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.

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.