Overloaded boat catches fire in Indonesia - 23 dead, another 17 missing

Fire in an overloaded boat Zahro Express that was carrying more than 260 people has left 23 dead with another 17 missing. The boat was going from a port near Jakarta to Tidung which is a resort island in the Kepulauan Seribu chain.
Most of the passengers were Indonesians who were celebrating the New Year holiday. The Jakarta Search and Rescue Agency has indicated that at least five ships and a number of speedboats and rubber boats have been deployed in the search.
This has been reported in thehindu.com dated 2 January 2017.

The fire had gutted about half the vessel, and twenty bodies that were found inside the vessel were burned beyond recognition and were transferred to a police hospital for identification. The fire apparently broke out about 15 minutes after the ferry had left the port of Muara Angke.
The ferry’s passenger manifest indicated that only 100 were registered as passengers, along with six crewmen but, in reality, there were nearly 260 passengers.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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Tourists flock to Shimla, The Queen of Hills, to ring in the New Year

Tourists, both domestic and foreign, have flocked to Shimla, The Queen of Hills, to ring in the New Year 2017. There was a huge rush of tourists in Shimala as well as in other popular hill stations of Himachal Pradesh - they hope to be in the midst of snowfall in the first week of 2017.
This has been reported in thestatesman.com dated 1 January 2017.

The famous Winter Carnival in Shimla virtually turned the historic Ridge Ground and Mall Road area into a human sea and, with the influx of tourists heading towards Shimla for the New Year celebration, there were long queues for parking in ‘Queen of Hills’ - this gave rise to traffic jams and parking woes.
All hotels and other tourist accommodations in the hill station were full to the capacity - it brought smiles to the faces of hoteliers who did brisk business, especially after snowfall on Christmas on December 25. The administration made elaborate arrangements to maintain law and order with deployment of additional security on The Mall and Ridge to avoid any untoward incident.
Over the years, winter tourism in Shimla, which generally, lasts for about three weeks from mid December to first week of January has picked up very fast and the rush during the peak days from Christmas to New Year is considerably more than the summer tourist rush.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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