When the boulders started raining down, the toil for survival turned into a trek for staying alive. At least a thousand labourers, many of them from Bengal, fled the site of the 1,200MW Teesta Stage-III hydel power project in Chungthang, North Sikkim, after seeing several fellow workers crushed by hurtling rocks. Last Sunday’s 6.9-magnitude quake, which has claimed over a 100 lives, didn’t just leave a trail of death; it snapped livelihoods...

-The Hindu   82 acquitted by Delhi court Fifteen people have been convicted and 82 acquitted by a Sessions court here in the much talked about Mirchpur killing case in which a physically challenged girl and her septuagenarian Dalit father were charred to death in neighbouring Haryana. In the ghastly incident of caste violence that rocked Haryana on April 21 last year, a mob belonging to the dominant Jat community had also burnt...

-The Indian Express Unfinished car shells rusting in a deserted factory in India's West Bengal state lie testimony to flaws in a century-old land-acquisition law the government now wants to replace. * Jobs, housing, cash to landowners made mandatory * Costs, project delays to increase - Indian corporates react * Bill to push up costs by 350 pct for big plots - analysts, cos * Bill likely to be passed in December Tata Motors was forced...

The army in Sikkim is fed up with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) because its personnel are not only unfit for rescue and relief work but also a drain on the military’s resources. Army officers are wary of speaking out in public on the difficulties of helping the NDRF — which they have been asked to by the home ministry — but it takes little for them to vent their...

-IBN   Just days after a massive earthquake hit Sikkim, the northeastern state was on Thursday hit by flash floods. The flash floods hit Lachung, located in north Sikkim district near China border, damaging at least two houses, including one Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) camp. As many as 100 people have been stranded due to the flash floods that occurred on Thursday. Meanwhile, rescue operations are on in the quake-hit areas of the state,...