Australia first country to offer babies peanut allergy treatment

Australia has become the first country to offer oral immunotherapy treatment to babies with peanut allergies in an effort to build immunity.

Ten paediatric hospitals in five states have partnered with the National Allergy Centre of Excellence, or NACE, to run a nationwide peanut oral immunotherapy programme.

Allergic babies will be given small daily doses of peanut powder for two years under supervision and doses will be increased over time to reduce sensitivity to peanuts, officials said on Wednesday.

It is the first national peanut allergy treatment programme outside of a clinical trial, said Kirsten Perrett, head of oral immunotherapy at NACE.

“Ultimately we want to change the trajectory of allergic disease in Australia so more children can go to school without the risk of a life-threatening peanut reaction,” Ms Perrett was quoted as saying by the ABC.

She said the children will be followed in routine clinical care for at least 12 months to evaluate the quality of life and longterm outcomes. A food allergy test will be conducted at the end of the two years to determine if the treatment led to a remission.

Tim Brettig, head of the programme, said peanut powder is introduced to the babies with other food in a small amount.

“Under supervision, each child has increases in dose each month at a level that should not cause a reaction for that child,” he told the ABC.

“Eventually they will reach a maintenance dose, where they will then stay and continue this dose for up to two years before stopping to see if this treatment has been effective.”

The free programme however is only available to children under 12 months diagnosed with a peanut allergy and receiving care from an allergist at one of the participating hospitals.

Three out of 100 Australian children develop a peanut allergy before turning one and only about 20 per cent outgrow their allergy by teenage, according to government data.

Assistant minister for health Ged Kearney described the programme as a big step towards combating peanut allergies.

“This new model of care might be the gamechanger we have all wanted to stop this terrible allergy in its tracks,” the minister said.

A nine-month-old baby enrolled in the programme developed hives after having peanut butter at six months old.

“We are taking part in the programme to try and improve his chance of being able to safely eat peanuts in the future,” the baby’s mother Kirsten Chatwin said.

“Many families are desperate to protect their children from allergic reactions and anaphylaxis. To have this programme available and free at public hospitals is a gamechanger.”

The 1975 sued by Malaysian festival for $2.4m over kissing controversy

The 1975 have been sued by organizers of Malaysia’s Good Vibes Festival after frontman Matty Healy protested the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws by kissing bassist Ross MacDonald during their performance last July.

The band’s members are also individually named in the suit, which seeks damages of $2.4m (£1.9m) because the band’s actions led to the festival being shut down.

In court documents filed in the UK High Court and seen by Variety, festival organizers Future Sound Asia claim that The 1975 and their management team had been made aware of various restrictions surrounding the performance.

The band had previously performed at the festival in 2016, and organizers say they were repeatedly reminded of restrictions around swearing, smoking, drinking alcohol on stage, removing clothes and discussing politics or religion.

The organizers also maintain that the band was aware of specific rules issued by the Malaysia Central Agency for the Application for Foreign Filming and Performance by Foreign Artistes (PUSPAL) that prohibit “kissing, kissing a member of the audience or carrying out such actions among themselves.”

They say that the band was paid $350,000 to perform and agreed to abide by these rules.

The lawsuit also states that PUSPAL had at first rejected the band’s application to perform in Malaysia in 2023 due to a 2018 article about Matty Healy’s past drug addiction. The band was able to overturn the decision after an appeal by promising that Healy would follow “all local guidelines and regulations.”

The suit goes on to claim that the band decided the night before the festival that they would not perform, then changed their mind and went ahead with “a completely different setlist” while acting “in way that were intended to breach the Guidelines”.

This included Healy making a “provocative speech” denouncing the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws and taking part in a “long pretend passionate embrace” with MacDonald “with the intention of causing offence and breaching the regulations and the terms of the agreement.”

The 1975’s performance was cut short, and the following day the organizers’ license was revoked. The remaining two days of the music festival, which had been set to include a performance by The Strokes, were canceled.

At the time, Malaysia’s government called the band “extremely rude” and added that they would not be permitted to perform in the country again.

Communications minister Fahmi Fadzil tweeted that the government had “called the organisers” of the festival before it was then cancelled outright.

Healy poked fun at the controversy on his Instagram Stories after sharing Good Vibes Festival’s cancellation statement.

The singer added: “Ok well why don’t you try and not make out for Ross for 20 years. Not as easy as it looks.”

The Independent has approached the 1975 for comment.

Taiwan says China invasion would be worse crisis than Ukraine or Covid

Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te has warned that a Chinese invasion of the self-governed island would have worse global impacts than either Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine or the Covid pandemic.

Mr Lai was speaking on Tuesday during the largest-ever gathering of foreign lawmakers and dignitaries in Taipei, at a summit chaired by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. The coalition, with hundreds of members from parliaments in more than 35 countries, is focused on monitoring Beijing’s threats to democracy and human rights.

Lawmakers met on Monday and held panel discussions on Tuesday at the event, attended by The Independent, which is taking place despite intense pressure against participants from the Chinese government.

Mr Lai said he hoped the summit would “allow the world to understand that any conflict in the Taiwan Strait will have a more profound economic impact on the world than the Russia-Ukraine war and Covid-19”.

MPs from countries including the UK, Australia, Japan and South Korea have travelled to Taipei for the talks, and at least eight of those invited have spoken out about being contacted by Chinese officials urging them not to attend. Some were even offered invitations to visit the Chinese mainland instead – or asked to explain why they were planning to travel to Taiwan.

The Taiwanese president praised those attending the talks for showing up despite China’s blocking tactics, which he described as part of a broader campaign of intimidation designed with one ultimate goal: Xi Jinping’s “authoritarian external expansion” to seize control of Taiwan.

Mr Lai said the island has a detailed action plan in the event of an invasion from China, and praised the conduct of “unscripted, actual-combat” drills earlier this month to bolster his defence forces, but said this would not be Taiwan’s preferred outcome. “Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait are closely related to global democracy, peace and prosperity,” he said.

“Taiwan will make every effort to work with its democratic partners to build a ‘democratic umbrella’ to protect democratic partner countries from the threat of authoritarian expansion,” he told the gathering of lawmakers, journalists and analysts.

On Monday, before the start of the discussions proper, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted the visiting lawmakers on a diplomatic tour of the island – an excursion that was punctuated by China sending at least a dozen warplanes across the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

Amid the looming threat of Chinese military action, Taiwanese vice-president Hsiao Bi-khim met the lawmakers for “candid discussions” and spoke “very persuasively” about the importance of maintaining stability in the region, according to IPAC’s director Luke de Pulford.

“There were a lot of different opinions about different scenarios that can happen around the Taiwan Strait. What they do seem to agree on is that [an invasion] must not be allowed to happen, it must be deterred from happening and [we must] use everything that we can in our diplomatic toolbox and otherwise to prevent it from happening,” he told The Independent.

The IPAC director also addressed China’s attempted interference with the summit, telling Beijing: “You don’t get to decide the travel plans of foreign politicians.”

“They tried to bully the global South countries. They wouldn’t dare to do it in Western, richer democracies. They think they can bully and coerce, which is even more deplorable. China’s intimidation tactics did not work.”

Why do trains keep getting derailed in India?

Two people were killed and 20 injured after a passenger train derailed in northern India on Tuesday, the latest in a series of railway accidents that has caused widespread safety concerns.

The train from Howrah in east India was on its way to Mumbai on the west coast when 22 of its coaches came off the rails at Barabamboo in Jharkhand state at around 3.45am local time on Tuesday.

Railway authorities are investigating the latest accident amid conflicting news reports about a collision.

“Two passengers died. Their bodies were recovered from the bathrooms after a coach was cut with gas cutters,” Prabhat Kumar Badiyar, a senior local administrative official, was quoted as saying by the daily Hindustan Times.

“The Howrah Mumbai Mail rammed a goods train from behind and about a dozen of its coaches derailed. A rescue operation is ongoing,” he said.

The Indian Express, however, quoted an anonymous railway official as saying that “there was no collision”.

“The derailment could be due to an operational error or some mechanical failure of the tracks, wheels. All possible angles are being investigated,” the official told the paper.

A series of deadly train collisions and derailments has caused widespread safety concerns in the country and prompted opposition leaders to accuse the Narendra Modi government of misgovernance.

Tuesday’s was the second fatal railway accident in northern India in July. At least four people were killed and 20 injured on 18 July when a train derailed in Uttar Pradesh. Ten people were killed last month when a freight train rammed into a stationary passenger train in the eastern state of West Bengal.

And in one of the country’s deadliest train accidents, over 280 people were killed in eastern Odisha state last year.

Calling the latest tragedy a “disastrous rail accident”, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee asked, “Is this governance?”

“This series of nightmares almost every week, this unending procession of deaths and injuries on railway tracks, for how long shall we tolerate this?” she asked.

“Will there be no end to the callousness of the government of India? My heart goes out to the bereaved families, condolences to the next of kin.”

The main opposition Congress party issued sharp criticism of federal railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. Party spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said the “fail minister” has “overseen three accidents” since June resulting in 17 deaths, yet there is “no accountability”.

India’s railway network is undergoing a £24bn transformation with new trains and modern stations under Mr Modi’s push to boost infrastructure and connectivity, Mr Vaishnaw said while presenting the new rail budget on 23 July, adding that nearly £10bn will be spent to enhance the safety of the national carrier.

But despite such efforts to upgrade infrastructure, former Railway Board chairman Vivek Sahai told the BBC, derailment remains a “bugbear”.

According to a report by the Commission of Railway Safety, the number of railway accidents increased from 35 in 2021-22 to 48 in 2022-23, with serious accidents doubling in successive years.

From 2013-14 to 2019-20 in contrast, there was “a declining trend” in railway accidents.

The report noted that derailments caused the majority of the accidents, accounting for 75 per cent of the total in 2022-23 and over 77 per cent in 2021-22. Collision and fire were the next biggest causes.

Train derailment could be caused by an ill-maintained track or “a coach could be faulty or there could be an error in driving”, Mr Sahai said after the Odisha accident.

According to Hindustan Times, derailments mostly occur due to “rail fractures” from expansion or contraction during extreme summer or winter conditions. “While technology and funding issues are there, the big problem is that adequate time to carry out routine maintenance of tracks is never available as drivers are under stress to run more trains in lesser time,” Sanjay Pandhi, of the Indian Railways Loco Running Men Organisation, told the daily in 2016.

Swapnil Garg, professor of strategy management at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore, however, told IndiaSpend that “one particular incident cannot cause a derailment”.

“It has to be a combination of three, four or five different mistakes before a derailment happens,” he said.

“When there is a signalling failure, mechanical failures and civil engineering failures, we find that these collectively result in a derailment.”

How Kamala Harris is still the pride of her Indian ancestral village

Between the coconut trees, bungalows and rice paddies of this remote village in southern India there is a bizarre sight: a collection of giant blue posters adorned with the face of US vice president Kamala Harris, each wishing her – in the local Tamil language – luck for November’s presidential election.

It is more than a century since Harris’s grandfather was born here in Thulasendrapuram, a tiny hamlet some 300km away from the state capital Chennai. Yet remarkably the Democrat and her family still maintain good ties to their ancestral home, a fact that has won her a village full of adoring fans a world away from Washington DC.

Outside the village’s 300-year-old temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Sastha there is a black stone tablet, proclaiming the names of major donors. There, written alongside an amount of Rs 5000 (£46.50), is Kamala Harris – a record of an offering made in her name in 2014, at at time when she was still serving as California’s attorney general.

The Sri Dharma Sastha Temple is abuzz at 6.30am with shops opening ahead of morning prayers. Siva Kumar, the priest in charge of the morning schedule, recalls a relative making the donation to the temple’s consecration on Harris’s behalf.

“Even after her family has moved from the village, they still sponsor prayers at the temple, not giving up on their roots. That is a source of pride for us,” says N Maheshwari, who runs a grocery shop close to the temple.

Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan was born in Thulasendrapuram in the early 1900s and moved away from the village, first to Chennai and later to Delhi, to become a civil servant in British-ruled India. His success paved the way for Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, to move to the US when she was 19 to study biomedical science at UC Berkeley. It was there that she met her future husband Donald Harris, an immigrant from Jamaica.

Almost everyone in the village seems to be aware of Harris’s family history, even though the home where that story began no longer stands. People here appreciate that the family remembers where they came from, and that members of Harris’s family living in India still stop by regularly.

“Her uncle Balachandran from Delhi and aunt Sarala from Chennai visit the local temple about once a year. The family is still connected to the village,” Ramalingam, who lives near the temple, tells The Independent.

Further down the village’s main road, a couple of hundred metres from the temple, is a neighbourhood of Brahmins – caste segregation remains a phenomenon in many rural parts of India – where residents say Harris’s grandparents most likely lived.

The homes here have large thinnais or raised platforms on their verandahs, characteristic of homes for better-off families in villages in the area, along with other features like concrete floors and a large tank to store water in one corner of the house.

Round the corner lives retired banker N Krishnamurthy, who has become something of a local authority on all matters relating to Harris and her ancestors.

“Some 80 years back one Gopal Iyer (Mr Gopalan) was living here with his wife Rajam. They were staying here at a house in this corner at the end of the agraharam. Now the house is not there. The place is nothing but a barren land now,” he says.

While talking to The Independent he repeatedly fields phone calls from people enquiring about Harris’s latest election prospects now that Biden has stepped down from the race, leaving her the presumptive Democratic candidate.

“Ms Harris was not so well known in the village until it was announced she was the vice presidential candidate [in August 2020]. This was when we started gathering information,” says Krishnamurthy, who has lived in the village for the last 15 years.

Harris is said to have visited Thulasendrapuram herself when she was five years old, and in interviews has recalled memories of walking with her grandfather on the beach in Chennai. She hasn’t been back to Tamil Nadu, or indeed visited India as a whole, since becoming vice president.

Nonetheless, residents here say there will be big celebrations if she can go one step further and enters the White House. Maheshwari, the shopkeeper, points to a calendar with photos of president Biden and Harris that occupies pride of place on the counter.

“Even people who migrate from the village to some place further north within India forget their ancestral deities,” she says, contrasting this to Harris and her family.

“We have been following her journey since she was nominated vice president in 2020. Back then we conducted special prayers at the temple when she won and distributed sweets to celebrate her victory. We will do it again if she becomes president this time.”

Some villagers suggest a win for Harris could strengthen ties between the US and India, although they are realistic about whether any benefits would extend to this tiny village 8,000 miles away from Washington DC.

“There was a lot of news coverage about our village when she became vice president, and afterwards officials, including some from the US consulate, came to inspect schools and water bodies here. Nothing happened after that,” a resident says as she prepares fodder for her cows.

“Even now we understand there’s not much in her power to help the village, but we still hope she wins,” she says.

Assuming she is named the Democratic nominee at the party’s convention next month, Harris will face Donald Trump in November’s election, and there are plenty of fans in India for the Republican who, during his time in office, found a kindred spirit in prime minister Narendra Modi.

There are no Trump supporters to be found in Thulasendrapuram, however, with many residents saying they are only interested in following the US elections because Harris is involved.

One villager, Maniyan S, puts it like this: “Trump is an American. But Harris is a woman with Indian roots, and her ancestry is from our land. It would be a source of great pride if a woman from our land wins the American election.”

Indonesian man stabs friend to death over chicken or egg debate

A man in Indonesia allegedly stabbed his friend to death over the classic disagreement: which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The suspect, identified as DR, stabbed Kadir Markus, 47, from Muna Regency in Southeast Sulawesi province, 15 times after they got into an argument over the riddle on 24 July, investigating officer La Ode Arsangka said.

DR invited Markus, who had come to repay a debt, for a drink and began posing a series of riddles, local media reported.

Markus left when the argument started, but DK grabbed a dagger and chased him on his bike and then on foot before stabbing him multiple times, police said.

The suspect has been arrested, Tongkuno police chief Iptu Abdul Hasan was quoted as saying by the Strait Times.

“The suspect has been charged with murder and faces up to 18 years in prison if convicted,” Mr Hasan said.

DK reportedly used a badik, traditional dagger of southern Sulawesi’s coastal tribes like the Bugis and the Makassarese, to commit the murder.

Dogs locked up in Bangkok house without food eat body of dead owner

More than two dozen dogs that ate their dead owner’s body to survive for days in a locked house were finally rescued over the weekend from a Bangkok suburb.

The dogs were trapped for at least a week after their owner Attapol Charoenpithak, 62, died inside the house of medical conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, police said.

Thai police found the man’s body on Saturday after his neighbour told police his car had not moved for several days. Sompong Phasuksri said Attapol usually drove his car to the local market every day.

The neighbour grew suspicious when he rang Attapol’s bell but got no response even though the lights were on, The Nation reported.

When police went in, they found the house littered with garbage and dog excreta. The police then contacted an animal rescue group, the Voice Foundation, to rescue the dogs.

The foundation rescued 28 dogs but two had died from lack of food.

“Initially, it was reported that there were about 15 dogs surrounding the uncle’s body. But when the team and doctors arrived to the area they found them scattered around the house and two dead bodies were found,” the charity said on Instagram.

A video shared by the charity showed the petrified canines, a mix of chihuahua and Shih Tzu breeds, being rescued from around the house.

“All the 28 siblings have been rescued at the hospital. To get checked, treated and spayed before proceeding to find a home,” the foundation said.

The dogs reportedly survived by “eating the left leg of the owner”.

Supawadee Srithassanakarn of the Voice Foundation, who led the rescue work, said Attapol had agreed to hand over the dogs to the charity following complaints.

He has been seen driving the dogs around in cages, which alerted animal charities to the potential exposure of his pets to heat.

In another post on Sunday, the charity said the dogs were weak due to lack of food and water and asked for donations to “take care of these children”.

US woman found chained to tree and left to die in India jungle

A 50-year-old American woman was found chained to a tree and left to die in a forest in India, police said.

The woman, identified as Lalita Kayi Kumar, was rescued after a shepherd heard her cries on Saturday evening in Sonurli village, located about 450km from India’s financial capital of Mumbai in the south-western state of Maharashtra.

Police registered a case of attempted murder against Ms Kumar’s former husband based on a note scribbled by her at the hospital.

The authorities ascertained her identity and residential address from photocopies of a US passport and a national identity card recovered from her.

”Based on the note written by the woman at the hospital, a case has been registered against her former husband on charges of attempted murder, act endangering life or personal safety of others and wrongful confinement under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS),” Saurabh Agrawal, superintendent of police of Sindhudurg district, said. BNS is India’s official criminal code.

She was transferred to a hospital in the neighbouring state of Goa, Mr Agrawal told the wire agency Press Trust of India. She is “weak” and “not in a position to give her statement”, he said.

Officials do not yet know how long she was left tied to the tree. “The area where she was found had experienced heavy rain,” Mr Agrawal said.

“We have found that the woman, who appears to have been born in the US, had also resided in Goa for some time. We are trying to find out whom she was in touch with in the past few months,” he added.

Police say she appears not to have eaten for several days. The husband, whose name was not disclosed by officials, allegedly hails from Tamil Nadu. Forest inspector Vikas Padve told The Hindu newspaper that while doctors told the authorities she was doing “fine”, Ms Kumar was “suffering from psychiatric issues.

“She is unable to speak and remains under observation,” Mr Padve said.

“She reportedly left her husband after a quarrel,” a police official was quoted as saying by the outlet.

The victim was believed to be living in India for the past ten years, reported the Hindustan Times, quoting officials from the local police station. The authorities have sent a team of investigators to Tamil Nadu and Goa to trace her relatives.