Jan 29
From time to time, we all hear stories about how supposedly closed cold drink bottles have had all sorts of things inside the bottle, ranging from cockroaches to pieces of metal, and so on. In a new twist that combines these stories with the push by our Health Minister to reduce the prevalence of smoking and tobacco consumption, a consumer found a bottle of Coca Cola containing a pouch of tobacco. He was shocked, and started a chain of correspondence with the company in order to discuss this, but apparently getting nowhere, he finally filed a case in the consumer redressal forum. And the consumer court ruled in his favor, awarding him a compensation of Rs. 15,000 (bringing the case dating from 2004 to a conclusion):
CHANDIGARH: The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Fatehgarh Sahib, has fined Coca Cola Rs 15,000 after a tobacco pouch was found in a bottle of the company. “The sale of contaminated Coca Cola, which is dangerous to human consumption is a matter of deficiency of service,” the forum said in its order.
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Jan 29
Over the course of the past 2 years, there has been an immense amount of literature and news over the dangers of bird flu, especially the H5N1 variety that is extremely destructive, and has caused human losses elsewhere. There is a lot of worry over the fact that a pandemic has not happened for a long time now, and with the current movement of humans all over the world, any spread of a human version will be a much higher killer than previous pandemics. What can cause such a thing to happen ? Well, the bird flu is mostly restricted to avian creatures, and spreads to humans very rarely. In addition, even if humans are affected due to contact with infected birds, the disease does not jump from person to person. It is feared that if the virus comes into close contact with the human influenza virus, and exchanges genetic material with the virus, it is possible that this may cause the bird flu virus may be capable of becoming capable of getting transferred from humans to other humans. This is one of the most feared scenarios for health care personnel, especially because while humans do not take human flu seriously, the bird flu variety is a much bigger killer.
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