NewsBytes

The Karnataka government on Monday decided to treat sudden deaths as "notifiable disease" and conduct postmortem in such cases. State Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao said there will be more screening of people above the age of 15 years in the state. The minister's remarks came in the wake of a spate of heart attacks in the state, especially in Hassan district. He also sought to clarify that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's statement linking Covid vaccine with the spate of heart attacks was not with any malafide intention. "We have decided to announce sudden deaths as a notifiable disease. The government should be notified if sudden deaths happen outside hospitals," Rao said in a press conference. He said autopsy will be made compulsory in cases of sudden deaths.

Indonesia's rumbling Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupted twice on Monday, sending a column of volcanic materials up to 18 km into the sky, dumping ash on villages and causing flight cancellations. No casualties were immediately reported. The volcano on Flores island has been at the highest alert level since an eruption on June 18, and an exclusion zone had been doubled to a 7-km radius as eruptions became more frequent. Indonesia's Geology Agency recorded an avalanche of searing gas clouds mixed with rocks and lava travelling up to 5 km down the slopes of the 1,584-metre (5,197-foot) mountain. Observations from drones showed lava filling the crater, indicating deep movement of magma that set off earthquakes.

                 The initial column of hot clouds that rose just after 11:00 am local time (0305 GMT) was the volcano's highest since the major eruption in November 2024  that killed nine people and injured dozens, said Muhammad Wafid, the Geology Agency chief. It also erupted in March. Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 280 million people with frequent seismic activity. It has 120 active volcanoes and sits along the “Ring of Fire”, a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

Russia's sacked transport minister has been found dead in his car outside Moscow with a gunshot wound and the principal hypothesis is that he took his own life, state investigators said on Monday, hours after President Vladimir Putin fired him. A presidential decree published earlier on Monday gave no reason for the dismissal of Roman Starovoit after barely a year in the job, though political analysts were quick to raise the possibility that he may have been dismissed in connection with an investigation into corruption in the region he once ran. Reuters could not independently confirm these suggestions, though a transport industry source, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Starovoit's position had been in question for months due to questions about the same corruption scandal, which centred on funds earmarked for fortifying Russia's border with Ukraine in the Kursk region. There were conflicting reports about the timing of Starovoit's death. Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said in a statement it was working to establish the precise circumstances.

The review of the ASEAN-India FTA figured during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's talks with his Malaysian counterpart Anwar bin Ibrahim on the sidelines of the BRICS summit. The two leaders reviewed progress in bilateral relations, including in areas of trade and investment, defence, education, healthcare, tourism and people-to-people contacts, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement on Sunday after the meeting. Modi congratulated Malaysia for its successful chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional grouping of 10 states in Southeast Asia.  PM Modi welcomed Malaysia's continued support for a strengthened ASEAN-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, including the early and successful completion of the review of the ASEAN-India FTA, the MEA said. The FTA was signed in 2009 and implemented in January 2010.