Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Nepal church collapse kills many

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t least 23 people are reported to have died when a makeshift church building collapsed in eastern Nepal.

At least another 60 people were injured in the incident, in the town of Dharan, about 400km (240 miles) south-east of the capital, Kathmandu.

Police official Arjun Khadka told the AP news agency the victims had been staying in the building while they attended a Christian conference.

Nepal's home ministry said a temporary wall had collapsed on them.

Ministry spokesman Ekmani Nepal told the AFP news agency 23 people had been killed instantly and around 60 were injured.

Some of the victims are believed to have been children.

Police inspector Mohan Bikram Dahal told AFP the victims were on the ground floor of the temporary building preparing to go to sleep when the collapse happened.

"The wall was made of bamboo and it could not withstand the weight of the people in the church," he said.

More than 1,500 people are thought to have been inside the building at the time.

Typhoon Ketsana wreaks havoc across Southeast Asia

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ANILA, Philippines -One of the most destructive storms in years extended its deadly path across Southeast Asia, blowing down wooden villages in Cambodia and crushing Vietnamese houses under mudslides after submerging much of the Philippines capital.
The death toll Wednesday was at 298 and rising.
"We're used to storms that sweep away one or two houses. But I've never seen a storm this strong," said Nam Tum, governor of Cambodia's Kampong Thom province.
The immediate threat was easing as Typhoon Ketsana was downgraded to a tropical depression as it crossed Wednesday into a fourth nation, Laos. But its powerful winds and pummeling rain left a snaking trail of destruction.
Landslides triggered by the storm slammed into houses in central Vietnam on Tuesday, burying at least seven people including five members of the same family, the government said. They were among 41 people killed in the country, some by falling trees, with 10 missing.
The storm destroyed or damaged nearly 170,000 homes and flattened crops across six central Vietnamese provinces, officials said. More than 350,000 people were evacuated from the typhoon's path, posing a logistical headache to shelter and feed them.
Parts of one hard-hit province, Quang Nam, were still isolated by floodwaters and its main highway remained partially submerged, provincial disaster official Nguyen Hoai Phuong said.
In neighboring Cambodia, at least 11 people were killed and 29 injured Tuesday evening as the storm toppled dozens of rickety houses in Kampong Thom province, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of the capital, Phnom Penh.
Five members of the same family died when the storm toppled their home as they ate dinner, said Neth Sophana of the Red Cross. Others were swept away by floodwaters.
Neth Sophana said about 90 homes were destroyed.
Authorities were searching for more victims and rushing food, medical supplies and plastic sheeting for temporary tents to storm-hit areas.
Light rain was falling over some parts of the disaster zone Wednesday, and most rivers had peaked Wednesday morning and were starting to slowly recede, Vietnam's National Weather Forecast Center said.
But the cleanup task was enormous.
In the Philippines, Ketsana on Saturday triggered the worst flooding in 40 years across a swath of the island nation's north and submerged riverside districts of the sprawling capital of 12 million people.
Officials said 2.3 million people had their homes swamped, and 400,000 were seeking help in relief centers hastily set up in schools and other public buildings — even the presidential palace. The Philippines death toll stood at 246, with 42 people missing.
Frustration boiled over at some sites.
Flood victims rushed at an army helicopter delivering boxes of clothes to a relief center in Rodriguez town in hard-hit Rizal province just east of the capital, an Associated Press photographer at the scene said. No one was apparently injured, and the scene returned to calm after the helicopter dropped off its goods.
Elsewhere in Rizal, police said they were investigating reports that flood victims mobbed two convoys carrying relief supplies and pelting the trucks with stones.
"Apparently victims who were hoping to receive the relief goods blocked the convoy," police official Leopoldo Bataoil told The Associated Press, adding that the report was unconfirmed.
Another tropical storm was headed toward the southern Philippines and could hit on Wednesday afternoon, government forecaster Malou Rivera said. Officials fear more heavy rain could flood already hard-hit areas and complicate cleanup efforts.
At relief centers Wednesday, women and children clutching bags of belongings lined up for bottled water, boiled eggs and packets of instant noodles for a fourth day. Their husbands waded through sludge to return to their homes to clean up the mud — sometimes two feet (half a meter) deep — that carpeted their houses and shops.
Thick, gooey mud lay in some streets, while others were still under a foot or two (half a meter) of water. Mountains of garbage piled up.
Neighborhoods rich and poor along the rivers that thread through the greater Manila area were hard hit, but the main downtown business and tourist district was largely unscathed and workers went back and forth as normal. The city's notorious traffic jams appeared marginally worse as drivers avoided flood-hit areas.
In Marikina, a suburban district of the capital, police used forklifts to remove mud-caked cars stalled along the road. Elsewhere, people used shovels and brooms to muck brown mud from their homes and businesses, some of them inundated up to the second floor.
The government has declared a "state of calamity" in Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces and estimated the damage at $100 million. It concedes its ability to cope with the disaster is stretched to the limit and has appealed for foreign aid, and accepted pledges from the United States, Australia, Japan and other nations.

Over 100 feared dead in tsunami-hit Samoa

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ydney, Sep 30 (ANI): The tsunami death toll triggered by an 8.3 magnitude earthquake, which rocked Samoa and other Pacific islands, could reach 100, according to Red Cross and media reports.

Locals in Samoa have been told more than 100, and possibly "hundreds", may have been killed in the tsunami that hit the island this morning.

The confirmed death toll from the South Pacific earthquake and tsunami is at 36, with a minimum of 14 reported dead in both Samoa and American Samoa; The Sydney Morning Herald quoted reports, as saying.

But media in Samoa says the tsunami had devastated villages on the south of the island, and the number of people feared dead was far higher.

"It''s like nothing we''ve ever experienced before," said Tasi Uesele, who in the Samoan capital, Apia.

"There''s unconfirmed reports that are on TV right now that up to 100 people, including tourists, that are missing right now because of the waves that hit hard," she said.

A large number of the dead were believed to be from Lalomanu, a village on Samoa''s southeastern tip popular with tourists, she said.

"We don''t know if the 100 are from people swept out [to sea] or from when tremors shook and people were buried in their own houses. We just saw some footage of dead people being brought into the hospital ... we''ve only seen about three or four dead and a lot of people wounded," Tasi added.

A Samoan schoolgirl whose village was evacuated to the mountains around Apia also said local radio reported hundreds of people were killed when the tsunami hit Lalomanu.

"They''re still looking for other people, missing people, they said hundreds. There are no houses, clothes, and stuff is all everywhere," said Sulu Bentley, who lives in Leauvaa, 15 minutes from Apia.

Tasi said the first wave hit so quickly after the tremor that locals had little time to react. (ANI)

Air India pilots strike called off

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ew Delhi, Sept 30 (ANI): Air India executive pilots today called off their strike after the government assured to look into their concerns.

Addressing a press conference here, representative of the striking pilots Captain VK Bhalla said: "We have called off the strike. The strike is being called off in view of assurances by Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel that status quo will continue on issues."

"The Prime Minister asked the Civil Aviation Minister to intervene, who has given us an assurance via the media that there would not be any cuts in the salary. The pilots will resume work with immediate effect," he added.

He also thanked the Prime Minister for intervening in the crisis. Yesterday, the Prime Minister Office (PMO) directed the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Air India to find an early resolution.

Welcoming suspension of pay cuts, Captain Bhalla said that full support would be given to Air India management.

Reacting to inconvenience caused to passengers, Captain Bhalla, who is spearheading the stir, said: " I apologise to passengers for the inconvenience."

The pilots began their strike on Saturday, weakening the turnaround plan of the ailing carrier.

Earlier this month, hundreds of pilots at India''s largest private carrier by passengers, Jet Airways (India) Ltd went on mass sick leave for six days to protest against the firing of two pilots instrumental in forming a pilots'' union. (ANI)

50 people fall ill after consuming prasad

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ALBARI: At least 50 people, including women and children fell ill after consuming prasad at a religious function in lower Assam's Nalbari
district, official sources said today.

The people of Gamarimuri village started vomiting and complained of severe lower abdomen pain and high fever after consuming prasad of soaked gram last night, the sources said.

They were initially admitted to Samata rural health hospital, but 19 of the critically ill including six children were shifted to Sahid Mukunda Kakoti civil hospital in the district headquarters Nalbari town, the hospital sources said.

Former Assam BJP president dead in Guwahati

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ormer president of BJP's Assam unit Prabin Barua died today at Jamugurihat in Assam's Sonitpur district due to old age ailments.

He was in his 80's.

Barua was the president of the BJP state unit twice.

Under his leadership the party had 15 years ago successfully sent ten members to the state assembly and two to the Lok Sabha, BJP spokesman Dr Pradip Thakuria said.

Over 15,000 children in Mizoram deprived of schooling

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bout 15,000 children in Mizoram, aged six to fourteen, are deprived of schooling even though the northeastern state is India's second most literate after Kerala, an official report said.

"After finding that around 15,000 children, mostly tribals, are deprived of formal education, the state's mission of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) sent education volunteers as mobile teachers in the interior villages," a report of the Mizoram education department said.

The mobile teachers would persuade the children and their parents to enrol themselves in government schools.

According to the report, the children deprived of education were mainly concentrated in Lunglei, Lawngtlai and Saiha districts of southern Mizoram and Mamit district in the east adjacent to Tripura.

Of the 15,000 illiterate children, 40 per cent were school dropouts and the remaining had never been enrolled in schools. In Mizoram, 88.80 percent of the 900,000 people are literate.

"The main reasons for staying away from educational institutions were poverty, child labour, absence of schools in their and adjacent villages and parents' ignorance," the report added.

It said: "Majority of the children who are not attending schools belong to Chakma and Reang (communities) as the two communities are primitive and nomadic tribes and practise 'Jhum Cultivation' (shifting or slash and burn cultivation)."

"It is hard to bring tribal children to schools due to their shifting from one village to another frequently," the report added.

In the mountainous state of Mizoram, education was first initiated and popularised by the British. Missionaries were responsible for the growth and institutionalisation of education in the state, bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The first educational institution in Mizoram was initiated by missionaries in the Aizawl region in 1897. Later, three more government primary schools opened in Aizawl in 1898.