[News] Around The Rest of World

A posting place for news from places around the globe, outside of the US/Europe.

This also kills otherwise hale people, where as far as I know influenza only kills the infirm. I suspect mortality ends up being >4%.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

Well google tells me the fatality rate of the new virus is two percent, much higher than seasonal flu although lower than SARS. This could be exaggerated by where the majority of cases have occurred so far and the quality of healthcare there. The fatality rate is likely to be lower in Europe I presume.

Anyway, as someone who gets a flu vaccination every year and practices preventative hygiene, I’m also concerned about this outbreak.

Sure, but virulance is a combination of transmissibility and severity. While you could argue that the published fatality rate right now is 2% (I agree that this number is probably a reflection of local healthcare quality and would likely be substantially lower in the USA and Western Europe), it doesn't seem to be a particularly transmissible virus. This is compared to something like Measles, which has a transmission rate exceeding 90%. If someone on an aircraft has Measles, every unvaccinated person on that plane is almost certainly walking off infected. With the latest coronavirus? Probably not.

I'm not saying that it isn't worthwhile to keep an eye on it for more concerning signs, but I do wonder how many people who are running out to buy (fairly pointless) face-masks and are waving their hands in the air about the new doom virus are the same people who skipped their flu shot and declined to vaccinate their kids with MMRV.

Locally, we have a plan in place to handle it just the way we would any other infectious agent. But until it proves to be something more in the vein of SARS or MERS, I think the media coverage is perhaps a little breathless. Quarantined cities make for dramatic news though, so I don't expect it to stop.

Suvanto wrote:

...influenza only kills the infirm.

Uh, no. Traditionally the very young and very old are vulnerable. As are the immunocompromised and those with significant pulmonary comorbidities (e.g. COPD). However, the H1N1 ("Swine flu") strain killed somewhere in the region of 17,000 people in the USA, and was notable for actually being worse in young, healthy individuals with strong immune systems. The 1918 "Spanish Flu" killed indiscriminately, irrespective of age or health status, and killed so many millions of people that to this day we don't have an accurate idea of the actual number of deaths.

Trust me, there's no such thing as "just the Flu".

I feel like "it's just the flu" is a thing said exclusively by people who've never really had a case of it. Even for a healthy person it is pretty debilitating.

thrawn82 wrote:

I feel like "it's just the flu" is a thing said exclusively by people who've never really had a case of it. Even for a healthy person it is pretty debilitating.

Wife and I just got over the flu and it messed us up something fierce. She was bed ridden for three days and I had to go to emergency once I started coughing up blood. Luckily, the blood part was unrelated and had to do with a minor bacterial infection in my lungs and a post-viral cough. The flu SUCKS and if you have it, you're out for a while.

Coldstream wrote:

I really wish people were this concerned about Influenza, which is staggeringly more virulent. Thus far the CDC reports that in the USA alone there have been 13 million influenza illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 6,600 influenza-related deaths. In contrast, China has had only 4,500 coronavirus infections and 106 coronavirus-related deaths.

Influenza is a known threat with a known virulence level. The CDC isn't screaming about the influenza numbers because they are entirely consistent with previous years. We've also distributed 173 million doses of vaccine for it since September of last year.

The coronavirus, on the other hand, is an unknown threat that was discovered less than a month ago. We currently don't have a vaccine or know how long it would take to develop and then distribute said vaccine. That 2019-nCoV apparently spread from animal-to-human contact is exceptionally concerning because, historically, diseases that make that jump are on the deadlier side (which was why everyone was worried about SARS and MERS).

Coldstream wrote:

Sure, but virulance is a combination of transmissibility and severity. While you could argue that the published fatality rate right now is 2% (I agree that this number is probably a reflection of local healthcare quality and would likely be substantially lower in the USA and Western Europe), it doesn't seem to be a particularly transmissible virus. This is compared to something like Measles, which has a transmission rate exceeding 90%. If someone on an aircraft has Measles, every unvaccinated person on that plane is almost certainly walking off infected. With the latest coronavirus? Probably not.

I'm not saying that it isn't worthwhile to keep an eye on it for more concerning signs, but I do wonder how many people who are running out to buy (fairly pointless) face-masks and are waving their hands in the air about the new doom virus are the same people who skipped their flu shot and declined to vaccinate their kids with MMRV.

Locally, we have a plan in place to handle it just the way we would any other infectious agent. But until it proves to be something more in the vein of SARS or MERS, I think the media coverage is perhaps a little breathless. Quarantined cities make for dramatic news though, so I don't expect it to stop.

Humanity is long overdue for a pandemic. The last one was the Spanish Influenza in 1918 that managed to infect half a billion people globally--a quarter of the world's population back then--with only slow-ass boat travel. 50 million people died.

Now the world's population is four times as large--with most people living in crowded cities--and someone can travel half the globe in a day.

And public health officials are concerned that our healthcare infrastructure isn't quite up to the task of a pandemic. In the states we haven't organized a country-wide vaccination program since we eradicated polio in the 50s. And now we have to deal with HMOs, privatized hospitals, and the fact that there are about 45 million Americans who don't have any health insurance.

That China is quarantining entire cities should give you pause. They are clearly worried about the disease spreading.

More like worried about the perception of not taking action to stop the disease from spreading. They don't want to lose face, but in reality there's really nothing they can do at this point because people are stupid.

Living with the Coronavirus

Chairman_Mao wrote:

More like worried about the perception of not taking action to stop the disease from spreading. They don't want to lose face, but in reality there's really nothing they can do at this point because people are stupid.

I agree with you, in part.

But quarantining cities is also what public health officials would argue for rather than waiting to shut the barn doors after the horse has bolted.

Now the world's population is four times as large--with most people living in crowded cities--and someone can travel half the globe in a day.

And with an ever growing segment of the population, at least in this country (can't speak to others) where people believe basically any vaccine is automatically worse than the thing it's preventing... or is some conspiracy by Big Pharma to make money... or is part of some other ridiculous conspiracy... All of which will only work to undermine any treatments/preventative measures we might take.

OG_slinger wrote:

But quarantining cities is also what public health officials would argue for rather than waiting to shut the barn doors after the horse has bolted.

Except that public health officials outside of China are not arguing for that.

So disease response experts are having trouble figuring out what China’s public health officials plan to do here, how they’ll do it, or why. In an outbreak, by the time you try something as ambitious as quarantining a megacity, it’s already too late to quarantine the megacity.

As a public health tool, quarantine has a deep history. For diseases against which you have no pharmaceutical defense—which was the case for basically every disease for most of human history—what else can you do? Large-scale ones chased and followed every great epidemic from the 12th century European plague to cholera to smallpox to influenza. But once people figured out that pathogens like bacteria and viruses cause disease, other interventions came to supercede if not outright replace quarantine, or what public health experts today call social distancing. “The problem with social distancing is that we have very little evidence that it works,” says Larry Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. “At most, it might delay for a short time an outbreak, but it’s very unlikely to stop the progressive spread.”

By the time you quarantine a city—if it is even possible to do so—it would already be too late if the pandemic were really that bad.

Quarantine at that scale is big, flashy, headline-grabbing and dubiously effective or proportionate. Exactly the kind of thing a government does when it wants to look like it's responding to a crisis.

So far, the global health community is concerned by the new coronavirus but isn't raising the alarm. I suppose maybe China knows something we don't and is sitting on apocalyptic piles of bodies, but you would think that would have come out by now.

It got Hong Kong out of the news cycle too.

LeapingGnome wrote:

It got Hong Kong out of the news cycle too.

And, just to be paranoid, I don't think the Chinese government minds a little practice quarantining and isolating a city, or having a plausible excuse to do so again floating around.

Refugees in South Africa: 'Give us a place where we can be safe'

Hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers have been crammed into a church in the centre of the South African city of Cape Town for four months. They are desperate to move to another country, as Vumani Mkhize reports.

The air is thick with the smell of too many people confined in one space.

Blankets, making up temporary beds, are strewn all over.

The cacophony of children's playful laughter rises above the scene, but it cannot mask the plight of the more than 500 refugees and asylum seekers who have sought refuge inside Cape Town's Central Methodist Church.

Last October this group, made up of people from across the continent, staged a sit-in protest outside the offices of the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR), demanding to be resettled outside South Africa.

Armed with an eviction order, police tried to forcibly remove them and images of stun grenades and weeping children desperately clinging to their mothers shocked the nation.

At the time the UNHCR said it had been "encouraging [the protesters] to participate in constructive dialogue to address their grievances".

"South Africa is a generous host country with progressive asylum policies and laws," it added.

In their time of need the church offered the group sanctuary. They have remained there ever since.

Nadine Nkurukiye escaped unrest at home in Burundi and has been living in South Africa for 13 years, but has not been granted asylum.

While in South Africa, a place where she thought she was safe, she was attacked and raped by a man who remains at large.

"There is no help, there is no-one who can show you the way to go," Ms Nkurukiye tells the BBC as she wipes away her tears.

Her voice breaking as she recounts her horrific ordeal, she says her problems are compounded by South Africa's inefficient asylum process, where applicants can spend years waiting for refugee status.

"What I'm only asking is for the UNHCR to help us, to give us a place where we can be safe. Where they can accept us like human beings, because South Africa doesn't treat us like human beings," Ms Nkurukiye says.

Since 2008, there have been numerous outbreaks of xenophobic violence targeting foreign nationals from the rest of the continent in townships across the country.


Brazil: judge dismisses cybercrimes accusations against Glenn Greenwald

I have profoundly mixed feelings about Glenn, but this is good and those charges were total politically motivated horsesh*t to shut down a Bolsonaro administration critic.

A judge in Brazil’s capital has dismissed accusations that the journalist Glenn Greenwald was involved in hacking phones of officials, following weeks of criticism that his prosecution would infringe on constitutional protections for the press.

Prosecutors last month leveled accusations that Greenwald helped a group of six people hack into phones of hundreds of local authorities, saying his actions amounted to criminal association and illegal interception of communications.

Greenwald’s online media outlet The Intercept Brasil has published a series of excerpts from private conversations on a messaging app involving the current justice minister.

The leaked excerpts appeared to show that Sergio Moró, then a judge, improperly coordinated with prosecutors during high-profile corruption investigations – including the case that imprisoned the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Thursday’s decision by the Brasilia-based judge, Ricardo Leite, invoked an earlier ruling by the supreme court Justice Gilmar Mendes, who barred investigations of Greenwald and The Intercept Brasil in relation to the alleged hacking.

Fear in Mexico as twin deaths expose threat to monarch butterflies and their defenders

The annual migration of monarch butterflies from the US and Canada is one of the most resplendent sights in the natural world – a rippling orange-and-black wave containing millions of butterflies fluttering instinctively southward to escape the winter cold.

The spectacle when they reach their destination in central Mexico is perhaps even more astonishing. Patches of alpine forest turn from green to orange as the monarchs roost in the fir trees, the sheer weight of butterflies causing branches to sag to the point of snapping. Tens of thousands of the insects bounce haphazardly overhead, searching replenishment from nearby plants.

To witness this sight is as if to enter a waking dream. “People have a spiritual and emotional connection to monarchs,” said Sonia Altizer, a monarch butterfly researcher at the University of Georgia. “Many people tell me that seeing them was a highlight of their life.”

The recent deaths of two butterfly conservationists in the region has, however, drawn attention to a troubling tangle of disputes, resentments and occasional bouts of harrowing violence that has lingered over the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a sprawling world heritage site situated 60 miles north-west of Mexico City.

Mustachioed and gregarious, Homero Gómez González tirelessly promoted the El Rosario sanctuary, a section of the butterfly reserve that receives the bulk of tourists who come from around the world to see the monarchs. He featured in mesmerizing social media videos – posing with butterflies fluttering around him – and called the creatures “a marvel of nature”.

Gómez, who was 50, disappeared on 13 January after attending a patron saint festival in the municipality of Ocampo; his body was found two weeks later at the bottom of a watering hole. His death has yet to be ruled a murder, although police say he suffered a blunt trauma to the head.

The incident raised fears that gangs, possibly tied to the illegal logging of the butterfly reserve, had targeted Gómez for his advocacy of ecotourism over the felling of trees in this rugged swath of Mexico where communities, often beset by poverty, have traditionally relied upon the harvesting of timber, potatoes and wheat.

Those concerns were further heightened this week after the death of a part-time tour guide from another nearby butterfly sanctuary, called Raúl Hernández Romero. His body was found 1 February with injuries possibly inflicted by a sharp object.

“The panorama for the community, the forest and the monarch butterflies is now very complicated and uncertain,” Amado Gómez González, one of Gómez’s nine siblings, told the Guardian.

“There are now these two crimes and it has spread fear. You find yourself thinking ‘What if this is a group that is coming to try and take the sanctuary away from us?”

Investigations into the two deaths are ongoing. But some conservationists fret they are a byproduct of the violence that has long troubled the state of Michoacán, which stretches from the mountains of central Mexico to the west coast.

How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart

Soon after the violence began, on 5 January, Aamir was standing outside a residence hall in Jawaharlal Nehru University in south Delhi. Aamir, a PhD student, is Muslim, and he asked to be identified only by his first name. He had come to return a book to a classmate when he saw 50 or 60 people approaching the building. They carried metal rods, cricket bats and rocks. One swung a sledgehammer. They were yelling slogans: “Shoot the traitors to the nation!” was a common one. Later, Aamir learned that they had spent the previous half-hour assaulting a gathering of teachers and students down the road. Their faces were masked, but some were still recognisable as members of a Hindu nationalist student group that has become increasingly powerful over the past few years.

The group, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP), is the youth wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Founded 94 years ago by men who were besotted with Mussolini’s fascists, the RSS is the holding company of Hindu supremacism: of Hindutva, as it’s called. Given its role and its size, it is difficult to find an analogue for the RSS anywhere in the world. In nearly every faith, the source of conservative theology is its hierarchical, centrally organised clergy; that theology is recast into a project of religious statecraft elsewhere, by other parties. Hinduism, though, has no principal church, no single pontiff, nobody to ordain or rule. The RSS has appointed itself as both the arbiter of theological meaning and the architect of a Hindu nation-state. It has at least 4 million volunteers, who swear oaths of allegiance and take part in quasi-military drills.

The word often used to describe the RSS is “paramilitary”. In its near-century of existence, it has been accused of plotting assassinations, stoking riots against minorities and acts of terrorism. (Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead in 1948 by an RSS man, although the RSS claims he had left the organisation by then.) The RSS doesn’t, by itself, engage in electoral politics. But among its affiliated groups is the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), the party that has governed India for the past six years, and that has, under the prime minister Narendra Modi, been remaking India into an authoritarian, Hindu nationalist state.

It was nearly 7pm when Aamir saw the approaching mob. At that time in mid-winter, the campus of JNU, perhaps India’s most influential state-run university, is unnervingly dark. It spreads over more than 400 hectares of wooded land, sealed off by a wall from the rest of south Delhi. Residence halls sit in groves of acacia and borage. To get anywhere from the gate requires a bicycle, an auto rickshaw or a long walk. The university’s 8,000 students appear to occupy a remote world unto themselves. Since its founding in 1969, though, JNU has functioned as a microcosm of national politics. The ideologies of its students and faculty – exhibited in its hyperactive student politics – have traditionally been liberal, leftist and secular. Through its academics, JNU frequently moulded government policy; its graduates went into the media, major non-profits, the law or leftist parties. Over the years, JNU has stood for much of what the conservative, ethnocentric BJP has resented about the country it governs today. The university has been like a stone in the boot of the BJP, hobbling the party with every step.

When he spotted the mob, Aamir ran into the dorms, up the stairs and into his friend’s room. They locked the door, then hid on the balcony. They heard the attackers shattering panes of glass, barging into rooms and beating students. Aamir silenced his phone. “I was sure they’d break my arms and legs if they caught me,” he said. The mob had come with clear intent, targeting students and faculty who had been critical of the BJP: a Muslim student from Kashmir, teachers with ties to the political left, members of groups that championed underprivileged castes. The president of the JNU student union, Aishe Ghosh, received a deep gash to her head and her arm was broken. The rooms of ABVP allies, though, were spared.

Later, it emerged that the university’s own cadre of ABVP had been bolstered by students from other universities – and perhaps by people who weren’t students at all, people who were just RSS muscle. Rohit Azad, who has spent two decades at the university, first as a student and then a professor of economics, told me that although he had seen his share of violence between student groups, “this thing – this act of bringing in attackers from outside – that was unprecedented”. It was as if the Young Republicans had invited some alt-right thugs to join them in running amok through Berkeley, beating up black and Hispanic students, Young Democrats and anyone who’d expressed support for Bernie Sanders.

Videos of the attacks leaked out through social media in real time. The police were called, but they didn’t move to stop the violence. Instead, a posse of policemen installed itself at JNU’s gate, allowing no one in. Yogendra Yadav, a political activist, arrived at the gate at 9pm. Ninety minutes later, the attackers emerged, still masked and armed. Even then, the police detained no one. Instead, they were permitted to walk away as if nothing had happened. When Yadav’s colleague took photos, Yadav was set upon by a knot of men, knocked down and kicked in the face. The police did nothing. Later, from a video, Yadav identified a local ABVP official among those who had hit him. In a statement, the ABVP blamed the attacks on “leftist goons,” but on television members admitted that the masked, armed men and women on campus were part of the ABVP. Still, the Delhi police pressed no charges. “The police gave the goons cover, gave them free rein on campus,” Yadav said. A JNU professor went further, claiming that: “The police are complicit.”

'Nothing will change': apathy and a lack of queues on election day in Iran

At dawn, Dr Mostafa, a psychologist, went to pray at the Imamzadeh Saleh shrine in north Tehran before taking the short walk to be the first in line at the polling booth. So determined was he to do his religious duty and show his support for the supreme leader, that he voted in Friday’s parliamentary elections as soon as the polling booth opened at 8am. “We all have a duty to vote, if we want to be responsible citizens,” said Mostafa, who claims to have worked for the Iranian delegation in the Hague. Saying he had voted for the Conservatives, he added that he believed the US was “a liar”, insisting: “The parliament should never have believed American promises.”

But such enthusiasm for the parliamentary elections is likely to be the exception. By mid-afternoon there was just a smattering of people queuing to vote by the same mosque, while the nearby Tajrish bazaar was, in contrast, teeming. The mosque itself, too, seemed more attractive to mid-afternoon visitors than the chance to vote.

Some people recalled the queue at the same polling booth in the equivalent election five years ago snaking back half a kilometre.

Drawing conclusions about turnout from visiting a handful of polling stations is dangerous, and Tehran, along with Iran’s other big cities, may not be representative of the national mood. But the early signs on a chilly but sunny day were that huge numbers had decided to ignore Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s urgent call to send America a message and to show their support for the regime by turning out to vote.

At 3pm, the head of National Election Headquarters, Jamal Orfi, said around 11m votes had been cast up until then. This constitutes slightly less than 20% of all eligible voters. The Iranian authorities extended polling by two hours in a probable sign that they needed more time to urge people to vote to boost the flagging turn out.

Late on Friday, the government said it would delay announcing an initial turnout estimate until Saturday, after twice postponing the closure of the polling stations.

Official state TV claimed the polling stations were being kept open due to the high turnout across the country, but official figures earlier in the day suggested a relatively low turnout.

In Tehran the provincial governor said 9.6 million people were entitled to vote, but by noon only 700,000 had done so. Iranian journalists at polling stations claimed it could be a record low turnout. On Twitter shots of deserted polling stations proliferated.

I believe the group that approves candidates removed anyone not conservative from the ballot so yeah nothing will change.

Yeah I was going to ask is it a real election with different candidates or a sham election with only people the current power group supports?

Well, i'm sure you'll all be shocked to learn that Iran's Conservatives and Hardliners are expected to win in a landslide. A landslide featuring record-low turnout (the lowest since the 1979 revolution).

Iran has seen the lowest turnout in a parliamentary election since the 1979 revolution, with 42.6% of eligible voters casting their ballots.

Officials had banned more than 16,000 contenders, many of them reformers.

Hardliners are set for big gains in the first vote since US sanctions resumed.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described Friday's turnout as stunning, as he said Iran's enemies had tried to put people off voting by exaggerating the coronavirus outbreak.

"This negative propaganda about the virus began a couple of months ago and grew larger ahead of the election," he said, according to his official website Khamenei.ir.

"Their media did not miss the tiniest opportunity for dissuading Iranian voters and resorting to the excuse of disease and the virus."

Uh-huh.

Death toll from Delhi's worst riots in decades rises to 38

The death toll from Delhi’s worst riots in decades has risen to 38, as a political row broke out over the transfer of a judge who criticised the police and government’s handling of the crisis.

Tensions remained high in India’s capital, as thousands of riot police and paramilitaries patrolled streets littered with the debris from days of sectarian riots.

Justice S. Muralidhar, a Delhi high court judge, sharply criticised the police and called on officers to investigate politicians from Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata party for inciting violence.

Muralidhar was transferred to another state court in a late-night order, prompting an outcry among opposition politicians and on social media. Manish Tewari, opposition Congress party leader, said every lawyer and judge in India should strongly protest what he called a crude attempt to intimidate the judiciary.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, the law minister, insisted it was a “routine transfer”.

The violence began over a disputed new citizenship law on Monday, which led to clashes between Muslims and Hindus in which hundreds were injured. Many suffered gunshot wounds, while arson, looting and stone-throwing also took place.

Mexico: activists voice anger at Amlo's failure to tackle 'femicide emergency'

Each day, María Salguero’s inbox floods with alerts telling the interminable tale of Mexico’s femicide crisis: “woman’s corpse”, “woman dismembered”, “woman stoned”, “woman stabbed”.

For the past four years the Mexico City activist has made a daily mission of documenting the death toll, and pinpointing each of the crimes and victims on an online map.

When Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected in 2018, Salguero hoped Mexico’s supposedly progressive new president would take decisive action to slow a wave of killing that last year claimed the lives of 3,825 women.

Instead, Salguero’s research tells her things are getting worse: 10 or 11 women are now being killed each day, compared to six when she launched her map in 2016.

And – like many Mexican feminists – she voices frustration at the politician popularly known as Amlo.

“I feel betrayed, because I was one of those who voted for him,” said Salguero, 40. “We trusted that things could be different – but now we are seeing that this is just more of the same.”

Salguero is not alone.

After a politically explosive start to 2020, in which two horrific femicides sparked street protests and catapulted gender violence to the top of Mexico’s political agenda, many former Amlo supporters are expressing disenchantment.

Masked feminists daubed their discontent on to the presidential palace last month with slogans such as “Amlo is killing us” and “Let’s abort Amlo”.

“We all believed that with him things would be different. I thought this too,” said Frida Guerrera, a journalist and activist who recently confronted Mexico’s president at his morning press conference.

Microphone in hand, Guerrera implored Amlo to do more to fight Mexico’s “femicide emergency”.

“Femicide exists. We should never, ever deny that,” she said, demanding to know why Mexico lacked a special prosecutor’s office to deal with such crimes. “I’m sorry to raise my voice. [But] what is the president’s stance towards us women?”

Guerrera – who tells the stories of femicide victims on her blog - insisted she had not intended to pick a fight with Amlo.

“I’m not Andrés Manuel’s enemy,” she said. “I went because I don’t want to write any more stories - and because I truly believe we must treat this as a national emergency – and they do not want to accept this.”

But Amlo’s reaction did nothing to reassure Guerrera, or other women’s rights activists who believe the president’s response to the crisis has been haughty and evasive.

Prederick wrote:

Death toll from Delhi's worst riots in decades rises to 38

The death toll from Delhi’s worst riots in decades has risen to 38, as a political row broke out over the transfer of a judge who criticised the police and government’s handling of the crisis.

Tensions remained high in India’s capital, as thousands of riot police and paramilitaries patrolled streets littered with the debris from days of sectarian riots.

Justice S. Muralidhar, a Delhi high court judge, sharply criticised the police and called on officers to investigate politicians from Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata party for inciting violence.

Muralidhar was transferred to another state court in a late-night order, prompting an outcry among opposition politicians and on social media. Manish Tewari, opposition Congress party leader, said every lawyer and judge in India should strongly protest what he called a crude attempt to intimidate the judiciary.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, the law minister, insisted it was a “routine transfer”.

The violence began over a disputed new citizenship law on Monday, which led to clashes between Muslims and Hindus in which hundreds were injured. Many suffered gunshot wounds, while arson, looting and stone-throwing also took place.

Why India doesen't explode like a powderkeg is a mystery to me. It seems to me as a shattered piece of plexiglass sagging under its own weight held together by a thin layer of plastic.

With Corona things are going to get ugly fast.

Yeah corona is terrible. Hopefully Zima will make a comeback to save us all from terrible beer. God I miss Zima, the nectar of the gods.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Yeah corona is terrible. Hopefully Zima will make a comeback to save us all from terrible beer. God I miss Zima, the nectar of the gods.

didn't they re-release it? or was that a limited run thing?

thrawn82 wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:

Yeah corona is terrible. Hopefully Zima will make a comeback to save us all from terrible beer. God I miss Zima, the nectar of the gods.

didn't they re-release it? or was that a limited run thing?

It's still available in some places. In naval aviation, it's used as a prank. The game is to get a person to accept the bottle, usually cunningly disguised or contained in something else. Once they are in possession, they are required to drink the entire bottle in front of everyone for our amusement. For the squadrons based in Japan, at least, it's a brave aviator who doesn't safety-check a gift for hidden Zima.

nvm