India's parliament speaker has cancelled a planned trip to Britain after being informed he would be frisked like everybody else. The ability to avoid airport security checks is seen as a status symbol in India and there are frequent controversies over who should be included on a special exemption list that is posted at airports across the country.The Hindustan Times quoted the speaker , Somnath Chatterjee as saying: "It's a matter of principle for me. I cancelled the trip because it involves the honour of the constitutional office I hold."
A small airplane crashed and caught fire as it tried to land in foggy weather at a tiny mountain airport near Mount Everest, killing 18 people, including 16 tourists from Germany, Australia and Nepal. The 19-seat Yeti Airlines plane, which had taken off from the capital Kathmandu , snagged its wheels on a security fence during its landing at Lukla airport, about 60km from Mount Everest. The tiny Lukla airport, little more than a runway carved into the side of the Himalayas at an altitude of 2 800m, is famous among travellers for its dramatic scenery, stomach-churning landings - and occasional crashes. The runway ends in a steep drop of a few hundred metres.
MUMBAI, India
An Indian man escaped a possible death sentence for drug trafficking after his lawyer told a court it was impossible to walk with a stash of heroin in his underpants.Mumbai police alleged Dhirendra Kamdar was carrying two kilograms of the drug in four, 500-gram packets in his underwear when they picked him up as he walked from a guest house to get a taxi to the city's airport. But when the case came to trial, Kamdar's lawyer Ayaz Khan said it was impossible for anyone to walk one kilometre with such an amount of drugs concealed in his smalls, the Daily News and Analysis newspaper said.Khan demonstrated his theory to the judge using four identically-sized bags filled with sugar, and was acquitted of the charge on lack of evidence.
Maldives' held its first democratic presidential election, which sees the Indian Ocean archipelago choosing whether to replace Asia's longest-serving leader. In all, 208 000 people are eligible to vote If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, a two person run-off will be held within 10 days. The polls pit incumbent President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, aged 71 and the islands' strongman for the past 30 years, against five bitter rivals in a race seen as impossible to predict given an absence of reliable opinion polls.
Spanish tenor Placido Domingo first-ever performance in India was held at the open-air stadium of the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai last Saturday with soprano Barbara Frittoli, PTI news agency reported. India-born conductor Zubin Mehta accompanied the tenor with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Mehta invited Domingo to Mumbai to take part in the series of concerts planned to celebrate the birth centenary of his father, Mehli Mehta, who was one of India's most renown conductors of Western classical music.
HYDERABAD, India
The communal riots in Andhra Pradesh's Adilabad district took a turn for the worse last weekend as six members of a family, including a two-year-old child, were burnt alive in their house, prompting the state government to announce a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the incident. A group of unidentified people torched the house, killing all its six inmates, including three children and a woman, police said. The attack took place at Vatoli village, 10 km from Bhainsa town, where four people were killed in communal violence Friday.
MUMBAI, India
In an apparent case of suicide triggered by the global financial crisis, a Mumbai-based stockbroker, his wife and their two children were found dead in their flat. The victims are A.K. Nair, a 77-year-old sharebroker, his wife Shyamala, 65, daughter Suchitra, 43, and son Sudhir, 42, the official from the Kasturba Marg police station said. According to preliminary investigations, it appears to be a case of mass suicide on account of financial calamities that befell the family in view of the recent crises in the stock markets, he said.
Around 25,000 people of Indian origin as well as a large delegation from India watched Pope Benedict XVI canonised Kerala nun Sister Alphonsa declaring her a saint at St. Peter's Square. Alphonsa is the first woman saint of the Indian church, which claims 2,000 years of history. Pope Benedict had cleared Sister Alphonsa's name for canonisation on June 1, 2007, a process that was started 55 years ago. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1986 in Kottayam, 40 years after her death, in recognition of the numerous miracles associated with her.
BHUBANESWAR, India
Three more people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the gang-rape of a nun in Orissa’s Kandhamal district, where communal clashes since August 23 have claimed at least 35 lives and rendered thousands homeless. The nun on August 26 filed a police complaint alleging she was gang-raped. However, the police collected her medical report only last week after the media reported the delay and Sister Nirmala, superior general of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, wrote to state authorities seeking justice. According to the nun’s written complaint, a mob of about 40 to 50 armed men attacked a house at K Nuagaon village where she along with a priest, Father Thomas Chellantharayil, had taken shelter after their centre was attacked.
KOCHI, India
Veteran filmmaker Mani Ratnam was asked to stop shooting his latest multilingual film Ravana in the forests of Malayatoor near here after he violated an agreement with the Kerala Forest Department, an official said. The forest is a two-hour drive from Kochi and is a prime spot for eco-tourism. Bollywood star-couple Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai are the lead actors and they were supposed to arrive next week.
NEW DELHI, India
A woman has phoned home four months after she was declared dead, police said. Software engineer Meghna Subedar called her parents to say that she had been living with a relative since June, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Police said the 28-year-old had informed her parents on April 10 that she was boarding a train for her home town in the central town of Korba.
She never turned up, and police registered her as a murder victim after they found the naked corpse of a woman on a popular Goa beach on June 25, although a DNA test later established the victim was not Subedar.
Authorities in the resort state of Goa ygave a final warning to the mother of murdered British teenager Scarlett Keeling to appear in court to face neglect charges. The state government’s directorate of women and child development said Fiona MacKeown had until October 15 to turn up in person to answer the allegations, which have been levied by a local social welfare group. The charity alleges that MacKeown failed in her duty as a parent by leaving 15-year-old Scarlett in “unlawful custody” in Goa while she and the rest of her family holidayed elsewhere in India. Scarlett’s body was found on a beach in February this year. A postmortem examination later found she had taken a cocktail of drink and drugs before she died. MacKeown’s Goan lawyer, Vikram Varma, said that the threat to proceed without his client was unfair and that she should be allowed to be present.
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