SOUTH SARDINIA — A Scottish doctor was reunited with a Sardinian girl he saved over 25 years ago during a holiday in Cuba. Vincent Perkins, 45, revived the three-year-old Sarah Carto with Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation after she was pulled out of the swimming pool at the country’s Camaguey Province resort in 1994. “I’m that little girl you saved many years ago in Cuba,” said a jubilant Carto to Perkins during a surprise video call arranged by Perkin’s wife Dawn in the last week of December with help from the Italian media. “We talked a little. I finally had the opportunity to…
Author: zenger.news
A new species of a six-pawed mutant bug is damaging the prehistoric cave paintings at the Altamira Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the northern Spanish region of Cantabria. The discovery of the new species was published in the magazine ZooKeys after a study was conducted by researchers of Spain’s Navarra University — Enrique Baquero and Rafael Jordana — along with biologists Lucia Labrada and Carlos Gonzalez Luque, earlier this month. “The species was first found in 2000 but has been identified as a new species now,” Baquero said. “It is totally different from other species in other caves…
LAHORE — Arab royals have arrived in Pakistan to hunt the houbara bustard after the government granted them special license to kill the bird, which is classified as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The hunting fees are reported to be as much as $100,000. Eleven royal family members from the United Arab Emirates along with staff are hunting in the Chagai district of Balochistan. The king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, and six members of the royal family are hunting in areas of Sindh. The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani,…
Peshawar — The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ordered the government to rebuild a Hindu temple that was destroyed by a mob after a local cleric allegedly incited people to attack the shrine. The chief justice ordered the Evacuee Trust Property Board, which manages Sikh and Hindu religious sites, to rebuild the temple, and said that “local cleric Muhammad Sharif, who incited the people to destroy the shrine, and his gang should bear the expenses to be incurred on rebuilding the temple.” “What impression we have given to the world about minorities’ rights in the country?” Supreme Court Chief Justice…
New Delhi — While the leopard population in India increased more than 60 percent from 2014-2018, their global range is dwindling and population is declining, according to the Status of Leopards in India, 2018 recently released by the Ministry of Environment. “Great news! After lions and tigers, the leopard population increases,” tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Congratulations to all those who are working towards animal conservation. We have to keep up these efforts and ensure our animals live in safe habitats.” Photo images showed that in 2018 there were 12,852 leopards in India, whereas the number in 2014 was estimated…
Tamil Nadu — The World Bank Group’s lending to India more than doubled between 2017 and 2020 as the economy contracted, despite a number of government reforms to spur growth. The funding to India increased from $2.2 billion in 2017 to $5.11 billion in 2020, the Word Bank reported, while citing the country’s “remarkable progress in reducing absolute poverty” since the 2000s. India’s GDP contracted by 23.9 percent in the first quarter of 2020-21, the lowest in 40 years, according to the National Statistical Office, primarily due to the impact of the pandemic. The contraction narrowed to 7.5 percent in the…
Some of Chile’s majestic landscapes result from massive earthquakes, which hit all too often in this South American country. In fact, Chile lived through the strongest earthquake in the world — 9.5 degrees on the Richter scale — in 1960. Chileans have dealt with the consequences of living in a seismic area for centuries. Chile is seismic because it is part of the so-called Ring of Fire, a region in the Pacific Ocean that often experiences earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The Ring of Fire covers the western coast of the Americas from Alaska to Chile, the eastern coast of Asia,…
NAIROBI, Kenya — Nairobi’s urban slums have become the breeding grounds for well-off street gangs. Violent robbery has long been associated with young men from impoverished backgrounds. The trend, however, has changed. In Kayole estate armed robbery, knife attacks, and break-ins are organized by the wealthy children of landlords and business owners. Wycliffe Anami, a child protection volunteer based at Chief’s camp in Kayole, has dealt with many cases involving rich children. He says he has talked to the parents of the perpetrators, who are between 13 and 21 years old, but his advice has been ignored. “Majority of the…
NEW DELHI — Seven U.S. lawmakers have weighed in on the months-long protests by farmers across India, urging U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to raise the issue of farmers’ demands with the Indian government. In their letter to Pompeo on Dec. 23, the lawmakers said that Indian-Americans, especially Sikhs, are among those affected as their families work in agriculture. Family members of many Sikh Americans live in Punjab, where the protests started against three new farm laws. The laws encourage the dissolution of community markets and the removal of the minimum support price for farmers. Democrat Reps. Pramila Jayapal,…
MUMBAI — India’s drug regulator has approved two Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use — Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin —paving the way for wide-scale immunizations to begin in the country. The virus has infected over 10.3 million people in India; 9.95 million have recovered. While both vaccines were approved for “restricted use in emergency situations,” Covaxin was released “in public interest as an abundant precaution, in clinical trial mode, to have more options for vaccinations, especially in case of infection by mutant strains,” according to a press statement from the Drugs Controller General of India. The vaccines’ approvals were…