NEW DELHI: India's home minister said Wednesday India was prepared to withdraw a "significant" number of troops from the occupied Kashmir.Briefing lawmakers in parliament, P. Chidambaram noted that violence in the region had dropped in the past few years."I would take what appears to be a risky step of withdrawing a significant number of battalions of security forces in Kashmir," the minister told members of parliament, according to Indian news agency."We are now transferring more and more law and order duties to the Kashmir police," the news agency quoted Chidambaram as saying.Chidambaram, however, did not state how many troops would be withdrawn or give a timetable for their pullout.
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...
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