Bug stop

A different kind of “cockroach” is pestering India’s government.

A pressure group named after the insect and composed of young activists is behind the days of protests in the capital, New Delhi, demanding the resignation of the election commissioner. The human roaches are claiming that the commissioner’s unilateral removal of millions of dubious names from the voter registration list was anomalous.

The government decided to crack down on the Gen Z protesters when they breached a barricade at a protest site called Jantar Mantar on Tuesday. Police arrested and detained the protesters and the leaders of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), namely, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, BBC reported.

The group’s previous nationwide protests forced the resignation of the education secretary, whom it accused of exam irregularities.

As Indian authorities arrested and detained CJP activists to keep the “roaches” at bay, another notorious bug was unstoppable in disrupting travel between Italy and Australia.

Qantas Airlines canceled a flight from Rome to Perth on 10 October and rebooked its passengers on alternate flights while providing accommodations to others.

The grounding of the plane was prompted by complaints from passengers who flew in the same aircraft from Perth to Rome on 9 October.

One of the passengers on Flight QF5, Hailey Bagnall, told 9News that bedbugs “were crawling all over our belongings, our clothing, our Qantas blankets, and they were even crawling along the window,” CNN reported.

Passengers also complained of being bitten by the bloodsuckers, according to 9News.

Qantas admitted that bedbugs were found in a small number of economy seats and that the cancellation of the flight allowed its engineers and maintenance teams to carry out a deep cleaning of the aircraft, according to CNN.