London,June 02,2022: Britain is seeing daily infections of the rare monkeypox virus that are unconnected to any travel to West Africa, where the disease is endemic, a health official said on Sunday.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said new figures would be released on Monday, after it registered 20 cases on Friday.
Asked if community transmission was now the norm in Britain, UKHSA chief medical adviser Susan Hopkins said “absolutely”.
“We are finding cases that have no identified contact with an individual from West Africa, which is what we’ve seen previously in this country,” she told BBC television.
“We are detecting more cases on a daily basis.”
Hopkins declined to confirm reports that one individual was in intensive care, but said the outbreak was concentrated in urban areas, among gay or bisexual men.
“The risk of the general population remains extremely low at the moment, and I think people need to be alert to it,” she said, adding that for most adults, symptoms would be “relatively mild”.
The first UK case was announced on May 7, in a patient who had recently travelled to Nigeria. The disease is also spreading in Europe and North America.
Monkeypox can be transmitted through contact with skin lesions and droplets of a contaminated person, as well as shared items such as bedding and towels.
Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, exhaustion and a chickenpox-like rash on the hands and face. They usually clear up after two to four weeks.
There is no specific treatment but vaccination against smallpox has been found to be about 85 percent effective in preventing monkeypox.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said the UK government had already started buying up stocks of smallpox vaccine.
“We’re taking it very, very seriously,” he told the BBC.
May 31,2022:Canada’s government introduced legislation Monday to implement a “national freeze” on the sale and purchase of handguns as part of a gun control package that would also limit magazine capacities and ban some toys that look like guns.
The new legislation, which resurrects some measures that were shelved last year amid a national election, comes just a week after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in their classroom in Uvalde, Texas.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters the new measures were needed as gun violence was increasing.
Mangaluru (Karnataka), May 27,2022: Muslim students of University College in Managluru on Thursday visited Deputy Commissioner’s office to submit a memorandum to allow the wearing of hijab in classrooms.
This came after the degree college, on May 16, issued a ban on hijab or a headscarf inside the campus.
“Nothing had happened after the court verdict, we wrote exams peacefully. But we received an unofficial note recently to attend classes without a hijab. We went to the principal, with HC’s order and tried to speak with him. He said that he was helpless. VC said the same,” said Fathima, a student.
Students of Mangalore University College on Thursday staged a protest on the campus against wearing Hijab in classrooms. The students condemned the college for failing to implement the Karnataka High Court’s order on Hijab within educational institutions.
Hijab protests in Karnataka took place in January-February this year when some students of Government Girls PU college in the Udupi district of the state alleged that they had been barred from attending classes. During the protests, some students claimed they were denied entry into the college for wearing hijab.
Stating that wearing the hijab is not an essential religious practice in Islam and freedom of religion under Article 25 of the Constitution is subject to reasonable restrictions, a full bench of the Karnataka High Court on March 16 dismissed a batch of petitions filed by Muslim girls studying in pre-university colleges in Udupi seeking the right to wear hijabs in classrooms.
The Court also upheld an order issued on February 5 by the state, which suggested that wearing hijabs can be restricted in government colleges where uniforms are prescribed — and ruled that “prescription of a school uniform” is a “reasonable restriction” that is “Constitutionally permissible”.
May 27,2022:After a cabinet meeting in West Bengal, Bratyabrata Basu, the Minister of Education of the state announced that the state cabinet in the meeting gave its consent to the proposal to replace Governor with Chief Minister as the Chancellor of all state universities.
“This proposal will soon be introduced as a bill in the assembly” the Minister said to the reporters just a few days after he had informed of friction between Governor Dhankhar and the government. The recent point of friction was over appointments of vice-chancellors across universities. Governor Dhankhar had earlier alleged that the state government had appointed several Vice-Chancellors without Raj Bhavan’s consent.