DEHRADUN: Forty bodies of flood victims were recovered from Haridwar, taking the toll in the rain fury to 190 as operations to rescue over 9000 stranded in Kedarnath and Badrinath were stepped up with the deployment of 40 helicopters.

As the magnitude of the tragedy continued to unfold, Uttarakhand principal secretary Rakesh Sharma said casualty figures can be "shockingly high".

In Haridwar, SSP Rajeev Swaroop said 40 bodies of those killed in the flash floods and incessant rains have been found.

Rescuers were focusing on rain-ravaged Kedarnath area where 250 people are stranded before shifting focus to Badrinath where 9000 people are st

JAKARTA: Indonesia on Friday dispatched helicopters to create artificial rain in a desperate bid to fight raging fires that have choked Singapore, as smog cloaking the city-state hit record-breaking levels that pose a threat to people's lives.

At a late-night emergency meeting, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered disaster officials to "immediately mobilise all the country's resources" to extinguish the fires on Sumatra island that have created vast palls of smoke.

Singapore's worst environmental crisis in more than a decade has seen the acrid smoke creep into people's flats and cloak residential blocks as well as downtown skyscra

REYKJAVIK: A chartered private jet is ready to bring US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden to Iceland from Hong Kong, a businessman connected to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks said on late Thursday.

"Everything is ready on our side and the plane could take off tomorrow," Icelandic businessman Olafur Sigurvinsson, head of WikiLeaks partner firm DataCell, told Channel2 television.

"We have really done all we can do. We have a plane and all the logistics in place. Now we are only awaiting a response from the (Icelandic) government," added the boss of Datacell, which handles donations to WikiLeaks.

The private jet belongs to a Ch

RIO DE JANEIRO: Hundreds of thousands of people rallied across Brazil on Thursday, as a protest movement over the quality of public services and the high cost of staging the World Cup gathered steam.

The mounting pressure on the government of President Dilma Rousseff in the face of the biggest street protests the South American country has seen in 20 years prompted her to cancel a trip to Japan planned for next week.

Police fired tear gas in Rio de Janeiro, scene of the biggest protest where 300,000 people demonstrated near City Hall, while in the capital Brasilia, security forces blocked protesters trying to break into the foreign ministry.

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Cairo: An opposition campaign demanding Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's resignation and calling for early Presidential elections, on Thursday claimed to have gathered more than 15 million petition signatures of support. 

The 'Tamarod' or Rebel movement is a grassroots campaign to mobilise opposition to Mursi and to force him to call for early Presidential elections by aiming to collect 15 million signatures and online registrations by June 30 (T

New Delhi: A report claimed on Thursday that India has put in place an elaborate surveillance system that would allow the government and its various agencies and departments, including income tax officials, to tap e-mails and phone calls of unsuspecting individuals. 

The report said such surveillance would not have any oversight by courts or Parliament. 

Melbourne: An 11-year-old boy in New Zealand has become a father after conceiving a child with the 36-year-old mother of a school friend. 
The woman coerced the boy, from Auckland, into repeated sexual encounters over a period of time before becoming pregnant, the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported. 

The woman gave the boy beer to drink

Zurich/New Delhi: Indians' money in Swiss banks has fallen to a record low level of about Rs 9,000 crore (1.42 billion Swiss francs), as a global clampdown against the famed secrecy wall of Switzerland banking system made it unattractive for their global clients.

The total funds held by Indian individuals and entities included 1.34 billion Swiss francs held directly by Indian individuals and entities, and another 77 million Swiss francs through 'fiduciaries

New Delhi, June 20 : Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh Thursday announced a special package of Rs. 340 crore for flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.   The rural development ministry is also working towards giving special assistance to Uttarakhand for constructing village houses under the Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) scheme.   The Rs. 340 crore would be apart from the Rs. 1,000 crore announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday.   "The ministry of rural development is working on a special road and housing package for Uttarakhand in view of the calamity. Next week, we are going to consider 82 roads and 27 bridges - covering a total 664 km - at a total cost of

New Delhi, June 19 : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday granted Rs. 1,000 crore for disaster relief in Uttarakhand and said the death toll in the state due to heavy rains and floods could be higher than the current estimate of 102.   The prime minister, who made an aerial survey of the rain and flood-hit areas of Uttarakhand with United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi, said here they were distressed to see the devastation.   "What the UPA chairperson and I saw today was most distressing. While the most recent estimates put the death toll at 102, it is feared that loss of lives could eventually be much higher," he said.   The prime

Latifa Nabizada often shares her cockpit with her daughter - "She has grown up in a helicopter," she says Col Latifa Nabizada, the first female pilot in the Afghan air force, has battled prejudice, the Taliban and personal tragedy - but her ambitions for her young daughter soar even higher. My sister and I always talked about the stars and the universe. We talked about how aeroplanes were made and what it would be like to fly one - how it would feel to be a pilot. There were water butts near where we lived and I used to climb on top and imagine I was flying a helicopter. After we had finished school, Laliuma and I told our parents we wanted to be professional pilots. They w

David Cameron insisted he had “learnt the lessons of Iraq” as world leaders at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland tonight set out an agreed blueprint for the future of Syria. But the Prime Minister was again warned not to consider arming the Syrian rebels by Vladimir Putin, who compared them to the killers of Drummer Lee Rigby.   Mr Cameron and Barack Obama persuaded Mr Putin to agree plans for a transitional government which could eventually replace the Assad regime, following intensive private discussions over dinner on Monday night.   The Prime Minister appealed directly to supporters of the Syrian dictator to turn against him, promising th

The NHS watchdog accused of a covering up its failure to investigate a maternity unit where babies died through neglect is still not “fully set up” to properly inspect hospitals, its chairman has admitted. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is accused in a report being published today of suppressing an internal review that uncovered critical weaknesses in its inspections, which may have cost the lives of mothers and babies. Regulators deleted the review of their failure to act on concerns about University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, where police are investigating the deaths of at least eight mothers and babies. There have been accusations that midwives collu

BERLIN: Barack Obama will on Wednesday invoke the Cold War history of German-US solidarity, on a long-awaited first visit to Berlin as president, but will face sharp questions on US spy snooping programmes. Almost 50 years to the day since John Kennedy declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" and 26 years since Ronald Reagan exhorted "Tear down this wall!" Obama will argue that a new generation must muster for history's fresh challenges.   He will also hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he usually has respectful relations, but who is pointedly demanding details on the exact extent of US spy agency surveillance programmes.   Though he

More than a dozen 7-Eleven franchises took in more than $180 million in revenue by running a "modern-day plantation system," prosecutors in New York charged on Monday, built on the unpaid labor of dozens of illegal immigrants hired using sham Social Security numbers.    Federal authorities seized 14 7-Eleven stores on Long Island and in Virginia, arresting nine owners and managers, and seized property, including five homes. They are investigating 40 other 7-Eleven franchises in New York City and elsewhere in one of the largest criminal immigrant employment investigations ever conducted by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, officials said.   

Beijing: China has banned individuals and groups from secretly adopting abandoned infants, days after an unwed mother flushed her newborn child in a toilet sewer pipe. 

An official circular from multiple Chinese government departments here has outlined specific instructions on transferring, settling and treating abandoned infants, requiring local residential committees and police when an abandoned child is found. 

The famous Kedarnath shrine was virtually submerged in mud and slush where 50 people died in the unprecedented flash floods that claimed over 130 lives in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and left over 70,000 pilgrims for Himalayan shrines stranded.   The shrine, one of the four holy dhams, in Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand bore the brunt of torrential rains. About 500 people, including several pilgrims, are said to be missing in the area.   IAF evacuates 180 in Uttarakhand | 15,000 pilgrims stranded on their way to pilgrimages: Army | Watch shocking footage as floods wash away 3-storey building in Uttarakhand | See pics | Himachal CM rescued from Kinnaur after 60 ho

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's advisor T K A Nair will soon be called by the CBI to record his statement in the coal blocks allocation scam case even as the agency summoned as accused former Coal Secretary H C Gupta and quizzed two former PMO officials.   CBI sources said agency will soon call Nair to record his statement as witness in connection with alleged irregularities in the allocations made during 2006 to 2009.   In a related move, CBI has asked former Coal Secretary H C Gupta, who recently resigned as member of Competition Commission of India, to appear before it for questioning as an accused in the case on Thursday.   The agency is likely t

New Delhi: Gujarat Chief Minister on his first visit to the national after being alleviated as the chief of the poll panel head of the BJP has reportedly told LK Advani that the party does not need allies who are against them. 

Narendra Modi and Advani had an hour long meeting today. As per reports, the two discussed the political developments that have unravelled in the past few days, including the split with the JD(U). 
  According to sour

LONDON: Cash-strapped Britain on Tuesday axed nearly 4,500 Army personnel in the third and biggest round of job cuts since the 2010 defence review.   A total of 4,480 have been told to leave as the Cameron government tries to reduce the number of regulars by about 20% to 82,000.   Those who take voluntary redundancy will be leaving within six months, and compulsory redundancies will be completed in a year, the defence ministry announced.   The ministry said that the move was necessary to address the multi billion-pound deficit and bring the defence budget back into balance, but insisted that the operational capability would not be affected.   Announcing th