15 killed in Karnataka van-bus collision

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 GULBARGA (KARNATAKA):  At least 15 people, including three children, were killed and a dozen injured when a van and a bus collided head-on and fell in a ditch in Karnataka, police said.

The accident took place in Aland, 40 km from here and 700 km from Bangalore.

The collision occurred around 5 am on a highway when a pick-up van and a state-run route bus collided head-on at high speed and fell in a roadside ditch, Gulbarga superintendent of police Amit Singh told IANS.

Most of the victims were from the van, which was going to Gulbarga from Akkalgud in Sholapur district of Maharashtra across the border.

Of the injured, five were admitted to the district hospital at Gulbarga and seven in a state-run general hospital at Aland.

"The victims, including the injured, from joint families  were on way to visit the Sufi shrine (dargah) of Khwaja Bande Nawaz on the city's outskirts," Singh said.

Among the injured were the driver and six passengers of the bus, which was coming from Koppal to Aland in the northern region of the state.

"We have registered a complaint against the bus and van drivers and set up a team to investigate the incident," Singh said.

Eyeing Pakistan and China, Modi bolsters security team

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen a daring former spy with years of experience in dealing with Pakistan as his national security adviser, a move officials say signals a more muscular approach to New Delhi's traditional enemy.

The choice of Ajit Doval, alongside former army chief General V.K. Singh as a federal minister for the northeast region, underscores plans to revamp national security that Modi says became weak under the outgoing government.

The two top-level appointments, reporting directly to Modi, point to a desire to address what are arguably India's two most pressing external security concerns - Pakistan and China, both of which, like India, have nuclear arms.

Doval, a highly decorated officer renowned for his role in dangerous counter-insurgency missions, has long advocated tough action against militant groups, although operations he has been involved in suggest a level of pragmatism.

In the 1980s, he smuggled himself into the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar from where Sikh militants were later flushed out, and he infiltrated a powerful guerrilla group fighting for independence from India in the northeastern state of Mizoram. The group ultimately signed a peace accord.

Doval was also on the ground in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when an Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu was hijacked by Pakistan-based militants on Christmas Eve, 1999. The crisis was resolved when top militants were freed in exchange for hostages.

'Doval is an out-of-the-box thinker,' said an Intelligence Bureau officer with long years of service in Kashmir and other Indian hotspots. 'Expect him to shake things up.'

The official, who did not want to be named, said he expected the new security team to push for a rapid expansion of border infrastructure and a streamlining of intelligence services, which still function in isolation and often impede one other.

Singh has declared his priority is to develop the northeast in order to narrow the gap with Chinese investment in roads and railways on its side of the frontier.

India is also creating a new mountain corps and beefing up border defences, although that initiative has stalled.
FEARS OF AFGHAN SPILLOVER
A secure India is a long-standing goal of Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the new prime minister himself wants strong borders so the country can focus fully on giving economic growth a much-needed boost.

He won the election in May in a landslide victory largely on economic pledges that India's 1.2 billion people hope will secure jobs and raise living standards.

But with most foreign troops withdrawing from Afghanistan by the end of this year, India is concerned that Islamist militants fighting there will turn their sights towards the disputed region of Kashmir, which is also claimed by Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have fought two of three wars since independence over the Himalayan territory, and their armed forces are separated there by a rugged, mountainous Line of Control which militants have the capability to cross.

Doval, 69, formerly head of the Intelligence Bureau domestic spy agency, will be National Security Adviser, only the second officer from the intelligence community to hold the post.

By contrast, predecessor Shiv Shankar Menon is a member of the elite Indian Foreign Service - an expert on China and nuclear security known for his formidable intellect.

Doval did not say what his priorities would be after his job was announced on Friday, but in conversations with Reuters previously as head of a right-wing think tank in New Delhi, he said the new government must lay down core security policies, one of which was 'zero tolerance' for acts of violence.

He was referring to operations by militants who India says cross from Pakistan, like the gunmen who killed 166 people in Mumbai in 2008 in a brazen assault that brought tentative peace talks between the South Asian rivals to a juddering halt.
CARROT AND STICK APPROACH
Modi invited his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, to his inauguration in a calculated sign of reconciliation. But he used stick as well as carrot.

During nearly an hour of talks, he told Sharif Pakistan must prevent militants on its territory from attacking India and act speedily against the men India blames for the Mumbai massacre.

Modi's assertive stance was in keeping with his Hindu nationalist agenda, which makes many of India's 175 million or so Muslims nervous, not to mention those in Pakistan next door.

The two nations did, however, agree to relaunch peace talks.

'Terrorism continues to be our main concern and we have to handle it in a holistic manner,' said A.S. Dulat, a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, which is charged with external intelligence gathering.

'At the end of the day, war is not an option.'

While India will put diplomatic pressure on Pakistan, there is also an acceptance that the civilian government in Islamabad is not in a position to control all militant groups and that New Delhi needs to address weaknesses in its homeland security.

'The one thing the new government will focus on is internal security, that's what worries them most. You don't want another Mumbai, you don't have a lot of good options if it happens,' said an official at the Home Ministry.

Pakistan said it remained committed to improving ties with India and that it had got off to a good start.

'Whoever is appointed by Modi in his national security team is his own prerogative, and we will certainly not interfere in that,' said Tariq Azeem, a senior official in Sharif's team.

'Pakistan will carry on with the determination shown by Nawaz Sharif to build good relations with India. The meeting in Delhi was cordial and friendly and we hope to build on that,' he told Reuters.
CHINESE FRONT
Modi's other key appointment, retired general Singh, may inject new urgency into India's plan to establish a corps of 80,000 troops along its border with China in the northeast.

A massive programme to build roads and upgrade airfields in the remote area was also cleared by the ousted Congress party, but has lagged.

Singh, who won a parliamentary seat for the BJP in the election, is expected to accelerate the process through the defence bureaucracy, helped by a direct reporting line to the all-powerful prime minister.

'Development of the northeast will be my top priority,' he told reporters after taking charge on Thursday.

China claims more than 90,000 square km (35,000 square miles) of land disputed by New Delhi in the eastern sector of the Himalayas, including most of Arunachal Pradesh state, which China calls South Tibet.

'As China continues to refuse to recognise Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India, and builds military-grade highways that can rapidly move tanks and heavy artillery to India's border, it's absolutely the perfect stratagem to put a former army chief in charge of the region,' wrote commentator Sandipan Deb in the Mint newspaper.

But in another sign that Modi is keen to defuse regional tensions, he spoke to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday and extended an invitation to President Xi Jinping to visit India.

REUTERS

Veteran Hindi journalist H Y Narayan Dutt passes away

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Bangalore: Renowned Hindi journalist and writer H Y Narayan Dutt passed away at a hospital here on Sunday following a heart ailment and related complications, his family said.

Dutt (85), also a scholar, was the younger brother of late H Y Sharada Prasad, who was the media adviser to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi during their Prime Ministership.

'He underwent an open heart surgery and developed some complications and passed away at a hospital in Bangalore this morning,' his brother H Y Mohanram said.

The illustrious journalistic career of Dutt spanned over five decades during which he started and headed PTI's Hindi Feature Service after joining the organisation in 1981 and served till his retirement in 1993.

Dutt also worked with the Indian Express group of publications in Mumbai serving in its film journal 'Screen' in Hindi and also as Editor of 'Navneet', a Hindi monthly magazine.

He had also compiled the edited lettters of veteran journalist and writer Sri Banarasi Das Chaturvedi.

Dutt was one of the journalists honoured by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for his contributions, among Hindi journalists whose mother tongue was not Hindi, Mohanram said. Dutt was born into a Kannada speaking family.

In 1992, he was felicitated for his outstanding work in the field of Hindi journalism by the Uttar Pradesh Sansthan with the Sauhard Samman. The following year, Kendriya Hindi Sansthan honoured him with Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Samman. In 2006, he was awarded an honorary DLitt by Makhanlal Chaturvedi University of Journalism.

Dutt also encouraged propagating science and technology in a 'correct perspective', Mohanram said.

Dutt was not married. PTI 

Kerala CM confident of good working relationship with Centre

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Thiruvananthapuram: Ahead of his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said he was confident of a good working relationship with the Centre regardless of political differences to take forward the development of the state.

'Though it will be a courtesy call, development issues relating to the state will broadly figure during the meeting,'
Chandy, whose current tenure as chief minister has two more year to go, told PTI.

Asked what are the key issues of development to be taken up with the Centre, Chandy, who did not attend the
installation of the new government, said 'let us see what their priorities are and that would also be factored in while
working out the state's projects.'

Chandy had earlier made it clear that the UDF government was not for any confrontation with the new government at the
Centre even though they have political differences.

Looking back to the last three years, Chandy expressed satisfaction about the performance of the government based
on the plank 'Development and Care,' which gave equal emphasis to infrastructure development and welfare of the
people, especially the less privileged.

The Congress-led UDF Government will come out with more support to help business and technological ventures, enthused
by the good response a youth entrepreneurship programme in Start-up Village at Kochi Infopark has received.

'For the last few decades aspiration of a Keralite youth has been a job or a visa. This mindset has started changing
with more and more graduates and technically skilled youth looking for opportunities to do things by themselves.They have
ideas and acumen to execute their ideas.All that they require is an initial support from government and state agencies,'
Chandy said.

Chandy said government would give added emphasis and budgetary support to promote such business and technological
vetnrues. Already 200 units have come up at the Startup village at the Infopark and more than 1000 ideas are still
waiting to take-off, he said.

As a policy, the Government had set apart one per cent of the budget for all departments for Youth entrepreneurship,
which together stood at around Rs 500 crore. This will be enhanced further and all the departments had been asked to
submit their views on this, he said.

Chandy, whose 'Mass Contact Programme' brought laurels to him including a UN award, said 'We have been able to carry
forward many of the items on our agenda and more remains to be done.'

On the development front, he said some projects like Kochi Metro and Kannur airport are on track. The first phase of the
metro would be commissioned in 2016, he said.

The first flight would take off from Kannur International airport in north Kerala in December next year. The work on
the airport terminal would start in July, he said. Smartcity IT project in Kochi would be commissioned next year. The government was keen on time-bound completion of the proposed Mono Rail projects in Thiruvanathapuram and at
Kozhikode.

The sea plane service, abandoned due to protest from people living in backwater areas, would be revived, he said.
He said side by side the infrastructure development, welfare of the people continue to receive due attention.
Schemes like rice at Re 1 per kg were successfully implemented to the benefit of the less privileged.

Chandy said the good work done by the government helped Congress and its UDF allies to buck the anti-incumbency and
win 12 of the 20 seats in the state in the Lok Sabha polls.

A popular leader who has never lost any assembly election in his home segment Puthuppally in Kottayam district since
1970, Chandy had turned the Lok Sabha polls into a referendum on his government's performance along with national issues.

Listing the priorities before him, Chandy said issues in health sector was a major challenge.
'High cost of treatment was an important factor the government has to tackle,' he said, adding that government was
working out schemes in this regard. PTI

Masked men attack Pakistani daily Jang's editor

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Zafar Aheer

Islamabad, June 1 (IANS) Unidentified masked men attacked resident editor of the Pakistani daily Jang and left him injured near Western Ford Colony in Multan, media reported Sunday.

Zafar Aheer was attacked Saturday when he was moving back home after his job, Geo News reported.

Aheer said the attackers stopped his car near his residence and started beating him, the report said.

'The attackers beat me a lot, tore my clothes and snatched my mobile phone,' Aheer was quoted as saying.

The attackers threw bullets in front of Aheer's car before escaping the site.

Police said that it is pre-mature to say anything at this moment about the incident.

Investigation into the matter has been started.

The injured resident editor of Jang, an Urdu newspaper, said that the attackers were talking to each other about shooting him in the legs.

'They called me an agent of India and Jews, and a traitor,' the editor said.

'I am Pakistani and love Pakistan,' Aheer added. IANS

Learn how to make your kids eat veggies

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London: If you wish to encourage your kids to eat healthy and want them to eat vegetables without making much fuss, starting early and often could be the key.

Exposing babies to a new vegetable early in life encourages them to eat more of it compared to offering new vegetables to older children, a new study has suggested.

Even fussy eaters are able to eat a bit more of a new vegetable each time they are offered it.

'Even if your child is fussy or does not like veggies, our study shows that 5-10 exposures (nine servings) will do the trick,' said professor Marion Hetherington from University of Leeds in Britain.

In the study, researchers gave artichoke puree to 332 children from three countries aged from weaning age to 38 months.

The research that involved babies and children from the UK, France and Denmark, also dispelled the popular myth that vegetable tastes need to be masked or given by stealth in order for children to eat them.

The study appeared in the journal PLOS ONE.

Home Minister’s remarks on orphanages draw flak from IUML

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Malappuram: Muslim League, the second biggest ally in the UDF, has come out in protest against the propagation by certain quarters to paint bringing children from other state to the orphanages in Kerala as “human trafficking”.

In a press release issued on Saturday, Muslim League general secretary KPA Majeed said that the efforts to demean the functioning of orphanages were condemnable.

There is a conspiracy behind such propagations. The home department should withdraw all the actions taken against the concerned persons charging them for human trafficking, Majeed said.

“The orphanages in Kerala are functioning in the best manner. Children from other states seek admission here as the institutes there do not have sufficient physical facilities. It is cruelty that this has been portrayed as anti-national crime,” Majeed said adding that the conspiracy behind such propagations should be recognized.

“There are a lot of students from other states who studied in the orphanages here and attained heights in their career. That gives an inspiration to the parents of other children to send the kids to Kerala.”

The attempt to degrade the institutes that cater to the educational needs of such children should be full-stopped, Majeed added.

He, however, said that the officials of the orphanages should have made sure that the children were brought in with adequate documents.

  

SpaceX unveils capsule to ferry astronauts to space

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LOS ANGELES: A sleek, white gumdrop-shaped space capsule that aims to carry up to seven astronauts to the International Space Station and return to land anywhere on Earth was unveiled by SpaceX.

The Dragon V2, short for version two, is the first attempt by a private company to restore Americans' ability to send people to the orbiting space station in the wake of the space shuttle program's retirement in 2011.

"It's all around, I think, really a big leap forward in technology. It really takes things to the next level," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday.

SpaceX is competing with other companies -- including Boeing, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin -- to be the first commercial outfit to take astronauts to space, possibly as early as 2017.

Until then, the world's astronauts must rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft at a cost of $70 million per seat.

The Dragon V2 was shown for the first time at a jam-packed evening press conference in Hawthorne, California.

The shiny Dragon V2 sat on a white stage floor, as a scorched Dragon cargo capsule was suspended above, bearing the blackened markings of a capsule that had returned to Earth from orbit.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule in 2012 became the first private spacecraft to carry supplies to the ISS and back.

Since then, Orbital Sciences has followed with its Cygnus, a capsule shaped like a beer keg that can carry supplies to the space station but burns upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere.

Musk said a key feature of the Dragon V2 is that it will be able to "land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter."

The crew spacecraft will be able to use rocket propulsion and deploy legs to land, instead of using parachutes to make an ocean splash-landing the way the cargo capsule does.

t will however still have parachutes that it can use for a landing in case any engine problems are detected before touchdown on Earth.

The V2 also carries an improved heat shield and will be able to autonomously dock with the space station, instead of needing the space station's robotic arm to catch it and pull it in.

"That is a significant upgrade as well," Musk said.

Musk touted the reusability of the Dragon V2, allowing it to cut back on expensive space journeys.

"You can just reload propellant and then fly again. This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space," Musk said.

"Because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space. It will always be incredibly expensive," he added.

"If aircraft were thrown away with each flight, nobody would be able to fly."

The Internet entrepreneur and billionaire co-founder of PayPal did not say when the Dragon V2's first test flight would take place.

Ever since the US space shuttle program ended in 2011, the world's astronauts have depended on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to reach the ISS, an orbiting outpost built and maintained by more than a dozen countries.

SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin have all received millions of dollars in NASA funds to help them develop next-generation spacecraft that will someday carry astronauts to space.

SpaceX has said its crew capsule may be able to reach the ISS with astronauts aboard by 2017.

Meanwhile, NASA says it is focusing on building a new deep space capsule that could take humans to Mars by the 2030s.

 

 

Five suspects in custody over India cousins gang-rape

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KATRA SHAHADATGUNJ: Five men have been arrested over the gang-rape and deaths of two girls found hanging from a mango tree in a northern Indian village, police said Saturday.

The discovery of the two cousins, aged 14 and 12, in the Budaun district of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday is the latest sexual violence case to have stirred national outrage.

"Rape on both the girls has been confirmed. The cause of their death was asphyxia," Budaun district police superintendent Atul Saxena told.

Saxena said preliminary cases had been filed against five men who were all being held in custody. Three are accused of rape while two policemen face charges of conniving with criminals and neglecting their duties. Two other men were also named in a police complaint filed by the victims´ families but their whereabouts were unknown, Saxena added.

The farming family of the two cousins from the lowest Dalit caste told police could have "saved" the girls but claimed they refused to help when they found they were from a lower caste.

"She was my everything, my world -- and now my world has come to an end," the grief-stricken father of one victim said. The alleged attackers were also from a higher caste.

There is a long history of women and girls from India´s lower castes -- especially those who belong to the Dalit caste who were previously known as "untouchables" -- of being sexually abused by people from higher castes.

Uttar Pradesh is deeply divided along caste lines.

"These policemen didn´t act for hours when they could have saved two young lives. Why is caste everything?" said the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Medical tests showed the victims had been sexually assaulted multiple times.

India toughened its laws on sex attacks in the wake of the December 2012 gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi which triggered nationwide protests, but the move has done little to stem the tide of sex attacks.

The father said his daughter and her cousin were attacked when they went to the fields to relieve themselves as there was no toilet in their house.

The father told his brother heard screams from the field where the girls had gone.

The brother got into a scuffle with five men, trying "to get them to leave the daughters who were being molested", but fled when they threatened to shoot him, the father said.

The family reported the crime to police who told villagers the girls were with an upper caste village man and would be back "in a couple of hours", the father said.

Then they got a call from a woman saying their daughters´ bodies were hanging from a tree.

"This was nothing but plain murder and (caste) conspiracy," he said.

Indian families forbids naming of the victims or their families.

"The cops were totally hand-in-glove in getting our daughters killed," said the father of the other victim.

Rights activists said the crimes highlighted Uttar Pradesh authorities were "not serious" about tackling sexual crime.

Amnesty International said lack of toilets across India forced women to answer the call of nature outside, "making them more vulnerable to violence.”

Five suspects in custody over India cousins gang-rape

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk]

KATRA SHAHADATGUNJ: Five men have been arrested over the gang-rape and deaths of two girls found hanging from a mango tree in a northern Indian village, police said Saturday.

The discovery of the two cousins, aged 14 and 12, in the Budaun district of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday is the latest sexual violence case to have stirred national outrage.

"Rape on both the girls has been confirmed. The cause of their death was asphyxia," Budaun district police superintendent Atul Saxena told.

Saxena said preliminary cases had been filed against five men who were all being held in custody. Three are accused of rape while two policemen face charges of conniving with criminals and neglecting their duties. Two other men were also named in a police complaint filed by the victims´ families but their whereabouts were unknown, Saxena added.

The farming family of the two cousins from the lowest Dalit caste told police could have "saved" the girls but claimed they refused to help when they found they were from a lower caste.

"She was my everything, my world -- and now my world has come to an end," the grief-stricken father of one victim said. The alleged attackers were also from a higher caste.

There is a long history of women and girls from India´s lower castes -- especially those who belong to the Dalit caste who were previously known as "untouchables" -- of being sexually abused by people from higher castes.

Uttar Pradesh is deeply divided along caste lines.

"These policemen didn´t act for hours when they could have saved two young lives. Why is caste everything?" said the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Medical tests showed the victims had been sexually assaulted multiple times.

India toughened its laws on sex attacks in the wake of the December 2012 gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi which triggered nationwide protests, but the move has done little to stem the tide of sex attacks.

The father said his daughter and her cousin were attacked when they went to the fields to relieve themselves as there was no toilet in their house.

The father told his brother heard screams from the field where the girls had gone.

The brother got into a scuffle with five men, trying "to get them to leave the daughters who were being molested", but fled when they threatened to shoot him, the father said.

The family reported the crime to police who told villagers the girls were with an upper caste village man and would be back "in a couple of hours", the father said.

Then they got a call from a woman saying their daughters´ bodies were hanging from a tree.

"This was nothing but plain murder and (caste) conspiracy," he said.

Indian families forbids naming of the victims or their families.

"The cops were totally hand-in-glove in getting our daughters killed," said the father of the other victim.

Rights activists said the crimes highlighted Uttar Pradesh authorities were "not serious" about tackling sexual crime.

Amnesty International said lack of toilets across India forced women to answer the call of nature outside, "making them more vulnerable to violence.”