The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

	Egyptians protest against ‘light’ sentence given to Mubarak Cairo, June 3 Thousands of Egyptians hit the streets in Cairo and occupied the iconic Tahrir Square overnight against the "light" sentence given to ousted President Hosni Mubarak for complicity in the killing of protesters during the 2011 mass uprising and acquittal of his two sons. 84-year-old ailing former dictator was handed down life imprisonment along with his former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly yesterday by a Cairo court which, however, acquitted six former police commanders. The court also dropped the separate corruption charges against Mubarak and his two sons Alaa and Gamal. But his sons will remain in detention as they are to be charged with stock-market manipulation. A huge crowd of up to 20,000 people gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the uprising, last night in protest against the verdict. Many protesters remained there overnight. Similar protests were reported from the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, Suez on the Red Sea and other parts of Egypt. More than 100 people have been wounded in nationwide protests, officials were quoted as saying by BBC. In Alexandria, over 500 people, including kin of those killed in last year's uprising against Mubarak's 30-year rule, protested on the stairs of the High Court in al-Mansheya district against the sentence given to the toppled leader. The protesters chanted: "We don't want much talk, we want a death sentence" for Mubarak, according to 'Egypt Independent'. The protesters expressed their dissatisfaction with the ruling saying it was not enough in the wake of the heinous crimes the defendants committed against protesters. Around 850 protesters had been killed during the 18-day revolt following which Mubarak was ousted on February 11, 2011. In Aswan in southern Egypt, hundreds of members of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition and political parties staged marches to condemn the verdict. They called for reviving the revolution, holding revolutionary trials of Mubarak and his former deputies and purging the judiciary of "corruption". Wael Refaat, a lawyer and spokesperson for the Coalition of Revolution Youth, criticised the verdict, saying the ruling opens the door for the exoneration of Mubarak and Adly if their sentences are appealed. Mostafa Mandour, Secretary for Salafi-oriented Assala Party in Aswan, was quoted as saying, "The people are dissatisfied with the light sentences. The people are capable of returning to the streets." The verdict against Mubarak, the only dictator toppled in the Arab Spring to be tried in person, came ahead of the June 16-17 presidential runoff between his last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and Mohammed Mursi of Muslim Brotherhood, a party legalised after the former President's fall. After the verdict was announced, Mursi declared the revolution must continue. — PTI
	7 slaughtered in family brawl over land in Nepal Kathmandu, June 3 Seven members of a family were slaughtered in a row between two brothers in a row over property inheritance in the remote village of Syadi in Bajhang district of western Nepal. Siblings of Gagan BK and Brijit BK, who live together in the Dalit settlement of Balulla in Syadi village, a two-day trek from the district headquarters, killed seven persons including their children with knives and other home-made weapons following the dispute yesterday, according to assistant sub-inspector of police in the area, Karna Bahadur Gharti. Brijit's wife Jhakri, their three sons aged 4, 5 and 8 and two-year-old daughter were killed by Gagan, whose six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter were killed by Brijit in retaliation, the police said. Police held both Gagan and Brijit, who were trying to flee the village after the murder of their children. Both of them have accepted that they were involved in the killings. According to locals, the siblings had a dispute over inherited land over the past few years. — PTI
	LHC will find ‘God Particle’ by year-end: Scientists London, June 3 Scientists say they may be able to prove by the end of the year that the elusive Higgs Boson, or the particle that is responsible for giving mass to the universe, really exists. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, will be switched off at the end of this year for some major upgrades, but Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), said he was very confident that by that time it will be possible to say whether Higgs Boson exists. The theoretical particle, nicknamed the God Particle due to its central role it has in explaining modern physics, has never been detected and scientists have been working for decades to prove its existence. — PTI
	Imran Khan condemns allocation for armed forces Afzal Khan in Islamabad Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan joined the chorus in criticising the government over the budget presented for the year 2012-13, by condemning the amount allocated to the armed forces. “The budget for the armed forces should be audited,” Imran said while talking to reporters here. Khan said that in order to stop corruption, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) should be allowed to operate “freely”. Referring to the government pledge to convet Prime Minister House into an education institute of international standards, Imran also questioned the expenditure for maintaining governor and chief minister houses in all four provinces. “We grand mansions and sprawling houses for these holders of public officewhile the people are starving.” he added.
	Another plea against Malik in Pak SC Afzal Khan in Islamabad Another application has been filed in SC against interior minister Rehman Malik amid reports he had not told the court the truth while claiming he had renounced British nationality in 2008. Reports said Malik’s application to renounce his British nationality was filed last week, has been accepted and he’s no longer a British national.
	US drone strike kills 10 in Pak Wana, Pakistan, June 3 second US drone attack in as many days killed 10 people in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, intelligence officials said, an incident likely to raise tensions in the standoff between Washington and Islamabad over NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The remotely-piloted aircraft fired four missiles at a suspected Islamist militant hideout in the Birmal area of the South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghanistan border, officials said. A drone strike in the same area killed two suspected militants on Saturday. The US and Pakistan are locked in difficult negotiations to reopen overland supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan, with no signs of a breakthrough. Islamabad blocked the routes last November to protest the death of 24 Pakistani soldiers by cross-border friendly fire from NATO aircraft. — Reuters
	Clashes leave 15 dead in Lebanon; Army deployed Tripoli, June 3 Lebanese troops deployed in the city of Tripoli on Sunday after 15 people were killed in clashes between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, local medics said, the deadliest fighting in Lebanon since Syria's uprising began. Residents said relative calm had returned to the Mediterranean city since the soldiers took up positions around the city at around 7 a.m. (0400 GMT), after gunmen exchanged heavy machinegun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Two people wounded in the fighting died on Sunday, adding to the 13 killed on Saturday. Occasional gunfire could still be heard but was less intense than earlier exchanges. Prime Minister Najib Mikati and other local politicians held a crisis meeting in Tripoli at the weekend and instructed security forces to use an "iron fist" to quell the violence. The mainly Sunni Muslim protests against Assad have polarised Tripoli, where a small community of Alawites - from the same offshoot of Shi'ite Islam as Assad - have frequently clashed with majority Sunni Muslims who support the uprising. Gunmen from the Jebel Mohsen district, home to Tripoli's Alawites, have fought intermittent skirmishes over recent weeks with Sunni Muslim fighters in the Bab al-Tabbaneh area. The latest clashes began after midnight on Friday and continued throughout Saturday until the army deployment. The death toll was the highest in a single day in Tripoli, reflecting the increasing threat to stability in Lebanon caused by tensions over neighbouring Syria. Sunni Muslim fighters have also fought street battles in the capital Beirut, and the kidnapping last month of 11 Lebanese Shi'ites in Syria has further fuelled tensions. — Reuters
	Church blast kills 14 in Nigeria Abuja, June 3 At least 14 people were killed when a bomb went off in a church near the capital of Nigeria's northern state of Bauchi, police said today. A police source told PTI that security forces have gone to the scene of the incident to verify the extent of damage. No group has claimed responsibility but the attack bears the signature of a radical Islamic militant sect - Boko Haram - which has been bombing churches and other public squares in the oil-rich African country with the intention of installing an Islamic state. The group had targeted and killed several politicians and Muslim religious leaders in the northern region for not conforming to their aspiration. Nigeria has 160 million people and is split between a largely Muslim north and Christian south. — PTI
	China steps up Afghan role as Western pullout nears Kabul, June 3 China and Afghanistan will announce a plan in the coming days to deepen their ties, Afghan officials say, the strongest signal yet that Beijing wants a role beyond economic partnership as Western forces prepare to leave the country. China has kept a low political profile through much of the decade-long international effort to stabilise Afghanistan, choosing instead to pursue an economic agenda, including locking in future supply from Afghanistan's untapped mineral resources. As the US-led coalition winds up military engagement and hands over security to local forces, Beijing, along with regional powers, is gradually stepping up involvement in an area that remains at risk from being overrun by Islamist insurgents. Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai will hold talks on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Beijing this week, where they will lay out a plan governing future ties, including security cooperation. Afghanistan has signed a series of strategic partnership agreements including with the United States, India and Britain among others in recent months, described by one Afghan official as taking out "insurance cover" for the period after the end of 2014 when foreign troops leave. "The president of Afghanistan will be meeting the president of China in Beijing and what will happen is the elevation of our existing, solid relationship to a new level, to a strategic level," Janan Mosazai, a spokesman for the Afghan foreign ministry, told Reuters. Details of an agreement will be fleshed out later, he said. "It would certainly cover a broad spectrum which includes cooperation in the security sector, a very significant involvement in the economic sector, and the cultural field. He declined to give details about security cooperation, but Andrew Small, an expert on China at the European Marshall Fund who has tracked its ties with South Asia, said the training of security forces was one possibility. China has signalled it will not contribute to a multilateral fund to sustain the Afghan national security forces — estimated to cost $4.1 billion per year after 2014 — but it could directly train Afghan soldiers, Small said. "They're concerned that there is going to be a security vacuum and they're concerned about how the neighbours will behave," he said. Beijing has been running a small progamme with Afghan law enforcement officials, focused on counter-narcotics and involving visits to China's restive Xinjiang province, whose western tip touches the Afghan border. Training of Afghan forces is expected to be modest, and nowhere near the scale of the Western effort to bring them up to speed, or even India's role in which small groups of officers are trained at military institutions in India. China wants to play a more active role, but it will weigh the sensitivities of neighbouring nations in a troubled corner of the world, said Zhang Li, a professor of South Asian studies at Sichuan University who has been studying the future of Sino-Afghan ties. "I don't think that the US withdrawal also means a Chinese withdrawal, but especially in security affairs in Afghanistan, China will remain low-key and cautious," he said. "China wants to play more of a role there, but each option in doing that will be assessed carefully before any steps are taken." — Reuters
	5 bodies found in burned-out SUV in Arizona desert Washington, June 3 Five charred bodies have been found in a burned-out vehicle in the southern Arizona desert, prompting authorities to probe whether it was a "cartel hit" by Mexican drug mafia. Border Patrol officers first spotted the white Ford Excursion sports utility vehicle yesterday off the side of Interstate 8 in western Pinal County, about 100 kilometres south of Phoenix, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said. When the agent turned around, the SUV "fled at high rates of speed," Babeu said. Aided by daylight, authorities spotted "numerous tracks off the road" and followed them for some distance before coming across a smoldering vehicle. "That's when the Border Patrol agents went up to the vehicle with fire extinguishers and realized there were bodies inside, clearly deceased," Babeu was quoted as saying. — PTI