India

Authorities ordered criminal charges filed against the great-grandson of India's first prime minister after footage emerged of him comparing a rival Muslim politician to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and threatening to cut the throats of Muslims during a political rally. Varun Gandhi, 29, a descendant of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a founding father of India's secular democracy, denied making the comments. Gandhi said the footage had been tampered with.

With her face wrapped in a pink veil, Suman Yadav squatted on the mud floor of her home washing clothes by hand, next to her family's gleaming new possession -- a silver-gray, $10,000 car called the Swift. They bought it on an auspicious January harvest-festival day, she said, and drove it straight to the village temple for a blessing before bringing it home. "My husband's new auto spare-parts shop is doing well. The mustard and wheat from the farm is fetching good money, too," said Yadav, 30. "We already had a motorcycle and a tractor, but now could afford a car, too. We paid the full amount in cash.

Police in northern India arrested a great-grandson of the country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, over allegations that he made inflammatory comments against Muslims. Police fired in the air and baton-charged a crowd of at least 10,000 of Varun Gandhi's supporters shouting pro-Hindu slogans as he was arrested in his constituency in Uttar Pradesh, a crucial state in the April-May general election. Gandhi is a member of India's powerful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and an election candidate for the Hindu-nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

Nearly 200 people have been killed by a cyclone that ripped through Bangladesh and eastern India, while millions were marooned by flooding or forced to live in shelters. The death toll in Bangladesh rose to more than 130, newspapers and private television channels said. In India, officials said at least 64 people had died in West Bengal state. Cyclone Aila slammed into parts of coastal Bangladesh and eastern India on Monday, triggering tidal surges that forced people from their homes.

A court issued arrest warrants for 22 Pakistani nationals accused of masterminding last year's deadly Mumbai terrorist attacks, including the founder of an Islamist militant group recently freed by a Pakistani court. Pakistan has vowed that it will not transfer any Mumbai suspects to longtime rival India, saying instead it will try them in its own courts. Among those sought by India were Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, whom Pakistani authorities arrested in December.

India stood firm against Western demands to accept binding limits on carbon emissions even as visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed optimism about an eventual climate change deal to India's benefit. "There is simply no case for the pressure that we -- who have among the lowest emissions per capita -- face to actually reduce emissions," India's minister of environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, told Clinton and her delegation in a meeting. "And as if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours," he added.

As the grill man stirred the glowing coals and the bread man rolled balls of dough, Akram Khan, the waiter, watched the traffic rumble down the pocked road. Soon, crowds would start arriving at this sidewalk kebab stand, families in expensive cars and partygoers fizzy with drink. Most wolf down their food, sweating over the spicy chutney as they gossip about politics, cricket, and the missing monsoon. But linger on this cracked slab of pavement and you'll witness the frustrations, hopes, contradictions and pleasures of life in modern India writ small.

A court found two men and a woman guilty in bombings that killed 52 people in Mumbai six years ago. Two taxis carrying explosives blew up within minutes of each other Aug. 25, 2003, at the Gateway of India, a popular tourist attraction on the waterfront, and at a busy shopping complex. Ashrat Shafiq Mohammed Ansari, Syed Mohammed Haneef Abdul Rahim and his wife, Fahmeeda Syed Mohammed Haneef, faced charges that included murder, conspiracy to kill and damaging public property. They had pleaded not guilty.

Rescue workers used sandbags to stop a raging river from breaching its embankment near the southern Indian city of Vijayawada as floods triggered by heavy rains over the last week left 2.5 million people homeless. The flooding, described by officials as the worst in many decades in south India, has killed about 250 people, mostly in the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. At least 5 million people are crammed in government shelters.