UNDATED, July 24: Zoramthanga, the chief minister of Mizoram, has said that the Mizoram government is not pushing back any Burmese pro-democracy activist to Burma. "We welcome them ... . We are not pushing those Burmese democracy activists at all. The people we pushed (back) are smugglers", Zoramthanga said on July 23 when asked to comment on a reported statement of the Mizoram home minister on the deportation of Burmese nationals from the state. According to a PTI report, Tawnluia, the state home minister had told the state Assembly on July 20 that the Mizoram government had deported 448...

KOHIMA, July 25: The Nationalist Democratic Movement (NDM), a regional party of Nagaland, has decided to have an electoral alliance with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), for the forthcoming general elections, party sources said.

NEW DELHI, July 24: Formal contact has been established between the top ULFA leadership and the Union government. Highly-placed sources in the ministry of home affairs have confirmed that a series of preliminary rounds of talks have been held during the recent past with the ULFA leadership. The last round of talks was held in London last month, where intermediaries of the Union government met the chairman of the banned outfit, Arabinda Rajkhowa. However, contrary to reports, the commander-in-chief of the outfit, Paresh Baruah, considered a hardliner, had neither established contacts with the...

NEW DELHI, July 24: Yamin Hazarika, deputy commissioner of police (crime against women), known for her impeccable track record in the force, including a three-month stint in Bosnia, died on July 24. She was 43. Hazarika, the first women from Assam to have cleared the police service exams, is survived by her 13-year-old daughter and her son, aged nine. It was in Bosnia, where she was posted as part of the UN peacekeeping force, that she was found to be suffering from leukaemia. Treatment began only in when she returned last September, at Mumbai's Tata Institute and at AIIMS where she passed...

KOHIMA, July 24 - Viral fever and water-borne diseases in Nagaland have claimed at least 274 lives in recent months, official sources said on Saturday. The state director of health services R Shaiza said the worst-affected areas were Mon, Mokokchung and Dimapur districts where the diseases were raging in an epidemic form. He said the diseases had claimed more than 150 people in Mon alone and 81 in Mokokchung. Forty-three people had died in Dimapur. Casualty figures from other parts of the state are yet to come in. However, unofficial figures put the toll at over 600.