British police arrest 18-year-old in hunt for London train bomber

Agencies
September 16, 2017

London, Sept 16: British police said they arrested an 18-year-old man on Saturday at a Channel port in their investigation into the bombing of a London Underground train.

"The 18-year-old man was arrested by Kent Police in the port area of Dover this morning, Saturday, 16 September, under section 41 of the Terrorism Act," police said in a statement that described the arrest as "significant".

"Although we are pleased with the progress made, this investigation continues and the threat level remains at critical," police said.

The man is in custody at a local police station and will be transferred to a south London police station in "due course".

Thirty people were treated in hospital after a bomb detonated in a packed London Underground train on Friday morning, in what was Britain's fifth terror attack in six months. The toll was revised upwards by one early Saturday.

"This arrest will lead to more activity from our officers," police said.

"For strong investigative reasons we will not give any more details on the man we arrested at this stage.

"This investigation continues and the threat level remains at critical," the statement added.

The Islamic State group said an IS "detachment" had been behind the bombing.

Prime Minister Theresa May announced late Friday that the threat level had been raised to "critical -- meaning another attack could be imminent -- and said troops would take over guarding key sites to free police officers for deployment elsewhere.

Four previous attacks in London and Manchester this year claimed the lives of 35 people.

Three of those attacks involved a vehicle ploughing into pedestrians. The other was a bombing in May at a pop concert by US star Ariana Grande in Manchester which killed 22 people, including several children.

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News Network
January 29,2020

Mumbai, Jan 29: Unfazed by his suspension from flying on Tuesday, stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra on Wednesday claimed that he once again approached television journalist Arnab Goswami, who he said was his co-passenger on a flight from Lucknow, for an "honest discussion" but was turned away.

Kamra tweeted in the morning that "Arnab Goswami was again travelling in his flight while returning from Lucknow". "I again asked him politely if he wants to have a honest discussion he with his verbal arrogant hand jester he asked me to move away & I did that (sic)," he tweeted.

The comedian was suspended from flying by IndiGo and Air India on Tuesday after he allegedly heckled Goswami aboard a Mumbai-Lucknow plane and posted a video clip on his Twitter handle.

While IndiGo suspended Kamra from flying with it for a period of six months, Air India banned him until further notice.

In a statement released on Twitter after he posted the video, Kamra said he did "exactly what Republic TV journalists do to people in their private/public spaces". Kamra stated he had not done anything criminal by allegedly heckling Goswami.

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News Network
January 9,2020

New Delhi, Jan 9: JNU students who tried to march towards the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday protesting the violence on the university campus were stopped by police and later detained.

The police also resorted to baton charge to control the mob who tried to block the traffic at Janpath. Using loudspeakers, the police also appealed to the crowd to maintain peace.

Before the students tried to proceed towards the Rashtrapati Bhavan, a delegation of JNU Students' Union and JNU Teachers' Association also met Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry officials and demanded the removal of Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar from his post.

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Agencies
June 30,2020

Washington, Jun 30: Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published Monday in the US science journal PNAS.

Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009.

It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers then carried out various experiments including on ferrets, which are widely used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans -- principally fever, coughing and sneezing. 

G4 was observed to be highly infectious, replicating in human cells and causing more serious symptoms in ferrets than other viruses.

Tests also showed that any immunity humans gain from exposure to seasonal flu does not provide protection from G4.

According to blood tests which showed up antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 10.4 percent of swine workers had already been infected.

The tests showed that as many as 4.4 percent of the general population also appeared to have been exposed.

The virus has therefore already passed from animals to humans but there is no evidence yet that it can be passed from human to human -- the scientists' main worry.

"It is of concern that human infection of G4 virus will further human adaptation and increase the risk of a human pandemic," the researchers wrote.

The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs.

"The work comes as a salutary reminder that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of zoonotic pathogens and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses," said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University.

A zoonotic infection is caused by a pathogen that has jumped from a non-human animal into a human.

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