Category: South Asia

BANGALORE, May 22, 2010 (AFP) – Some of the seven survivors who crawled or were carried from the burning remains of a plane that crashed in India on Saturday told of their escape amid scenes of horror and death. At least 159 people died after the plane overshot the runaway and plunged down a steep […]

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2010 (AFP) – Facebook is disappointed at being blocked in Pakistan over a contest that encourages users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and may make the offending page inaccessible to users there, the social network said late Wednesday. “We are very disappointed with the Pakistani courts’ decision to block Facebook […]

NEW DELHI, May 18, 2010 (AFP) – In a labyrinthine district of New Delhi, Kalpana Singh is busy knocking on doors, straining to make out house numbers scratched on the walls and warmly greeting residents with a smile. She is on a mission to record and document the occupants of the teeming and decrepit area […]

May 16, 2010 (AFP) – The Maldives has offered to take two detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, in what it described as a humanitarian gesture, the foreign minister said Sunday. US President Barack Obama, who has vowed to close the “war on terror” camp, has asked […]

MUMBAI, May 16, 2010 (AFP) – Vipul Modi is a busy high court lawyer in India’s financial capital Mumbai. Like many people, he uses the Internet to buy rail and airline tickets as well as pay his utility bills. Yet when it comes to buying other products online, the 44-year-old has misgivings, particularly about the […]

RAIPUR, May 14, 2010 (AFP) – When Samir Xalxo has a story to tell he makes a phone call and within hours people across one of India’s least developed and most violent states will be able to catch up on the news. The system, developed by Microsoft Research India, allows trained amateur journalists in Chhattisgarh […]

NEW DELHI, May 14, 2010 (AFP) – India aims to create an 11-billion-dollar fund to overhaul its creaking infrastructure, with 40 percent of the money sourced from abroad, a report said Friday. The government wants to raise 4.4 billion dollars from foreign pension, insurance and sovereign wealth funds and the rest from domestic institutions, the […]

NEW DELHI, May 11, 2010 (AFP) – The death from radiation poisoning of a scrapyard worker in New Delhi has highlighted the lax enforcement of waste disposal laws in India, leading to calls for urgent action. In early April, a machine from Delhi University containing cobalt-60, a radioactive metal used for radiotherapy in hospitals, ended […]

NEW DELHI, May 8, 2010 (AFP) – Bids for nationwide licences in India’s sale of spectrum for superfast 3G mobile services have hit 2. 65 billion dollars, a statement on a government website said Saturday. That price — 120.69 billion rupees (2.65 billion) — is nearly 3.5 times the 35 billion rupee reserve price set […]

NEW DELHI, May 5, 2010 (AFP) – The Indian media, a pillar of the country’s vibrant democracy, is riddled with corruption that sees journalists report stories for cash in a phenomenon known as “paid news,” a probe has revealed. The findings of an investigation for the Press Council of India, seen by AFP but yet […]

NEW DELHI, May 4, 2010 (AFP) – Chinese telecoms maker Huawei Technologies is planning to meet senior Indian officials to persuade them its equipment poses no security threat, a report said Tuesday. The move comes after New Delhi said last week it blocked sales between Indian mobile phone operators and Chinese equipment firms, which the […]

NEW DELHI, May 2, 2010 (AFP) – India’s government is weighing capital controls with the rupee on the rise amid fears of “hot money” flowing into the country as investors pile back into Indian assets. Unlike fellow emerging market giant China, India allows its currency to float freely and the central bank has warned of […]