Maggots ate organs of Indian toddler, US doctor unable to perform autopsy

Agencies
June 27, 2019

Houston, Jun 27: When the body of 3-year-old Indian toddler Sherin Mathews reached the morgue, maggots had eaten her internal organs, the doctor who performed the autopsy on the toddler in 2017 has told jurors in Dallas, Texas.

The Indian-American foster father of Sherin, Wesley Mathews, in an unexpected move, pleaded guilty on Monday to injury to a child by omission, a lesser charge, at the start of what was supposed to be his capital murder trial.

On the second day of the trial on Tuesday, 39-year-old Mathews said in a testimony that he raised his voice at Sherin while he was trying to get her to drink her milk in the garage. That startled her, and she began to choke on the milk.

He initially claimed that as punishment for not drinking her milk he sent Sherin outside at 3 am to stand by a tree outside the backyard of their home in Richardson, Texas. When he checked in on her 15 minutes later, Mathews said Sherin was missing.

Two weeks later, when Sherin’s body was found in a nearby culvert by a cadaver dog, Mathews changed his story, claiming he “physically assisted” his adopted daughter in drinking the milk and that the toddler choked.

Mathews and his wife Sini Mathews, both from Kerala, adopted Sherin (born as Saraswati) from an orphanage in Bihar in 2016.

Dr Elizabeth Ventura, the forensic pathologist who performed Sherin’s autopsy in October 2017, testified on Tuesday about her conclusions in the toddler’s death.

Ventura said she could not determine how Sherin died as the body was too decomposed to get an official cause of death.

She told the jurors -- four women and eight men -- that maggots had eaten Sherin’s internal organs away as her body was discovered in a trash bag in a culvert two weeks after her death. Ventura said that due to the decomposition of the child’s vital organs like the heart and lungs, she was unable to perform an internal autopsy and determine her cause of death.

Complicating the issue of determining how Sherin died was the absence of other evidence, including the clothes that Mathews washed before calling to report his daughter missing.

Sherin’s body was too decomposed to determine any other medical conditions at the time of her death, she said.

She ruled the manner of Sherin’s death “homicidal violence” due to the circumstances surrounding the case, Ventura told the jurors.

The pathologist also did not agree with the claim of Mathews that Sherin choked to death on milk.

“It’s not a cause of death that I have run across,” said Ventura. “We have yet to have a case where a child died from drinking milk,” she told the jury.

Apart from Dr Ventura, authorities testified that there were many red flags surrounding Mathews that made them believe Sherin was murdered.

According to Suzanne Dakil of the Referral and Evaluation of At Risk Children Clinic (REACH), Sherin was deficient in Vitamin D, had scurvy, and showed signs of physical abuse.

Dakil testified the Sherin had five broken bones within eight months. Authorities said Mathews’ casual and uncaring attitude, coupled with other evidence and information, was enough for them to charge him with capital murder.

Mathews still faces life in prison and prosecutors urged the jury on Monday to choose that sentence. The jury could decide on a lighter sentence, US media reports said.

In his testimony, Mathews said fear prevented him from asking for help, even from his wife, Sini, a registered nurse. At first, he hoped Sherin would be revived if he prayed hard enough. For a second, he said, he wanted a venomous snake to jump from the culvert and bite him so he could be with the toddler again.

He said he acted alone because he was terrified that his wife or his other daughter would see Sherin lifeless and that Child Protective Services would get involved.

“I keep going over and over again back to that night and I keep asking myself why was I being driven by fear,” Mathews said. “I was just completely driven by fear, and I can’t imagine that level of stupidity I went to driven by fear,” Mathews was quoted as saying by the Dallas Morning News.

Mathews said he then decided to try to find a place where he could protect her body, preserving her until he could give her a proper burial.

“I refused to believe that my child had completely gone from the world,” Mathews testified on Tuesday. He said he believed if he “prayed hard and strong enough” Sherin might be resurrected, like Lazarus. Police charged Sherin’s foster monther Sini with child abandonment in November 2017, after her husband told officials the couple left Sherin alone the night of her death while they went to dinner with their biological daughter. Sini’s case was dismissed in March this year after prosecutors said they could not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

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News Network
May 20,2020

London, May 20: The current physical distancing guidelines of 6 feet may be insufficient to prevent COVID-19 transmission, according to a study which says a mild cough in low wind speeds can propel saliva droplets by as much as 18 feet.

Researchers, including those from the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, said a good baseline for studying the airborne transmission of viruses, like the one behind the COVID-19 pandemic, is a deeper understanding of how particles travel through the air when people cough.

In the study, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, they said even with a slight breeze of about four kilometres per hour (kph), saliva travels 18 feet in 5 seconds.

"The droplet cloud will affect both adults and children of different heights," said study co-author Dimitris Drikakis from the University of Nicosia.

According to the scientists, shorter adults and children could be at higher risk if they are located within the trajectory of the saliva droplets.

They said saliva is a complex fluid, which travels suspended in a bulk of surrounding air released by a cough, adding that many factors affect how saliva droplets travel in the air.

These factors, the study noted, include the size and number of droplets, how they interact with one another and the surrounding air as they disperse and evaporate, how heat and mass are transferred, and the humidity and temperature of the surrounding air.

In the study, the scientists created a computer simulation to examine the state of every saliva droplet moving through the air in front of a coughing person.

The model considered the effects of humidity, dispersion force, interactions of molecules of saliva and air, and how the droplets change from liquid to vapour and evaporate, along with a grid representing the space in front of a coughing person.

Each grid, the scientists said, holds information about variables like pressure, fluid velocity, temperature, droplet mass, and droplet position.

The study analysed the fates of nearly 1,008 simulated saliva droplets, and solved as many as 3.7 million equations.

"The purpose of the mathematical modelling and simulation is to take into account all the real coupling or interaction mechanisms that may take place between the main bulk fluid flow and the saliva droplets, and between the saliva droplets themselves," explained Talib Dbouk, another co-author of the study.

However, the researchers added that further studies are needed to determine the effect of ground surface temperature on the behaviour of saliva in air.

They also believe that indoor environments, especially ones with air conditioning, may significantly affect the particle movement through air.

This work is important since it concerns safety distance guidelines, and advances the understanding of the transmission of airborne diseases, Drikakis said.

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News Network
May 29,2020

Washington, May 29: Reiterating his offer to mediate on the border dispute between India and China, US President Donald Trump has said that he spoke with Narendra Modi about the "big conflict" and asserted that the Indian Prime Minister is not in a "good mood" over the latest flare-ups between the two countries.

Speaking with the reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday, Trump said a "big conflict" was going on between India and China.

"I like your prime minister a lot. He is a great gentleman," the president said.

"Have a big conflict …India and China. Two countries with 1.4 billion people (each). Two countries with very powerful militaries. India is not happy and probably China is not happy," he said when asked if he was worried about the border situation between India and China.

"I can tell you; I did speak to Prime Minister Modi. He is not in a good mood about what is going on with China," Trump said.

A day earlier, the president offered to mediate between India and China.

Trump on Wednesday said in a tweet that he was "ready, willing and able to mediate" between the two countries.

Responding to a question on his tweet, Trump reiterated his offer, saying if called for help, "I would do that (mediate). If they thought it would help" about "mediate or arbitrate, I would do that," he said.

India on Wednesday said it was engaged with China to peacefully resolve the border row, in a carefully crafted reaction to Trump's offer to arbitrate between the two Asian giants to settle their decades-old dispute.

"We are engaged with the Chinese side to peacefully resolve it," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, replying to a volley of questions at an online media briefing.

While the Chinese Foreign Ministry is yet to react to Trump's tweet which appears to have caught Beijing by surprise, an op-ed in the state-run Global Times said both countries did not need such a help from the US President.

"The latest dispute can be solved bilaterally by China and India. The two countries should keep alert on the US, which exploits every chance to create waves that jeopardise regional peace and order," it said.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday that both China and India have proper mechanisms and communication channels to resolve the issues through dialogue and consultations.

Trump previously offered to mediate between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, a proposal which was rejected by New Delhi.

The situation in eastern Ladakh deteriorated after around 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers were engaged in a violent face-off on the evening of May 5 which spilled over to the next day before the two sides agreed to "disengage" following a meeting at the level of local commanders.

Over 100 Indian and Chinese soldiers were injured in the violence.

The incident in Pangong Tso was followed by a similar incident in north Sikkim on May 9.

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News Network
June 2,2020

Jun 2: Pakistan's COVID-19 cases reached 76,398 on Tuesday after 3,938 new infections were reported across the country, while the death toll due to the coronavirus has gone up to 1,621, according to the health ministry.

The Ministry of National Health Services said that 78 COVID-19 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of fatalities in Pakistan to 1,621.

A total of 27, 110 people have recovered, it said.

Sindh has 29,647 patients, Punjab 27,850, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 10,485, Balochistan 4,514, Islamabad 2,893, Gilgit-Baltistan 738 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 271, it added.

The authorities have conducted 577,974 tests, including 16,548 in the last 24 hours.

The jump in the number of cases comes a day after Prime Minister Imran Khan said that people should learn to live with COVID-19 until a vaccine is developed.

Khan addressed the media after chairing the meeting of National Coordination Committee, the highest body to tackle the pandemic.

"Coronavirus will not go away until the vaccine is discovered. We need to learn to live with it and we can live with it if we follow precautions," he said.

He said the one million volunteers of the government's coronavirus force will raise awareness of the need to follow guidelines.

The government also said that all sectors will be opened slowly after deciding the negative list of businesses which will not be allowed.

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