Barak Obama's Visit To Malaysia.................In Pictures,

United States President Barack Obama arrived in Malaysia as part of his four-nation tour of Asia. This is the first by a sitting US president in 48 years to visit the country since President Lyndon B. Johnson's trip back in 1966
Courtesy: NST

Airforce One landing at Sunang Airforce base in Malaysia,

Ebola Virus...........Educate yourself

History

Ebola virus (abbreviated EBOV) was first described in 1976. Today, the virus is the single member of the species Zaire ebolavirus, which is included into the genus Ebolavirus, family Filoviridae, order Mononegavirales. The name Ebola virus is derived from the Ebola River (a river that was at first thought to be in close proximity to the area in Democratic Republic of Congo, previously called Zaire, where the first recorded Ebola virus disease outbreak occurred) and the taxonomic suffix virus.
According to the rules for taxon naming established by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), the name Ebola virus is always to be capitalized, but is never italicized, and may be abbreviated (with EBOV being the official abbreviation).

Transmission
Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals. In Africa, infection has been documented through the handling of infected chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.
 
Ebola then spreads in the community through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids. Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.
Health-care workers have frequently been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed EVD. This has occurred through close contact with patients when infection control precautions are not strictly practiced.
Among workers in contact with monkeys or pigs infected with Reston ebolavirus, several infections have been documented in people who were clinically asymptomatic. Thus, RESTV appears less capable of causing disease in humans than other Ebola species. 

Signs and symptoms 

EVD is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.

People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory.
The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms, is 2 to 21 days.

Vaccine and treatment

No licensed vaccine for EVD is available. Several vaccines are being tested, but none are available for clinical use.
Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. Patients are frequently dehydrated and require oral rehydration with solutions containing electrolytes or intravenous fluids.
No specific treatment is available. New drug therapies are being evaluated.

Natural host of Ebola virus

In Africa, fruit bats, particularly species of the genera Hypsignathus monstrosus, Epomops franqueti and Myonycteris torquata, are considered possible natural hosts for Ebola virus. As a result, the geographic distribution of Ebolaviruses may overlap with the range of the fruit bats.

Ebola virus in animals

Although non-human primates have been a source of infection for humans, they are not thought to be the reservoir but rather an accidental host like human beings. Since 1994, Ebola outbreaks from the EBOV and TAFV species have been observed in chimpanzees and gorillas.
RESTV has caused severe EVD outbreaks in macaque monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) farmed in Philippines and detected in monkeys imported into the USA in 1989, 1990 and 1996, and in monkeys imported to Italy from Philippines in 1992.
Since 2008, RESTV viruses have been detected during several outbreaks of a deadly disease in pigs in People’s Republic of China and Philippines. Asymptomatic infection in pigs has been reported and experimental inoculations have shown that RESTV cannot cause disease in pigs.

Prevention and control

Controlling Reston ebolavirus in domestic animals

No animal vaccine against RESTV is available. Routine cleaning and disinfection of pig or monkey farms (with sodium hypochlorite or other detergents) should be effective in inactivating the virus.
If an outbreak is suspected, the premises should be quarantined immediately. Culling of infected animals, with close supervision of burial or incineration of carcasses, may be necessary to reduce the risk of animal-to-human transmission. Restricting or banning the movement of animals from infected farms to other areas can reduce the spread of the disease.
As RESTV outbreaks in pigs and monkeys have preceded human infections, the establishment of an active animal health surveillance system to detect new cases is essential in providing early warning for veterinary and human public health authorities.

Reducing the risk of Ebola infection in people

In the absence of effective treatment and a human vaccine, raising awareness of the risk factors for Ebola infection and the protective measures individuals can take is the only way to reduce human infection and death.
In Africa, during EVD outbreaks, educational public health messages for risk reduction should focus on several factors:

• Reducing the risk of wildlife-to-human transmission from contact with infected fruit bats or monkeys/apes and the consumption of their raw meat. Animals should be handled with gloves and other appropriate protective clothing. Animal products (blood and meat) should be thoroughly cooked before consumption.
• Reducing the risk of human-to-human transmission in the community arising from direct or close contact with infected patients, particularly with their bodily fluids. Close physical contact with Ebola patients should be avoided. Gloves and appropriate personal protective equipment should be worn when taking care of ill patients at home. Regular hand washing is required after visiting patients in hospital, as well as after taking care of patients at home.
• Communities affected by Ebola should inform the population about the nature of the disease and about outbreak containment measures, including burial of the dead. People who have died from Ebola should be promptly and safely buried.

Pig farms in Africa can play a role in the amplification of infection because of the presence of fruit bats on these farms. Appropriate biosecurity measures should be in place to limit transmission. For RESTV, educational public health messages should focus on reducing the risk of pig-to-human transmission as a result of unsafe animal husbandry and slaughtering practices, and unsafe consumption of fresh blood, raw milk or animal tissue. Gloves and other appropriate protective clothing should be worn when handling sick animals or their tissues and when slaughtering animals. In regions where RESTV has been reported in pigs, all animal products (blood, meat and milk) should be thoroughly cooked before eating.

Controlling infection in health-care settings

Human-to-human transmission of the Ebola virus is primarily associated with direct or indirect contact with blood and body fluids. Transmission to health-care workers has been reported when appropriate infection control measures have not been observed.
It is not always possible to identify patients with EBV early because initial symptoms may be non-specific. For this reason, it is important that health-care workers apply standard precautions consistently with all patients – regardless of their diagnosis – in all work practices at all times. These include basic hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, the use of personal protective equipment (according to the risk of splashes or other contact with infected materials), safe injection practices and safe burial practices.
Health-care workers caring for patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola virus should apply, in addition to standard precautions, other infection control measures to avoid any exposure to the patient’s blood and body fluids and direct unprotected contact with the possibly contaminated environment. When in close contact (within 1 metre) of patients with EBV, health-care workers should wear face protection (a face shield or a medical mask and goggles), a clean, non-sterile long-sleeved gown, and gloves (sterile gloves for some procedures).
Laboratory workers are also at risk. Samples taken from suspected human and animal Ebola cases for diagnosis should be handled by trained staff and processed in suitably equipped laboratories.


Courtesy World Health Organisation (WHO)

Buhari threatens to sue PDP for defamation

The former head of state and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Muhammadu Buhari, has issued a seven-day ultimatum to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to retract its accusation linking him with the Boko Haram terrorist acts, tender an unreserved public apology to him, or face a legal action.

In a statement he personally signed in Kaduna on Thursday Mr. Buhari said: ”I cannot sit back and allow my image, and that of my political party be smeared by falsehood in the name of politics.”

I take very serious exception to this grave accusation against me by the PDP Publicity Secretary. It is a false allegation aimed at tarnishing my image and reputation in the hope of destroying my political and electoral standings, and that of my party, the APC, in the country.
”Firstly, it is public knowledge that Boko Haram as a terror organization long preceded the 2011 presidential elections. My utterances or lack of them on the 2011 presidential election could not therefore have created nor sustained the Boko Haram insurgency.
”Secondly, the PDP Government of President Goodluck Jonathan constituted the Sheikh Ahmed Lemu Panel of Inquiry to investigate and report on the post-election violence in some parts of the country. The panel discharged its duties within its terms of reference and submitted its Report to the President. This Report was accepted by government and a Whitepaper issued. Nowhere in that Report, a product of thorough investigation of that unfortunate incident, was I mentioned in the remotest way to have uttered a word or acted in any form or manner that sparked off the violence. If I had, certainly that investigation would have uncovered it. The truth is that I had not.

”Thirdly, 2011 was not the first time I contested a presidential election and was declared defeated, it was the third! If I had had no cause to ‘beckon on my supporters to go on lynching spree’ in the two previous occasions, I would have had no cause to change in 2011 – and I did not,” Mr. Buhari said.
The APC chieftain said the PDP National Publicity Secretary also deliberately misquoted the interview he gave in Hausa on May 14, 2012 in which he said the opposition was determined to fight in the 2015 elections.
 ”I used the Hausa idiom ‘Kare jini, Biri jini’, which is a metaphor for a very tough fight. But, like the Islamic fundamentalist toga they falsely put on me because they cannot impinge on my personal and professional integrity, PDP apologists deliberately twisted this idiom to mean I called for violence.
”I am not a violent person and, other than my professional calling as a soldier, I have never associated with violence, I abhor violence and have never advocated it. I have always been a law abiding person who insists on due process and the rule of law in all my private and public affairs.
”It is therefore a grave infraction to my person, personality and integrity that such a false and malicious accusation is being leveled against me by the PDP. This is dangerous politics by the ruling party and it must stop forthwith,” Buhari said.

Top Opposition Leader Killed in Fatal Accident

Karpal Singh, an opposition Malaysian politician for more than four decades and lawyer who acted in some of the country’s highest-profile cases, was killed in a road accident today. He was 73. 

The late Karpal,former chairman of the opposition Democratic Action Party, died when his van collided with a lorry before dawn on a highway in the state of Perak, about 155 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur, national traffic police chief Fuad Abdul Latiff said.

"We've lost a colleague; an indefatigable fighter for justice; the legendary Karpal Singh!” Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the opposition coalition, said on his Twitter account.
"I heard the news that Karpal Singh died in a road accident," Prime Minister Najib Razak tweeted. "My condolences to the family."
An aide was also killed, while three others in Karpal’s vehicle were injured, Fuad said.
The four were traveling inside a Toyota Alphard at that time.

In both courtrooms and parliament, he is known as a controversial figure.

 

He has been suspended from parliament numerous times, charged for sedition, and has been detained under Malaysia's internal security laws.

 

His reputation as a lawyer and opposition politician has earned him the nickname "the Tiger of Jelutong".

Student Stabs 5 to Death at Party

A University of Calgary graduate has been charged in the fatal stabbing of five people at a house party that the police chief called the worst mass slaying in the western Canadian city's history.

 

Matthew Douglas de Grood, the son of a 33-year veteran of the Calgary police force, picked up a large knife shortly after arriving at the party on Tuesday and stabbed the victims one by one, said police Chief Rick Hanson.
De Grood, 22, was charged with five counts of murder late on Tuesday.
"This is the worst murder - mass murder - in Calgary's history," Hanson said at a news conference. "We have never seen five people killed by an individual at one scene. The scene was horrific."

On Tuesday, about 500 students and faculty members attended a late afternoon vigil at the University of Calgary.
With a candle projected on a giant screen, university president Elizabeth Cannon called for a moment of silence.
"The world lost five bright, promising, beautiful young people," she said. "We are still coming to grips with this tragedy and what transpired. We don't know all the details and we don't know the full impact on our University of Calgary community."
The attack in the western Canadian city came nearly a week after a teenage boy in the US stabbed and wounded 21 students at his high school outside Pittsburgh.One begins to ask why the new trend of crime.................

 

Paul Walker's brothers to help in finishing "Fast & Furious 7"

The duo of Cody and Caleb Walker(Paul Walker's brothers) have made their intention known to help in the finishing of "Fast & Furious 7" after the actor died last year in a car crash. 

Fast and Furious posted on its Facebook page and made it known that  "We have resumed shooting and now welcome Paul’s brothers, Caleb and Cody, into our FAST family. Caleb and Cody are helping us complete some remaining action for their brother and fill in small gaps left in production. Having them on set has made us all feel that Paul is with us too."

(Paul died just six weeks after serving as the best man in 36-year-old Caleb's October 2013 wedding. Cody, 25, was also in the bridal party and gave a speech with Paul to honor the groom on his big day.)