Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
NEW DELHI: The President of Orissa’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Naveen Patnaik came down strongly on erstwhile ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and said in the same breath that it was not possible for his Biju Janata Dal (BJD) to form an alliance with the Congress either. “The BJD would find it impossible to ally with BJP and certainly not with the Congress,” Patnaik told a media after meeting with secretary general of Communist Party of India.Asked about the possibility of an alliance with the BJP in Orissa if his party falls short of majority in the assembly elections, Patnaik said: “We are quite confident that we will secure majority on our own.” He added that after the communal violence in Kandhamal last year, “it became virtually impossible to carry on with BJP” and he decided to sever ties with it.
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