For five-year-old Saira Bilal who sustained a critical head injury when her family was shifting from their flooded house to safety in Anantnag town of South Kashmir last week, an Indian Air Force chopper came as a "true saviour".
The visual of a man kneeling down in muddy waters to help women step on to him to get into rescue boats went viral on Sunday.
About 1.82 lakh people have been evacuated to safe places by the rescue teams in last 48 hours.
A team of six trekkers from New Delhi and Shimla is missing in Kinnaur district, officials said. A rescue operation will be launched.
The water level rose above the danger mark in Haridwar and Delhi and the level at Bhakra dam was a foot above the permissible mark.
Avenging the Sukma attack, security forces claim to have gunned down 12-15 Maoists in Chhattisgarh's Basaguda-Chintalnar area on Sunday.
'Air Superiority that we held from the Second Day of Operation 'Cactus Lily' helped our Armed Forces to speed up operation 'Jackpot' to seize East Pakistan and force Gen Niazi and the Pakistani Army to lay down their arms on 16 December.'
Maharashtra police have made extensive security arrangements to ensure that voting for the October 15 Maharashtra Assembly polls goes peacefully with the deployment of over 2 lakh state police personnel, along with the reserved police forces.
Altogether 20,000 Indian nationals have been evacuated from quake-torn Nepal and arrangements were being made to take them to their homes by trains from Raxaul, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Tuesday.
Kerala has seen one of the worst floods in its history during this monsoon. From August 8 to 20, nearly 223 people have lost their lives, 33 are missing and around 1.2 million individuals from 3,02,441 families are in 3,941 relief camps. Initial losses are estimated to be around Rs 200 billion (Rs 20,000 crore). With the rescue measures in its last leg, the Kerala government is looking at raising funds to rebuild the state. In an interaction with Gireesh Babu and T E Narasimhan, Kerala Finance Minister T M Thomas Isaac says he has a three-pronged strategy to raise funds. Edited Excerpts.
The human toll in the floods and relentless rain across the country reached almost 200 by Thursday, even as thousands in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam, Odisha, West Bengal, and elsewhere were forced out of their homes into temporary shelters.
Many towns in Gir Somnath turned into islands as the district has been witnessing heavy rains for the third consecutive day.
The mood was subdued with roads deserted across large swathes of the Valley, the silence broken only by police sirens and Indian Air Force helicopters hovering overhead.
'Those 10 years in the IAF has made me what I am today.'
Swirling floodwaters have paralysed normal life and marooned over 1.20 crore people.
The unfortunate thing is that the film will leave a poor impression of the IAF's and indeed of the armed forces's ability to handle sensitive social matters within their professional space, observes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
Thousands of defence personnel are working overtime to rescue lakhs of people still stranded in the floods in Jammu and Kashmir.
The NWM pays tribute to soldiers who laid down their lives defending the nation during India-China war in 1962, Indo-Pak wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971, Indian Peace Keeping Force Operations in Srilanka and in the Kargil conflict of 1999.
He spent 12 hours out in the open precariously perched on a cliff as torrential rains unleashed large-scale devastation on Kedarnath, demolishing all that came in their way with equal fury except the shrine.
The death toll is Jammu and Kashmir mounts to nearly 200 and thousands still wait to be evacuated.
The disaster management department said that the state government has urged the Indian Air Force to send a helicopter for air-dropping of food packets and other relief material in marooned areas.
The Bihar government on Wednesday issued shoot-at-sight orders against troublemakers and made tight security arrangements to ensure violence free polling in 6 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats to be held on Thursday.
'When incidents of stone pelting at the aircraft occurred, the boys were careful that they continued with the rescue because finally we had to save lives.' A senior Indian Air Force officer, who is a veteran of flood rescue ops in Uttarakhand, Bihar, Gujarat and the Bombay deluge, tells Archana Masih/Rediff.com about the rescue operations in Kashmir, one of the first such efforts in a densely populated and urban area.
Basil George led an amazing rescue mission so that a helicopter could land and rescue people. In an admirable community effort, his team swam through strong currents, broken walls and floating snakes to help those who needed it most.
Beginning his film career in antagonistic roles, he later emerged on his own to become a hero. Ambareesh also had a successful career in politics having been an MLA, a Lok Sabha member and a former minister at the state and central levels.
President Kalam was loved by the youth of India. Something evidenced by the mass of student volunteers who have arrived in Rameswaram to mourn and to help out other mourners who have arrived in the island town to pay their last homage to India's 'Missile Man.'
How the two South Asian neighbours will interact with each other in the coming months will be decided by the two prime ministers in Washington.
'He keeps reminding me he is senior. There is no debate in this. I have never shown any disrespect to you since you are a senior,' the PM said.
A rare video footage of Maoists purportedly showing the rebels conducting a 'commando-style' training to gun down helicopters, used to ferry security personnel and VIPs in Chhattisgarh's worst insurgency-hit Bastar region, has been recovered by the police.
A major rescue operation is underway in the Adriatic Sea to airlift passengers stranded in a burning Italian-flagged ferry, the Norman Atlantic.
Thirteen Central Reserve Police Force personnel, including two officers were killed in a Maoist attack in the Chintagufa area in Chhattisgarh's Sukhma while they were on an area domination exercise. According to reports, the attackers used locals as human shields to prevent CRPF retaliation.
We present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you'll remember about this year we'd rather forget.
'China would rather tie us down; and bleed us as much as it can so that we aren't able to lift our heads to face them.'
"We are making serious attempts to rescue people marooned in flood waters based on inputs we get from various sources, including people," asserted a top Indian Air Force official overseeing the marathon operations by his force amidst allegations by some people that forces had not reached all the affected people.
The body of former President APJ Abdul Kalam, who died in Shillong on Monday evening, was carried to Delhi early Tuesday morning by a special aircraft from Guwahati.
Over 150 people have been killed and lakhs have been stranded in Jammu and Kashmir, which has been hit by the worst floods in five decades.
Flood fury on Sunday maintained its grip over Jammu and Kashmir, leaving 138 dead and many marooned as the swirling waters inundated the army cantonment, Civil Secretariat and the high court in Srinagar and snapped road and communication links.
'The government, supposedly manned by wise and experienced officers, was all at sea, unable to act cohesively, and with restraint. Each agency was out to score brownie points.'
With cyclone Phailin expected to make landfall in Odisha on Saturday, the state government mounted a massive operation to evacuate two lakh people from six coastal districts on Friday night
Rains will continue to batter Tamil Nadu for the next seven days and the next 48 hours are "very crucial", the IMD has said.
