Weeks of sweltering temperatures have caused more than 160 deaths in southern and eastern India, officials said, warning that any relief from monsoon rains was still probably weeks away.

A massive fire broke out during a fireworks display in a Hindu temple in south India this morning, killing more than 100 people and injuring at least 200 others, officials said.

Indian scientists are investigating whether a man was killed by a meteorite, which if confirmed would be the first recorded death from falling fragments of space rock in almost 200 years.

Police in central India are looking for a man in connection with a massive explosion at a restaurant that killed 90 people, as angry residents protested the way the authorities were handling the case.

Lightning has killed 22 people, mostly farm labourers working in fields, across the south eastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

A British graduate blamed for triggering an earthquake by posing naked on a sacred mountain knows what she did was “stupid and disrespectful and is very sorry for the offence that she has caused”, her father said today.

Police have detained four Westerners accused of posing naked to take photos on a Malaysian mountain — an act that has been blamed for causing the earthquake that killed 18 climbers last week.

Gunmen have killed 43 people in an attack on Shiites in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, police said.

By placing the responsibility on women, one of the men sentenced to death for gang rape was repeating what his community and religious leaders have said for years, writes Muneeza Naqvi

The death toll in a Taliban attack on a school in the city of Peshawar in Pakistan has risen to 126, an official says.

Scores of students have been killed in a Taliban attack on a military school in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, according to reports.

Eight Indian women have died and 20 others are in a critical condition after having sterilisation surgery under a free government-run programme to help slow population growth.

Army and air force troops worked to rescue thousands of people stranded in Indian-controlled Kashmir and northern and eastern Pakistan, where flooding and landslides have caused more than 320 deaths.

A woman was hanged from a tree in India’s state of Uttar Pradesh and another allegedly raped in a police station, the latest in a wave of crime against women in the country’s most populous region.

Police have used water cannons to disperse hundreds of women protesting against a rise in violence against women in the Indian state where two teenagers were gang-raped and later found hanging from a tree.

Police arrested a third suspect today over the gang rape and killing of two teenage cousins found hanging from a tree in northern India, as a top state official said he was recommending a federal investigation into a case that has triggered national outrage.

Facing relentless media attention and growing criticism for a series of rapes, state officials in north India fired two police officers for failing to investigate the disappearance of two teenage cousins, who were gang-raped and later found hanging from a tree.

Two police officers who failed to investigate the disappearance of two teenage girls in India who were gang-raped and later found hanging from a tree have been fired.

Thousands of cheering supporters have welcomed India’s next prime minister on his arrival in the capital after leading his party to a staggering victory in national elections.

Rescuers using backhoes and shovels searched for survivors yesterday under a massive pile of broken concrete and dust that was left when a residential building under construction collapsed in southern India, killing at least 15 workers.

The strongest cyclone to threaten India in more than a decade is approaching its east coast as authorities drove tens of thousands of villagers from their coastal homes to government shelters inland.

Spain has been accused of introducing an export ban on construction materials destined for Gibraltar.

Spanish fishermen have been involved in a stand-off with Royal Navy and police boats after a flotilla made an illegal incursion into British waters around Gibraltar.

Tensions over Gibraltar escalated yesterday when the British territory’s chief minister accused Spain of “sabre-rattling” and behaving like North Korea after Madrid floated the idea of a new border crossing fee and airspace controls.

At least 20 children have died and more are sick after eating free meals at a primary school in eastern India.

More than 5,700 people missing since last month’s devastating floods that ravaged northern India are presumed dead, the government has said.

Flash floods and landslides triggered by torrential rains have killed at least seven people in northern India, including three firefighters who were swept away as they helped rescue the stranded, an official said.

Army divers and rescue workers pulled 103 bodies out of a river after a packed ferry boat capsized in heavy winds and rain in remote north east India, an official said.

About 40 people were dead and 160 missing after an overcrowded passenger ferry with 350 people aboard split into two and sank in a river in north-east India in a storm.

A tainted batch of bootleg alcohol has killed at least 102 people and sent dozens more to hospital in villages outside the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, officials said.

FLEEING medical staff abandoned patients to a raging fire that killed 89 people in a seven-storey hospital in India, officials said.

At least 61 people have been killed in a fire at a hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, senior officials have said.

Soldiers in north-eastern India have cleared a path to a hydroelectric project where 17 people were confirmed killed by landslides in a powerful Himalayan earthquake, bringing the overall toll in the disaster to 99.

A strong earthquake shook north-eastern India and Nepal tonight, killing at least 16 people, damaging buildings and sending MPs in Nepal’s capital running into the streets.

The suspected knifeman behind the Jersey massacre had been suicidal over the breakdown of his marriage before the killings of six people including his children, neighbours believe.

A suicide bomber attacked a convoy carrying the top official in south-west Pakistan, injuring six people, police said today.

A FOUR-STOREY building collapsed in Delhi yesterday, killing at least 32 people, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Comedian Russell Brand and his singer bride Katy Perry flew to the Maldives today after their wedding at an Indian tiger reserve.

India’s main opposition party today demanded a parliamentary investigation on into the Commonwealth Games, which were hit by embarrassing allegations of corruption, building delays and cost overruns.

A New Zealand television host whose comments about an Indian official sparked a diplomatic protest of racism from India has resigned from his job.

New Zealand’s foreign minister today condemned a local television host’s “insulting” comments on air about an Indian official’s name which drew a complaint of racism from the New Delhi government.