-The Hindu     With the closing of Relief Camps in Muzaffarnagar, even the meagre food support has disappeared. As the winter cold descends this year on Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in Western U.P., some 20,000 people will camp in makeshift unofficial camps amidst squalor and official neglect, or survive in small rented tenements or with relatives - exiles from the villages of their birth. Three months after one of the grimmest communal outbreaks...

-The Hindu The camps were set up in the aftermath of September's communal violence MUZAFFARNAGAR: Three months after the high-profile visits of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi to various Relief Camps, riot-affected Muslims belonging to at least half-a-dozen villages are still to return to their native villages. Large scale violence that erupted in this sugarcane belt in August-September this year has a left deep scar on the psyche of these...

-The Hindustan Times Coming down hard on the Uttar Pradesh government over reports that 40 children had died in its Relief Camps in riot-torn Muzaffarnagar, the Supreme Court on Thursday directed it to take immediate steps to ensure there were no such deaths in future, especially with winter setting in. Hindustan Times had recently, in a series of ground reports, written about sufferings and deaths in the Relief Camps, set up after...

-The Hindu Hyderabad: Severe tropical cyclone Helen tapered off into a low pressure area on Saturday causing extensive damage to standing paddy crop and leaving six dead in the four districts of coastal Andhra region. According to official reports, six persons - two each in Krishna and East Godavari and one each in Srikakulam and West Godavari - were dead while paddy crop spread over 3.5 lakh hectares suffered extensive damage. In...

-The Hindu HYDERABAD / KAKINADA / ELURU: Several thousand people were evacuated from low-lying areas, standing crops in a few lakh acres were marooned and coconut trees and electric poles were uprooted in the three coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh as the severe cyclonic storm Helen made a landfall near Machilipatnam on Friday afternoon. Even after landfall, the system was expected to maintain the intensity of cyclonic storm for six hours and...