Los Angeles, Nov 18: Four people were shot dead and six others wounded while watching a football game in the backyard of a central California home on Sunday, police said.
"Three people died on scene," deputy Fresno police chief Michael Reed told reporters.
"One was critical and... succumbed to his injuries" after being rushed to a hospital, he added.
China on Tuesday justified the killing of an army officer and two soldiers of India and accused Indian troops of crossing a disputed border between the two countries.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Indian troops crossed the border line twice on Monday, "provoking and attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in a serious physical confrontation between border forces on the two sides".
An Indian Army officer and two soldiers have been killed in a "violent face-off" with Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), disrupting the fragile peace talks.
"During the de-escalation process underway in the Galwan Valley, a violent face-off took place last night with casualties on both sides," the Indian Army said in a statement.
Vienna, Jun 17: Austrian police fined a man 500 euros for loudly breaking wind after officers stopped him earlier this month to check his identity.
The police defended the massive fine saying he had deliberately emitted a "massive flatulence," lifting his backside from the bench where he was sitting.
The accused complained of what he called the disproportionate and unjustified fine when he gave his account of the June 5 events on the O24 news website.
In reply to social media commentaries that followed, the police in the Austrian capital justified their reaction on Twitter.
"Of course, nobody is put on the spot if one slips out by accident," the police said.
However, in this case, the police said, the young man had appeared "provocative and uncooperative" in general.
He then "slightly raised himself from the bench, looked at the officers and patently, in a completely deliberate way, emitted a massive flatulence in their immediate proximity."
Houston, Mar 15: Researchers, studying the novel coronavirus, have found that the time between cases in a chain of transmission is less than a week, and over 10 per cent of patients are infected by someone who has the virus, but does not show symptoms yet, a finding that may help public health officials contain the pandemic.
The study, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, estimated what's called the serial interval of the coronavirus by measuring the time it takes for symptoms to appear in two people with the virus -- the person who infects another, and the infected second person.
According to the researchers, including those from the University of Texas at Austin, the average serial interval for the novel coronavirus in China was approximately four days.
They said the speed of an epidemic depends on two things -- how many people each case infects, and how long it takes cases to spread.
The first quantity, the scientists said, is called the reproduction number, and the second is the serial interval.
Due to the short serial interval of the disease caused by the coronavirus -- COVID-19 -- they said, emerging outbreaks will grow quickly, and could be difficult to stop.
“Ebola, with a serial interval of several weeks, is much easier to contain than influenza, with a serial interval of only a few days,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, study co-author from UT Austin.
Meyers explained that public health responders to Ebola outbreaks have much more time to identify and isolate cases before they infect others.
“The data suggest that this coronavirus may spread like the flu. That means we need to move quickly and aggressively to curb the emerging threat,” Meyers added.
In the study, the scientists examined more than 450 infection case reports from 93 cities in China, and found the strongest evidence yet that people without symptoms must be transmitting the virus -- known as pre-symptomatic transmission.
More than one in ten infections were from people who had the virus but did not yet feel sick, the scientists said.
While researchers across the globe had some uncertainty until now about asymptomatic transmission with the coronavirus, the new evidence could provide guidance to public health officials on how to contain the spread of the disease.
“This provides evidence that extensive control measures including isolation, quarantine, school closures, travel restrictions and cancellation of mass gatherings may be warranted,” Meyers said.
The researchers cautioned that asymptomatic transmission makes containment more difficult.
With hundreds of new cases emerging around the world every day, the scientists said, the data may offer a different picture over time.
They said infection case reports are based on people's memories of where they went and whom they had contact with, and if health officials move quickly to isolate patients, that may also skew the data.
“Our findings are corroborated by instances of silent transmission and rising case counts in hundreds of cities worldwide. This tells us that COVID-19 outbreaks can be elusive and require extreme measures,” Meyers said.
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