16-10-2021 The Asian Independent

4
16-10-2021 to 31-10-2021 ASIA
www.theasianindependent.co.uk
CPI-Maoist confirms death of top leader R.K. due to kidney failure
Hyderabad. The outlawed
Communist Party of India-
Maoist on Friday confirmed the
death of its top leader, Akkiraju
Haragopal alias Ramakrishna.
The Central Committee of
the banned outfit released a
statement announcing death of
63-year-old leader due to kidney
failure and other ailments.
According to the statement
signed by the party's
spokesman Abhay, he died at 6
a.m. on October 14 while
undergoing treatment.
Also known as Saket,
Madhu and Srinivas, R.K., as
he was most popularly known,
More than 30 dead in
Kandahar mosque blast
New Delhi. More than 30 people
have died while 90 others
have been injured after an
explosion tore through a Shia
mosque during Friday prayers
in the Afghan city of Kandahar,
the BBC reported.
Pictures from inside the Bibi
Fatima mosque show shattered
windows and bodies lying on
the ground with some other
worshippers trying to help.
The explosion's cause is not
yet clear, but it is suspected to
be a case of suicide bombing.
Witnesses said that there were
three blasts in the mosque.
IS-K, a local branch of the
Islamic State, is expected to
claim responsibility for the
attack, the BBC reported.
Kandahar is Afghanistan's
second largest city and the spiritual
birthplace of the Taliban,
so an attack in the city by IS-K,
which is extremely hostile
towards the Taliban, would be
significant.
Last Friday, a suicide attack
on another Shia mosque during
Friday prayers in the northern
city of Kunduz had killed at
least 50 people. IS-K had said
that it carried out the attack,
which was the deadliest since
the US forces left Afghanistan
at the end of August.
IS-K, a Sunni Muslim
group, is the most extreme
and violent of all the jihadi
militant groups in
Afghanistan. Sunni Muslim
extremists have targeted Shia
Muslims, whom they see as
heretics. IS-K has targeted
Afghan security forces, politicians
and ministries, the
Taliban, religious minorities,
including Shia Muslims and
Sikhs, US and Nato forces,
and international agencies,
including aid organisations,
the report said.
China agrees to cooperate in WHO's fresh Covid origin probe
Beijing. China has agreed to
support and participate in the
World Health Organisation's
(WHO) fresh probe to trace the
origins of the Covid-19 pandemic
that has globally infected
21.9 crore people while
claiming 45.5 lakh lives.
The WHO, this week,
launched a new task force --
Scientific Advisory Group on
the Origins of Novel Pathogens
(SAGO) -- of 26 global experts,
and called it "the last chance"
to find the Covid origins.
It is nearly two years since
the virus was first detected in
the Chinese city of Wuhan, yet
the question of how it first
emerged remains unclear.
Several studies/probes into the
was a Central Committee and
Politburo member.
Though the statement has
not mentioned the place where
the top Moist succumbed,
police sources had Thursday
said he died in south Bastar in
Chhattisgarh.
According to the statement,
R.K. suddenly developed a kidney
problem. Though he had
started receiving dialysis, his
kidneys failed. It claimed that
the party provided him the best
treatment but it proved futile.
Terming R.K.'s death a big
loss, the spokesman said his
last rites were performed
origins from scientists, governments,
and independent groups
have not yet solved whether the
virus jumped from animals to
humans in Wuhan markets or
leaked in a lab accident.
While China, since the
beginning has strongly refuted
the lab leak theory, its Foreign
Ministry said the country will
"continue to support and participate
in" (the probe), the South
China Morning Post quoted it
as saying.
At the same time, Beijing
has also called on the global
health body to uphold an
"objective, scientific"
approach, stating that it will
aoppose any political manipulation',
the report said.
amidst revolutionaries. The
party paid him tribute for the
"China will continue to support
and participate in the global
scientific origins tracing, and
resolutely oppose any form of
political manipulation,"
Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman Zhao Lijian was
quoted as saying on Thursday.
Zhao also appeared to leave
the door open to future field
role he played in strengthening
the organisation and serving it
in various roles.
Haragopal was born in
Palnadu region of Guntur district
of Andhra Pradesh in
1958. Son of a school teacher,
he did post-graduation and
worked as teacher for some
time along with his father.
Attracted by the revolutionary
politics, he took membership
of People's War in 1978.
He became active in the organisation
in 1982.
According to the statement,
he became Guntur district
Secretary in 1986 and was elevated
as state committee member
in 1992. Subsequently, he
led the organisation in south
Telangana for four years and in
2000 he became Andhra state
committee secretary. At the 9th
Congress of People's War in
2001, R.K. was elected a
Central Committee member.
In 2004, R.K. led the
People's War in the talks with
then Andhra Pradesh government.
"He placed the people's
demands before the government
and along with other delegates
discussed them effectively,"
said the statement.
The party alleged that after
missions in the country, the
report said.
A joint WHO-China inquiry,
whose findings were released
in March this year, had dismissed
the possibility that the
virus had emerged accidentally
from a laboratory as "extremely
unlikely".
Undermining its own report,
Director General Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus in July,
proposed a second phase of
studies in Wuhan, which
includes audits of laboratories
and markets in the city, citing
that the investigation had been
hampered by a lack of data and
transparency from China.
On Thursday, Zhao said that
the first probe should be the
pulling out of talks, the government
started targeting the
Maoists and when it attempted
to kill Ramakrishna, the
Central Committee shifted him
to Andhra-Odisha border area
and gave him the charge of that
area. He worked as AOB
Secretary till 2014 and since
then, he was guiding the AOB
Committee. In 2018, the
Central Committee included
him in the politburo.
R.K. married Shirisha and
they had a son Munna alias
Pridhvi, who was killed in an
encounter with police in 2018
in Ramaguda.
Kerala's first artificial heart
implantation done successfully
Kochi. Kerala's first artificial
heart implantation was successfully
performed at a private
hospital on a 61-year-old
woman patient.
The cardiothoracic surgical
team at VPS Lakeshore hospital
implanted the Left
Ventricular Assist Device
(LVAD), an advanced and
unique mechanism designed to
aid patients suffering from
heart failure by helping the bottom
left chamber of the heart
(left ventricle) pump blood out
to the aorta and the rest of the
body.
The patient, who has been
undergoing treatment for dilated
cardiomyopathy (DCM) for
the past six years, was admitted
to the hospital with cardiogenic
shock, breathing difficulty, and
hypotension on September 13.
Her condition deteriorated
with ongoing heart failure with
fluid in the lungs (pulmonary
oedema) and she was shifted to
ventilator support.
Even though the option to
bring her back to life was a
heart transplant, which needs a
donor heart and an unpredictable
waiting period, time
was running out and it was then
the doctors decided to implant
LVAD - an artificial heart.
With the family's consent,
the doctors, on October 8 performed
the nine-hour-long
extremely rare surgery which
saved her life.
Now the patient is safe and
sound, she has started taking
food orally, and is in the recovery
phase undergoing rehabilitation.
As per the medical team, she
can live an improved, long, and
normal life with this support.
D.S. Sujith, the cardiothoracic
surgeon who led the team
of professionals, said, as organ
donation is in a plateau phase in
Kerala, ventricular assist
device (artificial heart) is a
boon in the present scenario as
a bridge to transplant as well as
destination therapy.
foundation for future work and
"adhere to a global perspective",
the SCMP reported.
China had, initially, rejected the
second probe accusing the
WHO of "arrogance" and a
"disrespect for common sense".
The proposed members of
the SAGO group include six
experts who visited China as
part of the previous team.
Besides Covid, SAGO will
also look into the origins of
other high-risk pathogens, the
BBC reported.
SAGO's work may be the
"last chance to understand the
origins of this virus", Michael
Ryan, the WHO's emergencies
director, was quoted as
saying.