10 dead, 25 injured in Himachal bus accident
Shimla: Ten people, including three women, were killed and 25 injured when a private bus they were travelling in fell into a 200-foot-deep gorge in Himachal Pradesh's Chamba district on Saturday night, the police said.
The accident occurred on the Dalhousie-Pathankot road near Banikhet in Dalhousie sub-division after the driver lost control of the vehicle at 7 pm, district Superintendent of Police Monica Bhutunguru said on Sunday.
The deceased have been identified as Manish Sharma, Rajni (Nurpur, Kangra) Shreshta Devi, Shivani (Dalhousie), Karam Chand (Saluni, Chamba), Ratto (Chamba), Yaru Ingam Shimre (Manipur), Karan Bhat (Delhi), Wasim Mandal (Malda, West Bengal), Manisha (Rajasthan), Bhutunguru said.
Speedy action by quick reaction teams of the Dalhousie cantonment and the civil administration helped in saving the lives of the 25 injured passengers, who were evacuated to nearby hospitals, a Jammu-based defence spokesperson said.
The Army reached the accident site immediately and rescue operation continued till midnight, defence spokesperson Col Davinder Anand said. "The timely help by the Army in the rescue operation saved many precious lives."
The rescue team carried out mustering of locals for rescue work, rope fixing up to the accident site, traffic management, search and evacuation of the injured persons and recovery of fatal casualties, Col Anand added.
In a statement issued in Shimla, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur has expressed grief over the incident.
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Indian-origin translator Padma Viswanathan shortlisted for International Booker Prize 2026
New Delhi (PTI): Padma Viswanathan, a Canadian-American writer of Indian-origin, has made it to the 2026 International Booker Prize shortlist as the English translator of a Portuguese language novella.
"On Earth As It Is Beneath" by Brazilian author Ana Paula Maia, described by judges as a "brutal, haunting and hypnotic novella set in a remote Brazilian penal colony, where the boundaries between justice and cruelty collapse", is among the six worldwide contenders for the coveted literary honour.
The annual prize worth GBP 50,000, divided equally between the author and translator, was won last year by Kannada writer-activist Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi for the short story collection "Heart Lamp". Each shortlisted title guarantees a prize of GBP 5,000 -- also split 50-50 between the book’s author and English translator.
"What struck us most is how spare, unflinching, uncompromising and relentless it is. Maia builds an entire moral universe out of very little: a remote prison, a handful of men, and the rituals of punishment that govern their lives.
"The novel reads almost like a dark fable about power, where brutality is ordinary and civilisation feels frighteningly thin," the judging panel, which also include award-winning Indian novelist and columnist Nilanjana S. Roy, said of the work translated by US-based Viswanathan.
The 58-year-old professor of creative writing at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville is an accomplished playwright and author, whose novels have been published in eight countries.
The list, announced on Tuesday, is dominated by women, with five of the six authors and four of the six translators being female. The authors and translators represent eight countries -- Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Taiwan, the UK and the United States.
"With narratives that capture moments from across the past century, these books reverberate with history. While there’s heartbreak, brutality and isolation among these stories, their lasting effect is energising," said author Natasha Brown, chair of this year’s judging panel.
The other books include "The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran" by Shida Bazyar and translated from German by Ruth Martin; "She Who Remains" by Rene Karabash and translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel; "The Director" by Daniel Kehlmann and translated from German by Ross Benjamin; "Taiwan Travelogue" by Yáng Shuāng-zi and translated from Taiwanese by Lin King; and "The Witch" by Marie Ndiaye and translated from French by Jordan Stump.
The announcement of the winning book will take place on May 19 at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.
The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for a single work of fiction -- either a novel or a collection of short stories -- written in another language, translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
According to the organisers, the 2025 winner "Heart Lamp" –- the first collection of short stories to win the prize and the first translated from Kannada –- rapidly sold out in the UK in the subsequent days, with the UK publisher, And Other Stories, immediately reprinting 40,000 copies.
