Inquiry into alleged abuse at orphanage to start in spring: Nova Scotia premier - Courier Islander

HALIFAX - The terms of reference for a public inquiry into alleged abuse at a former Halifax orphanage should be set before the end of the year, Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said Thursday.

McNeil, speaking after his first cabinet meeting Thursday, also said he expects the inquiry into the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children to start in the spring.

Former residents of the home allege they suffered sexual, physical and psychological abuse by staff at the facility over a 50-year period up until the 1980s.

They have been pushing for an inquiry for more than a year, but the former NDP government rejected the request.

The Liberal premier has said getting the inquiry started is one of his priorities.

"The (former) residents of the Home for Colored Children will find that there's a very different tone coming from this government," he said. "I want to move on this fairly quickly."

McNeil said an independent panel promised by the previous government — and dismissed as ineffective by former residents — was expected to release its terms of reference next week.

A spokesman in McNeil's office later said the government will have a look at the terms, but the plans for the panel will be scrapped.

"We won't be moving ahead with the panel, as it has no teeth legally," Kyley Harris said in an email. "(But) there may be value in some of Wright's recommendations related to an inquiry."

The panel's terms of reference were drafted by Robert Wright, who spent three years implementing a provincial child and youth strategy following a public inquiry into the case of a young offender whose stolen car struck and killed a Halifax woman in 2004.

Meanwhile, McNeil said he has yet to be briefed on a court case involving 155 ex-residents who want the Nova Scotia Supreme Court to certify a potential class-action lawsuit against the provincial government.

"I'll let the courts deal with that," he said when asked if his government would withdraw from the proceedings.

On previous occasions, government lawyers have come forward to challenge affidavits submitted to the court.

The allegations in the proposed class-action have not been tested in court and lawyers for the government have argued that some of them are based on speculation or hearsay.

In April, the Home for Colored Children agreed to pay a $5-million settlement to 140 plaintiffs after they launched a class-action lawsuit two years ago.

In December 2012, Halifax police and the RCMP announced they would not be laying criminal charges in the case after concluding there was not enough evidence to support the abuse allegations.

The orphanage opened in 1921, but its role has evolved over the years, eventually expanding its services to promote the health and well-being of children and families within Nova Scotia's black community.

© Copyright 2013

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Syria Destroys Chemical Sites, Inspectors Say - New York Times

Nour Kelze/Reuters

Rebels with the Free Syrian Army prepared to throw a homemade bomb in the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria's ability to produce chemical weapons has been destroyed and its remaining toxic armaments secured, weapons inspectors said Thursday, as President Bashar al-Assad has offered unexpectedly robust cooperation, at least so far, with a Russian-United States accord to dismantle his arsenal.

Elimination of Mr. Assad's manufacturing ability is the most significant milestone yet in a process that still faces a monumental task: destroying the government's 1,290 tons of declared chemical weapons in the midst of a bloody civil war that has killed well over 100,000 people and carved up control of the country.

Weapons inspectors who have been in the country just one month say that despite battles raging across the country, deep international disagreement over how to stop the war and even what United States officials say was an Israeli strike on a Syrian Army base late Wednesday night, Syria has so far met all of its commitments and deadlines.

By doing so, Mr. Assad's government can claim success in what it said would be a key benefit of the accord — seizing a new measure of credibility and portraying itself not as an outlaw regime but as a reliable and legitimate international player. But opponents of Mr. Assad, including the rebels, are deeply critical of the deal for that very reason — it has helped buttress his position but done nothing to stop the war.

"They want to tell you, 'It's not because you put a deadline — when we say something, we do it before the time,' " a pro-government Syrian journalist, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said of Syrian officials. "The main problem with the West, until now it never understood how the Syrian regime works. Whenever you threaten them you won't get anything."

Mr. Assad's opponents have bitterly denounced the accord as a distraction, and they were dismayed that the chemical weapons attack in August that American officials say killed 1,400 men, women and children near Damascus led not to American military intervention, as President Obama initially threatened, but to an agreement that allows Mr. Assad's supporters to portray him as a statesman.

The deal also created a de facto expectation that Mr. Assad would remain in office at least until mid-2014, when the elimination of the weapons is supposed to be complete under the agreement, critics say. And Syrians — supporters and opponents of the government alike — widely considered chemical weapons a side issue that global leaders were focusing on, rather than finding ways to end the war and its humanitarian disaster.

The government's international opponents emphasized on Thursday that the deal was still incomplete and that they still hold Mr. Assad accountable for the suffering of Syrians. The British Foreign Office said in a statement that while the destruction of chemical facilities was "an important first milestone, it brings no relief to the Syrian people," since the government continues to use artillery, air power and "siege tactics" against civilians.

In a statement on Thursday, the international chemical weapons watchdog group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said Syria had disabled all of the chemical weapons production and mixing facilities it declared to inspectors, rendering them inoperable, ahead of the deadline of Friday.

The organization said that its inspectors and United Nations officials had visited 39 of the 41 facilities at 21 of the 23 sites that Syria had declared to them. While the two remaining sites — where chemical weapons are developed, stored and tested — were too hazardous to visit because of fighting, chemical-making equipment had been moved to other sites that the inspectors could visit, the statement said.

"The joint mission is now satisfied that it has verified — and seen destroyed — all of Syria's declared critical production and mixing/filling equipment," the weapons organization's statement said. "Given the progress made, no further inspection activities are currently planned."

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London, and Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva.

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What next for Toronto's embattled mayor? - CBC.ca

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford gave a one-minute statement Thursday following the bombshell announcement that Toronto police have possession of the video that allegedly shows the mayor smoking crack cocaine.

Police also announced a charge of extortion, to go along with previous drug charges, against Ford family friend and part-time driver Alexander Lisi, who was caught up in a large drug and gang sweep called Project Traveller. Ford himself has not been charged with anything.

In his brief statement, the mayor said, "I think everyone's seen the allegations against me today," and noted that while the matter is before the courts "that's all I can say right now."

But what are his options as this controversy unfolds? Can he simply, again, try to brazen it out as he did earlier when two media organizations, citing unnamed sources, reported on the alleged video?

City councillor Jaye Robinson, a former member of Ford's executive committee, told the CBC that at this point city council does not have the power to make the mayor step down. "The only option before the city is for the mayor to step aside" on his own, Robinson said.

The Ontario government can remove a mayor from office, but only after a conviction for a criminal offence. Without that, Municipal Affairs Minister Linda Jeffrey said today, "There's nothing we can do at this point," adding, "I'm not going to speculate on what the next steps will be."

Hamutal Dotan, editor of the Torontoist, says Rob Ford "is notoriously reluctant to offer explanations when it comes to allegations and questions he's not comfortable with." (Corbin Smith/Courtesy Torontoist)

Hamutal Dotan, editor-in-chief of the Torontoist website, and a regular City Hall commentator on CBC Radio's Metro Morning, said, before Ford spoke, that she expects Ford "to come at this fairly aggressively," and to "project a message that he is going to continue serving in public office and doing his job."

That is exactly what Ford did Thursday in his brief scrum before retreating into his office away from shouting reporters.

Another possible option for the mayor would be to go on the offensive.

"When he's been in the midst of allegations before, his tack has been to go on the offensive, so I imagine he will do something similar," Dotan predicts.

"He is notoriously reluctant to offer explanations when it comes to allegations and questions he's not comfortable with."

That was how she saw Ford's performance after the allegations of a video showing the mayor smoking a crack pipe first emerged six months ago.

"Number one, there is no video, so that's all I can say," he said on his radio show in Toronto on May 26, adding, "You can't comment on something that doesn't exist."

Take on the police?

Now that police have confirmed that they have the video, recovered off a hard drive from which it had been deleted, Ford may consider whether to go after the police and Blair, who called what he saw in the video "disappointing."

Defence lawyer Mike Lacy told the CBC's Carole MacNeil, "it's not the role of the chief to weigh in on his personal feelings watching a video no one else has seen."

Ford, however, has historically been an ally of the police, as are many of his supporters. So if he challenges the police role in these developments he might have to walk a fine line.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford gives a brief statement outside his Halloween-themed office at City Hall Thursday, following the police announcement that it has retrieved a copy of the alleged video of the mayor smoking crack. (Canadian Press)

Lacy stressed that while Lisi has been charged with extortion, the victim of the alleged extortion is unknown (although police said the charge is connected to the video).

As a result, since Lisi "may or may not have done things to hurt Rob Ford that he had no idea he was doing, how can you hold Rob Ford accountable for that?" Lacy wondered.

He also noted that "people have to remember [Ford] is not alleged to have done anything wrong, he is not charged with any criminal offence."

He added that "we don't expect people to just, in the face of an allegation, to walk away from their work or to walk away from their businesses."

Lose support?

For her part, Dotan does expect Ford to lose some support, though she says the die-hard Rob Ford supporters are "just going to move the goal posts and say 'well, OK, fine, maybe the video exists, maybe it's actually true that the mayor smoked crack, that doesn't make him unfit for office."

Canadians tend to be more forgiving than their American counterparts about coming down on politicians for recreational drug use, Dotan says. But she also expects Toronto City Hall will come to a standstill over this latest development.

That's what she saw in the spring after the Toronto Star and Gawker articles about the video were first published. "I'd be surprised if regular council business gets much attention at all for a while."

And with Toronto's next election a year away, she said "the mayor is going to face a lot of questions about his re-election campaign.

"This might push some potential candidates to declare their candidacy earlier out of concern that the mayor isn't capable of governing effectively anymore."

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Halloween pumpkins found filled with cocaine - The Guardian

Pumpkins confiscated by Canadian border officials in a Montreal airport. Photograph: Canada Border Services Agency/AFP/Getty Images

A different kind of Halloween surprise has been found in pumpkins this year by Canada's border services agency.

Authorities believe three pumpkins found in a woman's luggage at the Trudeau International airport in Montreal on Thursday were stuffed with approximately 2kg (4.4 pounds) of cocaine.

Scanning equipment detected masses inside the pumpkins, which turned out to be bags filled with the chalky substance. A border agency spokeswoman was not able to say where the passenger was coming from or whether she was a Canadian citizen.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have taken over the investigation.

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squirrels, chipmunks found hanging in tree - Toronto Sun

EAST FERRIS, Ont. — Maryanne Saunders is still traumatized by what she saw hanging in her neighbour's tree earlier this week.

As she stepped out of her car she noticed something furry. It immediately caught her attention.

"Once I realized what it was I screamed, 'Oh my God. What the hell is this?' " she said Wednesday. "There were chipmunks with homemade nooses wrapped around their necks hanging from tree branches."

And they weren't alone.

Among the trees were large-sized army dolls handing from the branches, too.

Saunders said some of the tiny critters were hanging from the tree by their necks and others from their feet.

"It's so sad. I'm horrified and devastated," she said. "We're animal lovers."

Saunders said she enjoys feeding the wildlife at her rural home on Taillefer Road. Most of the visitors in her yard are chipmunks, squirrels and deer and her two-and-a-half-year-old grandson takes great pleasure out of the experience of handing out peanuts and deer feed.

But not everyone in the neighbourhood agrees with feeding wild animals.

Saunders said she was told several times by a neighbour to stop feeding the chipmunks, because he doesn't like them and considers them nuisance animals.

She said she knew his hatred towards the critters, but never imagined it would lead to this.

"He made a point to hang them on a tree located in between our driveways on the property line. He deliberately put them there so I would see them," Saunders said. "I'm just so thankful my grandson wasn't around. He would have been devastated."

Saunders contacted the Township of East Ferris, and East Ferris animal control officer Kathy Jeanneault to log a formal complaint.

Jeanneault said she was aware of the complaint, but she couldn't comment further.

"What I can say is the situation is under investigation."

Daryl Vaillancourt, executive director of the North Bay Humane Society, said they received a report of dead squirrels hanging in a tree.

"We attended the home and found five dead squirrels," he said. "I can't really comment any further at this time."

Vaillancourt said the humane society has opened up an investigation and would appreciate any information from the public pertaining to this case by calling 705-474-1251.

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Senate scandal hasn't hampered Tories' support, poll says - The Globe and Mail

The Senate expenses scandal may be ensnarling Stephen Harper in controversy, but polling suggests it's so far had little impact on Conservative support among decided voters.

Still, very minor changes in support over the last week have tightened the three-way horse race between the major political parties: all are now within one percentage point of each other.

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An Ipsos Reid survey released on the eve of the Tories' latest policy convention in Calgary shows Mr. Harper's Conservatives at 30 per cent in the polls, down one percentage point from a week earlier and two points since September.

"I don't know that you could interpret what is going on with the number as any impact," Ipsos Reid pollster Darrell Bricker said. "Basically what you're seeing is fluctuation within the margin of error."

The Liberals under Justin Trudeau are down two points since last week and stand at 31 per cent.

The major beneficiary of the scandal seems to be the NDP so far. Tom Mulcair's party, the Official Opposition in the Commons, has gained four percentage points since last week to sit at 31 per cent in the polls.

The results are from an online poll of Canadian respondents Oct. 25 to 28.

Mr. Bricker said the scandal appears to be having little effect these days on the government. "It's a wonderful story for the Ottawa press gallery … but the truth is the impact on the Canadian electorate, essentially what's happening is it's reinforcing impressions that people already have of Harper."

"It hasn't raised or elevated either [opposition] party, the Liberals or the NDP, to such a place of prominence where they can actually be in a position to defeat the government and form a majority."

The survey period however doesn't capture reaction beyond Monday, when beleaguered Senator Mike Duffy aired more Conservative Party dirty laundry on the scandal.

Mr. Harper's government found itself knocked back on its heels in Parliament this week as it scrambles to impose stiff sanctions on three ex-Tory senators accused of padding their expense claims.

The Conservative convention begins late Thursday and Mr. Harper will deliver a keynote address to Tories on Friday.

Mr. Duffy alleged Monday that the Prime Minister's Office coached him to lie about where he got $90,000 to repay questionable expense claims, insisting they told him to explain it as a loan from the bank rather than revealing that it came from the personal bank account of Nigel Wright, at the time the top aide in the PMO.

Mr. Bricker said he hasn't seen much movement in federal Conservative Party support in recent months.

"This is something we've been tracking for some time and we haven't seen an appreciable movement in the government's numbers for quite a while. If you look outside of election periods, Stephen Harper typically scores between 30 and 35 [per cent]," the pollster said.

He said the NDP's persistent strength in the polls makes the party a factor to watch. "The only thing we've seen that I think is of particular interest in all of this is the NDP strength hanging in there. The fact the NDP has got a new floor that is at least 25 [per cent] makes them definitely a spoiler in whatever goes on in the future."

Mr. Bricker notes that Mr. Harper's personal approval rating is 40 per cent – a number that's slipped just one percentage point since July.

"At 40 per cent – that's enough," the pollster says. "Typically governments that have approval levels of 40 [per cent] – and they're incumbent governments – typically win" re-election.

Mr. Bricker hastens to add that none of this suggests the Harper government is faring well these days.

"I wouldn't want to be misinterpreted as saying these are good days for him – they are definitely not."

He notes the scandal has made it very hard for the government to generate media coverage of recent achievements such as the Canada-European Union trade deal clinched in recent weeks.

The Oct. 25-28 poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

The percentage of respondents who believe Mr. Harper's government deserves re-election is 30 per cent – unchanged from July.

In Ontario, the Conservatives are at 33 per cent, the NDP at 33 per cent and the Liberals at 32 per cent – the tightest race across the country.

In Quebec, the NDP stands at 32 per cent, the Liberals at 30 per cent, the Bloc at 25 per cent and the Conservatives at 12 per cent.

In British Columbia, the NDP hold an edge over the Conservatives – 36 per cent to 29 per cent – while the Liberals are at 28 per cent.

The credibility interval on the regional and province sub-samples ranges from plus or minus 3.8 percentage points to plus or minus 9.4 percentage points.

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Iraqi PM: US aid needed to battle al-Qaida - Businessweek

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bloody resurgence of al-Qaida in Iraq is prompting Baghdad to ask the U.S. for more weapons, training and manpower, two years after pushing American troops out of the country.

The request will be discussed during a White House meeting Friday between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Barack Obama in what Baghdad hopes will be a fresh start in a complicated relationship that has been marked both by victories and frustrations for each side.

Al-Maliki will discuss Iraq's plight in a public speech Thursday at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington.

"We know we have major challenges of our own capabilities being up to the standard. They currently are not," Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "We need to gear up, to deal with that threat more seriously. We need support and we need help."

He added, "We have said to the Americans we'd be more than happy to discuss all the options short of boots on the ground."

"Boots on the ground" means military forces. The U.S. withdrew all but a few hundred of its troops from Iraq in December 2011 after Baghdad refused to renew a security agreement to extend legal immunity for Americans forces, which would have let more stay.

At the time, the withdrawal was hailed as a victory for the Obama administration, which campaigned on ending the Iraq war and had little appetite for pushing Baghdad into a new security agreement. But within months, violence began creeping up in the capital and across the country as Sunni Muslim insurgents, angered by a widespread belief that Sunnis have been sidelined by the Shiite-led government, lashed out, with no U.S. troops to keep them in check.

More than 5,000 Iraqis have been killed in attacks since April, and suicide bombers launched 38 strikes in the last month alone.

Al-Maliki is expected to ask Obama for new assistance to bolster its military and fight al-Qaida. Faily said that could include everything from speeding up the delivery of U.S. aircraft, missiles, interceptors and other weapons, to improving national intelligence systems. And when asked, he did not rule out the possibility of asking the U.S. to send military special forces or additional CIA advisers to Iraq to help train and assist counterterror troops.

If the U.S. does not commit to providing the weapons or other aid quickly, "we will go elsewhere," Faily said. That means Iraq will step up diplomacy with nations like China or Russia that would be more than happy to increase their influence in Baghdad at U.S. expense.

The two leaders also will discuss how Iraq can improve its fractious government, which so often is divided among sectarian or ethnic lines, to give it more confidence with a bitter and traumatized public.

The ambassador said no new security agreement would be needed to give immunity to additional U.S. advisers or trainers in Iraq — the main sticking point that led to U.S. withdrawal. And he said Iraq would pay for the additional weapons or other assistance.

A senior Obama administration official said Wednesday that U.S. officials were not planning to send U.S. trainers to Iraq and that Baghdad had not asked for them. The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters by name.

U.S. officials were prepared to help Iraq with an across-the-board approach that did not focus just on military or security gaps, the administration official said. The aid under consideration might include more weapons for Iraqi troops who do not have necessary equipment to battle al-Qaida insurgents, he said.

Administration officials consider the insurgency, which has rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant, a major and increasing threat both to Iraq and the U.S., the official said.

U.S. and Iraqi officials see a possible solution in trying to persuade insurgents to join forces with Iraqi troops and move away from al-Qaida, following a pattern set by so-called Awakening Councils in western Iraq that marked a turning point in the war. Faily said much of the additional aid — including weapons and training — would go toward this effort.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who opposed the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011, said Iraq likely would not get the aid until al-Maliki, a Shiite, makes strides in making the government more inclusive to Sunnis.

"If he expects the kind of assistance that he's asking for, we need a strategy and we need to know exactly how that's going to be employed, and we need to see some changes in Iraq," McCain said Wednesday after a tense meeting on Capitol Hill with al-Maliki. "The situation is deteriorating and it's unraveling, and he's got to turn it around."

Al-Maliki's plea for aid is somewhat ironic, given that he refused to budge in 2011 on letting U.S. troops stay in Iraq with legal immunity Washington said they must have to defend themselves in the volatile country. But it was a fiercely unpopular political position in Iraq, which was unable to prosecute Blackwater Worldwide security contractors who opened fire in a Baghdad square in 2007, killing at least 13 passersby.

James F. Jeffrey, who was the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad when the U.S. troops left, called it a "turnabout" by al-Maliki. He said Iraq desperately needs teams of U.S. advisers, trainers, intelligence and counterterror experts to beat back al-Qaida.

"We have those people," said Jeffrey, who retired from the State Department after leaving Baghdad last year. "We had plans to get them in after 2011. They can be under embassy privileges and immunities. They will cost the American people almost nothing. They will, by and large, not be in any more danger than our State Department civilians. And they could mean all the difference between losing an Iraq that 4,500 Americans gave their lives for."

Nearly 4,500 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq between the 2003 invasion and the 2011 withdrawal. More than 100,000 Iraqi were killed in that time.

___

Follow Lara Jakes on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/larajakesAP

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Syria chemical equipment destroyed, says OPCW - BBC News

31 October 2013 Last updated at 05:01 ET

Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, sources with the international watchdog say.

An announcement by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is expected later - a day before its deadline which Syria had to meet.

Inspectors were sent to Syria following allegations that government forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas, killing scores of people.

The government denies the accusations.

The inspections were agreed between Russia and the US after Washington threatened to use force in Syria.

The US says more than 1,400 people were killed during a nerve agent attack in Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus on 21 August.

Syria and Russia believe rebel groups were responsible for the attack.

Syria's chemical weapons arsenal is believed to include more than 1,000 tonnes of the nerve gas sarin, the blister agent sulphur mustard and other banned chemicals, stored at dozens of sites.

It has until mid-2014 to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile.

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Can Snowden revert privacy to a social norm? - USA TODAY

Should privacy be a social norm again?(Photo: USA TODAY)

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SEATTLE – The steady trickle of revelations of government snooping that continues to seep from the Edward Snowden documents is serving to keep attention riveted on how privacy in the digital age ought to be defined.

That' most probably not to the liking of Google and Facebook. In January 2010, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg infamously declared that the expectation of privacy was no longer a social norm, and, in October 2010, then Google chairman Eric Schmidt said "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."

By rationing out details of the NSA's bag of tricks on a regular basis, the Guardian and the Washington Post have orchestrated sustained attention on the true cost of using free services from Google and Facebook , whose business models revolve around unfettered access to your online persona.

So far the NSA and White House have taken much of the heat for the varied methodologies we now know, thanks to Snowden, that the NSA uses to tap into the trove of data compiled and packaged by search engines, social websites ad popular apps.

"This totally violates the privacy of US citizens," says Craig Kensek, senior manager at anti-malware supplier Ahnlab. "The NSA is coming across as a rogue operation, splitting technical fine hair, since data could literally reside anywhere in the world, thanks to cloud technology."

It's unlikely Congress will do much to restrict the NSA's ability to deter terrorists.. So the enduring effect of shedding steady light on Snowden's stolen documents may be exactly opposite of what Facebook and Google want.

The slow process of raising awareness about the desirability of privacy as a social norm appears to be gaining traction.

"The on-going persistence of the Snowden story with its continuing revelations appears to be reaching people's consciousness," says C. J. Radford, Vice President of Cloud at data security firm Vormetric. "At the same time, I don't believe that most U.S. consumers have connected the dots.

"The large amount of private information about them exists because it was collected for other purposes, such as advertising, billing, service delivery, etc.," Radford points out. "But they are learning, and the level of awareness is rising."

It's not just consumers who ought to question the level of privacy associated with use of the Web's most popular services, as we've come to know them. Companies are embracing BYOD – the trend of having employees use personal mobile devices for work duties – and are also increasingly relying on services delivered over the Internet cloud.

Pierluigi Stella, chief technical officer at Network Box USA, points to heightened privacy concerns raised for commercial users of Google's popular Web-delivered productivity suite, and would-be Office killer, Google Docs.

"Now we know that whatever they write is being collected and analyzed by the NSA before it is stored in the Google cloud. Do I really want my business emails to go through that? Do I trust that no illegitimate use will come of it?," Stella observes. "Personally, I prefer the good old e-mail server I control, because it is unlikely the NSA will come snooping simply because there is nothing of interest for them."

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Bus crash in south India kills 42, many burned alive - The Globe and Mail

A bus crashed into a highway barrier in southern India and erupted in flames early Wednesday, killing 42 passengers — many of them burned alive in the inferno, officials said.

The driver and six others managed to escape through a window, Deputy Police Inspector General Naveen Kumar Chand said. The other passengers, apparently asleep at the time of the crash, were trapped inside.

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The bus, operated by Jabbar Travels, had been travelling overnight from Bangalore to Hyderabad and was passing another vehicle when it crashed into the roadside barrier in Mehabubnagar in southern Andhra Pradesh state, Chand said.

The diesel tank then caught fire, and flames engulfed the bus, according to Pradeep, a police official who goes by one name.

Angry relatives gathered at both the Bangalore and Hyderabad offices of Jabbar Travels, forcing police to send officers to keep order. Police were also searching for the company's owners in Bangalore, the main city in the neighbouring southern state of Karnataka.

India has the highest annual road death toll in the world, according to the World Health Organization. More than 110,000 people are killed every year in road accidents across India, according to police.

Most crashes are blamed on reckless driving, poorly maintained roads and aging vehicles.

Wednesday's crash happened more than 1,200 kilometres from the Indian capital, New Delhi.

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