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Egypt’s Arab Spring ends not as scripted 5 students die in Pak blast |
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Big powers, Iran hold N-talks
European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton (L) with Iran’s Chief Negotiator Saeed Jalili in Moscow. Bomber kills top Yemeni General
Pak girls ‘killed for dancing’ alive Indian taxi driver beaten up, racially abused in Oz Now, take a bath without water
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Egypt’s Arab Spring ends not as scripted Cairo, June 18 The Muslim Brotherhood claimed its candidate Mohamed Morsy, 60, won the election against military rival Ahmed Shafik, 60, but a sweeping legal manoeuvre by Cairo's military rulers made clear the Generals planned to keep control for now, even if Shafik's refusal to concede defeat turns out to be justified. "This is more an episode in an ongoing power struggle than a real election," Anthony Cordesman, a veteran former US intelligence official and now the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters. "It is unclear who will rule, who the real leaders will be, and who, if anyone, represents the people. What is clear is that Egypt is no closer to stability and a predictable path to the future than before." In reality, the new President will be subordinate for some time at least to the 20-man military council which last year pushed fellow officer Mubarak aside to appease street protests. In the latest twist on Egypt's far from complete path to democracy, the Generals issued a decree on Sunday as voting ended which clipped the wings of the president by setting strict limits on his powers and reclaiming the lawmaking prerogatives held by the assembly it dissolved last week. "This is their insurance policy against a Muslim Brotherhood victory. It shows the extent to which they (the Generals) are willing to go to maintain their interest and their stranglehold on power," said Salman Shaikh of the Brookings Doha Center. The power struggle, analysts say, will almost certainly escalate between the two Leviathan powers after the army, which controls swathes of Egypt's economy, indicated that it had no intention of handing power to its old enemy the Brotherhood. "This is the culmination of decades of rivalry between the army and Islamists," Shaikh said. "This could really explode." Adding to the legal quagmire, a ruling in a case challenging the legality of the Brotherhood, which under Mubarak was banned, could be issued on Tuesday. Despite its victory declaration based on initial counts which gave it 52 per cent compared to 48 per cent, the Brotherhood is not out of the woods yet. There are a number of scenarios under which the Brotherhood victory could be sabotaged. Although monitors have broadly given guarded approval to the vote there may yet be enough reports of irregularities should a determined state wish to use the judiciary to contest the result. — Reuters
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5 students die in Pak blast At least five students were killed when a bus carrying Shia students was targeted with a powerful car bomb in Quetta on Monday. More than 70 persons, mostly students, were injured.
The bomb, hidden in a car parked by the roadside, was triggered by remote control when the bus reached the campus of the Balochistan University of Information Technology at Samungli Road. According to the bomb disposal squad, the bomb contained about 40 kg of explosives and metal pellets. Four female students and four policemen were among the injured. The injured were taken to the Combined Military Hospital, the Bolan Medical Complex and the Civil Hospital. At least 12 students, who were in a critical condition, were taken to the military hospital, officials said. The blast created a crater that was three feet deep and about 10 feet wide. A rickshaw was destroyed by the blast, which damaged several nearby buildings. Security forces cordoned off the site of the blast, located in a residential area of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, and launched a search operation. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. This was the latest in a string of attacks in Balochistan targeting the minority Shia community. Dozens of Hazara Shias have been killed, mainly in drive-by shootings, this year. The violence has been blamed on the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a notorious anti-Shia group.
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Big powers, Iran hold N-talks Moscow, June 18 Western diplomats were looking for signs that Iran could show willingness to scale down the intensity of its sensitive uranium enrichment activities as the Islamic Republic made a customary show of public defiance. Chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili sat down with representatives from six world powers, including Tehran's arch foe the United States as well as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, for two days of talks which will show if there is any hope of progress. "These negotiations are a big test to see if the West is in favour of Iran's progress or against," Jalili, apparently in uncompromising mood, told Iranian state television as he went into the talks. But the spokesman of the EU delegation told reporters that world powers were sticking by a previous demand for Iran to halt enriching uranium to 20 per cent, a level approaching that needed to make an atomic bomb. "Our priority is for the Iranians to address the 20 per cent," said the spokesman, adding that Iran should also shut down its Fordo enrichment plant outside the holy city of Qom. Failure in the talks could have a heavy toll with the United States and its ally Israel refusing to rule out the option of airstrikes against the Iranian nuclear programme and Tehran facing sanctions that could cripple the economy. But Iran made clear ahead of the negotiations it has no intention of abandoning its right to enrich uranium, a process which can be used to make nuclear fuel but also the explosive core of an atomic bomb. — AFP
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Bomber kills top Yemeni General Sanaa, June 18 Gen Salem Ali Qoton, southern Yemeni army commander, was killed in the port city of Aden while on his way to office in an attack seen as a blow to Yemen's fight against the militant group. General Qoton was killed and four others were wounded in a suicide attack near his home in the Mansoura neighbourhood of Aden. The medic, who is also a relative of Qoton, said the attacker "handed Qoton a paper, shook his hand and then detonated himself," when the General was walking to his office.— AFP
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Pak girls ‘killed for dancing’ alive Islamabad, June 18 The controversy emerged after a video surfaced showing the five girls dancing at a private gathering in Beech Bela village of Kohistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa prov-ince. "Ample evidence, collected by a fact-finding mission of the provincial government, is available, on the basis of which it has been established that all the five girls are alive and safe," provincial minister for information Mian Iftikhar Hussain was quoted as saying. He said a team appointed by the Supreme Court had visited the girls’ village and met four of them — Sareen Jan, Begum Jan, Aamna and Shaheen. The fifth girl, Bazgha, could not be reached but the team spoke with her parents, he said. — IANS
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Indian taxi driver beaten up, racially abused in Oz Melbourne, June 18 The gang ambushed and robbed five taxis in separate incidents in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Attackers wearing balaclavas and armed with baseball bats pulled up in two stolen cars and attacked the drivers at the Sunshine, Brooklyn and Laverton North areas last night. Harpreet Singh was driving his taxi through the Sunshine suburb when his car was rammed from behind and a second car pulled up abruptly in front of him. He said four men with baseball bats got out of the car in front of him and began smashing the driver-side window. "It was terrifying. They were smashing the car and hitting me with the bats also," he said. "I leaned to the left side (of the driver's seat) to avoid the baseball bats hitting me, (but) one guy punched me in the face. They didn't say anything to me, they just smashed the car and straight away asked for the money," he was quoted as saying by the Herald Sun. Singh said he had already handed over $150 cash and his phone when one of the men punched him and the group sped off in the two cars. He suffered a bloodied lip in the attack, while another driver was hospitalised with a broken arm. — PTI
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Now, take a bath without water Johannesburg, June 18 Marishane, a 22-year-old student at the University of Cape Town student invented a product called DryBath, a clear gel applied to skin that
does the work of water and soap. The invention, which won Marishane the 2011 Global Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award, has wide applications in Africa and other parts of the developing world where basic hygiene is lacking and hundreds of millions of people do not have regular access to water. The product differs from the anti-bacterial hand washes by eliminating the heavy alcohol smell. It creates
an odourless, biodegradable cleansing film with moisturisers. He came up with the idea as a teenager in his poor rural home in the winter when a friend of his said bathing was too much of a bother, made all the worse by a lack of hot water. "He was lazy and he happened to say, 'why doesn't somebody invent something that you can just put on your skin and you don't have to bathe',"
said Marishane. It was his "eureka" moment. He then used his web-enabled mobile phone to search through Google and Wikipedia in pursuit of a formula. Six months later, he came up with DryBath and a obtained
a patent. The product is now manufactured commercially with clients including major global airlines for use on long-haul flights and governments for its soldiers in
the field. Marishane also sees it helping conserve water in the poorest parts of
the world. "DryBath will go a long way in helping communities," he says. — Reuters
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The Egyptian chapter of the "Arab Spring" ended not as it was scripted by the revolutionaries of Tahrir Square.
They deposed a military dictator, secured the first free presidential race in their
history
Moscow, June 18
A suicide bomber killed today a top Yemeni Army General who was leading the fight against
Al-Qaida in the country's restive south, medical and military officials said.
Gen Salem Ali Qoton, southern Yemeni army commander, was killed in the port city of Aden while on his way to office in an attack seen as a blow to Yemen's fight against the militant group.
