Dozens of people have been killed across India and Pakistan as heavy dust and thunderstorms sweep through the region. While the worst is over, meteorologists expect the weather front will not stabilize until Friday.

The powerful storms unleashed dust, lightning, hail, rain and high winds across northern and central parts of India on Monday, uprooting trees, damaging homes and power lines across Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan states.

By Wednesday at least 64 deaths had been reported across the country, mostly from lightning strikes, tree falls, and people being electrocuted by loose power lines, the Times of India reports. At least 25 deaths occurred in Rajasthan alone, while another 21 fatalities were recorded in Madhya Pradesh, 10 in Gujarat and three in Maharashtra.

“The worst is almost over,” the head of India Meteorological Department, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, said on Wednesday. “There will be a significant reduction in activity from tomorrow. By Friday it will all be over.”

Besides India, the “western disturbance” front also affected neighboring Pakistan, with at least 39 deaths and 135 injuries reported there by Wednesday, the National Disaster Management Authority said.

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A group of gunmen stopped a bus on a highway in southwestern Pakistan before forcing passengers off and executing 14 of them, according to local officials.

While there were nearly three dozen people on the bus in total, the assailants appear to have selectively targeted their victims. Before anyone was killed, the gunmen asked for the passengers’ ID cards, it has been reported. It is still unclear if a specific ethnic or religious group was sought out.

The attackers were wearing uniforms of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, the provincial home secretary, Haider Ali, told AFP. The Frontier Corps is a provincial auxiliary force of the Pakistani government that maintains security on the borders with Iran and Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Khan called the attack a “barbaric” act and urged authorities to make “every possible effort” to identify and bring the perpetrators to justice.

A group of ethnic minority Baluch separatists later claimed responsibility for the deadly assault. The separatists have been waging a low-level insurgency, and often target security services and people from Punjab.

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The Samsung Galaxy Fold smartphone is making headlines for all the wrong reasons, with multiple tech journalists reporting problems with the high-end device’s foldable screen. The company acknowledged receiving “a few” complaints.

Several journalists given Galaxy Fold units have reported serious problems with the phone, just two days after the hotly-anticipated device was distributed to reviewers. The revolutionary design – the first production model of a foldable smartphone – comes with a price tag approaching $2,000, and a lot is resting on its April 26 launch in the US.

At least two of the reviewers said their phones become unusable in just days due to issues with their screens that appeared for no particular reason. Two others admitted they mistakenly removed a clear plastic ‘screen protector,’ thinking it was discardable packaging, only to learn it was not supposed to be removed after their screens went black or began flickering, and Samsung has replaced their phones.

Samsung acknowledged the issue and intends to “thoroughly inspect [the review] units in person,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday, and has warned users against removing the transparent protective layer on the screen.

Before the Fold was shipped to reviewers, Samsung boasted the device could “outlast 200,000 folds and unfolds.” The company has not delayed the phone’s release date and it is being rolled out in the US before anywhere else.

The Galaxy Fold wouldn’t be the first Samsung smartphone to go down in flames. The Galaxy Note 7 was infamously recalled after multiple units burst into flames, resulting in customer injuries, lawsuits, and property damage.

Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno claimed the expulsion and arrest of Julian Assange had nothing to do with the US pressure or himself seeking revenge for damaging leaks, telling RT these are all insinuations by his predecessor.

Assange spent almost seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London until last week, when Moreno abruptly revoked his political asylum. The WikiLeaks co-founder was immediately arrested by UK police on charges of skipping bail and under a sealed US indictment.

Former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa, who was the one to provide protection to the journalist and publisher back in 2012, slammed Moreno for the move, calling him the “greatest traitor in Ecuadorian history.” The incumbent president acted because he wanted to receive benefits from the US and get revenge on Assange for publishing documents about Moreno’s “blatant corruption,” Correa told RT.

Yet, when RT Spanish correspondent Helena Villar asked Moreno to comment on those accusations, he replied that there was “no way” was going to do it. “I already refuted this in my statements and through the documents I presented,” the Ecuadorean leader stated. “Those are the typical schemes, which the former president likes to use so much to hide the fundamental truth. Don’t forget that an order for his arrest had been issued in Ecuador.”

A congressional probe was launched against Moreno in February after the release of the so-called ‘INA Papers,’ which got their name from an offshore company that had allegedly been used by the president for shady operations. WikiLeaks denied they had anything to do with the leak, but the Ecuadorian leader believes otherwise.

Moreno was talking to the press in Washington where he’d arrived for a five-day visit, which won’t, however, see him meeting any members of the Trump administration. The journalists, of course, wanted to know if the US had anything to do with him giving Assange up.

After all, the Americans want the journalist to be extradited from Britain and prosecuted for alleged conspiracy with former US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who passed classified US military documents to WikiLeaks in 2010.

“The US had nothing to do with this decision,” the president assured the press, insisting that terminating Assange’s asylum was “a sovereign decision of the Ecuadorean people.”

The statement clearly goes against fresh reports from the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, where protesters clashed with police and demanded Moreno’s resignation over how he has treated the WikiLeaks founder.

In order to justify his decision, the president again accused Assange of violating all possible rules during his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy and “treating ambassadors, security personnel and other staff as if they were his servants.” He even claimed that Assange was “often visited by hackers, whom he instructed on how to distribute information on issues that were of interest to him and his sponsors.”

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Saudi Arabia has secretly beheaded two Indian nationals without notifying either the embassy or the men’s relatives of the brutal executions. To add to the shock, the Kingdom will not surrender the remains to the families.

Satwinder Kumar of Hoshiarpur and Harjeet Singh of Ludhiana were decapitated on February 28, in connection with the case of the murder of another Indian man back in 2015. The verdict was reached without the knowledge of the Indian embassy and without any prior warning issued to the men’s families.

The news of the capital punishment only surfaced after Satwinder’s wife, Seema Rani, approached the Indian government asking them to contact the Kingdom to seek clarification on her husband’s fate, after hearing rumors of his demise in a Saudi jail. This week, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) finally confirmed the beheadings, which Punjab’s chief minister has called “barbaric and inhuman.”

“He had gone to Saudi Arabia in 2013 to work as a truck driver on a two-year contract. He was arrested in 2015 but the family came to know about his arrest several months later,” Rani said, blaming MEA for failing to intervene and prevent the executions.

To add more to the families’ shock, the MEA letter said that “under the Saudi system, the mortal remains of those who are executed are not handed over either to the embassy of that country or to the family members of the deceased.”

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Three US service members were injured in yet another traffic incident in Poland, as Washington and Warsaw are reportedly nearing a deal on permanent US presence in the eastern European country.

A military truck traveling in a convoy between Swietoszow and Luboszow in Lower Silesia caught fire on Wednesday, local media reported. The injured service members were taken to a hospital and military firefighters were on the scene. The cause of the fire was being investigated.

The incident comes amid reports that the US and Poland are close to reaching a deal on establishing a permanent US military base, which Polish President Andrzsej Duda joked would be called “Fort Trump” during his visit to Washington last fall.

This is the third mishap involving US troops struggling with rural Polish roads so far this year. Last month, two soldiers were injured when three army vehicles collided near the Hungarian border. In February, a bus carrying US service members overturned in Lower Silesia, putting six soldiers in the hospital.

Poland currently hosts around 4,000 US troops – including a tank brigade, an infantry brigade, and an Air Force detachment – as part of an ongoing NATO effort to “deter Russia” launched in 2015. The leadership in Warsaw has been eager for a permanent US presence.

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A recent study found that hair samples taken from men’s beards contained more bacteria than fur taken from dogs, generating many breathless headlines in the process. However, this factoid is cherry-picked and somewhat misleading.

The actual purpose of the study, originally published in July 2018 in the journal European Radiology but which has reemerged in recent days, aimed to determine whether it was indeed hygienic to use human MRI scanners on our pets (Spoiler: it is).

“The main objective of this prospective multi-centre study is to determine whether it would be hygienic to evaluate dogs and humans in the same MRI scanner by comparing the microbial flora of dogs and humans,” it said.

As our pets enjoy longer life-spans, they experience an increase in diseases associated with their old age, many of which necessitate radiological scans. Germaphobes and hygiene enthusiasts alike were concerned at the potential for the transmission of zoonotic diseases, infectious diseases that can pass from animals to humans (like bird flu or rabies) and which account for 75 percent of new human diseases.

“People are afraid that they will contract a zoonosis if they share scanners with their furry friends,” the researchers wrote in their paper. However, we already share a large number of bacteria with our canine companions owing to our close proximity, even without sharing MRI machines.

The researchers took samples from the coats and mouths of 30 dogs and from 18 bearded men who also had upcoming MRI examinations, by pressing agar plates onto their facial hair. We already know that the vast majority of bacteria found in human body hair are essentially harmless to us (thanks, immune system), and some can be, and often are, beneficial to our health.

Long story short: it’s fine for dogs to use human MRI machines and it might even be more hygienic than it otherwise would have been because of sterilization techniques used after the canine scans.

“In this prospective multi-centre study, we showed that dogs do not pose a significant hygiene risk to humans even if they utilise the same MRI scan facility,” the researchers wrote.

Finally, various studies have extolled the virtues and health benefits of facial hair on men, with some suggesting those without beards were more than three times as likely to be harboring methicillin-resistant staph aureus (MRSA).

Microbiologist Adam Roberts carried out an experiment in which he was able to grow more than 100 types of bacteria from material swabbed from beards and found that it was possible that some of the microbes killed other harmful microbes off. Certain beard bacteria can also be harvested to develop antibiotics.

So while the quantity of bacteria on men’s beards may be higher than man’s best friend, the quality of the bacteria may, in fact, mean they are healthier than their clean-shaven human counterparts and just as healthy as their dogs.

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Former Peruvian President Alan Garcia has died after shooting himself in the head as police arrived at his home to arrest him. The ex-president was rushed to hospital, but doctors could not save him.

As police officers knocked on his door on Wednesday morning, Garcia shut himself in his room and shot himself in the head. The former leader was rushed to hospital, reportedly suffered multiple cardiac arrests during surgery, and died several hours later.

Peruvian president Martin Vizcarra confirmed Garcia’s passing, sending his condolences to the late leader’s family and loved ones.

Garcia, who served as president of Peru from 1985 to 1990 and again from 2006 to 2011, had been under investigation for bribery. The former president was one of more than 230 people across Latin America investigated in a corruption case centered on Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht.

The former leader sought asylum in Uruguay last November, after a judge barred him from leaving Peru for 18 months. The asylum request was denied, and a judge in Lima ordered his detention on Tuesday.

Prosecutors say Garcia took bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for a lucrative public transport contract in Lima. Garcia denied the charge, and claimed he was being politically persecuted.

Peru’s last five ex-presidents have all served jail time or are under investigation for corruption. Garcia’s successor, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, is also being investigated for his alleged involvement in the Odebrecht scandal. Prosecutors are currently seeking to extend Kuczynski’s detention until he can be brought to trial.

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The current CIA director reportedly played on Donald Trump’s emotions to persuade him to expel dozens of Russian diplomats, using pictures of dead ducks and sick children that she claimed had been exposed to Novichok.

The New York Times reports that the president was reluctant to throw out any Russian officials in the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in Britain last year, until Gina Haspel, who was CIA deputy director at the time, showed him pictures of children “sickened by the Novichok” and “a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.”

The revelation marks the first public mention of the existence of such material which the New York Times reports had been provided by British intelligence.

At no point during the Salisbury poisoning saga have the British authorities mentioned the discovery of dead ducks or children having been made ill by poison. Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper says its government sources are not aware of any photographs having been sent to the CIA.

There are now questions over whether Trump was not only emotionally manipulated by a senior member of his own spy agency, but also whether he was shown misinformation or misleading material in order to get him to take more hostile actions against Russia.

It’s suggested that Haspel resorted to playing on the emotions of Trump because he was reluctant to agree to London’s request to expel diplomats. He reportedly regarded the Salisbury poisoning as “legitimate spy games,” although Moscow denies any responsibility for what happened to former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Haspel is said to have pushed for the “strong option” of sending 60 Russian diplomats home, which is what Trump ultimately agreed to.

The pictures shown to the president may refer to the three children who were asked to go to hospital two weeks after the Skripals were found poisoned, but all three were given the all clear.

The children had apparently fed ducks alongside the former spy on the day he was discovered unconscious on a park bench, but there was no evidence of exposure to poisonous substances in any of them and they were sent home.

The report in the NYT has now opened yet more room for speculation surrounding events in Salisbury. There is either evidence which has not been publicly released by Britain for unknown reasons or the CIA was manipulating the material it gave to Trump. 

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The US is targeting Cuba with additional sanctions, including restricting travel to the island nation, limiting remittances, and sanctioning additional entities, White House national security adviser John Bolton said.

US citizens sending remittances to Cuba will be limited t $1,000 per person per quarter, Bolton said on Wednesday. Non-family travel will be restricted to reduce “veiled tourism” that benefits the Cuban government and military, he added.

“Through the Treasury Department, we will also implement changes to end the use of ‘U-turn transactions,’ which allow the regime to circumvent sanctions and obtain access to hard currency and the US banking system,” Bolton said in a speech to veterans of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when CIA-backed Cuban exiles tried to overthrow Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government.

The move comes a day after the White House announced it would stop issuing waivers on implementing the Helms-Burton law, which would penalize anyone in the world who did business with Cuban entities using property seized from US owners following the 1959 Cuban revolution.

“No one will take the fatherland from us, neither by seduction nor by force,” Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Treasury has not officially announced the new sanctions, but Bolton said five entities will be added to the Cuban blacklist, including the military-owned airline Aerogaviota.

The US cut diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961, and over the following decades imposed a wide range of sanctions on the island nation, just 90 miles south of Florida. Former president Barack Obama sought to soften the US policy in 2015, leading to the reopening of the US and Cuban embassies and loosening of travel restrictions.

In June 2017, however, Trump rolled back all of Obama’s changes, returning to a hard-line policy on Cuba. Additional sanctions were introduced this year, as part of the US effort to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela spearheaded by Bolton and Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), son of Cuban exiles.

The Trump administration has accused Cuba of “occupying” Venezuela, claiming that the Cuban military was helping Maduro stay in power.

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