Actor Rajinikanth defends Govt on CAA, says it won't affect Indian Muslims

Mumbai, Jan 30: The Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) has arrested Dr Kafeel Khan from Mumbai airport for allegedly making inflammatory statements at AMU during protests against the Citizenship Amendments Act (CAA) last month, officials said.

Khan was arrested on Wednesday night with assistance from Mumbai Police at the airport when he arrived in the city to attend anti-CAA protests, an official said.

"Officials of the UP STF arrested Dr Kafeel Khan in a case which was registered at Civil Lines Police Station under section 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups) of IPC. Our police team helped our UP counterparts on their request," said an official from Mumbai Police.

He claimed that Khan had made inflammatory statements on December 12 last year during the protest near Bab e Syed Gate outside the Aligarh Muslim University in front of more than 600 students.

The official also alleged that the Gorakhpur doctor had made objectionable comments against Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

The FIR against Khan mentions that Swaraj India's president Yogendra Yadav was also present during the speech at AMU.

Following the arrest in the case, Khan was taken to the Sahar Police Station and after completing formalities he will be taken to UP on transit remand, the official said.

Khan, a paediatrician, had come to the limelight in 2017 when a controversy broke out after the death of over 60 children in less than a week at the BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur, UP.

New Delhi, Jun 9: Petrol price on Tuesday was hiked by 54 paise per litre and diesel by 58 paise a litre - the third straight daily increase in rates after oil PSUs ended an 82-day hiatus in rate revision.

Petrol price in Delhi was hiked to Rs 73.00 per litre from 72.46, while diesel rates were increased to Rs 71.17 a litre from Rs 70.59, according to a price notification of state oil marketing companies.

This is the third daily increase in rates in a row. Oil companies had on Sunday restarted revising prices in line with costs, after ending an 82-day hiatus.

Prices were raised by 60 paise per litre each on both petrol and diesel on Sunday as well as on Monday. In all, petrol price has gone up by Rs 1.74 per litre and diesel by Rs 1.78 a litre in three days.

Oil PSUs - Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) - had put daily price revisions on hold soon after the government on March 14, hiked excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 3 per litre each.

Oil companies did not pass on that excise duty hike, as well as the May 6 increase in tax on petrol by Rs 10 per litre and Rs 13 a litre hike on diesel by setting them off against the decline in retail prices that should have effected to reflect international oil rates falling to two-decade low.

International rates have since rebounded and oil companies having exhausted all the margin are now passing on the increase to customers, an industry official said.

Feb 22: A 20-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, travelled 400 miles(675 km) north to Anyang where she infected five relatives, without ever showing signs of infection, Chinese scientists reported on Friday, offering new evidence that the virus can be spread asymptomatically.

The case study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, offered clues about how the coronavirus is spreading, and suggested why it may be difficult to stop.

"Scientists have been asking if you can have this infection and not be ill? The answer is apparently, yes," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who was not involved in the study.

China has reported a total of 75,567 cases of the virus known as COVID-19 to the World Health Organization (WHO) including 2,239 deaths, and the virus has already spread to 26 countries and territories outside of mainland China.

Researchers have reported sporadic accounts of individuals without any symptoms spreading the virus. What's different in this study is that it offers a natural lab experiment of sorts, Schaffner said.

"You had this patient from Wuhan where the virus is, travelling to where the virus wasn't. She remained asymptomatic and infected a bunch of family members and you had a group of physicians who immediately seized on the moment and tested everyone."

According to the report by Dr Meiyun Wang of the People's Hospital of Zhengzhou University and colleagues, the woman travelled from Wuhan to Anyang on Jan. 10 and visited several relatives. When they started getting sick, doctors isolated the woman and tested her for coronavirus. Initially, the young woman tested negative for the virus, but a follow-up test was positive.

All five of her relatives developed COVID-19 pneumonia, but as of Feb. 11, the young woman still had not developed any symptoms, her chest CT remained normal and she had no fever, stomach or respiratory symptoms, such as cough or sore throat.

Scientists in the study said if the findings are replicated, "the prevention of COVID-19 infection could prove challenging."

Key questions now, Schaffner said, are how often does this kind of transmission occur and when during the asymptomatic period does a person test positive for the virus.