TIRUCHY l monday l april 06, 2026 l `9.00 l PAGES 14 l LATE CITY EDITION Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai hotspots for abdominal obesity: Study The three metros have emerged as hotspots for abdominal obesity among both men and women, the study in the Nature Scientific journal reports Sedentary jobs, processed foods blamed The study by researchers from the Health Systems Transformation Platform found over half of women aged 15-49 (56.6%) and nearly half of men aged 15-54 (48.9%) in India have abdominal obesity. The researchers attributed this trend to long hours in sedentary jobs, increased reliance on motorised transport, and the widespread consumption of processed foods ■ NFHS-5 Higher prevalence among urban residents ■ Higher levels of abdominal obesity were seen among older adults, wealthier groups, and urban residents, the researchers noted “Metropolitan districts surrounding Delhi NCR, Kolkata, and Chennai demonstrated elevated prevalence among both sexes,” the study noted. Abdominal obesity was measured using the waist-to-hip ratio data of over 7 lakh people from 707 districts were examined CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Aviator scales 7,000-ft ridge to avoid capture by Iran; Trump says Tehran will be hit on Tuesday if Strait remains closed day 37 A G E N C I E S @Washington, Tehran A wounded US Air Force colonel survived 36 gruelling hours in the rugged mountains of southern Iran, evading capture by Iranian forces before Navy SEAL commandos extracted him in a dramatic night-time operation, which President Donald Trump termed nothing short of “miraculous.” Armed with only a pistol and moving on injured legs, the colonel — a weapons systems officer who had ejected from an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet shot down over southern Iran on Friday — navigated treacherous terrain to stay ahead of enemy patrols. At one point, he scaled a 7,000-foot ridgeline while American aircraft bombed an approaching Iranian convoy to buy him time, The Mail reported Sunday . US aviators undergo SERE training in the event they have to eject over hostile territory -survival, evasion, resistance and escape. They wear a combat vest with a radio/GPS-coded beacon to transmit their po- Heavy rainfall likely in three TN dists today e x p r ess n e w s se r v i ce @ Chennai The Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) has forecast heavy rain at isolated places in Virudhunagar, Dindigul and Theni districts on Monday . In its bulletin on Sunday the , RMC added that light to moderate rain is likely at isolated places, accompanied by thunderstorms and lightning, at one or two locations over districts in the Western Ghats and parts of South Tamil Nadu. Dry weather is expected to prevail over the rest of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Karaikal. A trough associated with an upper-air cyclonic circulation over Rayalaseema in Andhra Pradesh has extended up to South TN at about 0.9km above mean sea level, triggering rainfall in parts of the region. For Tuesday, the RMC has predicted light rain at isolated places, along with thunderstorms and lightning at one or two locations over coastal TN, Puducherry and Karaikal. The RMC also said the temperature was appreciably below normal over Ghat areas of Coimbatore and Nilgiris districts, and near normal for the rest of TN. Kodaikanal recorded the lowest minimum temperature of 11.7°C in the hill areas of TN in the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday  . Whole region will burn: Iran Come for talks, Russia tells US Iran’s powerful parliament speaker warned US President Donald Trump on Sunday that his “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”. The “only real solution is respecting rights of Iranian people and ending this dangerous game,” Mohammad Ghalibaf said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday said Washington should abandon “the language of ultimatums” and return to negotiations, in a telephone conversation with Iranian counterpart. Deescalating tensions would be “facilitated by US abandoning the language of ultimatums” The wreckage of a downed American jet and two helicopters involved in a rescue of a US Colonel, in Isfahan province | AP sition, while they also carry water, food, first-aid material and a pistol in order to survive. The airman was wounded after his ejection but could still walk, according to news outlet Axios, which cited a US official. Iran had placed a bounty on the officer’s head, setting off a race between Tehran and Washington to locate the missing aviator. “Everything is being thrown at finding the missing airman,” a source close to the President told The Mail on Sunday “The fear is he will be cap. tured and used as a pawn.” The pilot of the stricken jet had been recovered within 45 minutes of the crash. The extraction encountered serious complications. Two American transport aircraft became stranded at a remote staging location inside Iran and had to be destroyed by US forces to keep them out of Iranian hands, according to The New York Times and CBS News. Three additional planes were then deployed to ferry the rescued airman and his escort out of the country . A regional intelligence official, speaking anonymously, told Associated Press that “a technical malfunction — not enemy fire — had rendered the two planes unusable.” Iran’s version differed sharply Irani. an military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari declared that the US operation, staged from an abandoned airstrip in southern Isfahan province, had been “completely foiled.” He claimed two C-130 transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters had been destroyed. The CIA reportedly ran a parallel deception operation to help keep the aviator safe. Trump declared victory on his Truth Social platform on Sunday morning, saying: “WE GOT HIM!”  P11 Bengal tribunal asks Cong announces EC to add candidate’s SC candidate for name in voters list Madurai’s Melur day before deadline S U B H E N D U M AI T I @ Kolkata P r a bh a k a r Ta m i l a r a s u @ Chennai in its first verdict, an appellate tribunal in West Bengal on Sunday directed the Election Commission to include the name of Congress candidate in Farakka, Mahtab Sheikh, in the supplementary voter list by the end of the day . The order of the tribunal headed by the former Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam came a day before the April 6 deadline for submitting nomination for the firstphase polls in the state. Mohtab’s trouble started as his name was flagged under the ‘logical discrepancy’ status in the post-SIR voter list. His name also did not figure in the supplementary list of voters marked as ‘under adjudication’ by the ECI. The Supreme Court had allowed voters excluded voters to move any one of the 19 appellate tribunals being set up in West Bengal to contest the exclusion. However, the Congress nominee could not move any tribunal because of the delay in setting up of these units and the last date of filing nomination was approaching. He sought the intervention On the day before the window for filing poll nominations closes, the Congress announced former Kancheepuram MP P Viswanathan as its candidate for the Melur Assembly constituency (general) in Madurai on Sunday . So far, Viswanathan is the only Scheduled Caste candidate to be nominated to contest from a general constituency Bhim Rao from . the CPM and P Dhansingh from the AIADMK, elected P Kakkan’s from the Maduravoyal and 1957 win Pallavaram seats respecViswanathan is tively in 2011, were the last said to have SC candidates elected been considered from a general constitufor the seat by ency in Tamil Nadu. Kharge, as The announcement Congress leader came hours after ViswaP Kakkan had nathan met Congress presbeen elected to ident Mallikarjun Kharge the erstwhile at Puducherry on Sunday Madras State morning. On Friday after , Assembly from much deliberations, the Melur (SC) All India Congress Comin 1957 mittee (AICC) had announced its candidates for 27 of the 28 constituencies it was allocated in TN as part of the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance. However, it had put off announcing the candidate for Melur due to an internal rift between party MPs over allocating the seat. With the party high command unwilling to allocate the seat to any of the feuding factions, as per Congress sources, the party was, till Saturday, looking to swap the seat with the DMK’s allies.  P5 Mahtab Sheikh | Express ‘Logical discrepancy’ Mohtab was in the ‘logical discrepancy’ group because of a discrepancy in his as well as his father’s names. The tribunal noted that there is no discrepancy in Mohtab’s name though his father’s name has some inconsistencies of the SC, which in turn asked him approach a tribunal. Mohtab then moved the tribunal of Justice Sivagnanam, among the first to be set up, at Bijan Bhaban at Salt Lake. “My name figures as Mahtab Sheikh in Aadhaar card, passport, driving licence, and son’s birth certificate. Despite these proofs, I lost my eligibility as a voter in the supplementary list. Now it is solved,” he said. Ministry’s nod awaited Army bats for `250 cr fund to end startup ‘trial trap’ J a v a r i a R a n a @ New Delhi With defence startups often unable to move beyond the trial stage, the Army has proposed a `250 crore annual Field Exploitation and Capability Acceleration (FECA) fund per Service Headquarters. The proposal is under consideration by the defence ministry . The proposal, first outlined in February by Army Design Bureau Additional Director General Maj Gen C S Mann, has now been fleshed out. It aims to create a structured system to test and evaluate new technologies in real conditions, backed by small initial orders to assess performance. “The idea is to plug gaps by allowing improvements to systems over time, adapting civilian technologies for military use and covering costs during trials and field use, including damage and other expenses that startups currently have to bear on their own,” an Army official told this newspa- per. A key element of the proposal is risk support, which addresses a major gap in the current system. At present, startups bear the full cost of equipment damaged or expended during trials, including transportation, repairs and modifications. “There have been many cases where graduates from top institutions invest all their savings to build systems, only to see them fail in high-altitude conditions. Equip- ment gets damaged, sometimes destroyed, effectively ending a startup’s journey,” the official said, adding, “Even a single failed trial can set a startup back significantly .” Under the proposed framework, startups and MSMEs will be given a three to four month window to demonstrate their systems. “If a system performs well, it can be taken up for limited field exploitation orders, with the possibility of scaling up to bulk procurement...,” the official said. Plugging the gap Despite initiatives such as iDEX and the Make procedure under DAP 2020, converting prototypes to actual procurement remains a challenge Assembly elections Space for muslims in DMK & aiadmk shrinks I P6 vck to contest only one seat in pondy I P4 Proportional delimitation is a demographic coup: Pinarayi p R E E T H A n AIR @ New Delhi S TRESSING that the upcoming delimitation process requires scrutiny rather than blind acceptance, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday demanded a constitutional guarantee for states that have successfully stabilised their population. Speaking excl u s ive ly t o t h i s press newspaper, Vijayan said Prime clusive Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance that southern states will not lose their current number of seats is a clever play on words that masks injustice. “The core issue facing the Indian Republic is not merely the absolute number of seats a state holds, but its proportional representation and relative political weight within the Union,” Vijayan said, responding to Modi’s remarks. During an election rally in Kerala on Saturday, Modi had said that Lok Sabha seats would not be reduced in those Indian A decision of this states that have successfully magnitude, which controlled population. The PM affects the very also said the total number of seats would increase to benefit foundation of our states across the country . Republic, cannot be Calling for consensus, Vijaydictated by Union govt an said the inter-state seat ratio must be maintained at the 1971 Pinarayi Vijayan, Kerala CM census level until all states achieve population stability . “Any increase in the total number of seats must be structured so that it does not reduce the relative strength of states that have excelled in human development indicators. A decision of this magnitude cannot be dictated by the Union government. It requires a consensus reached through the InterState Council and Parliament, respecting the diversity and the sovereign rights of all constituent states. If the Union government proceeds with a delimitation exercise based solely on current population figures, it effectively punishes states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and others that have rigorously implemented national policies on population control and social development,” he said.  CONTINUED ON P5 PIC: Vincent pulikkal US rescues airman in daring mission