Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.
City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.
Washington, Jun 9: The defacement of Mahatma Gandhi's statue by unknown miscreants was a "disgrace", US President Donald Trump has said, days after it was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting during the nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.
The statue, which is across the road from the Indian Embassy, was vandalised on the intervening night of June 2 and 3, prompting the Indian embassy to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.
The incident happened during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
"It was a disgrace," Trump made the brief comment at the White House on Monday when asked about the incident.
The Indian Embassy here has taken up the matter with the US Department of State for early investigation into the matter, as also with the Metropolitan Police and National Park Service.
It is working with the US Department of State, Metropolitan Police and National Park Service for expeditious restoration of the statue at the park.
The US president and First Lady Melania Trump, during their visit to India in February, had spent considerable time at the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally given them a tour of the historic place.
"The First Lady and I have just had a pleasure of visiting Mahatma Gandhi's Ashram, a few miles from here, where he launched the famous Salt March," Trump had said during his address at the Namaste Trump rally at the Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad on February 24. A day later, Trump and the first lady also laid a wreath at Raj Ghat in New Delhi.
Pictures of Trump and the first lady with Gandhi's spinning wheel during their visit to the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad are seen hanging on the walls of the White House.
Last week, top US lawmakers and the Trump Campaign condemned the vandalisation of the statue.
"Very disappointing," tweeted Kimberly Guilfoyle, advisor to Donald J Trump for President Inc. and National Chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committees.
North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis said, "It's disgraceful to see the defacing of the Gandhi statue" in Washington DC.
"Gandhi was a pioneer of peaceful protesting, demonstrating the great change it can bring. Rioting, looting and vandalising do not bring us together, he said.
Senator Marco Rubio said, "more evidence that violent radicals and run of the mill crazies have hijacked legitimate protests to create anarchy or for their own purposes."
Protests against the custodial killing of Floyd turned violent in the US and prestigious monuments were damaged. In Washington DC, protestors burnt a historic church and damaged monuments like the Lincoln Memorial.
US Ambassador to India Ken Juster apologised for the incident.
"So sorry to see the desecration of the Gandhi statue in Wash, DC. Please accept our sincere apologies," he said.
"Appalled as well by the horrific death of George Floyd and the awful violence and vandalism. We stand against prejudice & discrimination of any type. We will recover and be better," he said in a tweet last week.
One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Gandhi was dedicated by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.
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.
London, Feb 12: Fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya returned to the courtroom here on Wednesday, the second day of hearing at the UK High Court, where the former billionaire has appealed against the extradition decision of Westminster Magistrates Court in December 2018.
On being asked about his expectations from the lengthy appeals process against the extradition order as today is the last day for Mallya to present his defence, the embattled former Kingfisher Airlines boss replied, "I have no clue. You see. I'll also see it. Let's not get into a speculative game."
When asked on what would happen if Mallya loses the case and has to return to India, the liquor baron responded: "We do have arguments."
The UK High Court, on Tuesday, had also heard Mallya's appeal against the Westminster Magistrates' Court order extraditing him to India to face alleged fraud and money laundering charges amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.
Mallya was present in the court along with his counsel Clare Montgomery during the hearing. Officials from Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) along with counsel Mark Summers representing the Indian government were also present.
When the judge asked if there was a timeline in the case, Clare said," This is a very dense case," involving multiple individuals and organisations and that not everything had been taken into account by the magistrate Emma Arbuthnot in her ruling against Mallya.
Montgomery contended that the magistrate's ruling had been riddled with "multiple errors". She also brought into question the admissibility of documents submitted by the Indian government - including witness statements and emails that proved crucial in the ruling by judge Arbuthnot, who found "clear evidence of misapplication of loan funds" and that there was a prima facie case of fraud against Mallya.
As she had done throughout the trial, Montgomery continued to assert that Mallya had not acted in a fraudulent manner or run a pyramid and that the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines was, in fact, the failure of a business in difficult economic circumstances.
She also reiterated concerns about the conduct of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in bringing charges against Mallya, claiming that the tycoon had been made a scapegoat.
Montgomery also stated that the Indian government had presented the loan taken out by Kingfisher Airlines, not as a simple business loan but was part of a larger and elaborate attempt at defrauding the banks by Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines management.
This, Montgomery contended, was but one example of a wider misinterpretation of the case by judge Arbuthnot.
The High Court justices reprimanded Montgomery for concentrating on the evidence - in essence rehashing the case presented at the lower court - rather than the apparent "mistakes" made by judge Arbuthnot in her ruling.
Mallya remains on bail of £650,000 as he has done throughout this legal process.
The Crown Prosecution Service which is representing the Government of India will present its case for the extradition of Mallya on Wednesday.
The 63-year-old businessman fled India in March 2016 and has been living in the UK since then.
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