In 2024, a blaze in the neonatal ICU of a medical college in northern Jhansi city killed at least 10 new born babies. In 2021, a fire in the ICU of Vijay Vallabh hospital in the western city of Virar killed 13 patients receiving treatment for Covid-19. Another fire in 2021 at a newborn care unit in Bhandara district in western state Maharashtra killed 10 infants.

In Odisha, the blaze was brought under control after fire service personnel rushed to the hospital. Patients were moved to other departments inside the same hospital, officials said.

SCB Medical College and Hospital is one of the largest government-run medical facilities in Odisha.

Speaking to reporters after visiting the hospital, Majhi said the fire affected the trauma care ICU as well as an adjoining ICU and wards.

Majhi said medical staff and security personnel “risked their lives” during the rescue operation and some of them were injured, adding that the government had directed officials to ensure proper treatment for those hurt in the incident.

The state government has announced financial compensation for the families of the victims. Majhi said he has ordered a judicial inquiry into the incident and said strict action would be taken against anyone found responsible.

Short circuits are among the most common causes of hospital fires in India. Hospitals are particularly vulnerable to fires because they contain a lot of electrical equipment, oxygen systems and patients who often cannot be moved quickly during emergencies.

“We’re at war,” Ecuadorean Interior Minister John Reimberg told residents of the provinces of El Oro, Guayas, Los Ríos and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.

“Don’t take any risks, don’t go out, stay at home,” he added.

Ecuador’s geographical location – sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine – has turned it into a key transit country for the illicit drug.

Around 70% of the cocaine produced in Colombia and Peru is estimated to be shipped through Ecuador.

Noboa’s government has been working with the administration of US President Donald Trump to quell the flow of cocaine from Ecuador to the US.

Last week, the FBI opened its first office in the Andean country, a move which came shortly after the two countries launched joint counter-narcotic operations.

Noboa was one of the Latin American leaders to attend an international meeting hosted by Trump in Mar-a-Lago, which the US authorities dubbed the “Shield of the Americas” summit.

At the summit, Trump likened criminal gangs to a “cancer” and urged his Latin American counterparts to use military force to root them out.

“We don’t want it spreading,” Trump added.

Following the meeting, Noboa posted a photo on social media of himself standing next to Trump with the words: “For too long, the mafias thought that America was their territory. That they could cross borders, move drugs, guns and [spread] violence without consequences. Their time has run out.”

Since coming to office, Noboa has tried to combat criminal organisations in his country with an iron fist and has declared several states of emergency but nevertheless the murder rate rose by over 30% between 2024 and 2025.

[BBC]

In theory, such bets run afoul of US financial rules, which bar trading on contracts involving war, terrorism, assassination, gaming or other illegal activities.

But that hasn’t stopped firms from taking in millions of trades.

Critics have seized on the activity, calling for a crackdown on the apps, which they say are facilitating unseemly, and potentially illegal, war profiteering, generating national security risks and enabling opportunities for insider trading and corruption.

“You have now opened up gambling basically on almost anything and it has turned into this very, very gruesome type of thing on the death of a head of state,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the Public Citizen advocacy group, which recently filed a complaint this week over the bets.

Polymarket alone has hosted what Bloomberg estimated as more than $500m in bets related to the Iran war, at one point offering an opportunity to play the odds on the chance of nuclear detonation.

The company, which is headquartered in New York but operates on a limited basis in the US, eventually removed that market after it drew scrutiny on social media but users can still submit bets on questions like when US forces will enter Iran. It did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Kalshi also ended up cancelling the Khamenei market, which had drawn $54m in trades, noting that US-regulated entities are barred from “having a market directly settling on someone’s death”.

The company, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has said the war bets are happening on unregulated exchanges outside the US.

Concerns about the war bets have collided with a bigger battle over how prediction market firms should be regulated.

Unlike traditional gaming firms, in which the odds are set by the company, prediction market companies function more like a stock exchange, allowing users to bet against each other on the outcome of future events using “event contracts”.

That design has allowed national financial regulators at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to claim oversight.