Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Global report: India overtakes Brazil as second most Covid-infected country

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Seven French departments placed on high alert; UK sees 3,000 cases in one day, the highest figure since May

India has recorded a global one-day record of more than 90,000 positive coronavirus cases, taking the country past Brazil as the second most infected country in the world, with 4.2m confirmed cases.

On Sunday India recorded 90,802 new cases and 1,016 deaths. The worst affected state continues to be Maharashtra, home to the financial capital, Mumbai. It has had nearly a quarter of the country’s total infections, and on Sunday it reported a record 23,350 new cases.

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‘World’s loneliest elephant’ allowed to leave zoo for better life

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Kaavan, who lives in a Pakistani zoo, lost his partner in 2012 and is now medically clear to travel

An elephant who has become a cause célèbre for animal rights activists around the world will be allowed to leave his Pakistani zoo and be transferred to better conditions, the animal welfare group helping with the case has said.

Dubbed the “world’s loneliest elephant” by his supporters, Kaavan has languished at a zoo in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad for more than 35 years.

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India logs record 83,883 Covid-19 cases in day

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Cases reach 3.85m as expert claims emphasis on recovery rates fuels public apathy

India reported a record daily rise of 83,883 coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking its total to 3.85 million cases, just as the country pushed ahead with attempting a return to normality and kickstarting its economy.

India now has the fastest growing Covid-19 infection rate in the world, and is only 100,000 cases behind Brazil, the second worst-affected country in the world. Experts are predicting that the south Asian nation will soon overtake Brazil (4 million) and then the US (6.1 million) to hold the dubious title of having the highest number of cases globally.

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India acts to secure border after Himalaya clashes with China

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Military buildup increases fears of further confrontations between nuclear powers

India has moved troops to the eastern stretch of its border with China since clashes erupted between the nuclear-armed rivals on the western part of their border in the Himalayas in June, a government official said.

The clashes in the Ladakh region in June, in the western part of their border, was the worst violence between the countries in decades and there has been little sign of a reduction in tension, with further military action in the past week.

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India accuses China of ‘provocative military movements’ near border

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Defence ministry claims it countered Chinese moves that ‘violated the consensus’ on the standoff in the Ladakh region

India has said its soldiers thwarted China’s “provocative” military movements near a disputed border in Ladakh region amid a months-long standoff.

A statement by India’s defence ministry said China’s Peoples Liberation Army “carried out provocative military movements to change the status quo” and “violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements” to settle the standoff in the cold-desert region.

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Covid turns tide on India’s Ganesh festival traditions

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Thousands of ritual statues are dunked into the sea off Mumbai each year – but coronavirus and pollution concerns are forcing change

In the quiet housing estate of Angrewadi in the heart of Girgaon in south Mumbai, people are celebrating the 100th consecutive year of the Ganesh Chaturthi, the Hindu festival of the elephant-headed god of new beginnings. Statues of Lord Ganesh are brought into homes and put on display for offerings and prayers.

On the 11th and final day of the festival, the ritual of Ganesh Visarjan takes place – falling this year on 1 September. The statues, normally made of soluble plaster of paris, are traditionally carried in a public procession with music and chanting, and are then immersed in either a river or the sea. Here, they slowly dissolve in a ceremony that dramatises the Hindu view of the ephemeral nature of life – but also causes widespread pollution.

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Netflix portrayal of female Indian Air Force pilot flies into flak

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Gunjan Saxena was one of the first women in the IAF, but her biopic has drawn rebukes from fellow officers over sexism claims

Former and current members of the Indian military have criticised a Netflix film for portraying the armed forces as rife with gender discrimination.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has written to an Indian censor board, as well as Dharma Productions, which produced the film, and Netflix to complain that Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl “presented some situations that are misleading and portray an inappropriate work culture especially against women in the IAF”.

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Coronavirus has made every day a struggle to survive amid the squalor of Cox’s Bazar | Farid Alam

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Once I flew kites and dreamed of being a teacher. Now it’s hard to see a better future for me or my family

When I was born in Kutupalong camp, Bangladesh, it was a very different place. I remember as a child laughing and flying kites with my friends. Kites are not flying around our camps any more. There is little laughter.

Just months ago, we lived in a different world. We used to go outside a lot, seeking freedom from our little bamboo and plastic homes. But with Covid-19 we cannot. Often we are told to stay inside. It’s hot and cramped, with nine of us in one room.

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At least 90 feared trapped as five-storey building collapses in India

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Twenty-eight people pulled out of block of flats south of Mumbai amid monsoon rain

At least 90 people are feared trapped in the debris of a five-storey building that collapsed to the south of India’s financial capital of Mumbai, according to police in Maharashtra state.

The building, which contained around 47 flats, caved in on Monday evening, a police statement said.

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Selective abortion in India could lead to 6.8m fewer girls being born by 2030

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New study shows preference for a son is highest in north of country with Uttar Pradesh having highest deficit in female births

An estimated 6.8 million fewer female births will be recorded across India by 2030 because of the persistent use of selective abortions, researchers estimate.

Academics from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia projected the sex ratio at birth in 29 Indian states and union territories, covering almost the entire population, taking into account each state’s desired sex ratio at birth and the population’s fertility rates.

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Whole of Sri Lanka hit by power blackout

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Water supply and road traffic disrupted for seven hours after main power station suffers ‘technical issue’

The entire nation of Sri Lanka was left without power on Monday for seven hours after a failure at a key electricity facility.

Power minister Dullas Alahapperuma said an unspecified “technical issue” at the Kerawalapitiya power complex just outside the capital Colombo was the cause of the blackout, which hit the entire nation of 21 million people at about midday.

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India’s invisible catastrophe: fears over spread of Covid-19 into poor rural areas

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Country is entering a dangerous new phase of rising infections in small towns and villages with limited access to healthcare

Where better to seek sanctuary from a virus roaring through a crowded metropolis than a remote mountainside with views of the Himalayas?

This was the reasoning that prompted Lalit Upreti, 34, to leave the Indian capital, Delhi, where he works as a cook, two months ago to return to his hamlet Khankari in Uttarakhand, near the country’s border with Nepal. Here, he thought, his family would be safe.

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Female Afghan peace negotiator wounded in assassination bid

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Women’s rights activist Fawzia Koofi, a member of the team negotiating a deal with the Taliban, was shot in the arm

A female member of Afghanistan’s peace negotiating team has been slightly wounded in an assassination attempt, officials say.

Fawzia Koofi, who is also a former parliamentarian, was attacked on Friday afternoon near the capital, Kabul, while returning from a visit to the northern province of Parwan.

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‘Peace where rights aren’t trampled’: Afghan women’s demands ahead of Taliban talks

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With negotiations set to begin, women have been sharing their ‘red lines’ on the progress they refuse to see negotiated

Farahnaz Forotan was three when the Taliban had arrived in Kabul. It was 1996. “I have this memory of a snowy day, I was sitting on my mother’s lap, in a minibus, and she was crying. I didn’t understand why she was crying,” Forotan says. It was the day her family became refugees.

“It was the civil war, and we had to leave our home and country to live in Iran – alive, but living in pain and facing discrimination,” she says.

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Polio vaccinations resume in Pakistan and Afghanistan after Covid-19 delays

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Fight to eradicate disease getting ‘back on track’ after surge in cases due to pause in vaccination campaigns

Polio vaccination campaigns have resumed in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the last two polio-endemic countries in the world – after a “surge” in cases.

The pandemic halted campaigns in both countries in March and confirmed cases have now reached 34 in Afghanistan and 63 in Pakistan – where cases are being recorded in areas of the country previously free of the disease.

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Indian food delivery company Zomato offers ‘period leave’ to women

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Employer aims to remove stigma in a nation where menstruation is still taboo to some

Indian food delivery company Zomato has said it will give female employees up to 10 days of “period leave” a year, as part of an effort to combat what it said was stigma around the issue.

Zomato is the most high-profile organisation to institute the policy in India, a country where menstruation is still taboo to some.

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Air India Express black boxes recovered at Kerala crash site

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Boeing 737 crashed on landing in heavy rain, killing at least 18, including the two pilots

Flight data and cockpit voice recorders have been recovered from the wreckage of an Indian passenger aircraft that crashed in the southern state of Kerala.

The Air India Express plane, which was repatriating Indians from Dubai because of the Covid-19 pandemic, overshot the runway of the Calicut international airport in heavy rain near the city of Kozhikode, also known as Calicut.

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India plans to fell ancient forest to create 40 new coalfields

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Narendra Modi’s dream of a ‘self-reliant India’ comes at a terrible price for its indigenous population

Over the past decade, Umeshwar Singh Amra has witnessed his homeland descend into a battleground. The war being waged in Hasdeo Arand, a rich and biodiverse Indian forest, has pitted indigenous people, ancient trees, elephants and sloths against the might of bulldozers, trucks and hydraulic jacks, fighting with a single purpose: the extraction of coal.

Yet under a new “self-reliant India” plan by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to boost the economy post-Covid-19 and reduce costly imports, 40 new coalfields in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests are to be opened up for commercial mining.

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Covid led to ‘brutal crackdown’ on garment workers’ rights, says report

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Brands including Primark, Zara and H&M accused of failing to protect workers at factories in Asia from ‘union busting’

Some of Europe’s biggest retailers, including Primark, Zara and H&M, are failing to stop Covid-19 being used as a pretext for union busting, human rights activists are warning.

Millions of garment workers in some of the poorest parts of Asia have lost their jobs since coronavirus shutdowns hit the retail industry worldwide.

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Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa brothers strengthen grip in landslide election win

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PM and president’s party wins ‘super majority’ that will allow them to carry out constitutional changes

Sri Lanka’s ruling Rajapaksa brothers have secured a two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections, giving them powers to change the constitution and unravel democratic safeguards.

Final results on Friday showed that Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP) won 145 seats and can also count on the support of at least five allies in the 225-member legislature.

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