Heavy monsoon rains lashed new areas of India, submerging dozens of villages in the West, as health workers raced to provide food and medicine to avert an outbreak of disease in the water-logged North.

EVERY now and then I come across an exciting food writer. I have just come across an Indian cook called Monisha Bharadwaj. I should have known about her sooner as she has written several award-winning books.

EFFORTS to reach stranded villagers in Pakistan’s northern mountains gathered pace yesterday after the country’s friends and foes both urged help for up to three million survivors rattled by fresh aftershocks.

Two men have been stabbed to death in India’s western state of Gujarat as Hindu nationalists celebrated a landslide win in state elections.

Thousands of Indian army soldiers tried to control Hindu mobs in the western city of Ahamadabad today as the death toll in the country’s worst religious violence in a decade approached 300.