Two US residents test positive for Zika virus

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Two US residents, both of whom recently traveled abroad, have tested positive for the tropical Zika virus. The virus is causing alarm in a number of Latin American and Caribbean countries.

No need to panic about the Zika virus | Sci-Tech | DW.COM | 27.01.2016

For a healthy grown-up who isn’t pregnant, Zika doesn’t pose much of a threat. Common symptoms include fever, joint ache and a rash with small red spots. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts it pretty clearly: “The illness is usually mild… Severe disease requiring hospitalization is uncommon. Deaths are rare.”Compare that to Ebola, which comes with vomiting and unexplained bleeding and killed more than 11,300 people in the recent West-Africa outbreak, and you’ll see that Zika isn’t quite that bad.Some tourists have already brought the virus back to their European home countries from vacation without any major consequences. According to the news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), there have been ten cases reported in Germany since 2013.The dpa also mentions four cases in Italy, three in Great Britain and two in Spain, though those numbers are probably incorrect, since there’s no international protocol for reporting and recording the virus, Schmidt-Chanasit said. More people could have been infected without ever knowing: the CDC reports that only one in five people infected with the virus actually become ill.Dangerous birth defect In hospitals like this one in Recife, Brazil, more and more babies are born with mircrocephalyAll that is not to say that Zika is completely harmless. The virus has been connected to an exceptional high number of babies born with microcephaly in Brazil. In the most recent Zika outbreak, around 4,000 newborns were diagnosed with the birth defect. Their skulls are smaller than those of healthy babies, which leads to brain damage.

Source: No need to panic about the Zika virus | Sci-Tech | DW.COM | 27.01.2016

British Muslim women hit back at Cameron′s ′submissive′ comments | Europe | DW.COM | 27.01.2016

Muslim women are tweeting their achievements to David Cameron, after he allegedly said their “traditional submissiveness” can lead to young men’s radicalization. Cameron’s comments were met with criticism online. Last week, a British newspaper quoted a comment allegedly made by British Prime Minister David Cameron during a private conversation during which he reportedly said that the “traditional submissiveness of Muslim women” can facilitate the radicalization of young men. The quote came as Cameron’s government had made public claims that over a quarter of Muslim women in Britain do not speak a good English.

Source: British Muslim women hit back at Cameron′s ′submissive′ comments | Europe | DW.COM | 27.01.2016

Denmark faces backlash over ‘despicable’ ‘jewellery law’ – The Local

Legislation agreed in Denmark to seize the valuables of refugees in the hope of limiting the flow of migrants is “despicable”, US-based rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday. “I think it’s despicable that Denmark and also in a sense Switzerland are moving to seize the last remaining assets of people, who by virtue of their movement and vulnerability tend to be impoverished and have very little on them,” the executive director of HRW, Kenneth Roth, told a news conference in Istanbul, referring to a Swiss law that since the 1990s has required asylum seekers to contribute to the costs of hosting them in the wealthy Alpine country. “Does a rich country like Denmark really need to strip the very assets of these desperate asylum seekers before providing them basic services?” asked Roth, who was presenting HRW’s annual report in Istanbul.

Source: Denmark faces backlash over ‘despicable’ ‘jewellery law’ – The Local