In India, rats have a $19,000 meal

It was a cash machine heist with a difference: The attackers were hungry rodents.

At least one rat slipped through a hole in the back of an ATM in northeastern India and started eating. By the time it was finished, police say more than $19,000 in bills were shredded.

When technicians arrived June 11 to fix a broken State Bank of India cash machine in the town of Tinsukia they found a dead rat inside it and Indian currency notes worth nearly 1.3 million rupees, or a little over $19,000, chewed to shreds. The rat had entered the ATM through a small hole for cables, police superintendent Mugdha Jyoti Mahanta said Friday. The notes were in 500-rupee and 2,000-rupee denominations.

India says Chinese construction on river dirtying water

Officials in India’s northeast are complaining that Chinese construction activity on the upper reaches of one of the largest rivers that flows into India are likely turning the waters downstream turbid and unfit for human consumption.

Over the weekend, Sarbananda Sonowal, the chief minister of India’s Assam state, said the Brahmaputra river was contaminated with bacteria and iron, with laboratory tests declaring its waters unfit for human consumption. Sonowal asked that the Indian government take up the matter with Beijing.

Flooding maroons people in Indian states, eases in Nepal

Monsoon flooding is easing in Nepal, but the water flowing downriver has worsened floods in northern India and marooned thousands of villagers across the border, officials said Thursday.

The existing flood situation was aggravated in Uttar Pradesh state after three rivers became swelled with the waters from Nepal, said disaster relief official Mohammad Zameer Ahmad. At least six deaths have occurred since Wednesday.

Ahmad said Thursday that over 300 villages were marooned in no time and thousands of people were forced to move to higher ground.

48 dead as heavy monsoon rains lash western India

At least 48 people have been killed as large swaths of western India have been lashed by heavy monsoon rains and flooding over the last week, officials said Wednesday.

In Rajasthan, home to a number of popular tourist destinations, the streets of at least four districts have been turned into virtual rivers, trapping tens of thousands of people on the upper floors of residential buildings. Rescue workers were scrambling to rescue thousands of others whose homes have been flooded or destroyed.

By Wednesday, the death toll in the state stood at 19.

India's Assam state makes new plans to halt rhino poaching

The newly elected government of the northeast Indian state of Assam has launched plans to crack down on the poaching of the area's famed one-horned rhinos, an official said Saturday.

The state's Kaziranga National Park is home to the world's largest population of the rare rhinos, with more than 2,000 of the species. While overall poaching deaths have dropped over the last few years, a series of rhino killings this year has led the new government to renew anti-poaching efforts.

Survivors huddle after violence in India kills 72

Instead of celebrating Christmas in her home, Rina Vor and her four young children were huddled in a church Thursday along with hundreds of other survivors of a rebel massacre that killed 72 members of her tribe.

Vor said she putting her kids to sleep in her village in India's remote northeast when she heard the gunfire. She quickly gathered the children and ran to the church for safety, leaving behind her house and belongings.

Curfew in India state after rebels kill 63

Hundreds of survivors of a brutal rebel attack that killed at least 63 people in northeastern India sought shelter Wednesday in a church and school while security forces imposed a curfew in a bid to contain the latest bout of ethnic violence.

Long-simmering land and ethnic disputes in Assam state erupted in bloodshed Tuesday when authorities said rebels belonging to a faction of an indigenous separatist group called the National Democratic Front of Bodoland attacked tribal settlers known as Adivasi. Most of the Adivasis, whose ancestors migrated to Assam more than 100 years ago, have worked on tea plantations.

Rebels in northeast India kill 34

Separatist rebels gunned down at least 34 people and wounded a dozen more in India's remote northeast Tuesday in a series of coordinated attacks, police said.

At least 30 tribal settlers were killed in north Assam's Sonitpur district, said S.N. Singh, a top local police officer.

All those killed were Adivasis who largely work in tea gardens in the region.

Four others were shot dead in the western Kokrajhar district.

Monsoon floods kill 11 in India, maroon thousands

Indian authorities rushed food and drinking water Saturday to thousands of people marooned by monsoon rains and mudslides that left at least 11 dead in the remote northeast.