Khadoor Sahib, India, May 31 (Reuters): A jailed Sikh separatist leader is contesting India’s general election from prison and drawing good support, his campaign managers said, in what could become a concern for New Delhi which has sought to stamp out any revival of Sikh militancy. Amritpal Singh, 31, is detained in a high-security prison in Assam, nearly 3,000 km (1,865 miles) from his Khadoor Sahib constituency in Punjab state, where villages and towns are dotted with posters depicting him with swords and bullet-proof vests. Singh was arrested last year and jailed under a tough security law after he and

NEW DELHI, May 30 (Reuters): India’s capital Delhi recorded its first heat-related death this year as temperatures reached record highs, media reported on Thursday. Parts of northwest and central India have been experiencing heat wave to severe heat wave conditions for weeks, and the temperature in Delhi reached a record high of 52.9 degrees Celsius (127.22°F) in Mungeshpur neighbourhood on Wednesday. That reading may be revised however, as maximum temperatures in other parts of the city ranged from 45.2 C to 49.1 C. The capital territory’s first heat-related fatality this year was a 40-year-old labourer who died of heatstroke on

New York (AP): Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read as cheering from the street below could be heard in the hallway on the courthouse’s 15th floor where the decision was revealed after more than nine hours of deliberations. “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial,” an angry Trump

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI, May 30 (Reuters): Monsoon rains hit India’s southernmost Kerala coast a few days earlier than expected on Thursday, the national weather office said, boosting prospects for bumper harvests that could spur farm and economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy. Summer rains usually begin to lash coastal Kerala state around June 1 and spread across the whole country by mid-July, triggering the planting of crops such as rice, corn, cotton, soybeans and sugarcane. The monsoon, the lifeblood of the country’s nearly $3.5 trillion economy, delivers nearly 70% of the rain that India needs to water farms and recharge reservoirs