Category Archives: India

‘My angel’: man who became face of India’s stranded helped home by stranger

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Image captured the plight of the millions of migrant labourers left unable to return home in the pandemic

A photograph of a migrant labourer, his face contorted with anguish as he sits on the roadside in Delhi speaking to his wife about their sick baby boy, has come to symbolise the ordeal of India’s daily wage workers; penniless, and unable to get home to their families because of the lockdown.

Rampukar Pandit, a construction worker in the Indian capital, had heard that his 11-month-old son was seriously unwell. With no public transport to reach his home in Begusarai in Bihar, 1,200 km (745 miles) away, he started walking. He reached Nizamuddin Bridge where, exhausted and hungry, he could go no further.

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Global report: US unemployment could hit 25%, warns Fed chairman, as Japan enters recession

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India extends Covid-19 lockdown but eases many restrictions; South Africa reports highest daily new cases; World Health Assembly to begin

Unemployment in the United States could peak at 25% as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the chair of the Federal Reserve, amid warnings the June quarter economic figures will be “very, very bad”. The bleak prediction came as Japan slid into its first recession in five years, with forecasts that worse was to come.

In a sober assessment of the economic impact of coronavirus in the US, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, estimated GDP contraction in the June quarter could be “easily be in the twenties or thirties”, as fallout from the global outbreak worsened.

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Covid-19 cases in Brazil surpass Italy as virus surges in Latin America

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Mexico and Peru struggle to contain outbreaks while deaths in Spain fall to two-month low

Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil have surpassed the total in Italy and are surging in Mexico and Peru as Latin America struggles to contain its fast-growing coronavirus outbreak.

Spain announced that 87 people had died there in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, the first time the figure has been below 100 in more than two months and a sign the virus is being contained in western Europe as it continues to spread aggressively in Russia, India and parts of Africa.

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Factory behind India gas leak operated illegally until 2019

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Company that owns factory admitted it did not have valid environmental clearance

The chemical factory that leaked gas into a coastal Indian city on Thursday morning, killing at least 12 people and putting hundreds in hospital, was operating illegally until at least the middle of 2019, documents show.

In an affidavit [pdf] filed by LG Polymers in May 2019, as part of its application to expand the plastic plant’s operations, the South Korean multinational admitted it was operating its polystyrene plant without the mandatory environmental clearance from the Indian government.

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Indian and Chinese soldiers injured in cross-border fistfight, says Delhi

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Troops also threw stones in face-off involving 150 soldiers at remote crossing point near Tibet, says Indian army

Several Indian and Chinese soldiers have been injured in a cross-border clash involving fistfights and stone-throwing at a remote but strategically important mountain pass near Tibet, the Indian army said on Sunday.

There have been long-running border tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours, with a bitter war fought over the Indian north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in 1962.

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Trouble brewing for tea producers as coronavirus lockdown hits harvests

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India’s ‘champagne of teas’ among those affected as country’s tea board estimates output could drop 9%, amid strain in China and Sri Lanka

Trouble is brewing for the world’s tea producers as the coronavirus lockdown shut down the harvest in several important regions, including the picking of India’s “champagne of teas”.

Despite forecasts of increased demand from drinkers stuck at home across the world, producers have become frustrated by the enforced quarantining of their workforce, with India’s output expected to drop by 9% in 2020.

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India chemical leak: more evacuations amid fears of second gas release

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Everyone within 5km of the plant in Andhra Pradesh told to leave over fear of repeat of accident that has left at least 11 dead

Indian officials have evacuated more people from the area around a chemical plant in the south of the country that leaked toxic gas, killing at least 11 people and sickening hundreds more.

There was confusion about whether the wider evacuation orders were sparked by a renewed leak at the LG Chem factory in Andhra Pradesh, or by the fear that rising temperatures at the plant could lead to another leak.

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India’s chemical plant disaster: another case of history repeating itself

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Decades after Bhopal, lack of law enforcement and political will plagues Indian industry

The gas leak at a chemical factory in Visakhapatnam will immediately remind many in India and beyond of the 1984 Bhopal disaster, widely considered the world’s worst industrial disaster.

So far, the scale of the tragedies are very different. Eleven people are confirmed to have died in Visakhapatnam – but with hundreds hospitalised and thousands affected, there are fears the toll will rise. In Bhopal, 4,000 people died within days of the toxic gas leak from a pesticide plant and thousands more in the following years.

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Gas leak at chemical factory in India kills at least nine and hospitalises hundreds

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Styrene gas leaked from the LG Polymers plant, part of the Korean conglomerate LG, in Andra Pradesh state

A gas leak at a chemical factory in southern India has killed at least nine people and led to hundreds being taken to hospital, amid fears that the death toll could climb higher.

Styrene leaked from the Korean-owned LG Polymers plant during the early hours of Thursday morning when families in the surrounding villages were asleep, a local official in Andra Pradesh state said.

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Top rebel commander killed by Indian forces in Kashmir

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Riyaz Naikoo was member of region’s largest indigenous militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen

Indian government forces have killed a top rebel commander and his aide in disputed Kashmir, and shut down mobile phone and mobile internet services during subsequent anti-India protests.

Riyaz Naikoo, 35, was the chief of operations of the region’s largest indigenous rebel group, Hizbul Mujahideen, which has spearheaded an armed rebellion against Indian rule.

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How coronavirus is dividing India – video explainer

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The spread of Covid-19 in India has been catastrophic for millions of its poorest and marginalised residents who are bearing the brunt of the world's biggest shutdown. Hannah Ellis-Peterson tells us how coronavirus and the lockdown is further dividing the country along class and religious lines

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Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in

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Civil society has outperformed the state in helping to feed India’s poorest. It should be seen as ally not enemy

The highways connecting India’s overcrowded cities to the villages had not seen anything like it since the time of partition 73 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of workers were on the move, walking back to their villages with their possessions bundled on their heads.

On 24 March, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide 21-day lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. States sealed their borders, and transport came to a halt. With no trains or buses to take them home, India’s rural-to-urban migrant population, estimated at a staggering 120 million, took to the roads. On 5 April a statement from the home ministry said 1.25 million people moving between states had been put up in camps and shelters.

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Rishi Kapoor, Bollywood star, dies of leukaemia aged 67

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Family urges fans not to publicly mourn leading man of numerous musical romances

The Indian actor Rishi Kapoor, who built a career as one of Bollywood’s romantic heroes, has died of leukaemia at the age of 67.

Kapoor, part of a famous Bollywood family, was admitted to hospital in Mumbai on Wednesday and died on Thursday, according to a family statement.

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Spain and Germany deal blow to hopes of tourism revival

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Minister rules out imminent reopening in Spain as Germany extends travel warning

Spain has ruled out any early reopening of its tourism sector and Germany is set to extend a travel warning for all leisure trips outside the country until mid-June, casting further doubt on when would-be holidaymakers will be able to venture abroad again.

With airline fleets mostly grounded, cross-border train traffic slashed and many EU countries, including France, requiring all arrivals bar their own citizens to formally justify their journey, leisure travel within Europe is at a near standstill.

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Bollywood star Irrfan Khan dies aged 53

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Khan, who had a string of Anglo-American successes under his belt, including Slumdog Millionaire, Life of Pi and Jurassic World, has died in Mumbai

• A life in pictures

Irrfan Khan, the Indian-born actor who achieved considerable success in both Bollywood and the west, has died aged 53. He had been admitted to the intensive care unit of Mumbai’s Kokilaben hospital on Tuesday with a colon infection.

In March 2018, he revealed he had been diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour, but after extensive treatment he recovered well enough to shoot Angrezi Medium, the film which would turn out to be his last, and whose release this March was cut short because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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‘They are starving’: women in India’s sex industry struggle for survival

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Exclusion from government Covid-19 relief has left many reliant on private food donations, as fears raised over protection from transmission after lockdown

Rasheeda Bibi has five rupees to her name. A worker in India’s sex industry, she lives in the narrow lanes of Kolkata’s Kalighat red light area with her three children in a room she rents for 620 rupees (£6) a month.

As a thunderstorm rages through the city, Bibi worries about the leaky roof of her small room.

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India should be placed on religious freedom blacklist, US panel says

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Commission says religious minorities face ‘increasing assault’ under Narendra Modi but state department unlikely to take action

A US government panel has called for India to be put on a religious freedom blacklist over a “drastic” downturn under the prime minister, Narendra Modi, triggering a sharp response from New Delhi.

The US commission on international religious freedom recommends but does not set policy, and there is virtually no chance the state department will follow its lead on India, an increasingly close US ally.

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Coronavirus: global death toll passes 200,000 as more countries prepare to reopen

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As WHO warns no evidence exists to suggest people can’t catch Covid-19 twice, India, Belgium and Greece among latest countries to ease lockdowns

The global toll from Covid-19 passed 200,000 on Saturday, with over 2.8 million people infected, as the WHO warned against issuing “immunity passports” because there is no evidence people who recovered from the disease are protected against a second infection.

It took more than three months after the coronavirus first emerged for deaths from the disease to pass 100,000, a grim milestone that was reached on 10 April. It took just over two weeks for that toll to double, and worldwide the number of confirmed infections is creeping towards 3 million.

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Two Muslim students face ‘bogus’ charges of inciting Delhi riots

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Lawyers say pair were peacefully protesting against Indian citizenship act

Delhi police have been accused of slapping two Muslim student activists with “bogus” charges of conspiring to incite the recent riots, the worst religious violence in India’s capital for decades, and in which the police were accused of being complicit.

Meeran Haider and Safoora Zargar, students at Delhi’s Muslim-majority Jamia Millia Islamia University, were charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which is usually reserved for terrorist activity and means they can be held for six months.

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Kingfisher Airlines tycoon loses appeal against extradition to India

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Multimillionaire ‘king of the good times’ Vijay Mallya faces allegations of £1bn fraud

The Indian multimillionaire businessman Vijay Mallya has lost his appeal against a decision to extradite him to India to face allegations of a £1bn fraud at his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

High court judges on Monday rejected Mallya’s appeal against a 2018 decision granting his extradition, ruling that there was a “prima facie case of fraud by false representation”.

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