LIVE: 102 dead, 280 injured in Kerala temple fire
- Ramesh Babu, Hindustan Times, Thiruvananthapuram |
- Updated: Apr 10, 2016 13:15 IST
At least 102 people are feared dead and 280 injured in a fire that broke out in a temple in Kerala early on Sunday.
Fireworks during an event to mark the Hindu New Year at Puttingal Devi temple in Kollam district’s Paravur, around 70km from the capital Thiruvananthpauram, triggered the tragedy .
Initial reports suggested that the temple authorities did not have the permission to burst firecrackers. Chief minister Oommen Chandy cancelled his campaign for the elections that begin on May 16 and rushed to the spot.
Read | Kerala temple fire: Situation at site alarming, says CM Oommen Chandy
The world looks away as blood flows in Burundi
More than a quarter of a MILLION
people have fled in terror as opposition militias plot their return. Without international assistance a humanitarian disaster looms
Thierry wants to talk, but chokes on memories of blows and stabs punctuated by the sound of his father pleading for his life before masked men hacked him to death. He shrinks into himself, cold and small on a damp wooden bench just inside Tanzania. Hell is just a couple of kilometres and a river crossing away, in the country he called home until two hours ago.
“Blood flows everywhere in Burundi, that’s how things are,” said the young farmer, rolling up his trouser legs and a shirt sleeve to show cuts and bruises almost as raw as his anguish. He asked that his name be changed to protect family still inside Burundi. A refugee at 27, he is just one victim of a crisis that has pushed more than a quarter of aMILLION people into exile, and now threatens the tenuous stability of a region with a grim history of genocide. Torture, assault, abduction and murder fill the stories of those who have fled.
people into exile, and now threatens the tenuous stability of a region with a grim history of genocide. Torture, assault, abduction and murder fill the stories of those who have fled.Echoes of Stalinism abound in the very modern Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict
The same old enemies are clanking around the black mountains of Karabagh: Russian power, Turkish expansionism and Armenian nationalism
The weariness with which the media reported the latest battle for Nagorno-Karabagh was all too evident during al-Jazeera’s first news reports. Blaming Stalin for the Armenian-Azerbaijan war, the satellite channel showed an old news clip which had absolutely nothing to do with the conflict. The poor quality footage actually showed Winston Churchill presenting to Stalin the Sword of Stalingrad – a gift from King George VI to the Soviet people for their courage in defending the city against Hitler’s Germany and defeating the Nazi Sixth Army in 1943.
Stalin has so often been blamed (as Soviet acting Minister of Nationalities in the 1920s) for giving the mountainous Armenian region to Muslim Azerbaijan – on the grounds that he liked to divide nationalities – that a 20-year discrepancy and the unrelated history of the Second World War didn’t seem to matter. The line from reporters, diplomats and pseudo-experts was pretty much the same when the conflict flared up again this month: here they go again.
Erdogan's Tightrope Walk: How Turkey's Reform Project Ended in Isolation
An Essay by Michael WerzWhen he first came to power, Turkish President Erdogan embarked on a path of modernization. But the growth of a new elite withered those reforms and now, an autocracy is taking hold. It is time for the West to rethink its relations with Turkey.
Late in the summer of 1999, over 18,000 people lost their lives in an earthquake that struck northwestern Turkey. The high number of casualties was partly a consequence of massive migration within the country from Anatolia to the wealthier cities of western Turkey: Between the years 1980 and 1985 alone, the population of Istanbul exploded from 2.8MILLION
to 5.5 million. Many of the new houses and apartment complexes in the cities of western Turkey were hastily erected and did not meet legal standards -- many collapsed in the quake, burying under their rubble thousands of families' dreams of joining the middle class.Kerry in Japan for landmark Hiroshima visit
Hiroshi Hiyama, Nicolas Revise,AFP
John Kerry and other G7 foreign ministers on Sunday began two days of talks on global hotspot issues in Hiroshima, where the first ever visit to the atomic-bombed city by a US secretary of state is overshadowing the broader agenda.
Kerry's trip is seen as possibly paving the way for Barack Obama to become the first serving US president to journey to the thriving metropolis next month when he visits Japan for the Group of Seven summit.
The Hiroshima meeting includes top diplomats from nuclear-armed Britain and France, as well as Canada, Germany, Italy, host Japan and also the European Union.
The gathering is part of the run-up to the G7's rotating annual leaders' gathering, scheduled this year from May 26-27 in the Ise-Shima region between Tokyo and Osaka.
BEAUTY SECRETS OF THE SPIES
Lee Fang
SKINCENTIAL SCIENCES, a company with an innovative line of cosmetic products marketed as a way to erase blemishes and soften skin, has caught the attention of beauty bloggers on YouTube, Oprah’s lifestyle magazine, and celebrity skin care professionals. Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the firm has also attracted interest and funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The previously undisclosed relationship with the CIA might come as some surprise to a visitor to the website of Clearista, the main product line of Skincential Sciences, which boasts of a “formula so you can feel confident and beautiful in your skin’s most natural state.”
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