india - The African Mirror

Apr

2024

By TORA AGARWALA, SUNIL KATARIA and JOSEPH CAMPBELL

India’s strife-torn Manipur overcomes fear of violence to vote in big numbers

RESIDENTS of India's violence-torn northeastern state of Manipur turned out in large numbers to vote on Friday, despite the shadow of ethnic clashes that killed at least 220 people in the last year hanging over the national election. The state has been roiled by fighting between the majority Meitei and tribal Kuki-Zo people since May and continues to be divided into two enclaves - a valley controlled by Meiteis and Kuki-dominated hills, separated by a stretch of "no man's land" monitored by federal paramilitary forces. There were scattered incidents of violence on Friday in the state, despite heavy security. At least…

Mar

2024

By KRISHN KAUSHIK

India brings back 35 Somali pirates as part of operations near Red Sea

NEWS

THE Indian navy handed over 35 Somali pirates to the police in Mumbai on Saturday, after 100 days of anti-piracy operations east of the Red Sea, where piracy has resurfaced for the first time in nearly a decade. India, the largest national force in the Gulf of Aden and northern Arabian Sea region, captured the pirates from the cargo ship Ruen last week, three months after it was hijacked off the Somali coast. Taking advantage of Western forces' focus on protecting shipping from attacks in the Red Sea by Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi militants, pirates have made or attempted more than 20 hijackings…

Mar

2024

By SHIVAM PATEL

Delhi chief minister Kejriwal arrested in liquor graft case

WORLD

INDIA'S financial crime agency arrested Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi on Thursday in connection with graft allegations relating to the city's liquor policy, his party said, a setback for the opposition ahead of elections. The arrest means the main leaders of the decade-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are in jail, following the arrests last year of two of Kejriwal's deputies in the same case - which the party has called "dirty politics". Kejriwal, 55, rose to power as an anti-corruption crusader and founded the AAP, Hindi for "common man's party", in 2011. Scores of supporters protested outside his…

Jan

2024

By SUNIL KATARIA and SAURABH SHARMA

Hindus throng Ram temple in India’s Ayodhya as it opens to the public

WORLD

TENS of thousands of Hindus braved biting cold to pray at a new temple to Lord Ram in India's northern city of Ayodhya, a day after its inaugural by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a site believed to be the god-king's birthplace. Hindu groups, Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliates have portrayed the opening as part of a Hindu renaissance after past centuries of subjugation by Muslim invaders and colonial powers. "I was adamant about this ... I will only leave after I have seen my Lord Ram," one of the visitors, Guddu Shukla, who queued at the…

Jan

2024

By KRISHNA N. DAS

India pledges ‘appropriate action’ after completing cough syrup bribe probe

NEWS

INDIA will take "appropriate action" after completing an investigation into a complaint that a drug regulator helped switch samples of cough syrup linked to the death of children in Gambia in return for a bribe, two officials said. The World Health Organization (WHO) linked the syrups made by India's Maiden Pharmaceuticals to the deaths of 70 children in 2022, though India's government said subsequent tests at an Indian government laboratory showed the syrups were not toxic. Maiden, whose factory is based in Haryana state, denies wrongdoing. Reuters reported in June last year that a lawyer named Yashpal accused Haryana's drug controller, Manmohan…

Jan

2024

By The African Mirror

How an election-packed 2024 could swing world markets

NEWS

COUNTRIES making up over 60% of the world's economic output and more than half of its population hold elections this year. Markets face a "ballot box bombshell", financial services group Morningstar says, adding: "Prior experience of this kind of event risk shows big changes can cause sell-offs". Here's a look at the elections that matter for markets, in roughly chronological order for the coming year. 1/ TAIWAN Date: Jan 13 Back story: Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is competing mainly with the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) for the presidency and legislature. A DPP win would be the third consecutive victory for a…

Dec

2023

By KRISHNA N. DAS

Cough syrup deaths: India denies tempering with tests

NEWS

INDIA'S Maiden Pharmaceuticals, whose cough syrups have been linked to the deaths of children in Gambia, denied it had tampered with test samples or bribed officials to do so, as alleged in a complaint under investigation by local health officials. An investigator with the state of Haryana's Food and Drug Administration told Reuters on Friday he was close to finishing a probe into whether a state drug regulator was bribed to switch samples, tested by the Indian government, that contradicted the World Health Organization's findings of toxic substances in the cough syrups. "I have never changed the sample," Maiden founder Naresh Kumar Goyal…

Dec

2023

By ARPAN CHATURVEDI and YP RAJESH

India’s top court upholds end of special status for Kashmir, orders polls

WORLD

INDIA'S Supreme Court upheld a 2019 decision by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revoke special status for the state of Jammu and Kashmir and set a deadline of September 30 next year for local polls to be held. India's only Muslim-majority region, Jammu and Kashmir has been at the heart of more than 75 years of animosity with neighbouring Pakistan since the birth of the two nations in 1947 at independence from colonial rule by Britain. The unanimous order by a panel of five judges followed more than a dozen petitions challenging the revocation and a subsequent decision…

Nov

2023

By SAURABH SHARMA

Rescuers drill to reach 40 workers in India tunnel collapse

WORLD

RESCUE workers battled to reach 40 Indian workers trapped inside a collapsed Himalayan highway tunnel for almost 60 hours, drilling through debris to fix a wide steel pipe which they hope can be used to pull the men out. The trapped men are safe and healthy, authorities said, and are being supplied food, water and oxygen through a pipe. Officials are also in regular contact with them. The 4.5-km (3-mile) tunnel, which is being built in Uttarakhand state on a national highway that is part of the Char Dham Hindu pilgrimage route, caved in around 5:30 a.m. on Sunday (2400…

Oct

2023

By KRISHNA N. DAS

Exclusive: India allows cough syrup firm linked to Uzbek deaths to re-open factory

WORLD

INDIA'S Uttar Pradesh state has permitted the resumption of most production at a factory owned by Marion Biotech, whose cough syrups Uzbekistan linked to the deaths of 65 children last year, according to an order seen by Reuters. Marion is among three Indian companies whose cough syrups the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies have linked to the deaths of 141 children in Uzbekistan, Gambia and Cameroon since the middle of last year, in one of the world's worst such waves of poisoning. "There's no known case of a lack of quality in other medicines manufactured by the firm," the drug controller of…