New Delhi, Oct 2: The US government shutdown has entered its second day, with President Donald Trump urging Republicans to use the crisis to “clear out dead wood” and cut what he called “Democrat agencies,” the BBC reported. Trump said the shutdown presented an “unprecedented opportunity” to reshape the federal government.

The White House warned that mass layoffs of federal employees were “imminent” and could result in permanent job losses.

In a shutdown, the White House and Office of Management and Budget decide which parts of the executive branch remain operational. Thousands of federal workers have already been placed on unpaid leave. Democrats and Republicans continue to trade blame over the deadlock, with little sign of compromise. The next vote on ending the impasse is not scheduled until Friday, according to the BBC.

New Delhi, Oct 02: Scientists have, for the first time, directly visualised the way Parkinson’s disease gets ‘triggered’ in human brain tissue.

Using a newly developed technique, called ASA-PD (Advanced Sensing of Aggregates for Parkinson’s Disease), researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College London, UK, could see, count, and compare the protein clusters called alpha-synuclein oligomers in human brain tissue.

Oligomers have long been considered the likely culprits behind Parkinson’s, but until now, these tiny clusters — just a few nanometres long — have evaded direct detection in human brain tissue.

Using ASA-PD with ultra-sensitive fluorescence microscopy, the team could, for the first time, detect and analyse millions of oligomers in post-mortem brain tissue.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to look at oligomers directly in human brain tissue at this scale: it’s like being able to see stars in broad daylight,” said Dr. Rebecca Andrews, who conducted the work when she was a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.

“It opens new doors in Parkinson’s research,” she added.

Since oligomers are so small, their signal is extremely weak. But ASA-PD maximises the signal while decreasing the background, dramatically boosting sensitivity to the point where individual alpha-synuclein oligomers can be observed and studied.

The team examined post-mortem brain tissue samples from people with Parkinson’s and compared them to healthy individuals of similar age.

The results, reported in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, showed that oligomers exist in both healthy and Parkinson’s brains.

The main difference between disease and healthy brains was the size of the oligomers, which were larger, brighter, and more numerous in disease samples, suggesting a direct link to the progression of Parkinson’s.

The team also discovered a sub-class of oligomers that appeared only in Parkinson’s patients, which could be the earliest visible markers of the disease, potentially years before symptoms appear.

“Oligomers have been the needle in the haystack, but now that we know where those needles are, it could help us target specific cell types in certain regions of the brain,” said Professor Lucien Weiss from Polytechnique Montréal, who co-led the research.

Weiss noted that similar technologies could be applied to other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s.

New Delhi, Oct 02: India and China will resume direct flight services later this month, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Thursday.

The flight services between the two sides were suspended following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It was not restored in view of the eastern Ladakh border row.

It has now been agreed that direct air services connecting designated points in India and China can resume by late October, subject to the commercial decision of the designated carriers from the two countries and fulfilment of all operational criteria, the MEA said.

Since earlier this year, the civil aviation authorities of the two countries have been engaged in technical-level discussions on resuming direct air services between the two countries and on a revised air services agreement, it said in a statement.

Jaipur, Oct 02: Rajasthan Police has arrested a former National Security Guard (NSG) commando, who had participated in the 26/11 anti-terror operation in Mumbai, for allegedly being the kingpin of a cannabis smuggling racket, a senior official said on Thursday.

Bajrang Singh was arrested late Wednesday night from Ratangarh in Churu. He was allegedly involved in smuggling ‘gaanja’ from Telangana and Odisha into Rajasthan and was caught with 200 kg of the substance, said Inspector General of Police Vikas Kumar. The “drug kingpin” belonged to Rajasthan’s Sikar district and carried a bounty of Rs 25,000, Kumar said.

He added that the state’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and Anti-Narcotics Task Force (ANTF) successfully carried out ‘Operation Gaanjaney’, resulting in Singh’s arrest.

The two-month operation to track Singh succeeded after a crucial tip that he always travelled with a trusted Odiya cook. Technical intelligence on the cook’s relatives led the team to Singh’s hideout in Ratangarh, where the commando-turned-criminal was finally caught.

Police expect the arrest to curb the large-scale illegal drug trade from Odisha and Telangana into Rajasthan, Kumar said.

Singh had joined the NSG after finishing his Class 10. He was part of the commando team that responded to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, Kumar said.

After retiring in 2021 and facing a political defeat, he turned to organised drug trafficking, quickly becoming a major trafficker dealing in large quantities of gaanja, the official said.