Delhi is one of the most polluted cities in the world Sometime next year, if all goes well, a retired jet engine will be mounted on a flatbed trailer and taken to a coal-fired power plant in Delhi. With the exhaust nozzle pointed at the sky, the engine will be placed near the smokestack and turned on. As the engine… Read more »
New Delhi, India – Syed Wasif Haider says he was arrested by plainclothes policemen on July 31, 2001, from Kanpur, an industrial city in northern Uttar Pradesh state. He was told he faced a dozen charges ranging from sedition, that is waging war against the nation, to rioting and murder, and was accused of being a member of Hizbul Mujahideen, which… Read more »
Kabul, Afghanistan – Caught in the middle of political tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are some two million Afghan refugees – registered and unregistered – who now face the option of either returning voluntarily or being deported from Pakistan. And it couldn’t happen at a worse time. Winter in Afghanistan can be bitterly cold. The country is also experiencing a spike in… Read more »
Children of Afghan families returning from Pakistan, who do not go to school and have no access to education, are increasingly at risk of early marriage and child labour, according to a new survey. The survey released by Save the Children on Wednesday reveals an alarming crisis in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, where the polling took place among returnees from… Read more »
The hardline leader of Kazakhstan apologised on Monday for winning its presidential election with 97.7 per cent of the vote as international monitors condemned the poll as unfair. “I’m sorry that for super-democratic states these figures are unacceptable, but there was nothing I could do,” said Nursultan Nazarbayev, 74, after a victory rally in the capital, Astana. “If I had… Read more »
Long queues. Days off work. Loss of assets. Not the effects of an economic crash, but rather what has happened in recent weeks after India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced a policy of “demonetisation”, which banned with immediate effect the two notes most widely used throughout the Indian economy. Modi said demonetisation was necessary for several reasons, among them: combating… Read more »
The controversial Indian Islamic preacher, Zakir Naik, has been accused by the government of causing disaffection along religious lines and inciting youth through speeches. The BBC’s Zubair Ahmed went to Mumbai to find out more about him and the impact of his preaching. Zakir Naik’s Islamic International School, located in a crowded Mumbai suburb, could be easily missed due to… Read more »
A 42-hour gun battle that started on Thursday has ended in Indian-administered Kashmir after two suspected rebels and one civilian were killed, triggering massive anti-India protests in the disputed region. A police officer said soldiers recovered bodies of the two suspected rebel fighters from the debris of a destroyed house in southern Arwani village on Friday.
Twelve people were arrested on Monday evening at a cinema in India, after they remained seated while the national anthem played. The cinemagoers, who were attending an international film festival in the city of Trivandrum in Kerala, were later freed but they face charges of “failure to obey an order issued by a public servant, thereby causing obstruction or annoyance… Read more »
There are unlikely to be any survivors from a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane carrying about 40 people that crashed on Wednesday in a mountainous northern region, a government official at the crash site said. The military said 21 bodies had been recovered and rescue efforts continued. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) said its plane lost contact with the control tower… Read more »