As India inched towards independence, hundreds of mixed-race Anglo-Indians feared for their future and retreated to a self-styled homeland in a thickly forested part of the country.

Ernest McCluskie, an Indian of Scottish descent, established McCluskieganj in what is now the eastern state of Jharkhand, hoping to attract Anglo-Indians anxious about the impending demise of the British Empire.

They are already calling it the "widow village." In the space of just a few short days, the close-knit community of Sangrampur in eastern India -- along with a number of smaller surrounding villages -- has been devastated by a case of mass poisoning from toxic, home-brewed alcohol.

So far 170 people have died, almost exclusively men, most of whom were the sole bread-winners in families that were already struggling with life on the poverty line.

An Indian student measuring just 62.8 centimeters (less than two foot, one inch) was on Friday confirmed as the world's shortest living woman, Guinness World Records said on Friday.

Jyoti Amge took the title as she celebrated her 18th birthday with family and friends in the city of Nagpur, some 520 kilometers (320 miles) east of Mumbai in western India.

A batch of home-brewed liquor possibly laced with a lethal dose of the highly toxic chemical methanol has killed more than 100 people in eastern India, according to an official.

Hospitals near the impoverished district of 24-Parganas, 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the West Bengal state capital Kolkata, have been overwhelmed by victims, many of them laborers and rickshaw drivers too poor to afford branded alcohol.

Indian police were on Saturday investigating the cause of a fire that killed 90 people in a hospital in Kolkata when poisonous fumes spread from the blaze in the building's basement.

Patients were lowered down the outside of the hospital on ropes after the fire broke out in the early hours of Friday at the privately-run AMRI hospital, engulfing the multi-storey premises in thick smoke.

At least 70 people were killed when a fire engulfed a hospital Friday in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, with many victims believed to be patients who died of smoke inhalation.

Most of the victims appeared to be patients, trapped by the smoke and flames that spread rapidly through the private AMRI hospital during the night.

The Indian government has asked Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and other Internet networks to screen user content to cut out defamatory and offensive material, officials said Tuesday.

Communications Minister Kapil Sibal met with representatives of the companies in New Delhi and requested that all content was checked before it was uploaded onto social websites.

Maoist rebels have killed 11 people in attacks across an eastern Indian state after their leader died in a gunbattle with security forces, police said.

The rebels blew up railway tracks at two points in Jharkhand before dawn Sunday to protest the Nov. 24 killing of Koteshwar Rao, alias Kishanji, in the neighboring state of West Bengal, police Superintendent D.V. Sharma said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Saturday that governments worldwide are curbing personal liberty, privacy and free speech by misusing technology.

"Bulk surveillance of entire nations is on," Assange said in an address from Britain via video to a media conference in New Delhi.

Thousands of survivors of the world's worst industrial accident blocked trains through a central Indian city on Saturday to demand more compensation.

The protests were on the 27th anniversary of the disaster in Bhopal, where a Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked lethal gas that killed an estimated 15,000 people and maimed tens of thousands more.