NEW DELHI – An Indian publisher has caused a furore with a school textbook that encourages children to suffocate kittens as part of a scientific experiment.

The book, which is used in hundreds of private schools in India, includes an experiment in which two kittens were placed in separate boxes – only one of which had airholes.”Put a small kitten in each box. Close the boxes. After some time open the boxes. What do you see? The kitten inside the box without holes has died,” read the text.

Animal rights activists said several schools had already pulled the offending page from the book, entitled “Our Green World”.

They have also secured a promise from the publisher that it will not be included in the next edition.

“It might be stupid, but they were endangering the lives of the children and animals by citing such an experiment,” Vidhi Matta, spokeswoman for the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations, told AFP on Wednesday (Feb 8).

Matta said she was unaware of any student actually conducting the experiment.

Indian textbooks frequently make the headlines for their glaring mistakes and controversial content.

Last week a passage from a textbook in Maharashtra state caused outrage over its assertion that “ugly” and “handicapped” women had led to a rise in dowries claimed by the groom’s family.

One government textbook in central Chhattisgarh state blamed women for a rise in unemployment, while another claimed that Japan had dropped nuclear bombs on the US during World War II.

Beijing – China will double the number of AIDS patients it treats with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), officials have said, part of a broader push to increase the use of the ancient practice in the country’s medical system.

The promotion of TCM is part of a five-year plan from the State Council, China’s cabinet, to tackle HIV/AIDS.

“The number of people living with AIDS who are treated with traditional Chinese medicine should be twice what it was in 2015,” the State Council said on its website Sunday.

The plan outlined collaboration between traditional Chinese medicine departments and national health and family planning commissions “to find a therapeutic regimen which combines traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicines”.

The TCM push aligns with a recent effort by the government to make the practice a priority for both development and publicity.

TCM, dating back thousands of years, treats ailments using herbal mixtures and physical therapies such as acupuncture and cupping.

The science behind such remedies has long been questioned. Last month medical researchers disputed a study claiming that acupuncture could cure babies of colic.

In late December the Chinese legislature passed its first TCM law, which will allow practitioners to be licensed and make it easier for them to open clinics.

There are about 450,000 TCM practitioners across the country, according to the State Council Information Office.

The government sees the practice as a cost-saving alternative to modern healthcare.

The new initiative to tackle HIV/AIDS will aim to reduce “AIDS-related homosexual behavior” by at least 10 percent and mother-to-children transmission rates to less than four percent.

In a 2015 report China told the UN that it had 501,000 cases of HIV/AIDS as of the end of 2014.

Animal listed as ‘critically endangered’ after population declined by up to 94 per cent

Conservation groups have called for governments to increase protection of the Chinese pangolin after a social media post triggered public concern over this critically endangered wild mammal.

A Sina Weibo user posted four pictures from 2015 showing a pangolin meat banquet held for a business delegation from Hong Kong in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. This triggered public criticism and has led to a probe.

The Chinese pangolin, one of the eight species of pangolins, has been heavily hunted and trafficked for its meat and scales, which are believed to have medicinal qualities.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna said in 2003 the population was estimated at 50,000 to 100,000, having declined by up to 94 per cent since the 1960s.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the Chinese pangolin as “critically endangered” in 2014 on the basis of predicted continuing declines of up to 90 per cent over the next couple of decades.

Wu Shibao, a professor at South China Normal University, has devoted himself to pangolin protection since 1995.

He said the Chinese pangolin is already commercially extinct in the wild.

“There is virtually no information available on population levels of the Chinese pangolin on the Chinese mainland,” he said.

“The species exists, but is very rare. I talked to some hunters. Some said they haven’t seen wild pangolin for three decades.”

Wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic and environmental organisation WildAid in September released an overview of the pangolin trade in China. The report said the “illegal trade appears to be continuing unabated”.

Traffic China recommended that the Chinese government should upgrade the species from a second-class to a first-class national protected species and strengthen management of the animal.

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Photo Gallery

Pangolins on the brink of extinction

Source: World Animal Protection, Reuters, National Parks Board

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One of the authors of the review, who wished not to be named, told China Daily that it is difficult to protect the Chinese pangolin, unlike the giant panda or snow leopard.

“The majority of rescue centres or zoos don’t even know how to keep pangolins alive, not to mention encourage reproduction,” she said.

“One of the important ways to raise public awareness of wildlife protection is to show endangered animals in zoos. However, no zoo on the Chinese mainland has pangolins. So most people don’t know this species is more endangered than the giant panda.”

Wu from South China Normal University is more positive about the pangolin’s future. He said the first step is to conduct a national survey of wild Chinese pangolin to provide a basis for establishing reserve areas.

“We have saved giant pandas and Tibetan antelope from the brink,” he added.

MANILA – A massive fire swept through a crowded shanty town near the docks in Manila, destroying houses and leaving 15,000 people homeless, authorities in the Philippine capital said on Wednesday.

Seven people were injured in fire that broke out late on Tuesday night and raged for 10 hours as it spread rapidly, engulfing more than 1,000 makeshift houses, fire officer Edilberto Cruz told reporters.

About 15,000 people were left homeless and were temporarily sheltered in evacuation centres, and their belongings, like television sets, washing machines and clothes were left on a major road, blocking trucks hauling containers at the port.

Only a week ago a worker was killed and more than a hundred injured at a huge industrial fire at factory south of the capital.

Fires are common in factories and shanty towns in Manila, one of the most populated cities in the world. In 2015, 74 workers were killed when they were trapped in a slipper factory north of the capital.

A Myanmar patrol boat opened fire on Bangladeshi fishermen, killing one, because it feared it was under attack, Myanmar state media said on Wednesday, in a report on the latest violence on the countries’ troubled border.

A Bangladeshi security official said a complaint had been lodged over the early Monday shooting, the details of which were disputed by the two sides.

Their border has been unsettled since attacks on Myanmar border guard posts on Oct. 9 in which nine policemen were killed. Myanmar blamed insurgents from the Rohingya Muslim minority.

A subsequent crackdown by Myanmar security forces has tested the already strained relations between the neighbours, who both see the stateless Rohingya as the other side’s problem.

Bangladesh has complained about the new wave of refugees from Myanmar who have followed hundreds of thousands of Rohingya already in Bangladesh, having fled previous unrest and discrimination.

Almost 70,000 people have fled to Bangladesh since Oct. 9, many giving accounts of extrajudicial killings, beatings, rape and arbitrary detention to UN investigators, journalists and human rights monitors.

Read also: Bangladesh urges Myanmar to end unrest

The Myanmar government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has rejected the reports of abuse, saying many were fabricated. It insists strife in the area near the border with Bangladesh, where many Rohingya live, is an internal matter.

Bangladeshi police, residents and fishermen in the Bangladeshi district of Teknaf said fisherman Nurul Amin, 26, was killed when a Myanmar navy vessel approached his boat at speed in the Naf river which forms the border in that area.

The Myanmar boat chased the small wooden fishing boat toward the Bangladeshi bank of the river before opening fire, they said.

One fisherman was being treated for a bullet wound and another went overboard but swam to safety, said the sources, including Colonel Anisur Rahman, Border Guard Bangladesh commander for Cox’s Bazar.

‘GOING TO ATTACK’

The government-run Global New Light of Myanmar, however, said the patrol boat came across eight “illegal” Bangladeshi fishing boats, five of which were in Myanmar’s waters. “The illegal boats surrounded the marine patrol boat in manoeuvres that suggested they were going to attack,” the newspaper said, citing unidentified officials. “To ensure security and the lives of the soldiers, the patrol team fired two shots, causing the boats to abandon the area.” The newspaper did not suggest the Bangladeshi fishermen were armed.

Bangladeshi Border Guard commander Rahman said the Myanmar vessel had “crossed into Bangladesh’s body of water”. “We sent a protest letter to our Myanmar counterpart for killing the Bangladeshi fisherman,” he said.

Bangladesh officials said in late December four Bangladeshi fishermen were injured by Myanmar’s navy in an incident on the border.

A spokesman for the office of Myanmar President Htin Kyaw, said the information in the newspaper report came directly from the navy and he could not give any more details. “This is a complicated issue,” said the spokesman, Zaw Htay, adding it would take time to “find out the real situation of this incident”.