SYDNEY — Lawyers behind a landmark class action over damaging Johnson & Johnson pelvic mesh implants have filed a new suit on behalf of women allegedly harmed by other pelvic implants. Multinational medical device maker Boston Scientific is accused of acting negligently and selling implants that were not fit for purpose or of acceptable quality, the case filed in the Federal Court of Australia on Monday, March 22, states. One of the women included in the class action suit says she has been in constant pain since an Obtryx sling was implanted to reposition her bladder in 2012. “It has been…
Author: zenger.news
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s threatened species list is set to grow significantly following devastating bush fires and other environmental catastrophes. Threatened Species Commissioner Helene Marsh is recommending recovery plans for more than 200 species to the federal government. “As a result of the bush fires and many other environmental catastrophes that are happening now, we are going to have a lot more species on the list, unfortunately,” she told a Senate estimates hearing in the Australian capital Canberra on March 22. “By using more tools in the toolbox, we will be able to put the structures in place for more appropriate…
BRISBANE, Australia — Olympic silver medalist Nathan Jon Baggaley and his brother Dru Anthony Baggaley have been accused of being involved in a plan to get 650 kilograms (1,433 pounds) of cocaine from a foreign vessel hundreds of kilometers off the New South Wales coast in Australia. Plane surveillance allegedly showing an offshore rendezvous has been played to the jury as the champion kayaker and his brother face charges over a botched cocaine smuggling plot. Footage from a surveillance plane from July 2018 was played on March 22 as their trial continues in the Brisbane Supreme Court. Two vessels, one significantly larger…
MUMBAI, India — Durga Rahikwar, a young man in his twenties from Ballarpur, a city in Chandrapur district in India’s western state of Maharashtra, decided to change his name to Raju in 1992. “My friends told me my hairstyle and face resembles Shah Rukh Khan, whose films were becoming very popular then,” Rahikwar told Zenger News. Raju was the name of Khan’s character in the 1992 Hindi film “Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman”. Rahikwar, now 45, had never imagined he would make a living as a lookalike actor — a popular trend in Bollywood — the Hindi film industry based out of Mumbai.…
NEW DELHI — Indian fashion designer Rahul Mishra’s schedule does not leave him with much time for television. So, during the pandemic, he made up for the deficit by watching “David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet” five times. The 2020 documentary, a “witness statement,” by British natural historian Sir David Frederick Attenborough on the condition of our planet, and how it may be saved, left him disturbed, yet hopeful. Mishra is the owner of one of India’s biggest sustainable couture brands and is the only Indian designer to have been invited to show at the prestigious Paris Haute Couture Week twice…
MUMBAI, India — Fifty years ago, Admiral Vijai Singh Shekhawat was busy giving instructions to his team while commanding the INS Karanj, a Foxtrot class submarine commissioned in 1969 at Riga in the erstwhile Soviet Union. “Our orders were to detect the enemy ships and attack if confirmed that it was an enemy warship,” Shekhawat, now retired, told Zenger News, recalling his time deep down in the sea during the 1971 battle with Pakistan over the liberalization of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). “In those days it was impossible to say whether a particular ship you have detected was an enemy ship…
PUNE, India — “I went back a generation behind and realized that the birth of a girl is celebrated, but while celebrating that birth, the family starts implanting fear in her mind,” Manish Kelshikar, a 49-year-old entrepreneur based in Mumbai, told Zenger News. “Don’t go there, don’t use this washroom, this is not safe, this is not accessible, this is not hygienic, you will get an infection.” In 2019, Kelshikar, along with his wife Rupali, started Woloo, which stands for women’s loo and is India’s first chain of women’s powder rooms. Supreet Shah, a former engineer with Infosys, and Amit Arondekar, who has 12…
MUMBAI, India — Milkha Singh was a track athlete who won India medals in Commonwealth Games and narrowly missed out on an Olympic one, Mary Kom brought home a boxing bronze medal from the 2012 Olympics, and M. S. Dhoni led the Indian cricket them to World Cup glory in 2011. While their track and field successes were avidly followed by millions of Indians, there was also enormous curiosity about their lives and their success stories, from the small towns of the country to the global stage. Enter Bollywood — the Hindi film industry based out of Mumbai — which has…
ARMIDALE, Australia — The Australian Federal Police arrested a 40-year-old man suspected of holding a woman hostage for years. The suspect, identified as James Robert Davis, a former Australian Defense Force member, allegedly assaulted the victim and used her as a sex slave. Davis was arrested in the city of Armidale in the Australian state of New South Wales at around 8 AM on March 11. “The man allegedly held a woman hostage in slave-like conditions from 2012 to 2015 as part of a cult where she was subjected to ongoing physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and degradation,” said the police officials. The…
SAINT PETERSBURG, Russia — A Russian woman from the city of Saint Petersburg won the best Decorative Figure prize at the UK’s Cake International competition with her fearsome-looking Predator desert. Tatyana Kholodtsova, 48, took a total of 40 hours to create the Predator, also the title character of a film series of the same name. “Creating tasty figures is my favorite pastime over the past ten years. I love doing it,” said Kholodtsova. Kholodtsova is a gold and a silver Cake International winner. Her creative career as a cake artist started in 2013. Since then, she has been teaching anatomical modeling in cakes. Today,…