➡️There have been eight attacks in Mumbai's northwestern suburbs over the past month alone, sparking a debate on the future of the city's historic leopard population…
A 2018 Indian government report found there are only 12,852 of the cats left nationwide, a reduction of 90 percent since the 1990s, due to poaching and habitat destruction.
An Indian leopard in its natural habitat, Getty Images
In Mumbai 50 leopards currently live in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) which dissects the north of the city
The park comes right up against high-rise blocks.
📸Subhash Sharma for The Daily Telegraph
🔴Although they are walled in, the leopards are expert climbers and are often spotted in the densely-populated surrounding neighbourhoods looking for food...
Usually leopards attack Mumbai’s stray dogs, but some are known to attack humans
Four year old Ayush Yadav was pounced on outside his home - he was lucky to survive.
🔴The authorities in Mumbai have blamed the attacks this month on one leopard and called for calm
📱But the animal in question is still at large and social media is fuelling panic...
It is clear the leopards' future greatly divides opinion and a fatal attack or planned citizens' protests could ramp up the tension further...
🚀While the missile reportedly missed its target by about two dozen miles, the test shows China has made rapid progress on the lightning-fast weapons and is far more advanced than US intelligence officials had realised.
“We have no idea how they did this,” one official said
Drew Thompson, a former American defence department official with responsibility for China, said the test “really should change US calculations”.
“I think it is a game changer in a way that little else has really shifted the balance”
🛰️The first analysis of images from Nasa’s Perseverance rover show the Jezero crater was once a huge 21-mile wide lake, which was fed by a river, and which suffered flash flooding
🦠However, researchers are most excited by the discovery of layers of fine-grained clay and mudstones at the site, because they could preserve traces of ancient life telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/0…
The former detective described the extreme abuse Uyghurs were subjected to in order to elicit confessions as China rounded up about two million people in a social cleansing programme
The officer, identified only by the surname Jiang, said he worked in one of the hundred internment camps dotted around far-western China
🇨🇳A sudden surge of Chinese warplanes into Taiwan’s air defence zone has raised alarm about whether the drums of war are beating louder across the Taiwan Strait.
🛫A record-breaking 56 Chinese warplanes flew close to the island’s airspace on Monday, following 93 similar flights over the weekend.
The latest mission included 12 nuclear-capable H-6 bombers in the vicinity of the uninhabited Pratas islands claimed by both Taiwan and China
So, what is China up to?
🇹🇼Taiwan acts like any other nation with its own democratic government and military but China’s ruling Communist party claims the island of 24 million as its own territory even though it has never ruled there