An Indian court has found a guru guilty of raping a teenage girl in 2013 and sentenced him to life in prison. The verdict against Asaram Bapu, 77, was read out inside a prison in Jodhpur, Rajasthan state, due to fears that his followers might resort to violence.Security was tight around the prison complex and in states where the guru has a large following. It is the latest high-profile rape case in India, following others that have fuelled public protests and raised questions about how police handle allegations and treat victims. In August, another popular guru, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping two female followers.

Responding to widespread outrage over the recent rape and killings of girls and other attacks on children, India’s government last week approved the death penalty for people convicted of raping children under the age of 12. The judge, Madhusudhan Sharma, announced the prison term for Bapu and sentenced two of his associates to 20 years in prison each for helping him in the crime. Sharma convicted Bapu on charges of criminal conspiracy, wrongful confinement and rape.(theguardian)…[+]

Malaria could be quickly eliminated in south-east Asia by an all-out effort to dose whole populations with drugs that treat the disease, regardless of whether people have symptoms or are healthy, say experts. The radical programme may be the best way to outpace rapidly spreading resistance to anti-malarial drugs, they believe.

An experimental programme which involved giving drugs to 365,000 people in malarial “hotspots” across 18,000 square kilometres of Myanmar has succeeded in substantially reducing and even sometimes clearing malaria completely from villages.

The Oxford University team who ran the study believe this “nuclear option” is urgently needed to wipe out malaria in south-east Asia before growing resistance to the best drugs now available – the artemisinin compounds – spreads to India and Africa.

They are calling for urgent political and financial backing from donor governments and the World Health Organization. “It is hard. People don’t want to move outside their comfort zone of the current approaches. We need very high level political commitment and the money,” said Professor Sir Nick White, chair of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit which ran the study and board member of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (Warn). “We think the risk to the rest of the world is significant and we can’t afford to let this get out of control. If it extends to India and Africa that’s it. All the gains could be reversed.”(theguardian)…[+]

The president of Madrid’s regional government has resigned after video footage emerged of her apparently being caught stealing two tubs of face cream seven years ago. Cristina Cifuentes, one of the most high-profile figures in the conservative People’s party (PP) led by the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, had been under pressure to quit over allegations that she faked her master’s degree.

She said on Wednesday she was stepping down to spare her colleagues and her family any further embarrassment and discomfort. Cifuentes had managed to cling on for weeks and had attempted to shift responsibility for the degree on to the university that awarded it to her, but the release of the video to the news site OKdiario appears to have sealed her fate. Speaking at a hastily convened press conference, Cifuentes said the footage showed nothing more than an “involuntary mistake” she had made in 2011. She said she had become the subject of a very public and very personal “lynching” over recent days and weeks.(theguardian)…[+]