Category Archives: India

India invokes emergency laws to ban BBC Modi documentary

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Government accused of ‘censorship’ over ban on film about PM’s role in violence during 2002 Gujarat riots

The Indian government has invoked emergency laws to block a BBC documentary examining the role of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, during riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002.

Controversy has erupted in India over the first episode of the two-part programme, India: The Modi Question, which tracked his rise through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata party and his appointment as chief minister of Gujarat.

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UK will be 15 years late in hitting £1tn annual export target, figures show

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Exclusive: Forecasts predict exports will fall to £707bn next year and target will not be reached until 2035

Ministers have been accused of leaving a “record of failure and broken promises” as internal forecasts show Britain will be 15 years late in achieving its £1tn annual export target after being hit by Brexit.

Projections from the Department for International Trade (DIT) show the value of UK exports will not reach £1tn until 2035, based on current trends, with the total due to fall to £707bn next year.

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Head of Indian wrestling federation accused of sexual harassment

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Wrestlers including Olympic medallists stage sit-in demanding federation is disbanded

Two Olympic medal-winning wrestlers in India have accused the head of their sport’s governing body and its coaches of sexually harassing female players and have vowed to protest until the federation is disbanded and its leader investigated.

Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, who have Olympic bronzes, Vinesh Phogat, a Commonwealth Games gold medallist, and other athletes began a sit-in protest in the capital, Delhi, on Wednesday.

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Three children among six killed during Indian kite-flying festival

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Victims reportedly bled to death when glass-coated strings were entangled around their necks

Six people, including three children, have died after their throats were cut by glass-coated kite strings during an annual kite-flying festival in India.

Hundreds flocked to terraces and rooftops to unfurl their kites towards the sky at the Uttarayan festival in the western Indian state of Gujarat over the weekend.

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Indian diamond heiress gives up fortune to become child nun

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Eight-year-old daughter of wealthy gem dealer follows family’s Jain faith to enter strict religious order

An eight-year-old girl in India who was due to inherit a multimillion-dollar diamond fortune has instead been admitted as a nun to a strict religious order after renouncing worldly pleasures.

Devanshi Sanghvi was, until this week, an heiress to the Sanghvi and Sons jewellery business in the western city of Surat, known locally as Diamond City for its prominence in the global gem trade.

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‘World’s longest river cruise’ could threaten endangered Ganges dolphin, experts warn

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A luxury cruise has been hailed as the start of a new age of Indian tourism. But conservationists fear the impact of increased river traffic and pollution

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has officially launched the “world’s longest river cruise” from the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. The luxury voyage will last 51 days, travelling 3,200km via Dhaka in Bangladesh to Dibrugarh in Assam, crossing 27 river systems.

The three-deck MV Ganga Vilas, with 18 suites, is the latest venture in a trend for cruise tourism in India being promoted by the government. Modi hailed the cruise industry on the Ganges as a “landmark moment”, which will herald a new age of tourism in India.

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Myanmar junta hit Indian territory during strike on rebel camp, say witnesses

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Locals in Farkawan village said that two bombs were dropped on the Indian side of the border but no one was hurt

The Myanmar military launched an airstrike on a prominent training camp for pro-democracy forces close to the Indian border, with jets dropping at least two bombs inside Indian territory according to eyewitnesses.

The Myanmar junta, who seized power in a coup in February 2021 and are engaged in a bloody battle to crush pro-democracy insurgents, began bombing Camp Victoria in Myanmar’s Chin state, on Tuesday afternoon, a rebel commander confirmed to the Guardian.

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Toyah Cordingley killing: Rajwinder Singh waives right to challenge extradition from India

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‘I did not kill the woman,’ suspect says outside Delhi hearing, adding that he wants to reveal all to a court in Australia

The man accused of murdering 24-year-old Toyah Cordingley on a Queensland beach four years ago has told an Indian court he wants to return to Australia as soon as possible to face trial.

Rajwinder Singh, 38, swore in a “willingness statement” submitted to a Delhi court magistrate that he wished to formally waive his right to challenge extradition.

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Shock in India as woman, 20, reportedly dragged by car for hour after collision

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Police in spotlight after claims they failed to respond to reports car with five men had not stopped

The death of a 20-year-old woman who was reportedly dragged for almost an hour by a car after a vehicle collision in Delhi has provoked outrage and calls for justice.

The woman was driving home from work in the early hours of New Year’s Day when her scooter and a car collided. News reports say the car driver and four passengers, all male, did not stop, dragging her body for miles through the streets of outer Delhi.

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Indian leather companies accused of enabling Russia’s war effort

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Soldiers’ boots are made from imported Indian leather as country’s trade with Russia soars by 400%

Indian companies have been accused of enabling Russia’s war effort after exporting leather to Russian companies that make boots for its military in the months since the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and India have longstanding ties and Narendra Modi’s government has not joined western countries in openly criticising Moscow over the war nor stopped Indian companies trading with Russia.

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China’s move to open up travel sparks concern over spread of new variants

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Japan, India and Taiwan introduce measures to prevent influx of cases as experts say lack of data makes it difficult to assess risk

Virologists are watching nervously to see how China’s abrupt decision to drop some of its toughest Covid-19 restrictions, including scrapping quarantine rules for travellers, may affect variants and their global spread as some countries increase precautionary measures.

China’s decision on Monday to drop quarantine for overseas visitors from 8 January has prompted concerns about the potential for new variants to spread beyond China’s borders. Japan and India are among the countries that have introduced measures to prevent an influx of cases.

This article was amended on 28 December 2022. Airfinity estimates there are more than 5,000 deaths a day in China, rather than new cases as an earlier version said.

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Indian police investigate Russian politician’s hotel death

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Death of Pavel Antov, who reportedly criticised Ukraine war, comes days after his travelling companion died at same hotel

Indian police are investigating the sudden deaths at a luxury hotel of a wealthy Russian politician who reportedly criticised the Ukraine war, and his travelling companion.

The body of Pavel Antov, 65, was found on Saturday in a pool of blood outside his lodgings in eastern Odisha state, where he was on holiday with three other Russian nationals.

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‘A threat to unity’: anger over push to make Hindi national language of India

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Ruling BJP accused of agenda of ‘Hindi imposition’ in a country with more than 700 languages

Tensions are rising in India over prime minister Narendra Modi’s push to make Hindi the country’s dominant language.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janaya party (BJP) government has been accused of an agenda of “Hindi imposition” and “Hindi imperialism” and non-Hindi speaking states in south and east India have been fighting back.

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Nepal to release ‘The Serpent’ serial killer Charles Sobhraj

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Nepalese supreme court orders release on account of old age of man jailed for murders of two tourists

The Nepalese supreme court has ordered the release of the French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, known as “the Serpent”, who preyed on western tourists travelling on the hippy trail in south Asia in the 1970s and was jailed for life for the murder of an American woman.

Sobhraj, who has French citizenship and is of Indian and Vietnamese descent, has been linked to the killings of 20 foreign tourists across Thailand, Nepal and India. He is said to have lured them in before drugging, robbing and murdering them.

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Weather tracker: cyclone drags pollution towards Sri Lanka

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Particulate matter, which is hazardous to lungs, has been pulled in from India by Cyclone Mandous

In Sri Lanka, schools were forced to close on Friday last week owing to high levels of pollution pulled in from India via Cyclone Mandous. The cyclone was situated in the Bay of Bengal, with winds blowing anti-clockwise around the central low pressure, sweeping the polluted air from India across the Palk strait into Sri Lanka. Subsequently, this merged with Sri Lanka’s local air pollution, leading to unhealthy pollutant concentrations that created a haze across parts of the country, including the capital, Colombo.

Most people are aware of air pollutants, such as carbon dioxide and methane, and the impacts they have in contributing to global warming. However, other air pollutants pose a more immediate threat to human health. Particulate matter refers to tiny particles or droplets in the air, and is split into two categories depending on diameter; up to 2.5 microns (0.0025mm, PM2.5) or up to 10 microns (0.01mm, PM10).

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Chinese and Indian troops in fresh skirmish at Himalayan border

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Region on high alert after dozens reported injured in first clash in disputed area for more than two years

Chinese and Indian troops have clashed in a disputed Himalayan border region for the first time in more than two years, with reports of dozens injured.

At least 20 Indian soldiers were injured in the incident on 9 December in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh, the Indian army said on Tuesday. The clash was the most serious since June 2020, when at least 24 soldiers died in violent hand-to-hand combat, and comes after months of major acts of disengagement by both militaries in the long-running dispute.

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Modi’s BJP clinches landslide election victory in Gujarat

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Bharatiya Janata party claims biggest electoral success on record in prime minister’s home state

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, was given a significant boost as his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) won a landslide victory in his home state of Gujarat, a sign of the party’s enduring popularity before a general election due in 2024.

Gujarat has long been a stronghold of the Hindu nationalist BJP, which has won seven consecutive elections there since 1995, but Thursday’s results were the BJP’s biggest electoral success in the state on record. It looks on course to win a record 156 seats out of 182, giving it an 80% majority, the highest achieved by any party in the state’s history.

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Billionaire Modi ally on verge of taking over independent Indian news channel

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Gautam Adani’s takeover of NDTV is ‘serious threat to democracy’ in India, says news anchor

One of India’s few remaining news channels known for independent reporting is about to be taken over by a billionaire ally of the prime minister, Narendra Modi.

In recent years, NDTV (New Delhi Television) has earned a reputation as one of the last bastions of independent journalism among India’s mainstream media, which have increasingly been put under pressure to toe the government line under Modi, who came to power in 2014.

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Air pollution linked to almost a million stillbirths a year

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First global analysis follows discovery of toxic pollution particles in lungs and brains of foetuses

Almost a million stillbirths a year can be attributed to air pollution, according to the first global study.

The research estimated that almost half of stillbirths could be linked to exposure to pollution particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), mostly produced from the burning of fossil fuels.

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The Kashmir Files: Israeli director sparks outrage in India over ‘vulgar movie’ remarks

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Nadav Lapid, chair of the International film festival India, spoke out against work that critics say is anti-Muslim propaganda

A row has erupted in India after an Israeli director described a controversial film about Kashmir as propaganda and a “vulgar movie”, prompting the Israeli ambassador to issue an apology.

Nadav Lapid, who was chair of this year’s panel of the international film festival of India (IFFI), spoke out against the inclusion of The Kashmir Files at the event.

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