[Nasheman news] London A decade after an American was “first” cured of HIV using stem cell transplant, a British man has experienced sustained remission from the disease for over an year, after receiving a similar transplant of virus-resistant cells raising prospects of a cure, said doctors, including one of Indian-origin.

The new “London patient” — who prefers to remain anonymous — was treated with stem cell transplants from donors with a rare genetic mutation known as CCR5-delta 32, which made him resistant to HIV, just like the first cured case of Timothy Ray Brown, better known as the “Berlin patient”.

The “London patient” has been in remission for 18 months since he stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, according to the study published in the journal Nature. 

“By achieving remission in a second patient using a similar approach, we have shown that the Berlin Patient was not an anomaly and that it really was the treatment approached that eliminated HIV in these two people,” lead author Ravindra Gupta, Professor at University College London, was quoted as saying by CNN.

The method used may not be appropriate for all patients but offers hope for new treatment strategies, including gene therapies, Gupta added. 

The London patient is under observation, as it is still too early to say that he has been cured of HIV, the report said.

Nearly one million people die annually from HIV-related causes. Treatment for HIV, known as antiretroviral therapy, involves medications that suppress the virus, which people with HIV need to take for their entire lives.

The London patient was first diagnosed with HIV infection in 2003 and began antiretroviral therapy in 2012. Later, he was also diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma — cancer of the immune system. 

After undergoing chemotherapy, he also underwent a stem cell transplant in 2016, and subsequently remained on antiretroviral drugs for 16 months.

Later, he went without drugs to test whether he was truly in HIV-1 remission. 

The London patient has now been in remission for 18 months, and doctors have confirmed that his HIV viral load remains undetectable, the report said.

Similarly, the Berlin Patient had been living with HIV and routinely using antiretroviral drugs when he was diagnosed with a different disease called acute myeloid leukemia — cancer of the blood and bone marrow. 

After two bone marrow transplants, Brown was considered cured of his HIV-1 infection. 

Traces of HIV were seen in Brown’s blood a few years after he stopped antiretroviral drugs. However, because the HIV remained undetectable, he is still considered clinically cured of his infection, according to his doctors.

Despite various attempts by scientists using the same approach, Brown had remained the only person cured of HIV until the new London patient, CNN reported.

[Nasheman news] Thiruvananthapuram Following farmer suicides in Kerala amid recovery notices being issued to them in the aftermath of the century’s worst flood last year, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday announced fresh sops for farmers, including a moratorium on repayment of loans that will be extended till December 31.

Aiming to aid the distressed Kerala agriculture sector that faced huge losses especially in Idukki and Wayanad districts where thousands of hectares of farm land was damaged, Vijayan said: “From now on in all districts of the state barring Idukki and Wayanad, loans taken by farmers till March 2014 would get the benefit of the moratorium.” 

This was earlier fixed for all loans taken till March 2011.

“Farmers in Idukki and Wayanad will get this benefit on all loans taken till August 31, 2018,” he added.

The decision came following reports of half a dozen farmer suicides in Idukki district over the past two months.

“Hitherto it was only the loans taken by farmers from the cooperative banks that got the benefit from the Kerala State Farmers’ Debt Relief Commission.

“We have now asked the Agriculture and Planning Departments to have a look into the loans taken from commercial banks and public sector banks. Moreover, the limit of the loans that get the benefit of moratorium has now been increased form Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh,” said Vijayan.

In the aftermath of last year’s floods, banks in the state have been using the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Securities Interest Act, 2002, (also known as the Sarfaesi Act) to recover loans from farmers.

As part of this recovery process, notices were being sent to auction residential or commercial properties of those who default.

Close to 15,000 farmers in Idukki district alone have received recovery notices from both commercial and cooperative banks.

According to official statistics, the floods damaged around 11,000 hectares of agricultural land in Idukki leaving almost 35,000 farmers in distress.

Vijayan, on Wednesday will also preside over the meeting of the State Level Bankers Committee here and is expected to demand that the public sector and commercial banks adopt the same stand that the state government has taken.

He said the compensation for the losses suffered by farmers on cash crops has also been increased.

For every yielding areca nut tree that has been damaged, prices have been hiked from Rs 150 to Rs 300, cocoa from Rs 100 to Rs 200, coffee Rs 100 to Rs 200, pepper Rs 75 to Rs 150, nutmeg Rs 400 to Rs 800, cloves Rs 100 to Rs 200 and for cardamom it has been hiked from Rs 18,000 per hectare to Rs 25,000 per hectare.

[Nasheman news] Nagpur Australia won the toss and elected to field against India in the second One Day International here on Tuesday.

While hosts India are playing with the same team, Australia made two changes. Shaun Marsh and Nathan Lyon were included in the team for Aston Turner and Jason Behrendorff.

Teams:
India: Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli (captain), Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni (w), Kedar Jadhav, Vijay Shankar, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah.

Australia: Usman Khawaja, Aaron Finch (captain), Shaun Marsh, Marcus Stoinis, Peter Handscomb, Glenn Maxwell, Alex Carey (w), Nathan Coulter-Nile, Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon, Adam Zampa.

[Nasheman news] Bengaluru Umesh Jadhav, Karnataka’s “rebel” Congress MLA who resigned from the state Assembly, fell prey to the BJP’s ‘Operation Kamala’, party leader Siddaramaiah said on Tuesday.

“The circumstantial evidence clearly suggests that he (Jadhav) has fallen for #OperationKamala (referring to alleged poaching attempts by the BJP),” the former Chief Minister said in a series of tweets.

“People are saying that he has sold himself for money and power. If true, it is shameful on his part,” he added.

Jadhav, a two-time MLA from Chincholi constituency in Kalaburagi district, submitted his resignation to Assembly Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar on Monday without any explanation.

Hours later, G. Madhusudhan, the state spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, told IANS that Jadhav would join the right-wing party on Wednesday at Kalaburagi where Prime Minister Narendra Modi would address a massive rally.

The Speaker is yet to accept Jadhav’s resignation.

“We had already petitioned to disqualify four MLAs, including Jadhav, as per anti-defection law for involving in anti-party activities. Resignation cannot be accepted without deciding our petition. Let us leave it to the speaker to decide,” Siddaramaiah said in another tweet on Tuesday.

Jadhav’s resignation came in the wake of the southern state’s ruling coalition partners Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress and the opposition BJP trading charges of poaching each others’ legislators since January.

[Nasheman news] Namchi [Sikkim] Sikkim’s five-term Chief Minister Pawan Chamling has said his state will never politicise religion, nor will it indulge in dynastic politics, in effect distancing it from both the BJP and the Congress for the upcoming assembly and parliamentary elections.

“In 25 years of SDF government, no one has died in the name of religion”, Chamling said here on the occasion of the 27th Foundation Day of the ruling Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) party on Monday. 

“We should not politicise religion, we should humanise it,” he added.

The party has not and will not engage in dynastic politics, he said, adding that no one from his family will be made an MP or an MLA as long as he remains active in politics. 

“It is not important for me to become Chief Minister again, I have already been elected five times consecutively. But this time, I am fighting elections to ensure the safety of the Sikkimese people’s future”, he said, adding that “this time, we must win not only from every constituency but from every booth.”

Around 75,000 people took part in the Foundation Day events that was celebrated in all the 31 assembly constituencies in the state.

[Nasheman news] New Delhi The website of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went into maintenance mode after an alleged hacking attempt early on Tuesday morning.

Social media was abuzz with screenshots of a meme featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Below the meme was a music video of “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

The meme poked fun at a clip in which German Chancellor Angela Merkel walks past Modi as he extends his hand.

Later, while trying to open the website, it showed the following message: “We will be back soon! Sorry for the inconvenience but we’re performing some maintenance at the moment. We’ll be back online shortly.”

The party was yet to comment on whether it was a hacking attempt or the site was undergoing maintenance.

Earlier media reports said that nearly 70 Indian government websites were targeted by hackers.

[Nasheman news] New Delhi A Delhi court on Tuesday adjourned the recording of a statement by Dubai-based businessman Rajiv Saxena, who wants to become an approver in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal case.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal adjourned the recording till Wednesday.

Saxena has said that he would make a full disclosure of the case, if he was granted pardon.

United Arab Emirates (UAE) security agencies picked up Saxena from his Dubai residence on January 30 and extradited him to India the same night.

He was granted bail on medical grounds last week. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) did not oppose his bail application.

According to the ED, in connivance with lawyer Gautam Khaitan, Saxena provided a global corporate structure to launder money for payment to various political leaders, bureaucrats and Indian Air Force (IAF) officials to influence the contract for supplying 12 VVIP helicopters in favour of AgustaWestland.

B

[Nasheman news] New York US President Donald Trump has announced that he was ending India’s $5.6 billion trade concessions under the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) programme accusing New Delhi of not providing Washington “equitable and reasonable access” to its markets.

Trump, who is on a mission to expand marker access abroad and end trade deficits, made the announcement on Monday in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence in his capacity as the Senate President.

The US Trade Representative’s Office (USTR) said that the preferences will end in 60 days after the notification to Congress and the Indian government.

Meanwhile, Trump said that he will continue to monitor if India is “providing equitable and reasonable access to its markets” and meet the GSP eligibility criteria.

India had opposed proposals to end the GSP saying that it would be “discriminatory, arbitrary” and hurt the country’s development.

India is the largest beneficiary of the GSP exporting goods worth $5.6 billion to the US under the programme. Congress establishes the conditions of eligibility for GSP, which include “providing the US with equitable and reasonable market access, protecting workers’ rights and combating child labour”.

Trump wrote in his letter: “I am taking this step because, after intensive engagement between the United States and the government of India, I have determined that India has not assured the United States that it will provide equitable and reasonable access to the markets of India.”

The USTR said: “India has implemented a wide array of trade barriers that create serious negative effects on United States commerce”, but did not mention the specifics in its statement. 

“Despite intensive engagement, India has failed to take the necessary steps to meet the GSP criterion”, it added.

The total India-US trade was $126.2 billion in 2017, with a $27.3 billion deficit for the US, according to the USTR. India’s total exports were worth $76.7 billion and the end to GSP affects only a small part of it limited to $5.6 billion.

At a hearing held by the USTR last June on withdrawing India’s GSP, the minister in charge of commerce at the Indian Embassy in Washington, Puneet Roy Kundal, said that withdrawing the GSP benefits “would be discriminatory, arbitrary, and detrimental to the development, finance and trade needs of India, which is a vast and diverse developing country with unique challenges”.

The primary aim of the GSP is to help developing countries, particularly in sectors where the benefits can reach the poor.

Trump also said that he was ending the GSP for Turkey because of its economic success and rising living standards that would no longer make it eligible for the programme that is meant to help developing countries.

The President has been on a warpath against what he said were high tariffs on US imports to India. While pushing for the Reciprocal Trade Act in January, he brought up India’s duty on American whiskey, which he said was 150 per cent and on Harley Davidson motorcycles that he asserted he had gotten reduced from 100 to 50 per cent.

The decision to end the GSP may not entirely be influenced by high tariffs imposed by India on US imports. The two countries have had differences over the restrictions placed on e-commerce by Amazon and on Walmart subsidiary Flipkart and on data housing by Visa and Mastercard.

The decision comes as the US is reported to be making headway in trade negotiations with China aimed mainly at cutting American trade deficits with a deal expected soon.

Ironically, a trade group warned that taking ending GSP for India could end up helping China.

The American Apparel and Footwear Association said in a written testimony that if GSP benefits are withdrawn for India as well as Indonesia and Thailand, “companies will have no choice but to return to sourcing from China”.

It pointed out that Trump has threatened to impose 10 per cent punitive duties on US travel goods imports from China and ending the GSP for India “means that not only will sourcing return from China, but American consumers will pay far higher prices for their travel goods”.

The US dairy industry was a strong advocate of ending the GSP for India citing its difficulties in exporting to India.

Shawna Morris, Vice President of the National Milk Producers Federation and the US Dairy Export Council, at the the June USTR hearing accused India of refusing to provide them equitable and reasonable access to its markets through “unscientific sanitary and phytosanitary requirements”.

These requirements by India were that the exports should not come from cows that have been given cannibalised feed that includes offal or other meat products.

Kundal countered that it was not an issue fo of market access but of “certification given the religious, cultural and moral sensitivities” and India provide unimpeded market access to dairy products from all countries that met the criteria.

Another opposition came from the medical sector based on price controls on medical devices imposed by India. Kundal said that these were necessitated by India’s need to provide affordable health care to its citizens.

[Nasheman news] Srinagar  A protest shutdown called by traders affected normal life across the Kashmir Valley on Tuesday

The shutdown was called against the Centre’s ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir and the subsequent arrests of nearly 200 of its cadres. 

The protesting traders said the shutdown was also for the protection of Articles 35 A and 370 that give special status to the state.

The Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), a separatist conglomerate headed by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, has supported the shutdown call.

Shops, other businesses and public transport remained closed.

Authorities made heavy deployments of police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Srinagar’s old city areas and other law and order sensitive areas in the valley.

On February 28, the Central government banned the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir, declaring it an “unlawful association” under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The order by the Union Home Ministry said that the organisation has “been indulging in activities which are prejudicial to internal security and public order and have the potential of disrupting the unity and integrity of the country”.

B

[Nasheman news] Panaji  Botanists here have recommended reviving an ancient Indian alchemy technique by using earthworm feces for bio-mining of gold, which their research paper claims is present in the soil in the state’s mining belt.

In their research paper published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews, botanists at Goa University, Nandakumar Kamat and Sujata Dabolkar, say that earth-feeding worms, can be tapped in an eco-friendly way for sustainable bio-mining in Goa.

“Basically just like age-old artisanal alluvial gold mining from auriferous (containing gold) river sands we see the possibility of artisanal extraction of metallic secondary gold by intelligent, systematic and ecofriendly use of vermicasts (earthworm fecal matter) by rearing local geophagous earthworms with a feedstock blend of organic matter and auriferous soil,” the research paper states.

“This is like reinventing India’s lost alchemic heritage because anyone with some patience can rear earthworms and extract small quantities of metallic gold easily,” it adds.

The report also states, that gold availability in parts per million (PPM) is higher in Goa’s now non-utilised iron and manganese mining belt, compared to other areas in the coastal state.

“It was found that vermicast samples from mining areas contained gold ranging from 0.76 to 1.77 ppm whereas in case of non-mining areas the gold value ranged from 0.66 to 1.03 ppm,” the report states, adding that Goa lies in the northwest part of the Western Dharwad Craton which is known for its rich metallic deposits.

Explaining their research, Kamat and Dabolkar say they collected vermicasts from mining and non-mining areas, which were later dried, sieved and powdered. When the dust was put through a series of laboratory tests, they detected vermiform gold.

The research paper also suggests a roadmap for eco-friendly biomining of gold using earthworms.

“The first step is establishing a facility of rearing earthworms which can feed on auriferous soils which acts as the raw material,” the paper states.

The earthworms, the botanists say, should then be added to auriferous (which has been analysed for gold) soil and material to feed earthworms, which move through the soil and build an organomineral structure (vermicasts) with specific physical, chemical and microbiological properties.

“Further the vermicasts can be treated by powdering, sieving, magnetic separation, gravity separation/flotation techniques and finally auriferous (gold) material is recovered and purified,” the report states.