NewsBytes

Indian Naval Sailing Vessel (INSV) Tarini carrying two women officers is heading home after successfully crossing the Cape of Good Hope braving persistent rain, high-velocity winds and large waves, officials said. The vessel was ceremonially flagged off from Cape Town in South Africa for the final leg of her journey back to Goa. As part of the ongoing Navika Sagar Parikrama II, the vessel, crewed by Lt Cdr Dilna K and Lt Cdr Roopa A, made a scheduled stopover at Cape Town recently. During her port call at Cape Town, the vessel served as a hub for numerous outreach and diplomatic engagements, an Indian Navy spokesman said.

Liberia has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza on a poultry farm, the World Organisation for Animal Health said. The disease, commonly called bird flu, has spread around the globe in the past years, leading to the culling of hundreds of millions of poultry. The outbreak, detected in February on a farm in the Bong county, killed 18 birds out of a flock of 26,000, the Paris-based WOAH said, quoting information from Liberian authorities. Some 25,800 poultry in the Western African flock were vaccinated, the report also said, without specifying when vaccination occurred.

Climate change could be resulting in higher levels of arsenic in rice, potentially increasing lifetime cancer and health risks for people in Asian countries by 2050, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal. Researchers from Columbia University, US, explained that an increase in temperatures above 2 degrees Celsius and rising levels of carbon dioxide could be causing changes in soil chemistry, favouring arsenic, which gets more easily absorbed into a rice grain. Contaminated soil and irrigated water while growing rice are known to increase inorganic arsenic in rice. An increased exposure to arsenic is known to heighten the risk of cancers of the lung, bladder and skin, among others. Rice can also absorb additional arsenic from water used for cooking.

Amid a rise in liver diseases among both urban and rural populations, doctors emphasised the critical link between dietary habits and liver health. On the eve of World Liver Day, medical experts are sending the message of "Food is Medicine", saying healthy changes today can cut the risk of liver disease by 50 per cent. Liver Transplantation Society of India president Dr Sanjiv Saigal said, “Damage done to the liver from poor dietary choices, alcohol, processed food and sedentary lifestyles can be reversed if we take action today.” The liver has a remarkable ability to heal itself and even years of damage can be reversed with the right lifestyle changes, he added. A diet rich in fresh fruits, green vegetables, whole grains and lean protein not only prevents liver disease but also supports liver regeneration.