At least 20 people were killed yesterday when a passenger train hit boulders on a bridge and jumped the tracks in western India, the railway minister said. At least 50 passengers were hospitalized with injuries.
The locomotive of the Bombay-bound Matsyagandha Express derailed and fell off the bridge and two of the train's eight coaches were hanging precariously in the Raigad district of Maharashtra state, spokeswoman Vaishali Patange said.
At least 20 people were killed, Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav said.
Earlier, Patange said 12 bodies had been recovered from the two hanging coaches.
The rail track slices through hills on both sides. Boulders had streamed onto the tracks from a nearby cliff following heavy monsoon rains, the railway minister said.
The accident took place nearly 200km south of Mumbai, the capital of western Maharashtra state and India's commercial hub.
A similar derailment in the region in June last year killed 51 passengers -- the first accident since the 760km rail line was built to link Bombay with tourist destinations of Goa and Mangalore in 1998.
The route is considered one of India's most scenic railroad journeys. It cuts through hills and rivers along the western coast and has 91 tunnels between Mumbai and Mangalore.
Ajit Gawli, medical superintendent of a government-run hospital in Mahad, a town 20km west of the accident site, said 20 people had died and at least 50 others were hospitalized with injuries. Three of the injured were in serious condition with fractures and chest injuries. He said six of those killed were young children.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS