GAUHATI, India: The death toll in monsoon flooding in South Asia has climbed past 160 as millions of people and animals continue to face the brunt in three countries, officials said Saturday.
At least 90 people have died in Nepal and 62 in northeastern India’s Assam state over the past week. A dozen have been killed in flooding in Bangladesh.
Shiv Kumar, a government official in Assam, said 10 rare one-horned rhinos have died in Kaziranga National Park since the Brahmaputra River burst its banks, flooding the reserve.
Some 4.8 million people spread over 3,700 villages across the state are still affected by the floods, though the frequency of rains has decreased in the past 24 hours, the Assam Disaster Response Authority said. The authority said 12 bodies of residents from different areas were recovered on Saturday.
More than 2.5 million people have been impacted by flooding in northeastern India’s Bihar state.
A young woman gave birth to her first child on a boat in floodwaters early Friday while on her way to a hospital in Assam’s flooded Gagalmari village. The newborn girl and her 20-year-old mother, Imrana Khatoon, were brought back to their home without getting to the hospital.
Community health official Parag Jyoti Das, who visited the family, said there were no post-delivery health complications. However, the mother and the baby were moved by boat to a hospital in the nearby town of Jhargaon because of unhygienic conditions due to floodwaters, Das said. The health center in Khatoon’s village was flooded and closed.
“I would have felt happier if the baby’s father was here,” Khatoon, whose husband works in a hotel in the southern state of Kerala, told The Associated Press.
More than 147,000 people have taken shelter in 755 government-run camps across Assam, officials said.
Authorities warned they would take action against suppliers who were reported to be distributing poor quality rice and other essentials to marooned people and inmates of temporary shelters at some places.
“We have ordered the arrest of those unscrupulous elements supplying substandard materials and playing with the lives of the affected people,” said Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s finance minister.
In Nepal, the Home Ministry said about 36,728 families were affected by the monsoon rains. The flooding and mudslides forced some 13,000 families to flee their homes.
In at least two of Nepal’s districts, helicopters were used to transport emergency food supplies, while other transport means were being used to move tents and other supplies to the victims.
South Asia’s monsoon rains, which hit the region from June to September, are crucial for the rain-fed crops planted during the season.
Monsoon flooding death toll climbs to 164 in South Asia
Monsoon flooding death toll climbs to 164 in South Asia
- At least 90 people have died in Nepal and 50 in northeastern India’s Assam state over the past week
- South Asia’s monsoon rains, which hit the region from June to September, are crucial for the rain-fed crops planted during the season
Briton fights for tech justice after daughter’s suicide in 2017
- Molly Russell took her own life after viewing pro-suicide content online
- The inquest heard that, of the 16,300 posts Molly saved, shared or liked on Instagram in the six-month period before her death, 2,100 related to depression, self-harm or suicide
LONDON: The father of British teenager Molly Russell, who took her own life after viewing pro-suicide content online, hopes a documentary about her death will inspire change.
The film — “Molly vs. the Machines” — about his 14-year-old daughter will “bring back some of the grief,” Ian Russell acknowledged.
He said it will highlight how the tragedy was not isolated, and “there’s a real hope that it will become part of a conversation that might help bring about change.”
The documentary, which premieres in British cinemas from March 1 and airs on the UK’s Channel 4 on March 5, recounts his quest to hold “digital systems designed for profit” accountable for his loss, according to Russell.
Perhaps surprisingly, he opposes an outright social media ban for children, arguing “getting the platforms to change is actually much more effective.”
The bereaved father is also seeking an end to impunity for big tech, which he says purposefully targets vulnerable people with addictive algorithms feeding them harmful content for monetary gain.
Molly took her own life in 2017, with a coroner concluding five years later that she had died from an act of self-harm while suffering from the “negative effects of online content.”
The inquest into her death heard that, of the 16,300 posts Molly saved, shared or liked on Instagram in the six-month period before her death, 2,100 related to depression, self-harm or suicide.
Her engagement with pro-suicide content increased toward the end of her life, until “this intelligent, caring, beautiful person had been persuaded she was worthless,” her father said.
“How Molly of all people could ever have been convinced of that, for those of us lucky enough to have known her, is just baffling,” he added.
Research published in October by the Molly Rose Foundation, a suicide prevention charity founded and chaired by Russell, showed 37 percent of children aged 13-17 had seen at least one type of high-risk content relating to suicide, self-harm, depression or eating disorders during the week they were surveyed.
According to the data, which was collected before child safety obligations of the UK’s landmark Online Safety Act became law, 27 percent of those children said they had viewed such content at least 10 times that week.
The foundation has welcomed legislation put forward by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government. It called a decision to ban AI chatbots from generating illegal or harmful content — a loophole exposed by sexualized deepfakes created by X’s AI chatbot Grok — a “welcome downpayment.”
But it said the Online Safety Act, which legally obliges tech companies to better safeguard children and adults online, could go further.
The law should require greater transparency from platforms and use separate age limits for different tools — such as AI chatbots.
The foundation argues that would push companies to offer fewer high-risk services and make platforms safer. It is also calling for “fundamentally repurposed” algorithms that promote healthy content from trusted sources instead of “harmful and toxic material.”
And it advocates for better digital education at schools to enable young people to “critically reflect” on online content.
Russell favors this two-pronged approach over a social media ban for children, pointing out that Australia’s under-16s block only covers 10 platforms and might push minors to more dangerous fringe sites. Youngsters might find ways to bypass the rules, he added, while those turning 16 will enter an “unregulated” space.
