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Over 50 Killed in Landslides in India's Kerala

This handout photograph taken on July 30, 2024 and released by India's National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) shows NDRF personnel at the disaster site as they rescue victims of the landslide in Wayanad. (Photo by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) / AFP)
This handout photograph taken on July 30, 2024 and released by India's National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) shows NDRF personnel at the disaster site as they rescue victims of the landslide in Wayanad. (Photo by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) / AFP)
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Over 50 Killed in Landslides in India's Kerala

This handout photograph taken on July 30, 2024 and released by India's National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) shows NDRF personnel at the disaster site as they rescue victims of the landslide in Wayanad. (Photo by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) / AFP)
This handout photograph taken on July 30, 2024 and released by India's National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) shows NDRF personnel at the disaster site as they rescue victims of the landslide in Wayanad. (Photo by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) / AFP)

Landslides swept through tea estates in southern India's Kerala state on Tuesday, killing over 50 people, authorities said, as hillsides collapsed after heavy rain and sent rivers of mud, water and boulders on homes of workers and villagers.
The hillsides gave way after midnight following torrential rainfall on Monday in the Wayanad district of Kerala, a state renowned as one of India's most popular tourist destinations. Most of the victims were estate workers and their families who were asleep at the time in makeshift tents, Reuters reported.
Television visuals showed relief personnel working amid uprooted trees and flattened tin structures as boulders lay strewn at the site with muddy water gushing through.
One man was stuck in chest-high mud for hours, television showed, struggling to free himself until rescue workers finally reached him.
"More than 50 dead bodies have been found but it is difficult to establish a proper count as many body parts have been spotted in the river," the state chief minister's spokesman, P.M. Manoj, told Reuters by phone.
Nearly 350 families lived in the affected region, mostly tea and cardamom estates, and 250 people had been rescued so far, state officials said. Many others are missing.
Army engineers were roped in to help build an alternate bridge after the one that linked the affected area to the nearest town of Chooralmala was destroyed, the chief minister's office said in a statement.
The weather office said there was extremely heavy rainfall over north and central Kerala so far on Tuesday, with more rain predicted through the day.

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World

Trump Says Not Putting US Troops in Region Amid Iran War

Plumes of smoke rise from the site of a strike in Tehran on March 16, 2026. (AFP)
Plumes of smoke rise from the site of a strike in Tehran on March 16, 2026. (AFP)
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Trump Says Not Putting US Troops in Region Amid Iran War

Plumes of smoke rise from the site of a strike in Tehran on March 16, 2026. (AFP)
Plumes of smoke rise from the site of a strike in Tehran on March 16, 2026. (AFP)

US President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested he was not looking at deploying more soldiers to the Middle East amid the Iran war.

"I'm not putting ‌troops anywhere," ‌Trump said, ‌asked ⁠by a reporter whether ⁠he was planning to send more service members to the region. "If I were, I certainly wouldn't tell ⁠you. But I'm not ‌putting ‌troops. We will do whatever ‌is necessary to ‌keep the price."

Trump spoke at the White House during an Oval Office meeting with ‌Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

Reuters reported on ⁠Wednesday ⁠that the Trump administration is considering deploying thousands of US troops to reinforce the Iran operation, citing a US official and three people familiar with the matter.

World

Pentagon Seeks $200 Billion in Additional Funds for the Iran War

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., US, March 19, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., US, March 19, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
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Pentagon Seeks $200 Billion in Additional Funds for the Iran War

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., US, March 19, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., US, March 19, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci

The Pentagon is seeking $200 billion in additional funds for the Iran war, a senior administration official says.

The department sent the request to the White House, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private information.

It’s an extraordinarily high number and comes on top of extra funding the Defense Department already received last year in President Donald Trump’s big tax cuts bill, The AP news reported.

Congress is bracing for a new spending request but it is not clear the White House has transmitted the request for consideration. It is unclear the spending request would have support.

The new funding request was first reported by The Washington Post. Asked about the figure at a press conference Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not directly confirm the figure, saying it could change. But he said “we’re going back to Congress and our folks there to to ensure that we’re properly funded.”

“It takes money to kill bad guys,” Hegseth said.

 

 

 

 

World

What Cargo Ships are Passing Hormuz Strait?

Commercial vessels offshore in Dubai last week © - / AFP/File
Commercial vessels offshore in Dubai last week © - / AFP/File
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What Cargo Ships are Passing Hormuz Strait?

Commercial vessels offshore in Dubai last week © - / AFP/File
Commercial vessels offshore in Dubai last week © - / AFP/File

Just a trickle of cargo ships and tankers -- most of them Iranian -- have made it through the Strait of Hormuz since Iranian forces blocked the crucial trade route in the Middle East war.

Here are facts and figures about vessels that have passed through the 167-kilometre (104-mile) long strait since the war broke out with US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, according to AFP.

- 95% shipping drop -

From March 1 to 19, commodities carriers made just 114 crossings, according to analytics firm Kpler -- a decrease of 95 percent from peacetime.

Of these, 69 crossings were by oil tankers and more than half were loaded, Kpler data showed, with most travelling east out of the strait.

Traffic "is being led mostly by bulk carriers, tankers and container ships," said Richard Meade, editor of leading shipping intelligence journal Lloyd's List, in a briefing on Thursday.

"But we have seen a bit of an uptick in gas carriers moving over the last week."

- Iranian, Greek, Chinese ships -

Most of the ships passing the strait are owned or flagged in Iran, said Bridget Diakun, an analyst at data company Lloyd's List Intelligence.

After that, Greek ships accounted for 18 percent of crossings and Chinese ones 10 percent in recent days, she said.

"Although Iran is continuing to control the Strait and exit its own oil, everything else is largely still at a standstill," said Meade.

- 35 sanctioned ships -

Overall since the war started, around a third of the ships transiting the strait were under US, EU or UK sanctions, according to an AFP analysis of passage data.

Of the oil and gas tankers, more than half were under sanctions.

Since March 16 "anything heading westbound has been shadow fleet, gas carriers or tankers... they absolutely dominate the traffic going through," Diakun told the Lloyds briefing.

- Oil to China -

Commodities analysts at JPMorgan bank said in a report released Monday that most of the oil passing through the strait was headed for Asia, principally China.

Data in the report indicated it was receiving more than a million barrels day from Hormuz -- far below the pre-war level of nearly five million.

Cichen Shen, Asia Pacific editor at Lloyd's List, said there were indications online that Chinese authorities were working on "some sort of exit plan" for their big tankers stuck in the region.

- 1.3 mn barrels of Iran oil -

The JPMorgan analysts said overall 98 percent of the observable oil traffic through the strait was Iranian, averaging 1.3 million barrels a day "in early March".

A fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the strait in peacetime.

- Indian, Pakistani ships -

"There are indications that some ships are transiting under Iranian 'approval', with some vessels following a route through the Strait closer to the Iranian coastline than normal," including Indian and Pakistani vessels, marine consultancy Clarksons said in a note.

Meade of Lloyds List added: "Several governments, including China, but (also) India, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia, they're all in direct talks with Tehran, coordinating vessel transits" with Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

- Alternative routes surge -

Shipping companies are carving out other ways to get their cargos through the region. Major shipping firm CMA CGM said it was moving freight across Gulf countries by rail and road to avoid the strait.

"Gulf maritime traffic patterns indicate early signs of global rebalancing," said marine intelligence group Windward in a report.

In recent days transit volumes through the Bab el-Mandeb strait off east Africa surged 280 percent, and 70 percent through the Suez Canal, it said, indicating that "shipping is adapting through alternative corridors."