Rare virus kills 8 in India and sparks encephalitis outbreak concerns

At least eight Indian children have died in the past week from suspected infection by the relatively unknown Chandipura virus, sparking concerns about an encephalitis outbreak.

Seven children are fighting for their lives in hospital, Rushikesh Patel, health minister in the western Gujarat state, said.

Chandipura virus, or CHPV, is named after Chandipura village in coastal Maharashtra state where it was first identified during an investigation into a dengue and chikungunya outbreak in 1965.

An RNA virus of the Rhabdoviridae family, which includes the rabies virus, it primarily affects children and is associated with outbreaks of acute encephalitis in India.

“This disease occurs by the sting of a vector-infected sandfly and mainly affects children aged 9 months to 14 years,” Mr Patel was quoted as saying by India Today.

“It is seen more in rural areas. Fever, vomiting, loose motion and headache are the main symptoms.”

The virus “has garnered significant attention in recent years due to its potential to cause severe and often fatal illnesses in humans, particularly children”, Dr Neha Rastogi Panda, an infectious diseases specialist at the Fortis Memorial Research Institute in Gurugram, told IANS.

The virus lives in the salivary glands of the sandfly and the Aedes aegypti mosquito. It can move into the central nervous system after infecting a child, causing encephalitis or inflammation of the active brain tissue.

It initially presents symptoms like fever, body ache and headache but progresses to seizures, altered sensorium and encephalitis within 24 to 72 hours.

Although the disease is not contagious, it requires early diagnosis and supportive care due to the rapid onset of severe symptoms, lack of specific antiviral treatments or vaccines, making it a severe challenge for doctors and public health officials.

“Only symptomatic treatment is possible in the absence of any antiviral and proper care of the patient in an intensive care unit,” Dr Sayan Chakraborty, infectious diseases consultant at Manipal Hospital, Kolkata, told Telegraph India.

The Chandipura virus caused a major encephalitis outbreak in India in the early 2000s, killing 322 children.

The virus is endemic to Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, which appear to have higher sandfly and mosquito populations.

“A lot of houses also use cow dung paint or maybe make cow dung cakes, which in turn attracts sandflies,” Dr Rajesh Jeswani, a paediatrician in Gujarat, told The Indian Express.

“Additionally, outbreaks are more pronounced because sandflies multiply more during the monsoon season.”

Doctors have voiced concerns about the changing nature of the vector and symptoms.

“Sandflies usually do not fly at a height more than three feet from the ground but this time, during surveillance, sandflies have been found on terraces and higher heights,” Dr Sandipkumar Trivedi, a former executive board member of the Indian Association of Pediatrics, told the newspaper. “Additionally, of the six suspected deaths so far, two presented with brain haemorrhages, which is a new presentation.”

Insecticide sprays could help eliminate the vector, public health experts said and called for measures to prevent the spread of the virus by controlling sandfly populations and mosquito bites.

“Strategies include the use of insect repellents, bed nets and insecticides as well as raising awareness about the risks and symptoms of the disease,” Dr Panda said.

Six killed as protests over jobs quota turn violent in Bangladesh

Six people have been killed in the ongoing unrest in Bangladesh over government job reservations, prompting authorities to shut down all universities in the country indefinitely.

Hundreds of people have sustained injuries in the protests which turned violent after demonstrators clashed with police and pro-government agitators this week. Three of the dead have been identified as students aged between 22 and 32.

They have been protesting against a 30 per cent reservation in government jobs for family members of freedom fighters from the 1971 War of Independence. The quota system also reserves jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups.

The policy has angered students suffering from high unemployment in a country where some 32 million young people are not in work or education. Bangladesh has a total population of 170 million.

The protests escalated after prime minister Sheikh Hasina refused to address the demands of the students, citing ongoing court proceedings, and labelled those opposing the quota system as “razakar“, or volunteer, a term used for those who allegedly collaborated with the Pakistani army during the 1971 war.

The demonstrators claimed the prime minister’s statement incited her party’s student wing — Bangladesh Chhatra League, or BCL — to attack thousands of people rallying against the quota system.

The protests are the first major challenge to Ms Hasina since she secured a fourth consecutive term early this year in an election boycotted by the opposition parties. Her government has a track record of deploying brute force against critics to throttle dissent.

The government has deployed riot police along with the Border Guard Bangladesh paramilitary force across university campuses to maintain law and order.

The protesters have been demanding an end to the quota system, arguing that people should be selected for the sought-after government jobs based on merit.

“We were protesting peacefully until we were attacked by the BCL goons. It is our right to continue protesting, it is embedded in the history of this country and we shall continue to do so for our right,” a Dhaka university student who did not want to be named for fear of persecution told The Independent.

On Tuesday, the University Grants Commission ordered all universities to shut down and instructed students to vacate the campuses immediately “to protect the students”.

High schools, colleges and other educational institutions were also shut.

Police arrested seven activists, including a former leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s student wing, during a raid at the main opposition party’s headquarters in Dhaka.

“The ruling party members are targeting non-protesting students inside the campus as well. Men, women, anyone who refuses to side with the government quota is being assaulted,” Rubina Khatun, a student at Dhaka University, told The Independent.

She said the students have been given time till 6pm today to vacate the university premises but some have decided to stay back, defying the order. “This puts us in so much danger. There is violence everywhere, how would we go home,” she said.

Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters as at least two buses were set ablaze amid reports of sporadic clashes across the country.

“We have no issue with them protesting against the quota. However, if they engage in vandalism or destructive activities, under anyone’s influence or leadership, we will not spare them,” said home minister Asaduzzaman Khan. “Wherever there is vandalism, killing, or bloodshed, law enforcement will do their duties.”

Nahid Islam, a coordinator of the protests, said students will hold processions on Wednesday carrying coffins in solidarity with those who lost their lives. The paramilitary paraded through the streets of Dhaka and other big cities as stray protests continued at some universities.

The quota system was suspended in 2018, ending similar protests against it. However, a high court last month asked for the 30 per cent quota for descendants of freedom fighters to be restored.

The supreme court last week stayed the high court’s order for four weeks and the country’s chief justice asked the student protesters to return to their classes.

Mummified crocodile’s gut sheds light on Egyptian sacrifice ritual

Advanced scans of a mummified crocodile have revealed it was likely killed as an offering to the god Sobek, shedding more light on the practice of animal sacrifice in ancient Egyptian rituals.

Archaeologists said the mummy, kept at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, could be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old, when the practice of mummifying animals was at its peak.

They found the 2.2-metre-long reptile had swallowed stones to break down chunks of meat and regulate its buoyancy.

The stones were higher up in the gut, indicating the animal attempted to break down its last meal, a fish still tied to its hook, but died before the food could reach its stomach.

The findings led scientists to suspect the crocodile was caught in the wild and processed for mummification, likely as an offering to the crocodile god Sobek.

“Our work revealed a great amount of information, both about the life of the crocodile and the postmortem treatment of its remains,” Egyptologist Lidija Mcknight said.

“Mummies have long been a source of fascination for museum visitors of all ages. Our work provides a unique opportunity to connect visitors to the story of this animal,” Dr Mcknight, a co-author of the study published in the journal Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, said.

The study also showed the promise of imaging technology to peer inside mummies without damaging them as opposed to more invasive techniques like autopsy which were previously used.

Using special software and 3D X-ray scans, scientists could virtually reconstruct the hook attached to the fish.

“We took the process a step further by replicating the hook in its original material, bronze,” Dr Mcknight said.

“Egyptians probably used a hardened clay mould into which the molten metal, melted over a charcoal-based heat source, would have been poured. Despite the passing of several millennia between the production of the ancient fish hook and the modern replica, the casting process remains remarkably similar.”

North Korean diplomat posted in Cuba defects to South Korea

A North Korean diplomat in Cuba defected to South Korea with his family in November last year, the South Korean spy agency has said, in what would be the highest-profile defection in recent years.

In a brief statement, the National Intelligence Service confirmed a South Korean newspaper’s report that Ri Il Kyu, 52, North Korean counsellor of political affairs in Cuba, defected last year.

As a counsellor, Mr Ri was tasked with blocking rival South Korea and old ally Cuba from forging diplomatic ties, Chosun Ilbo reported.

The two countries established diplomatic ties in February this year, weakening Pyongyang’s thin network of allies.

Mr Ri said he did not reveal his plan even to his family until hours before he pulled off the high-risk escape. “I bought flight tickets and called my wife and kid to tell them about my decision, six hours before the defection,” he said. “I didn’t say South Korea, but said, let’s live abroad.”

Mr Ri told Chosun Ilbo that he defected because of disillusionment with the North Korean political system.

But the Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified South Korean official, reported that Mr Ri escaped after clashing with North Korean foreign ministry officials about his job evaluation.

Mr Ri’s is the latest defection from isolated North Korea. Those caught attempting to defect from the country face severe punishment, including death, according to human rights groups and defectors who have been successful.

The last high-profile defection from North Korea to South Korea was that of Tae Yong-ho, a former deputy ambassador to the UK, who escaped in 2016, drawing rebuke from Pyongyang.

Mr Tae said he fled because he did not want his children to live “miserable” lives in North Korea and that he felt “despair” after watching Kim Jong-un order the executions of officials and pursue the development of nuclear weapons.

North Korea called Mr Tae “human scum” and accused him of embezzling government money and committing other crimes. Mr Tae had been elected to South Korea’s parliament in 2020.

Mr Ri was inducted into North Korea’s foreign ministry in 1999 and applauded by the North Korean leader for successfully negotiating with Panama to end the detention of a North Korean ship caught carrying arms from Cuba in 2013, Chosun Ilbo said.

Mr Ri said North Korea denying his request to travel to Mexico for medical treatment last year was the final nail in the coffin in his decision to leave North Korea.

The death of his parents and parents-in-law, who might have faced reprisals for his defection, also helped him make up his mind, he said.

According to human rights groups, fewer North Korean defectors have been able to escape to the South in recent years due to strict limits on border crossings into China and hefty broker fees.

Last year, 196 North Korean defectors came to Seoul, down from nearly 2,700 a decade ago, according to data from the South Korean government.

In 2020, North Korean diplomat Jo Song-gil and his wife were reported to be living in South Korea after having disappeared in Italy. Mr Jo was working in the North Korean embassy in Rome as acting ambassador.

The year before, North Korea’s acting ambassador to Kuwait left for South Korea with his family. South Korean lawmakers said the diplomat changed his name to Ryu Hyun-woo after arriving in South Korea.

British zoologist facing 249 years in jail for raping and killing dogs

Adam Britton, a renowned zoologist, has confessed to 60 heinous crimes involving the rape, torture and killing of dogs. The 53-year-old now faces a potential sentence of up to 249 years in Australia.

The leading British crocodile expert confessed to bestiality and a plethora of animal sexual abuse charges filed against him in Australia in September last year.

His case shocked and angered animal rights activists and the public alike as the details of his disturbing actions came to light.

Britton has confessed to an interest in “zoo-sadism” and, in numerous online messages presented to the Northern Territory Supreme Court, he guided other people on how to perpetrate similar acts of abuse.

When Britton appeared for sentencing submissions recently, the court was told about the psychiatric condition called paraphilia that afflicted him.

Who is Adam Britton?

Born in 1972 as Adam Robert Corden Britton, he graduated from Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in 1987 and earned an Honours degree in Zoology from the University of Leeds in 1992.

Britton completed his PhD in Zoology from the University of Bristol in 1996.

He moved to Australia that same year and met his future wife, Erin, a wildlife ranger and biologist. The couple established a consultancy specialising in wild crocodiles.

Britton gained international recognition as a crocodile expert and collaborated with prominent figures like David Attenborough. He contributed to various documentaries and educational programs for the BBC and National Geographic.

He was a research associate at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, and appeared on the Discovery Channel programme “Animal Face-Off”, further cementing his reputation as a leading authority on crocodiles.

His career came to be overshadowed by his criminal activities after he confessed to a raft of charges involving the rape, torture, and killing of dogs, which he used to commit inside a shipping container dubbed the “torture room”.

What are the charges against him?

The Australian court has been told that Britton used to source rescue dogs on the online classifieds website Gumtree Australia, offering to rehome them at his expansive property near Darwin.

He would reportedly film himself torturing the animals and post the videos on online platforms using pseudonyms “Monster” and “Cerberus”. He would also allegedly access child abuse material on these platforms.

His disturbing actions led to the deaths of 39 dogs.

He has also pleaded guilty to four counts of accessing and transmitting child abuse material.

“I was talking with someone else about why I love to hurt dogs,” he wrote in a secret chat group. “I wasn’t sure at first, but now I live for it. I can’t stop myself hurting dogs.”

“I was sadistic as a child to animals, but I had repressed it. In the last few years I let it out again, and now I can’t stop. I don’t want to.”

He added a smiley.

Australian authorities were alerted to Britton’s activities by an anonymous person. They then launched “Operation Haine”, which resulted in a search warrant for Britton’s McMinns Lagoon home on Darwin’s outskirts. In the course of their inquiry, law enforcement uncovered unsettling footage shot by Britton revealing his acts of animal cruelty.

He was arrested in April 2022.

Britton’s lawyer — who has sought to remain anonymous due to the threats they have been receiving for representing Britton — recently presented the court with a fresh report on the zoologist’s “paraphilia”. It’s a psychological term to describe a condition characterised by intense sexual fantasies, urges, or behaviours involving atypical objects, situations, or individuals.

What happened at the latest hearing?

At the hearing on Thursday, Britton’s lawyer reportedly told the court about his “paraphilia” due to which the court was adjourned.

Before the hearing commenced, the Northern Territory Supreme Court judge Michael Grant asked his staff and animal rights activists to vacate the room due to the grotesque nature of the actions committed by Britton.

“This is a human being who has been afflicted by a condition since very early childhood,” Britton’s lawyer said. “It is not his fault that he had that.”

“This particular condition is exceptionally taboo in most societies and the court can, and I hope would, accept that that would have been a very difficult thing to grow up with and learn to manage into adulthood.”

The lead prosecutor, Marty Aust, however, said Britton derived “entrenched enjoyment” from his perverse sexual interest in animals.

“There was significant planning to the extent that it was quite a production, with multiple cameras, tripods, various recording equipment, production values, editing,” he told the court.

“If you watch that footage you will see the extreme pleasure and enjoyment that this man had in creating this and doing these acts. His sheer delight goes to the core of it … it’s difficult to read, it’s difficult to hear but to see it, really is something other.”

Mr Aust said that “much like any other human being who has a particular sexual interest” Britton was “able to rationally determine whether to act on that interest”.

“He has done so and then, with the incitement and the encouragement of other like-minded persons, he has offended in a way that’s almost beyond description in terms of its significant depravity,” he said.

Mr Aust said that even if Britton’s condition were treatable, “there remains a constant risk of its recurrence”.

At a hearing early this year, judge Grant had doubted whether any psychiatric evidence could diminish Britton’s moral responsibility for his actions.

“A serial killer can’t say, for example, ‘My moral culpability is reduced because I suffer from psychopathy’,” he said in February. “I just can’t see where the evidence is going here.”

Reaction to the charges against Britton

Britton’s sentencing was delayed for the third time after his lawyer submitted a fresh report to the judge. He will be back in court next month.

Former Northern Territory lawmaker Ross Bohlin said the sentencing delay was an “abuse of the judicial process”.

“It would be good to think today brought an end to this psychopathic level of abuse. Unfortunately, the adjournment will only continue the pain,” he said.

Protesting outside the courthouse recently, animal rights activists displayed signs demanding justice, including calls for the death penalty and “justice for the innocent victims of Adam Britton”.

“He’s got to be punished so people don’t think that animals are something that can be exploited and abused,” one protester said.

They realised the death penalty “isn’t going to happen”, the protester told the ABC, “but incarcerated forever would be my personal choice”.

Man who went for routine hospital checkup trapped in lift for two days

A man has been rescued after he was trapped in a hospital lift in southern India for two days, police said.

Ravindran Nair, 59, was visiting a hospital in Kerala with his family on Saturday when he went missing.

He was rescued on Monday after spending the weekend stuck inside the elevator of the Government Medical College Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram.

Kerala’s health department said on Monday that three employees at the hospital had been suspended for negligence.

Mr Nair had gone to the hospital with his wife for a checkup but got stuck in the elevator while leaving.

“He got into the lift to go to the first floor but claims that the lift came down and did not open. He says he shouted for help but no one came. His phone was also switched off,” police said.

The lift was reportedly stuck between two floors and Mr Nair’s phone fell and broke during his desperate attempts to call for help, police added.

He pressed the lift’s alarm button and called emergency numbers but didn’t get a response.

“I tried calling all the emergency numbers listed inside the lift, but no one answered. The alarm was sounded, but no one came. After some time, I understood that it was the second Saturday [a bank holiday in India] and Sunday the next day, and then I waited for help,” he told the news agency Press Trust of India.

Mr Nair said he lost track of time inside the lift and it was only on Monday morning that an operator came for routine work.

“We both forcefully opened the door from both sides, and I jumped out of it,” he said.

His family had filed a missing persons case on Sunday after he did not return home.

His son, Hari Shankar, said his father was shaken up from the ordeal.

The state’s health minister Veena George has asked the hospital administration to conduct an inquiry into the incident.

“The director of Medical Education Department has been instructed to inquire into the incident of patient getting stuck in the lift at Thiruvananthapuram Medical College OP Block,” Ms George wrote on Facebook.

In 2023, a nine-year-old boy died after getting stuck in the doors of a lift at a residential complex in the national capital Delhi. The lift went up with the boy trapped between the doors, crushing him.

Employment figures a blow for Modi ahead of Budget as 1.6m jobs lost

India’s unorganised sector, seen by many as the driver of its economy, lost at least 1.6 million jobs between 2015 and 2023, according to a recent government survey that underlines deepening concerns around unemployment in the country.

This is the first time employment figures for the unincorporated sector have been released since 2017, drawing focus to the economic impact of the pandemic as well as policy decisions made by Narendra Modi’s government, particularly the overnight demonetisation of the bulk of currency notes in 2016 and the Covid lockdown in 2020.

Mr Modi rode to power in 2014 on a promise of creating 20 million new jobs per year as the keystone of his development agenda. But a growing unemployment crisis has instead become a major talking point in the country and has been cited as one of the main reasons for the ruling party’s below-par performance in the recent national election.

The newly released survey by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation found that India had over 109.6 million people working in the unincorporated non-agricultural sector between October 2022 and September 2023. This sector relates to businesses that have not been set up as separate entities, and includes sole traders like street vendors as well as their unpaid family members and hired workers.

The figure stood at 111.3 million in 2015-16, The Indian Express reported citing government data from 2017. This means the unorganised sector lost at least 1.6 million jobs over eight years.

At the same time, Mr Modi claims to have created over 80 million jobs in just the last three to four years. “The country’s people are clever and the public is recognising this,” the prime minister during a visit to the financial capital Mumbai over the weekend where he also attended the grand wedding ceremony of the son of Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani.

Mr Modi was speaking after the Reserve Bank of India released a report stating that the employment growth rate had nearly doubled in the last fiscal year, far exceeding estimates put out by private surveys that point to high joblessness rates in the South Asian country.

According to the central bank’s report, released on 9 July, the overall employment rate rose from 3.2 per cent in 2022-23 to 6 per cent in 2023-24, meaning the country created more than 46.7 million jobs in that time.

In total, the number of employed people increased from 596.7 million in March 2023 to 643.3 million in March 2024. Most of the new jobs, 18.5 million, came from agriculture and allied sectors while 4.8 million appeared in construction, The Times of India reported.

In the previous fiscal year, in contrast, India had created about 11 million new jobs, the central bank said in the report that covered 27 industries from agriculture to manufacturing and services.

It used data from the National Accounts and the Ministry of Labour to extrapolate productivity and employment levels but didn’t give a breakdown of the new jobs created by sector, Reuters reported.

But economists cautioned that the central bank’s report did not tell the whole story. They noted that much of the growth in employment came from unpaid work and temporary farm labour which cannot be compared to formal employment with regular wages.

“What is clear is that there is a large increase coming from agriculture and from self-employment, which includes own account work or unpaid family work,” said Amit Basole, head of the Centre for Sustainable Employment at the Azim Premji University.

The central bank’s report showed agricultural work contributed 48 million of the 100 million jobs created between 2017-18 and 2022-23, Mr Basole noted. “I wouldn’t call them jobs,” he said. “They are just people working in agriculture or in non-farm self-employment because of lack of adequate demand for workers from businesses.”

The Reserve Bank’s report came on the heels of a Citibank assessment earlier this month that even a GDP growth of 7 per cent would only create eight to nine million jobs in India, short of the 11-12 million needed.

“Even 7 per cent GDP growth might not be able to fulfil the job requirement over the next decade,” Citibank’s chief India economist Samiran Chakraborty wrote in the assessment.

The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private think tank that tracks joblessness, estimated that India’s unemployment rate rose to eight per cent in 2023-24 from 7.5 per cent and 7.7 per cent in the preceding two financial years.

The federal labour department countered the Citibank report claiming that its own estimate suggested that over 20 million employment opportunities were created on average every year between 2017-18 and 2021-22.

The opposition lashed out at such claims by the Modi government and accused the prime minister of weaving a “web of lies”.

“I want to remind you again what you said while announcing the National Recruitment Agency,” Congress party leader Mallikarjun Kharge said, addressing Mr Modi. “In August 2020, you said the NRA will prove to be a boon for crores (tens of millions) of youth. Through the common eligibility test, it will eliminate multiple examinations and save precious time as well as resources. It will also give a big boost to transparency. Why, despite providing a fund of Rs 1,517.57 crore to NRA, only Rs 58 crore has been spent so far in 4 years?”

Chinese swimmers set for twice as many doping tests at Paris Olympics

Chinese swimmers will have undergone at least eight drug tests by the start of the Paris Olympics, twice as many as athletes from some other countries.

The sport’s governing body, World Aquatics, was under pressure to act after 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance, heart medication trimetazidine, seven months before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, but were cleared of wrongdoing and went on to claim three gold medals. Eleven of them are competing in Paris this month.

After a review of its decision allowing the swimmers to compete in Tokyo, World Aquatics said the incident “weakened” trust in the anti-doping system.

To rebuild trust, it said, Chinese swimmers competing in Paris will have been tested “no less than eight times” this year by the International Testing Agency, twice the standard level.

It said “a certain number of athletes from specific nations will be tested four times” by the agency which runs anti-doping programmes for many Olympic sports.

Samples of Chinese athletes will ideally not be collected by the Chinese anti-doping agency and not be tested by laboratories in China.

World Aquatics is likely to publish the results of the tests before the Olympics opening ceremony next week.

“What is extremely clear and what cannot be taken for granted is that the trust of the aquatics community is vital to the continued success of World Aquatics as an international federation,” the governing body said.

The body is seeking to reassure the world of sport of its fairness after Michael Phelps, the most decorated athlete in Olympic history with 28 medals, said the World Anti-Doping Agency, which conducted the 2021 tests, can no longer be trusted.

It was also targeted by a US federal investigation for accepting the explanation for 2021 test results when travel to China was not possible due to the Covid pandemic.

A Chinese investigation in June 2021 blamed the tainted results on mass contamination of food in a hotel kitchen, without providing evidence.

The matter came to public attention three months after the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on it.

World Aquatics formed a panel to review its actions from three years ago, specifically its adherence to doping guidelines and its decision not to contest the Chinese claim before the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The panel published its report on Monday, 12 days before swimming events start in Paris, and pledged to have more anti-doping tests for some countries, especially China.

It recommended that World Aquatics routinely publish details of athletes provisionally suspended for potential breaches of doping rules, how many times they were tested in the six months before a major competition like the Olympics or the World championships and by whom.

“World Aquatics must accept this challenge and intensify its communication with athletes,” the panel concluded.

Additional reporting by agencies