Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of temple in British Columbia, found fatally injured in car park
A campaigner for a Sikh nation to be carved out of India’s Punjab state who was wanted by Indian authorities has been shot dead in Canada, police have said.
Federal police said a man was found in his pickup truck in the car park of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, British Columbia, at about 8.30pm on Sunday, with apparent gunshot wounds.
Continue reading...Poverty drove young men from small Kashmir town to board ill-fated fishing trawler, say families
The last time Mohammed Yousaf talked to his son, Sajid Yousaf, on 8 June, the son was waiting anxiously in Libya for smugglers to pack him and hundreds of others on to a boat bound for the other side of the Mediterranean.
Six days later, the overcrowded fishing trawler sank off the coast of Greece. Sajid, 28, a shopkeeper and father of two from the small town of Khuiratta in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, is among the hundreds missing, presumed dead.
Continue reading...Questions raised about death toll after more than half of the fatalities reported in a single district in Uttar Pradesh
At least 96 people are reported to have died from heat-aggravated conditions during a blistering heatwave across two of India’s most populous states over the past several days, although questions have been raised after more than half of the deaths were reported in a single district.
The deaths happened in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the east, where 45C (113F) temperatures were recorded over the past few days, coupled with humidity.
Continue reading...Ruling dismays free speech activists who accuse Modi government of systematically shrinking space for dissent
An Indian court has blocked the screening of an Al Jazeera documentary about the country’s Muslim minority, fuelling fears that the right to criticise the government is being eroded.
The Allahabad high court was acting on a public interest petition filed by Sudhir Kumar, an activist, who said he had learned from media reports that the documentary Who Lit the Fuse? portrayed India’s 172-million Muslims as living in fear of the Narendra Modi government. He also alleged that it showed state agencies acting against the interests of Muslims.
Continue reading...‘Dragon boat water’ is breaking records in Guangxi region, as air conditioner use in Xinjiang puts strain on grid
Many people in China have experienced a variety of weather extremes in recent days. Parts of southern and eastern China experienced prolonged periods of torrential rainfall, as the summer rains known as “dragon boat water” got off to a remarkable start.
The city of Yulin in the Guangxi region experienced 35 hours of non-stop rain on 8-9 June, while the nearby city of Beihai was flooded after 614.7mm of rainfall over 24 hours in the same period. This is approximately a third of the city’s average yearly precipitation, and a June record for the Guangxi region. It is in stark contrast to May, when Guangxi experienced its lowest rainfall in 60 years.
Continue reading...Charges follow months of complaints against BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh by country’s top wrestlers
Police in India have filed charges of sexual harassment and criminal intimidation against the chief of the country’s wrestling federation, a member of parliament with Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), following complaints by female wrestlers.
The public prosecutor Atul Srivastav read out the charges against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh at a court hearing in Delhi. If convicted he faces up to three years in jail.
Continue reading...Cyclone Biparjoy, which means ‘disaster’ in Bengali, is expected to make landfall on Thursday evening
More than 100,000 people have been evacuated in India and Pakistan ahead of the expected landfall on Thursday of a “very severe cyclonic storm”.
Biparjoy, a cyclone whose name means “disaster” in Bengali, is making its way across the Arabian Sea and is expected to make landfall on Thursday evening, government weather monitors said.
Continue reading...Gunmen stormed a village close to the capital of the remote north-eastern state on Tuesday
At least nine people have been shot dead in the remote north-eastern Indian state of Manipur in the latest incident in weeks of violence that has claimed more than 100 lives.
Clashes between members of the Kuki ethnic group, who mostly live in the hills, and Meiteis, the dominant community in the lowlands, erupted on 3 May, sparked by resentment over economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education reserved for hill people.
Continue reading...Journalists say directive on hate speech issued by regulator indirectly affects coverage of former PM
Broadcast journalists in Pakistan have decried a de facto ban on mentioning Imran Khan by name or showing his image after a series of directives issued by the country’s media regulator.
Pakistan’s parliament ousted Khan from parliament in April last year. Since then he has been making nearly daily headlines with fiery speeches and tweets directed at the government and army.
Continue reading...Downing Street crisis meeting hears that about 8,000 who arrived under Operation Warm Welcome will be evicted this summer with nowhere to go
Thousands of Afghan refugees in the UK face homelessness this summer, the government was warned last week at a secret crisis meeting in Downing Street.
Council officials told No 10 and Home Office civil servants that about 8,000 Afghan refugees, allowed into the country in 2021 under the slogan Operation Warm Welcome, are due to be evicted from hotels as early as August because of a government deadline, yet have nowhere to go.
Continue reading...Report demands accountability for war crimes and singles out Russia for ‘mind-boggling’ targeting of hospitals in Ukraine
Russian attacks on medical facilities in Ukraine made 2022 the most violent year in a decade for hospitals and health workers operating in conflict zones, according to a new report by a coalition of humanitarian organisations.
With 750 reported attacks in 2022, Russia set a 10-year record, according to the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.
Continue reading...Ministers accused of trying to shift blame for Friday’s disaster in which 275 people died
Police in the Indian state of Odisha have registered a criminal case of “death by negligence” relating to the train crash on Friday that killed 275 people, as critics accused the government of trying to shift blame for the disaster.
The report filed by police did not name any specific person as being responsible but stated that “culpability of specific railway employees has not been ascertained, which will be unearthed during the investigation”.
Continue reading...Two schools in northern province targeted, says education official, who suggested the attacker was motivated by a personal grudge
Nearly 80 girls were poisoned and hospitalised in two separate attacks at their primary schools in northern Afghanistan, a local education official said on Sunday.
He said the person who orchestrated the poisoning had a personal grudge but did not elaborate. The attacks took place in Sar-e-Pul province over Saturday and Sunday.
Continue reading...Train was diverted on to wrong tracks, says railways minister as efforts to clear wreckage continue
India’s railways minister has said the country’s deadliest train crash in more than two decades was caused by an error in electronic signals that sent a train on to the wrong tracks.
Ashwini Vaishnaw said the full investigation into Friday’s crash in the eastern state of Odisha, which killed at least 275 people and injured more than 1,000, was still under way but “the root cause has been identified”.
Continue reading...Since the coup in 2021 the carnage has been unceasing, meanwhile Russia and China continue to send weapons
The problem is not that governments around the world are unaware of what is happening in Myanmar. It’s that they are not doing nearly enough to stop it.
Since the military seized power in a coup in early 2021, it has terrorised the country, killed, tortured and imprisoned thousands of citizens, broken countless laws, and made a mockery of the UN.
Continue reading...Though the number of railway accidents has come down in the past few years, derailment remains the main cause
There is no railway system quite like the Indian railways. Trains remain an essential lifeline in India, the world’s most populous country of 1.4 billion people, carrying about 13 million passengers a day for work, family and leisure on trains that weave across 40,000 miles of track, more than enough to wrap around the Earth.
Friday night’s collision involving two passenger trains and a freight train in the eastern state of Odisha was one of the worst accidents since 1999, when a collision between two trains in West Bengal killed 285 people. More recently, 160 people died in 2016 when the Indore-Patna Express derailed and as recently as February, two goods trains collided in Uttar Pradesh.
Continue reading...Relatives tell of agony of searching for survivors among what one called ‘heaps of bodies’ as rescue activities draw to a close
The carriages from three trains sat piled high in an entangled wreck. Some lay sideways, while others had been thrown so high into the air on impact that they had fallen back to earth twisted and upside down.
A line of dozens of bodies covered in white sheets were laid out next to the wreckage waiting for vehicles – ambulances, local cars, even tractors – to take them away to local hospitals. Passengers’ possessions lay scattered around them, shoes and toys and thrown-open suitcases.
Continue reading...Allies desert former prime minister amid disappearances and torture as powerful military reasserts control
In recent days, Imran Khan has cut an increasingly isolated figure. Since Pakistan’s former prime minister was released from jail, after a brief but explosive attempt to arrest him last month, his return has been marked by a mass exodus of the top leadership of his party, on a scale that has surprised even his critics.
Late on Thursday night, Pervez Khattak, the former chief minister and defence minister, became the latest high-profile resignation from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. He followed in the path of Khan’s former finance minister, his former human rights minister, his former information minister and his former shipping minister, who all stepped down from senior posts or left PTI altogether in recent weeks. Dozens of other federal and state ministers have followed suit.
Continue reading...Rescue operation under way with death toll expected to rise in India’s worst rail disaster in more than 20 years
At least 288 people have been killed and 803 injured after two passenger trains collided in the eastern Indian state of Odisha – the country’s deadliest rail disaster in more than 20 years.
The Coromandel Express, which runs from Kolkata in West Bengal to Chennai in Tamil Nadu, was going about 80mph (130km/h) when it collided with a stationary freight train at about 7pm on Friday, causing it to derail.
Continue reading...Gelje Sherpa was guiding Chinese client to summit when he saw Malaysian climber clinging to rope
A Malaysian climber narrowly survived after a Nepali sherpa guide hauled him down from below the summit of Mount Everest in a very rare high-altitude rescue, a government official has said.
Gelje Sherpa, 30, was guiding a Chinese client to the 8,849-metre (29,032ft) Everest summit on 18 May when he saw the Malaysian climber clinging to a rope and shivering from extreme cold in the area known as the death zone, where temperatures can dip to -30C or lower.
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