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Magnitude-6.9 quake kills 21 in India and Nepal
By the CNN Wire Staff
September 19, 2011 2:28 a.m. EDT
PHOTO: A man looks out a collapsed house just southeast of Kathmandu, Nepal, on Monday.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
14 people die in India and seven more lose their lives in Nepal, the officials say
300 civilians, 22 tourists are rescued near India's border with Tibet, an official says
The quakes set off landslides that, with heavy rains, are hampering rescue efforts
A wall of the British Embassy in Kathmandu collapsed due to the quake, killing three
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New Delhi (CNN) -- The death toll from a magnitude 6.9 earthquake -- and its aftershocks -- along the border of India and Nepal climbed to 21 Monday, officials said.
Fourteen deaths were reported in India with seven others in Nepal, according to each nation's Home Ministry. More than 90 have been injured in India.
The quake struck the northern Indian state of Sikkim, where seven people died, causing damage in West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya. Five deaths were reported in West Bengal and two others in Bihar.
The dead include three in Nepal's capital of Kathmandu, who died when a wall of the British embassy collapsed, according to Kedar Rijal, Kathmandu police chief. They included an 8-year-old girl, her father and a third person.
The British Foreign Office confirmed a "compound perimeter wall" of the embassy collapsed, adding that its ambassador has met with the community and offered condolences.
Police said in a statement that two more people died in the Nepalese town of Dhara, about 217 miles east of Kathmandu. About a dozen people were injured when they jumped from their houses during the quake, police said.
The locations of the other two fatalities were not immediately available.
Communications to stricken areas are "much better now," Sikkim's chief secretary Karma Gyatso said Monday, adding cell phone connections have also improved in the northern Indian state. He added that rescuers have reached most of the hardest-hit areas, with more emergency crews set to be deployed over the course of the day.
Already, 300 civilians had been rescued in one such effort near Sikkim's border with China, said Indo-Tibetan Border Police spokesman Deepak Kumar Pandey. Some 22 tourists -- all of them Indians -- were also rescued in the same area.
The deaths, damage and recovery efforts came after a total of three quakes struck the region in rapid succession in a mountainous region.
The U.S. Geological Survey initially put the largest quake at 6.8 magnitude, later upgrading it to a 6.9, and the other two at magnitudes 4.8 and 4.6. All three occurred within an hour and 15 minutes, the U.S. agency said. The India Meteorological Department said the quakes were 6.8 magnitude, 5.7 magnitude and 5.3 magnitude.
The quakes set off landslides, which -- along with heavy rains -- were blocking roads and hampering rescue efforts, Pandey said. He expressed fears that the toll, as far as deaths and damage, could be more than is now known, anticipating more will be known once the sun rises Monday.
Authorities have reported power outages and downed phone lines in Sikkim.
Emergency crews were dispatched from different locations to the region, India's home ministry said in an alert to reporters. At least four fighter jets were carrying rescue officers to a neighboring region, where they travel by road to Gangtok, Sikkim's capital, according to the alert.
As for outside help, World Vision announced Sunday that it "has put its emergency response team in India on standby" to provide relief as requested. The nonprofit organization reported that the quake cut off phone communication and electricity in parts of Sikkim and West Bengal provinces.
"The whole earth was shaking and it lasted for two minutes," Paul Mathai from World Vision, who was 130 kilometers (80 miles) from the epicenter, said in a statement from the organization. "We were panicked, but all of us are safe."
That quake's epicenter was about 42 miles from the city of Gangtok and 169 miles east of Kathmandu, according to the geological survey.
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CNN's Harmeet Singh, Manesh Shrestha and Bharati Naik contributed to this report.
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Magnitude-6.9 quake kills 21 in India and Nepal
By the CNN Wire Staff... more
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Four elephants, allegedly poisoned, dead in Assam
Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Updated: October 12, 2010 16:38 IST
Guwahati: The fringes of the Kaziranga National Park have turned into deadly territory.
In the last few days, four elephants - two of them calves - have been found dead in the area, the most recent was discovered in the Panbari Reserve Forest. All are suspected to have died of poisoning.
Panbari is one of the most important animal corridors in the country, but the corridor has been choked with more than a hundred stone quarries.
The impact of that on wildlife is compounded by the tea estates in the area which chemical pesticides and toxic weedicides.
It's not clear whether the poisioning was deliberate. But the conflict between elephants and humans has been rising. This year, elephant herds from near-by Karbianglong have destroyed fully-grown rice paddy in at least ten villages in Kaziranga.
In September, the government announced that the elephant would be given National Heritage Animal status, which would entitle it to the same level of protection as the tiger. A task force set up to draft policy has presented an agenda that tackles the diversifying conflict with humans, as well as the loss of habitat. However, it has not touched upon the issue of pesticides in eco-sensitive zones.
"There is no measure as of now and we have enough laws, it's the implementation which is lacking," says Rathin Barman, Coordinator of the Wildlife Trust of India.
Last month, pictures of seven elephants run over by a speeding train in Siliguri in West Bengal had people all over the country cringing. It also became a sore point between the Railways Ministry and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh.
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/four-elephants-die-in-five-days-in-assam-59091?cpFour elephants, allegedly poisoned, dead in Assam
Kishalay Bhattacharjee,... more
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P Chidambaram seems to have repeated the same blunder that was committed by Rajiv Gandhi in trying to get V Prabhakaran shot dead at the behest of some foolish trigger-happy top Indian military brass. It’s true that the human rights activist Swami Agnivesh has put up a brave face by saying that the Azad’s death shall not be allowed to derail the peace process initiated by Swami Agnivesh in trying to bring a truce between the Indian Government and the CPI [Maoist]. But, the unpalatable truth is that the Congress/UPA has proved once again that the majority of the Indian politicians are really immature morons who cannot handle and resolve internal Indian political problems peacefully. Yes, the majority of the Indian politicians are excellently superb in taking care of their own personal interests even if these interests meant derailing the supreme Indian national interests.
The major chunk of the Indian politicians [whether those in ruling government or in opposition] wants the Indian democracy to function only for the exclusive benefit of the select political-bureaucratic-antisocial elements' network in India. Sushma Swaraj has called for Army action against the Maoists. But, she forgets that not long back there were posters/material in New Delhi that had suggested of Sushma’s links with Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, the notorious Indian smuggler’s underworld.
The Congress/UPA had earlier used the shoulders of P Chidambaram to try to silence the voice of the civil society and human rights workers in India in terms of P Chidambaram having threatened to put all people [who expressed their candid and frank views on Maoist-Indian Government issue] by putting them into jails under various Indian laws. Well, if these Indian laws were to be applied sincerely, P Chidambaram himself would turn out to be the first person to be dubbed a goonda and put behind bars for having threatened, civil society, like a goon!
Also, the Congress/UPA shall have to put Digvijay Singh, the AICC general secretary, into jail for having challenged P Chidambaram on the vexing Naxal-Maoist issue. Then, the Congress/UPA shall have to put the management/correspondents of all the Indian newspapers like The Times Of India, etcetra for the later having published articles/views on this issue…P Chidambaram shall have to die and go to heaven if he [P Chidambaram] wished to bring back VP Singh, the former Indian Prime Minister to be put into the Indian Jail for VP Singh having commented some time before his death [comments were published in the Times Of India] during the meet at a slum that he [VP Singh] was so annoyed with the corruption in the system [Indian Government] that he [VP Singh] would pick up a gun and become a naxalite if he [VP Singh] were still young in age!
As regards the Maoist-Naxal issue in India, it’s a political problem and not a simple law and order issue. The Congress/UPA and opportunist opposition Indian political leaders have tried to wrongly project it as a law and order problem. The real problem is the majority of the Indian politicians themselves who seem to be considering their excellent political fortune as a divine right for ever to trample upon the rights of the ordinary citizenry/tribals. Why will your own citizen in general pick up a gun against you if you take care of your citizen’s genuine needs, desires and aspirations?
Well, this lesson seems to have been lost upon most of the Indian politicians. That’s why we see that the Indian nation-State has been at war against its own people since Indian independence in 1947. It’s true that most Indian politicians would love to see that you don’t see this true picture of the Indian polity.
The Indian government has waged wars and is still continuing wars against its own Indian people. Examples are numerous – Kashmir, Goa, Hyderabad, Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, Punjab, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa. Although the Indian Government and state governments of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal would like you to believe and even I myself would have liked to believe that Maoist issue were a law and order problem yet it were not so. The Factual reality is that it is an armed conflict in the aforesaid 5 states – irrespective of whether the majority of the Indian politicians would like to admit publically this factual reality or not. So, the United Nations Organization seems to have fully correctly designated the Indian government-Maoist conflict as the Armed Conflict and has wisely refused to accept it as a law and order problem.P Chidambaram seems to have repeated the same blunder that was committed by Rajiv... more
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The recent cold-blooded murder of AZAD and his colleague Hem Pandey, both belonging to CPI [MAOIST], in a blatantly cold-blooded fake encounter in Adilabad Forests bordering Andhra-Maharashtra by the Andhra Pradesh police, in all possibility under instructions from P Chidambaram, the home minister of India, has only confirmed further the deep suspicions raised earlier by Ms Mayawati, the UP CM, regarding the ruling Indian National Congress’ intentions about dealing with the Naxalites-Maoist issue in India.
As per the Maoist statement, “on June 1 [2010], the Andhra Pradesh Special Branch Police…arrested Com Azad, politburo member and spokesperson of CPI [Maoist] and Com Hem Pandey, a zonal committee level comrade, in Nagpur city around 11 am when they went to meet a comrade who was supposed to receive them from Dandakarnya zone. Azad reached Nagpur around 10 am on the fateful day along with Hem Pandey, after travelling a long distance…with specific information, the APSIB [Andhra Pradesh State Intelligence Bureau] abducted them, perhaps flew them in a helicopter, to Adilabad jungle near Maharashtra border and killed them.”
Going by the media reports in the mainstream Indian newspapers, it’s fully clear that the politburo member and spokesperson of the CPI [Maoist], Shri Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad was planning to discuss truce dates. A statement by the CPI [Maoist] said, “Azad was going to discuss with our comrades, concrete proposals of well-meaning people like Swami Agnivesh about particular dates for the mutual ceasefire.”
The statement added, “Will Chidambaram expect CPI (Maoist) to sit for talks with blood on his hands, of Com Azad and Com Hem Pandey?”
Does the Congress/UPA combine really wish for a truce with the Maoists-Naxals? The brazen unwanted killing of Azad, the key Truce-mediator, at the behest of the Centre seems unfortunately to indicate otherwise. It’s a time-honoured/pragmatic standard practice not to kill the DUUTA [MESSENGER] who generally acts as a go-between two warring parties. The DUUTA is often a soft target. In this case, Azad was treated probably to be a soft target by P Chidambaram who got him killed as a revenge for the heat unleashed by the Maoist attacks on the paramilitary forces like the CRPF in revenge for crimes perpetrated on the innocent tribals by the Indian security forces.
Well, P Chidambaram has foolishly lost an opportunity to deal peacefully with the Maoists by having Azad killed. It is something akin to the Maoist killing P Chidambaram to avenge the killing and torture of the tribals at the hands of the security forces in which case the Centre might refuse talks with the Maoists. OR IS IT THAT THE CONGRESS/UPA COMBINE DOESN’T WANT TO HAVE A NEGOTIATED PEACE SETTLEMENT WITH THE MAOISTS? The killing of Azad seems to suggest so.
It seems to be an old foolish-policy-blunder-mechanism that the Congress always has used.
Remember the recent TV interview in which one retired Indian army general had boasted as to how he had convinced Rajiv Gandhi, the then Indian PM, to get V Prabhakaran, the LTTE chief wiped out, a strategy based on which only, V Prabhakaran was shot at by the Indian snipers when V Prabhakaran had come to meet the Indian high commissioner to Sri Lanka prior to the outbreak of a full-fledged hostility between the LTTE and the IPKF?
Luckily for V Prabhakaran, the Indian snipers failed to kill him. But, this treacherous act by Indian politicians made V Prabhakaran a sworn enemy of Rajiv Gandhi that culminated in the revenge-death of Rajiv Gandhi by the LTTE operatives. Also, that very treacherous act deprived the suffering Lankan Tamils of any Indian help in terms of the Indian National Congress having harboured animosity towards V Prabhakaran after Rajiv Gandhi’s death. This chain of events probably made the ruling Congress-led UPA to give silent approval to Mahinda Rajpaksa, the Sri Lankan President who ruthlessly got his military then kill more than 20,000 innocent Lankan Tamils to overcome the resistance by the LTTE, a little prior to the 2009 Indian General elections.
Although, the Congress/UPA would not like to admit it yet the fact seems to be that the Congress/UPA feared that the NDA-led coalition might win 2009 elections and as such Congress/UPA would lose a golden chance to get V Prabhakaran wiped out, even if the wiping out of the later meant human rights violation for more than 20,000 innocent Lankan Tamils who were then going to be butchered by the Lankan military within a time of few weeks.The recent cold-blooded murder of AZAD and his colleague Hem Pandey, both belonging to... more
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Babar Ali is, quite possibly, the youngest headmaster in the world and, again, quite possibly, the only one to teach pupils in their backyard.
This is the story of Babar's day, teaching the kids from his village in West Bengal, eastern India.Babar Ali is, quite possibly, the youngest headmaster in the world and, again, quite... more
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NEW DELHI, Oct. 3 -- After months of violent demonstrations, Tata Motors, the Indian manufacturer of the world's cheapest car, will abandon its $350 million factory in West Bengal state.
The problem: protests by farmers who lost land in a deal that had been seen as a symbol of India's transition from agriculture to manufacturing and technology.
"Taking all things into account, mainly the well-being of our employees, the safety of our contractors and in fact our vendors also, we've taken the very regretful decision to move the Nano project out of West Bengal," Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Group, said Friday.
From the start, farmers said the government had given them too little compensation and pressured them too hard to leave their land so Tata could build a 1,000-acre plant an hour's drive from Kolkata.
The state government recently offered farmers more-generous compensation and job guarantees in exchange for their land. But many continued to refuse the offer.
The factory has divided neighbors in the area's fertile potato- and cucumber-farming villages between those who were hopeful about the factory and those who mistrusted it.
Tata Motors has already been offered two other sites in neighboring states. The Nano, which is known in India as "the people's car," is a mini, golf-cartlike vehicle reminiscent of the Volkswagen Beetle. It was to roll out this month with a sticker price of $2,500.
As other Indian cities have boomed, Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, has remained in a bygone era. The area has sentimental ties to India's former Soviet ally. Hammer-and-sickle flags adorn Kolkata's coffeehouses and village tea shops.
Across India, land acquisition projects for about 92,000 acres -- estimated to be worth $54 billion -- are stalled by protests launched mainly by peasant farmers.
The plant at Singur was seen as an important test case for the world's biggest democracy. After Tata decided to abandon the project, pundits on television said the state's image with potential investors was now tainted.
Kolkata's famously left-wing intellectuals and celebrities were torn on the Tata issue, saying the case is symbolic of a society wrestling with its transformation.
Cricket star Sourav Ganguly recently tried to rally city youth in radio and magazine ads: "The Nano project will completely revolutionize the future of the youth. If this project goes elsewhere, the state will become a dark spot."
NEW DELHI, Oct. 3 -- After months of violent demonstrations, Tata Motors, the Indian... more
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India’s Tata Motors on Friday said it was withdrawing its low-cost Nano car project from the state of West Bengal after more than a month of violent protests by local farmers brought construction to a halt.
The decision by Ratan Tata – one of India’s most respected industrialists – to relocate the $350m factory for its “people’s car” comes as the factory was nearing completion. The company had set a late October deadline for rolling out what is intended to be the world’s cheapest car.
The pull-out – which followed weeks of negotiations between Tata, West Bengal’s government and its opposition leader Mamata Banerjee – highlights the severe difficulties companies face in acquiring land for industrial development in densely populated India.
Farmers had claimed that they were forced to give up their land for the car factory without sufficient compensation, and their protests were stoked and encouraged by Ms Banerjee, seeking to build her political base for her challenge to the state’s elected Communist authorities.India’s Tata Motors on Friday said it was withdrawing its low-cost Nano car... more
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