After a long hiatus of more than 20 months, the government had on November 26 announced the resumption of scheduled international commercial flights from December 15.
An FIR has also been lodged against boat operator in Sonpur Police Station.
The weatherman said when 'Amphan' makes the landfall between West Bengal's Digha, some 180 km from Kolkata, and Hatiya island in Bangladesh on Wednesday afternoon or evening, it will pack sustained wind speed of 155 to 165 kmph, gusting at 185 kmph. The gale-force wind, blowing at a speed of 240 to 250 kmph and gusting to 275 kmph at one point, had lost intensity and was moving at a speed of 200 to 210 kmph, gusting to 230 kmph on Tuesday evening.
Four people have died including one each in Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab and Maharashtra.
Parts of Raigad, Ratnagiri districts in the coastal Konkan region and Kolhapur district in western Maharashtra, have been worst affected by the floods. Besides that, heavy rains have been pounding parts of Satara district.
Heavy rains in the last three days triggered flash floods in parts of Bihar, where 41 people have died so far, and inundated large areas in Assam and North Bengal, paralysing normal life and snapping rail link to the Northeast from the rest of the country.
The police lodged a suo motu case against unknown persons in connection with their involvement in the mishap, a police officer said.
A total of 147 people, including patients and visitors, were rescued after the fire broke out at the ESIC Kamgar Hospital at Marol in suburban Andheri, said an official of the Disaster Management Cell of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
Teams of the National Disaster Response Force started landing in Gujarat with the help of the Indian Air Force to undertake preventive evacuation of people living on the west coast, an IAF official said.
The PM held bilateral meetings with three ASEAN leaders, including his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, and discussed key bilateral and regional issues.
In a curious turn of events on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi picked Rajeev Topno, a 1996 batch Indian Administrative Service officer from the Gujarat cadre and a part of the Prime Minister's Office under former PM Manmohan Singh, as private secretary.
The exponential number of downloads can be attributed to a call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking people to have the app on their mobiles, combined with the government's push for downloading of the app through other channels, reports Neha Alawadhi.
Alert to the looming threat from the 'Omicron' variant, states began to re-tighten curbs and urgently trace people who arrived from abroad in the last one month while a demand to not allow flights from the affected countries was made by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.
Fresh guidelines issued by the Union home ministry on Wednesday permit industries operating in rural areas to run from April 30 with strict social distancing norms.
'There's also a possibility of the cyclonic system changing its course, thus avoiding a landfall in Odisha'
Cyclone Nisarga slammed Maharashtra coast with wind speeds of up to 120 kmph, making landfall at 12.30 pm at Alibaug near Mumbai. The process was completed by 2.30 pm, a senior India Meteorological Department official said. Alibaug witnessed wind speeds of up to 120 kilometres per hour. It weakened into a 'deep depression' late on Wednesday evening, the IMD said.
At least 15 people have died in heavy floods and landslides triggered by continuous rain for the last three days in Assam, where airforce helicopters, army, National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Force have been pressed into service for rescue work, officials said.
An eyewitness said some people in a minibus and private cars were trapped.
The chief minister said the Delhi government was implementing from November 19 its decision to reserve 80 per cent of ICU beds in private hospitals for COVID-19 patients.
After a brief suspension due to bad weather early in the morning, the rescue operations in rain-hit Uttarakhand resumed on Sunday on a war footing to evacuate 22,000 pilgrims still stranded in high altitude areas amid a MeT department warning of light to moderate rains in the region from Monday.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy announced an ex gratia payment of Rs 1 crore each to the kin of those killed in the incident.
The Indian contingent of more than 300 navy personnel was assisting in the relief, with divers searching the brackish waters and medical teams seeing patients in makeshift tents set up at shelters.
At least 200 people were killed and more than 1,300 others injured today as a powerful 7.5- magnitude earthquake -- the strongest in 10 years --rocked Pakistan, sending severe shock waves as far as Punjab and PoK.
'Not only have we rescued 1,700 fishermen but on the morning of November 30, we evacuated 1,044 fishing folk, otherwise the missing numbers would have been much higher.'
There has been a decline in foreign direct inflow from China in the last three years, with FDI coming down to USD 163.77 million in 2019-20, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur informed the Lok Sabha on Monday. Giving details of the total foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow from Chinese companies in India, he said, it was USD 350.22 million in 2017-18, while it declined to USD 229 million in the following year.
'The COVID-19 pandemic must push the military into a long-term reconsideration of its primary challenges.' 'There must be greater emphasis on humanitarian aid and disaster relief including the management of contagious illnesses and impending crises caused by climate change,' notes Ajai Shukla.
The South Central Railway as well as the East Coast Railway cancelled several trains while some were terminated midway, officials said, adding a few express trains were also diverted.
The cyclone is expected to intensify into a very severe cyclonic storm by Tuesday, a home ministry statement said.
On Thursday, eight coronavirus patients died in a fire at a private hospital in Ahmedabad.
Heavy rains lashing Mumbai since Sunday have thrown rail, air and road traffic out of gear, with several trains and flights being cancelled. With IMD forecast of heavy rains for Tuesday, the authorities declared a holiday in the city and adjoining regions, asking people to avoid stepping out of their houses.
Over 20,000 people have been displaced with officials warning the situation could get worse.
The army, SDRF and NDRF are assisting the district administrations in evacuating the affected population to safer places, the authority said.
Real, Barca and Juve stand firm on Super League
A day after the first Ebola case was reported in India, Health Minister J P Nadda on Wednesday said arrangements similar to the one at Delhi airport, which helped detect the virus in a man returning from Liberia, have been put in place at 24 airports and stressed the situation was under "complete control".
The NDRF has engaged all its resources for rescue of those trapped under the debris of an under-construction bridge which collapsed in Kolkata.
In a minor relief for residents of flood-hit Chennai, the rains have stayed away for the last few hours.
Experts say poor city planning and inefficient administration turned an unusually high rainfall into a disaster.
"As so far, 12 people died and another 125 were injured," China Daily reported.
Flight operations at the Mumbai airport were suspended for nearly half an hour as visibility dropped well below the required 550 meter-mark
'Did the government learn any lesson from the disasters of 2008, 1987, 1975?' 'Certainly not!' 'They are making people believe that the 2017 flood was unexpected, so no preventive effort towards reducing the loss of human lives was to be expected from the government,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances