Twins Separated from Bangladesh Intensive Care: Hospital

SYDNEY news update: Bangladeshi twins Trishna and Krishna have left intensive care as they continue their remarkable recovery from surgery to separate their conjoined heads, the hospital said.
The two-year-old girls, rescued from a Dhaka orphanage, moved to a shared room on the normal ward on Monday, just a week after the 32-hour operation to disconnect their fused skulls, brains and blood vessels.

“They are sharing a room together and settling into their new environment,” Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital said in a statement.

“The girls are getting to know the new staff who will be caring for them now that they have left intensive care.”

The twins’ heads remain heavily bandaged but they have appeared otherwise well, with Trishna awake and talking two days after surgery and Krishna blowing a signature raspberry when she was woken from a medical coma on Saturday.

Their condition has amazed medical staff who nursed them back to fitness after they arrived in fading health from Bangladesh two years ago, and gave them just a 25 percent chance of both recovering completely from the separation.

“We’re all so proud of our children’s hospital and we’re so proud of the quality of the nurses and the staff and the doctors that we’ve got there,” Victoria state Premier John Brumby told Fairfax radio.

“This was just another great example where these two children, who I think, to be honest, many of us thought were not going to get through, have come through, fingers crossed at this stage, with flying colours.”

The girls’ 22-year-old mother, who was unable to care for the sickly babies and handed them to an orphanage soon after their birth, has said she hopes to travel to Australia to see them.

Oz PM Indian Students Warned to Contradict Activities

SYDNEY: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday warned students from India not to take the law into their own hands after writer and activist
Farrukh Dhondy reportedly urged Indians in the country for “some form of retaliation” following the brutal assault on four Indians in Melbourne.

Dhondy has urged Indians in Australia to take matters into their own hands, The Age reported on Thursday.

“There really has to be some form of retaliation from the Indian community as a whole. India has to stand up,” he told ABC Radio.

Rudd said Australia was a law-abiding nation.

“The laws are there for a purpose and that is for all citizens to adhere to them,” he was quoted as saying by The Age.

When asked what message he had for anyone who took the law into their own hands, Rudd said: “People should not”.

The four Indians were attacked by a group outside a bar in Epping on Saturday and the attackers told the victims “You Indians, just go back to your country”.

The attack comes as Victoria’s Premier John Brumby prepares to go on a mission to India to help repair Australia’s reputation.

The victims say they were bashed by up to 70 people in a car park in High Street at Epping on Saturday night.

But the police say there were only four or five offenders, although there were another 15 people making racist comments.

There have been a string of attacks on Indian students since May this year. The attacks have caused an uproar in India.

India’s external affairs minister SM Krishna was assured by Canberra that students from India would be taken care of.

The latest attack takes place after a brief lull in such incidents in which the victims maintain that the assaults were racially motivated.

The brother-in-law of two of the victims, Onkar Singh, had told ABC’s AM programme that his relatives have suffered serious injuries.

“Sukhdip got very badly injured in that, and Gurdeep has his jaw broken, and Mukhtair’s (the uncle) shoulder is broken,” he was quoted as saying.

“When the attack happened there was a lot of people, about 70 and they might have run away or something because they can all see the whole car park was full with them.”