Author: Indmedia

Eleven people have died in a fire at a foster care facility in Algiers, Algeria’s capital city.The country’s civil protection department said 19 others were injured in the blaze, which firefighters began to tackle at 03:30 local time (04:30 GMT) on Thursday.They were still attempting to extinguish the fire just over three hours later, when the authorities released an update on the situation.The civil protection department’s statement did not specify the ages of those killed or injured, but in a statement Algeria’s president said children were among the dead. The authorities have not said what caused the fire.Ten fire engines…

Rescue personnel could be seen escorting distressed devotees to waiting ambulances while security forces worked to prevent further congestion amid the surging crowd. PURI: A temporary crowd surge during the annual Rath Yatra in Odisha’s Puri left one devotee dead and more than 100 others requiring rescue and medical attention on Thursday, raising fresh concerns over crowd management a year after a deadly stampede during the festival.According to news agency PTI, one person died during the crowd surge, while another devotee died of a cardiac arrest in an unrelated incident.The scale of the crowd was evident on the Grand Road,…

Shares of state-run energy giant Gazprom plunged to historic lows on Thursday, weighing heavily on the broader Russian stock market as the benchmark MOEX index extended its longest losing streak on record. Gazprom’s stock tumbled more than 5% to a low of 83.98 rubles per share around noon Moscow time, breaking past its previous record low of 84 rubles per share set during the 2008 global financial crisis.  The Bell estimates Gazprom’s total market value at just over 2 trillion rubles ($25.7 billion). The slide coincided with a broader retreat on the MOEX index, which fell as much as 3.4%…

A new NITI Aayog report recommends faster approvals and simpler rules to speed up hotel projects and tourism growth (AI-generated image used for representational purposes) MUMBAI: Setting up a hotel in India takes 36 to 48 months from approval to commissioning, up to three times longer than the 12 to 18 months required in competing ASEAN countries, creating a bottleneck that is limiting room supply, driving up project costs and ultimately making travel more expensive for tourists, according to a new NITI Aayog report released on Wednesday.Prepared jointly with the Union ministry of tourism, the report, Unlocking Growth in Tourism…

Bengaluru: Aurum PropTech will acquire Housing.com for Rs 458 crore in an all-stock deal that will give Australian digital property company REA Group a 24.9% stake in the listed Indian firm.Aurum’s board on Thursday approved the acquisition of 100% of Locon Solutions, which owns Housing.com, from REA India. Aurum will issue 1.98 crore shares at Rs 231.4 apiece to the seller instead of paying cash.REA already owns 5.5% of Aurum. Its holding will rise to 24.9% after the share allotment. The transaction requires shareholder and regulatory approvals and is expected to close by September 30.Aurum will separately issue 51 lakh…

Hyderabad: Former minister T Harish Rao on Monday accused the Congress govt of pushing Telangana towards a severe power crisis due to its lack of foresight and failure in governance. He said farmers staged protests in front of electricity substations in 11 districts on Monday, expressing their anger over frequent power disruptions. Harish Rao said unscheduled and unannounced power cuts have become a daily norm across the state, causing hardships to farmers, students, traders and people from all sections of society.“The crisis is entirely man-made and result of Congress govt’s failure to maintain adequate coal stocks for thermal power stations.…

KRISHNAGIRI: More than 10 people suffered injuries when a Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) bus rammed a granite-laden truck at Attakurikki in Krishnagiri district in the early hours of Thursday. The accident caused a severe traffic jam on the Chennai-Bengaluru National Highway that lasted almost two hours. The accident happened when the TNSTC bus was heading towards Hosur from Tindivanam. The bus rammed a truck that was trying to cross the highway. Bus driver K Mohan, 47, of Krishnagiri suffered leg fracture in the accident. “The driver and the other injured were rushed to Krishnagiri Government Medical College and…

Battery energy storage system BESS Ahmedabad: Waaree Energy Storage Solutions (Waaree ESS), a subsidiary of Waaree Energies Ltd, has commissioned a 5.15GWh battery energy storage system (BESS) container manufacturing facility as part of its planned 20 GWh energy storage manufacturing capacity.The company has raised the facility’s capacity from the originally planned 3.5GWh to 5.15GWh by improving production throughput and using battery cells with higher energy density, it said on Thursday.The facility will manufacture BESS containers for utility-scale and commercial as well as industrial applications. It is equipped with automated assembly lines, automated guided vehicles, material handling systems and testing and…

Naresh Chandra PattanayakKeonjhar: More than 50,000 devotees on Thursday witnessed Rath Yatra of Lord Sri Sri Baladevjew, one of the oldest car festivals in Odisha. They pulled the 72-foot-tall chariot, Nandighosha, carrying Lord Baladevjew, Devi Subhadra and Lord Jagannath, along the 1-km-long Bada Danda from Sri Baladevjew Temple to Sri Gundicha Temple.Grand Road turned into a sea of humanity as devotees thronged the route for a glimpse of the deities. The festival also offered a rare sight of Devi Subhadra, whose idol is red in Keonjhar, unlike the yellow-coloured deity worshipped in Puri and most other places.Earlier in the day,…

ERODE: A special task force comprising Erode district administrative officials on Thursday sealed 21 unauthorized resorts in the buffer zones of the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve on Thursday.The task force comprising three teams sealed the resorts as directed by the Madras high court which acted on a public interest litigation filed by environmental activist R Karpagam of Coimbatore. The petitioner successfully argued that multiple resorts were operating illegally in the Hasanur, Germalam, and Thalavadi panchayats without acquiring mandatory clearances from the Hill Area Conservation Authority and the National Board for Wildlife.“Operating in the ecologically sensitive buffer zones of the Sathyamangalam Tiger…