North India reels under heat wave, power cuts; monsoon hits Kerala

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Lucknow/Chandigarh/Shimla: Heat wave conditions intensified across north India Friday with the mercury hovering between 46 and 48.4 degrees Celsius at several places. No respite was in sight in the coming days though the monsoon hit Kerala, a day behind schedule.

Extreme heat wave conditions continued in most parts of Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populated state, with the mercury climbing steadily. Met officials said Mahoba, with a maximum temperature of 48.4 degrees Celsius, was the hottest.

Day temperatures in the state hovered around 46 degrees Celsius in most places, including state capital Lucknow. Temperatures significantly soared in Agra, Unnao, Kanpur, Bareilly, Kannauj, Mainpuri, Muzaffarnagar, Deoria and Gorakhpur and humidity levels were also high.

Power outages made life miserable for the common people. No power supply in many parts of Lucknow and other districts added to the people's problems with power cuts extending from 8 to 10 hours. People at many places took to the streets to protest and, in some instances, even held power staff hostage.

The only good news Friday was that the monsoon hit the coastal belt in Kerala.

Regional Met director J.P. Gupta, said in Lucknow that the monsoon, after hitting the Kerala coast earlier in the day, was 'on schedule' and in all likelihood, will reach the eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh June 15.

In neighbouring Haryana, Hisar town sizzled at 46.5 degrees as heat wave conditions intensified over most parts of the state and Punjab. The temperature at most places ranged from 44 to 46.5 degrees, Met officials said.

Bhiwani recorded a high of 45.6 degrees while Ambala recorded 44.9 degrees.

In Punjab, Patiala was the hottest at 45.6 degrees while the Sikh holy city of Amritsar and industrial hub Ludhiana had a high of 45.5 degrees. All were four degrees above normal.

Chandigarh recorded a high of 44.5 degrees, five degrees above normal.

Met officials here said that the weather will remain dry, sunny and hot in the coming days with the heat wave intensifying.

People preferred to remain indoors during the day time with the searing heat prevailing outside.

Met officials ruled out any relief from the heat wave in the next two to three days.

The hills of Himachal Pradesh were slightly better than the plains but the mercury soared here also.

State capital Shimla recorded a maximum temperature of 30.7 degrees Celsius, a whopping six notches above the season's average.

'Temperatures across the state rose abnormally, remaining above average by two to seven degrees Celsius,' an official of the Met Office in Shimla told IANS.

According to him, Una town was the hottest place in the hill state with the maximum temperature touching 44.4 degrees Celsius.

Sundernagar in Mandi district recorded a maximum of 39.8 degrees, Bhuntar in Kullu district touched 36.5 degrees, Dharamsala in Kangra district was at 35.4 degrees, and Kalpa in Kinnaur district marked a high of 26.4 degrees.

Picturesque tourist resort of Manali recorded a high of 27.2 degrees. IANS

Afghan presidential candidate escapes bombing attack

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Kabul: Afghan presidential candidate Dr. Abdullah Abdullah Friday escaped unhurt twin-bomb blasts in Afghanistan's capital city Kabul, media reported.

"Following a political gathering, our vehicle was struck by a mine. None of our team members in the vehicle was hurt in the explosion," Xinhua quoted Abdullah as saying.

The blasts occurred at around 12:10 p.m., shortly after a political rally ended in Ariana restaurant in western Kabul.

The meeting was attended by several political leaders and hundreds of their supporters.

However, Abdullah, a former foreign minister, said several of his bodyguards were injured in the first blast, adding that none of the injured received life-threading wounds.

The attack took place as Afghanistan is preparing for the presidential runoff between Abdullah and his rival Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzi to be held on June 14.

IANS

Orphanage issue: HC for "serious investigation"

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Kochi: The High Court Thursday wanted a "serious investigation" in the matter relating to bringing of 588 children from Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal to orphanages in the state and suo motu impleaded the Railway ministry and social welfare ministries of the three states. 

"There should be a serious investigation in the matter to know the real cause or reason why such a huge number of children from outside the state came to Kozhikode and Palakkad," a division bench, comprising Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice PR Ramachanra Menon said.

The Court suo motu impleaded the states of Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand and issued notices to the Ministry of social welfare in each of the three states. The Railway ministry was also impleaded in the case. 

The bench directed the state to place on record from time to time details of the investigation by the crime branch in the case and posted the case to June 19. The directions were issued on a PIL filed by Rajendra Prasada, President of Thampu, an NGO, seeking a direction to send back the children immediately to their homes. The children belonging to extremely impoverised communities were brought to the orphanages. 

The bench directed the government to place on record all details of children, including their age and state to which they belonged. The reports of the child welfare committee on the incident should also be placed before the court, it said. The report should also contain details on how many children were sent back to their respective states, who were in charge of the children, it said. 

On June 3, the state child rights panel had directed the government to send back the children to their home states-- Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal--within three weeks, after it found they were brought without due documents and not following procedures under Juvenile Justice Act and Orphanage and Other Charitable Homes Act. 

A police investigation is already under way by a special team and an FIR has been lodged following the arrest of eight persons, who accompanied 586 children at Palakkad, where they were brought in two batches by train. The children, meant to be taken to some orphanages, had been kept in state-run juvenile homes of the Child Welfare Society in Palakkad, Malappuram and Thrissur.

The issue has also caused ruptures within ruling UDF with key partner IUML resenting the steps taken by the Home Department.

PTI

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Munde's body brought home to Beed for last rites

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Latur/Beed (Maharashtra): The body of senior BJP leader and union minister Gopinath Munde, who was killed in a road accident in New Delhi early Tuesday, was flown in to Latur from Mumbai Wednesday morning.

Thousands of mourners, including senior party leaders, activists and commoners received the coffin at Latur airport.

Earlier, the body was taken from the Mumbai residence of the Munde family, where security forces accorded a guard of honour, for the flight to Latur.

From Latur, it was taken by a special helicopter to Beed, which is around 65 km away, for the last rites.

The body will be kept for public homage at the sprawling Vaijnath Sugar Factory campus till around 2 p.m. before the last rites. The state government has announced a three-day mourning for Munde.

Munde's eldest daughter and Parali legislator Pankaja Munde-Palve will perform the last rites at the state funeral being accorded to Munde. His wife is Pramod Mahajan's sister and they have three daughters.

Top BJP leaders, including L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj, other union ministers, Maharashtra political bigwigs, chief ministers of several states and party activists from all over the country are expected to attend the funeral.

Late Tuesday evening, Munde's body was brought to Mumbai from Delhi and kept at his residence in Purna Building, Worli, where relatives, friends and close acquaintances besides VVIPs paid their last respects.

Ironically, it is the same building where his brother-in-law and former BJP strongman Pramod Mahajan was gunned down by his brother Pravin eight years ago.

Subsequently, Munde's body was kept at the BJP state headquarters at Nariman Point in south Mumbai where party workers from Mumbai and surrounding areas paid homage.

Munde was scheduled to go to Beed Wednesday to address a series of victory rallies, his first visit to his home district after the BJP-led NDA swept to power last month.

Munde was born Dec 12, 1949, in Parali-Vaijnath village where he had his schooling.

Soon afterwards, he plunged into student politics along with BJP strongman and later his brother-in-law, late Pramod Mahajan, and was imprisoned during the Emergency of 1975-1977.

Over the years, Munde was elected five times as legislator in Maharashtra, then Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra assembly, deputy chief minister of the state, and subsequently as the deputy leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, and last week was made the union minister for rural development.

Germany to launch probe into US spying on Merkel

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Berlin: Germany's Federal Prosecutor General Harald Range has decided to launch a criminal investigation into alleged hacking of Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone by the US National Security Agency (NSA), a German daily reported Tuesday.

The mass spying on German citizens by the NSA, however, will at least provisionally not be placed under formal investigations, Xinhua reported citing German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

It is said that Range's decision to look into the monitoring of Merkel's cell phone is a reaction to angers triggered by reports about a possible drop of NSA snooping investigations.

Range did not find enough evidence to warrant criminal proceedings into the cases, reported Sueddeutsche Zeitung last week, citing sources from the prosecutor's office.

In Range's opinion, the newspaper said, the proceedings would be purely "symbolic" since it is impossible to gather evidence about the activities of the NSA or its British counterpart GCHQ on German soil.

IANS

Egypt's al-Sisi officially declared president

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Cairo: Egypt's former military chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi was Tuesday officially announced as the new president of the country by the presidential election commission.

Al-Sisi achieved a landslide victory over leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabahy in the three-day presidential polls held last month.

"Presidential candidate Abdel-Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil al-Sisi got 23,780,104 votes, which represents 96.91 percent of the votes," Xinhua quoted Judge Anwar al-Assi, chairman of the election commission, as saying in a press conference Tuesday.

Al-Assi said Sabahy got 757,511 of the total valid votes, about 3.1 percent.

More than 25 million of the 53.9 million eligible voters joined the polls, giving a voter turnout of 47.45 percent.

"The valid votes were 24,537,615, representing 95.93 percent of the votes, while the invalid votes were 1,040,608, representing 4.07 percent of the votes," he said.

"Accordingly, the winner of the post of president of the Arab Republic of Egypt is Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi," al-Assi announced.

Sisi supporters took to the streets across the country to celebrate his victory after the announcement.

IANS

MERS toll surges to 282 in Saudi Arabia

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Riyadh: The death toll from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus in Saudi Arabia has surged to 282 after recalculations, the health ministry announced Tuesday.

A total of 688 cases have been confirmed in the Gulf kingdom since the first case was registered in 2012, according to the ministry's rigorous review. Of those infected, 53 are reportedly receiving treatment, Xinhua reported.

Before the review, the ministry's latest tally of cases reached 575, with 190 deaths.

The main objective of that review was to ensure a more complete and accurate understanding of the virus outbreak in the country, the ministry said, adding that the review has already enhanced the ministry's policy development process and improved measures already taken to address the situation.

MERS is considered a deadlier but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected thousands of people. The coronavirus was first discovered in mid-2012 in an old man with acute pneumonia and renal failure.

The Saudi government has been criticised by international health experts over its handling of the disease, which has spread to several Middle East countries, Asia, and the US.

IUML resents move against orphanages

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Kozhikode: IUML, a key partner in ruling Congress-led UDF, on Monday came out strongly against the Home Department and Child Rights Commission for running down orphanages managed by Muslim religious outfits in the context of alleged trafficking of children from eastern states. 

A meeting of Indian Union Muslim League working committee held here claimed the arrival of over 500 children, mostly from Jharkhand and West Bengal, was being projected with the intention of casting orphanages in Malabar region of Kerala in poor light.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, IUML General Secretary and Lok Sabha member ET Muhammad Basheer said the party's serious concern over the matter would be conveyed to the government. The League would press for "corrections" in the FIR lodged in the case since serious charges had been made against the authorities of orphanages, which smacked of prejudice, he said.

The party took serious objections to the statements made by DIG S Sreejith, nodal officer of state Human Rights Trafficking Cell. "The DIG is only an investigator. How could he arrive at definite conclusions and make specific charges before the investigation is completed"? he said. The course of investigation was moving in a direction as if its sole purpose was to malign reputed charity homes, the League leader alleged. 

Police have claimed to have unearthed a child trafficking racket with the arrest of eight persons who had accompanied over 500 children who reached Palakkad by train recently. The children were moved to child care homes in the district. 

A team of officials from Jharkhand is in Kerala and after preliminary interaction with children they said there were no proper grounds to believe that this was a case of human trafficking.

PTI

22-year-old girl gangraped, murdered

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BAREILLY: A 22-year-old girl was allegedly gangraped, forced to drink acid and later strangulated to death in Baheri area here, police sources said on Monday. The victim’s body was recovered from a field in Aithpura village on Saturday with her face mutilated, they said, adding her postmortem report, which was received on Monday, found that she was gangraped and later strangulated. Police said that acid was detected from the stomach of the victim, which indicated that she was forced to drink it before being murdered. Her face was mutilated by pouring acid and petrol to conceal her identity, they added. SSP J Ravindra Gaur said there was a possibility of the victim hailing from Uttrakhand, and therefore a team has been dispatched there for investigation. Deputy SP Baheri Kalu Singh said police was investigating on several aspects. It is being suspected that it could be a case of honour killing or could be related to flesh trade, he said.