Bayezid Hossain has the premature ageing condition progeria
Disease ages the body - but not the mind - at eight times normal rate
Also has another condition causing his skin to hang loosely in folds
He doesn't go to school because other children are afraid of him
A four-year-old boy resembles an 80-year-old pensioner due to an incredibly rare condition.
Bayezid Hossain, from outside Magura, southern Bangladesh, suffers a swollen face, hollow eyes, sagging skin, aching joints, difficulties passing urine and already has weak and broken teeth.
People in the community stay away from him and children are afraid to play with him, despite him having above average intelligence.
Bayezid is believed to suffer from progeria, which ages the body at eight times the normal rate.
The disorder is said to have inspired the F Scott Fitzgerald novel and Brad Pitt movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which the character is born an old man and ages backwards.
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Bayezid Hossain, from southern Bangladesh is only four years old but resembles an old man due to a rare ageing disease
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Bayezid is believed to suffer from progeria, which ages the body at eight times the normal rate, as well as a condition which causes his skin to hang loosely
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He is pictured with his mother Tripti
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Progeria patients normally die from heart attacks or strokes at an average age of 13.
Bayezid also has a form of cutis laxa, a rare connective tissue disorder in which the skin hangs loosely in folds.
His 18-year-old mother, Tripti Khatun, says she is amazed at how clever her son is, but it breaks her heart that his appearance is so unusual.
She said: ‘Bayezid only learned to walk aged three but he had a full set of teeth at three months old.
'His physical growth is completely abnormal but mentally, he has wonderful conversation, very aware and is very intuitive for his age.
Pregnant women should avoid all non-essential trips to Florida because of the risk of contracting the Zika virus, British officials have said, after the first cases of Zika transmitted by mosquitoes on the US mainland were confirmed in the state. The advice comes as thousands prepare to visit the popular tourist destination.
Florida and national health officials reported the first local transmission of the Zika virus in a US state on Friday, as the state began an “aggressive” investigation and federal authorities short of funding braced themselves for a health crisis.
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Governor Rick Scott reported that four people in southern Florida were likely to have contracted the virus through local mosquito bites, even though no insect trapped and tested in the state has yet proved positive for the virus.
“These are the first cases of locally transmitted Zika virus in the continental United States,” said Tom Frieden, the director for the Centers for Disease Control. “Zika is now here.”
Although health officials have confirmed more than 1,600 cases of the virus across America, every patient bar the four reported in Florida contracted the disease either travelling abroad or through sexual transmission. In Puerto Rico, there are more than 4,500 cases of the virus, virtually all contracted through mosquitoes.
As many as 50 pregnant women a day are affected in the US territory, according to the Centers for Disease Control. “This is a silent epidemic that is rapidly spreading through Puerto Rico,” Frieden said.
The Florida report followed an announcement on Thursday that blood donations had been suspended in the affected area until all current samples could be tested. Two of the cases suspected of local transmission were in Miami-Dade county and two in Broward county, Scott said. The patients included one woman and three men, and none has needed hospital care.
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Health officials believe that the infections occurred in an area of about a square mile just north of downtown Miami. Officials are now going door to door in the area offering to test people, and Scott said that they would be “aggressively testing”.
“While no mosquitoes trapped tested positive for the Zika virus, the department believes these cases were likely transmitted through infected mosquitoes in this area,” the Florida health department said. “All the evidence we have seen indicates that this is mosquito-borne transmission that occurred several weeks ago in several blocks in Miami,” Frieden added.
Earlier in July, authorities began investigating the possible first local transmission of Zika, but Scott’s near-confirmation on Friday amounted to a serious development of the feared health crisis. There have been 386 cases of Zika reported in Florida so far, mostly in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Fifty-five pregnant women have been affected.
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“Florida is taking an aggressive approach,” Scott confirmed. “We have worked hard to stay ahead of the spread of Zika and prepare for the worst.”
Scott emphasised that there had been no reported cases of local transmission of Zika in central parts of the state. The Orlando area is teeming with summer visitors from all over the US and the globe, attending the cluster of theme parks such as Disney World, Universal Studios and SeaWorld.
Officials fear local transmission because local mosquitoes could spread the disease far more rapidly than isolated travel or sex.
More than a million British nationals visit Florida each year. The updated travel advice from Public Health England, which comes as many are expected to visit the state’s theme parks this summer, reads: “The risk in Florida is considered moderate based on the number and spread of cases and their demonstrated ability to implement effective control measures for similar diseases such as dengue – a virus transmitted by the same mosquito.
“Pregnant women should consider postponing non-essential travel to affected areas until after the pregnancy. At present, only a zone of about one square mile in Miami-Dade county is considered to be at risk of active transmission.” Experts in the UK recently urged expectant mothers to avoid travel to the Olympics in Brazil, which has been hit hard by the disease, and parts of the US, including Florida.
The CDC has also warned of probable local outbreaks in other southern coastal states as the summer heats up; poor communities in Texas and Louisiana are seen as particularly vulnerable. Texas reported the first case of Zika transmission in the US in February, believed to have been passed on through sex.
Shootings follow several major acts of gun violence in the US over past several weeks
By Prince K
The clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin, the spot from which Charles Whitman carried out a mass shooting fifty years ago. Photograph: Ilana Panich-Linsman/The New York Times
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One woman is dead and three others have been taken to hospital after in a shooting in the centre of Austin,Texas, and police are hunting for a suspect.
Austin Police chief of staff Brian Manley said officers received reports of gunshots in the crowded entertainment area shortly after 2am local time. Police arrived to find a chaotic scene and five people shot.
Mr Manley said one woman was pronounced dead at the scene, and three others, all female, were taken to University Medical Centre Brackenridge with gunshot wounds. He said another victim declined to be taken to hospital.
There was no immediate word on the condition of the injured.
Mr Manley said a suspect began firing into the crowd after an initial disturbance.
He said officials are trying to determine who the suspects are and he did not rule out that a suspect might be one of the people taken to hospital.
The shootings follow several major acts of gun violence in the United States over the past several weeks.
On June 12th, a gunman who sympathized with Islamist extremist groups killed 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
On July 7th, a US military veteran shot and killed five police officers in Dallas in the deadliest day for US law enforcement since the September 11th, 2001, attacks.
Just over a week later another gunman killed three officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Both attackers were killed by police
