Todays News

  For nearly three months, Assam has been living through one of its most punishing monsoon seasons in years. What began as isolated flash flooding in late June has, by late August, evolved into a slow, grinding crisis — one that is finally showing signs of easing, even as its human and economic toll continues to add up. How It Started The first wave hit around June 28, when intense rainfall triggered flash flooding across six districts, affecting more than 22,000 people and knocking out early infrastructure. That was just the opening act. Between July 18 and 21, a second and far more severe spell of heavy rain inundated 16 districts and nearly 800 villages. Then, on July 19, a cloudburst upstream sent a sudden wall of water down through Upper Assam, breaching the extreme flood level on the Dikhow River and affecting more than 700,000 people in that wave alone. The districts of Sivasagar, Charaideo, Jorhat, and Golaghat bore the brunt of it. Officials described the flooding patter...

Shillong has spent the last two weeks at the centre of one of Meghalaya's sharpest political flashpoints in recent memory. The Khasi Students' Union (KSU) — the influential indigenous pressure group founded in 1978 — pushed a five-point charter of demands to the brink of confrontation with the state government, only to pull back this week after a "constructive" round of talks with Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma. Here's how the story unfolded, and where it stands now. What KSU is fighting for The five demands, whittled down from a broader 20-point charter, read like a checklist of the anxieties simmering in the Khasi Hills right now: Cancellation of the July 31 public hearing for Shree Cement's proposed mining project in East Jaintia Hills. KSU alleges the hearing was stage-managed to shut out opposition, and it wants the East Jaintia Hills DC, SP, senior police officers and pollution board officials removed and departmentally proceeded against. Full im...