WORLD NEWS FLASH
UNITED STATES
Cover Photo Caption: U.S. Rear Admiral John Mauger delivering a press briefing in Boston about the Titan
A hastily made trip to see the ruins of one lost sea vessel led to the loss of another – and its five adventurers.
On June 18, the Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate, Inc. made a dive to see the downed RMS Titanic ship off the coast of Newfoundland. The five men on the vessel consisted of Stockton Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani-British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, an underwater research expert who made over 30 expeditions to the Titanic site.
After communications were lost with the submersible, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that a debris field was found near the Titanic, which included the nose cone of the Titan. This led officials to believe that the submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion. Experts assessed that due to the nature of an implosion, the five men aboard did not suffer during their deaths due to the speed and impact of the event.
The U.S. Coast Guard has convened a Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) into the loss of the Titan submersible and the five people on board. An MBI is the highest level of investigation in the Coast Guard. Upon completion of the investigation, the Board will issue a report to the Commandant with the evidence collected, the facts established, its conclusions, and recommendations.
During the course of the MBI, the Board will work to determine:
The Coast Guard MBI is working in close coordination with other national and international authorities including the United States National Transportation Safety Board, Canadian Transportation Safety Board, French Marine Casualties Investigation Board, and United Kingdom Marine Accident Investigation Branch.
Anyone wishing to provide information that may assist the Coast Guard MBI can submit to accidentinfo@uscg.mil.
MASS SHOOTING UPDATE
Information recent as of 6-27-2023 at 12 p.m.
2023 Mass Shooting Stats: (Source: Mass Shooting Tracker – https://www.massshootingtracker.site/data/?year=2023)
Total Mass Shootings: 388
Total Dead: 511
Total Wounded: 1506
Shootings Per Day: 2.18
Days Reached in Year 2023 as of June 27: 178
Latest High Profile Incident
Location: Fourth and Johnson Sts. – Saginaw, MI
Time: Around 12:00 a.m. local time, June 24.
Deceased: 2.
Injured: 15, including two critical.
Shooter(s): Number of shooters unknown as of press time.
Weapon(s): At least five different calibers of weapon.
Motive: A fight among partygoers at a street party.
Status: At-large.
Notes: Some of the injuries in this shooting came from instances of people who fled the gunfire being struck by cars, driven by people also fleeing the gunfire.
MIDDLE EAST
MORE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN BEEF
A particularly deadly week of violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory’s West Bank risks spiraling out of control, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on June 23, after a “major intensification” involving Israeli airstrikes and drone attacks.
“These latest killings and the violence, along with the inflammatory rhetoric, serve only to drive Israelis and Palestinians deeper into an abyss,” said the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as his Office warned of the “terrible impact on both Palestinians and Israelis” of the escalation, before calling for an immediate end to the bloodshed.
Mr. Türk’s comments followed remarks by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who “condemned all acts of violence against civilians” in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and deplored the loss of life.
Echoing Mr. Guterres’s deep concern about an Israeli military raid on Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on June 19 that killed at least seven Palestinians, including a boy and a girl, the UN rights chief said that the use of airstrikes was “more generally associated with the conduct of armed hostilities rather than a law enforcement operation.”
According to reports, Israeli gunships were used for the first time in the area since the early 2000s to extract injured soldiers, while a long gun battle raged.
Mr. Türk added that on the evening of June 21, other reports emerged of an Israeli military drone strike near Jenin that killed three alleged Palestinian militants.
“Israel must urgently reset its policies and actions in the West Bank in line with international human rights standards, including protecting and respecting the right to life,” insisted the High Commissioner.
Following the Jenin raid, Mr. Türk’s Office said that he had been “appalled” that some Palestinians had celebrated the killing of four Israeli settlers – reportedly including a 17-year-old boy – by two armed Palestinian men near the community of Eli in the occupied West Bank.
Highlighting the tinderbox situation, OHCHR spokesperson Jeremy Laurence said that several Palestinian communities had reportedly been assaulted by Israeli settlers, amid “confrontations between Israeli settlers, accompanied by Israeli Security Forces, and Palestinians.”
According to UN rights office OHCHR, so far this year, Israeli Security Forces have killed at least 126 Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Among them were 21 boys and one girl.
This compares with last year, when 155 Palestinians were killed by Israeli Security Forces in the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, representing the highest number in the past 17 years.
Data from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights indicates that 24 Israelis were killed inside Israel and the occupied West Bank last year – “the highest number of Israelis were killed last year since 2016.”
“For this violence to end, the occupation must end,” said Mr. Türk. “On all sides, the people with the political power know this and must instigate immediate steps to realize this.”
AFRICA
BAD CONDITIONS HAMPER HORN OF AFRICA
Climate, armed conflict, high food prices and post-COVID-19 economic fall-out have caused record food insecurity in the Horn of Africa, with an estimated 60 million urgently in need of help, UN humanitarian agencies warned on June 26.
“About five million children under the age of five are estimated to be facing acute malnutrition in 2023 in the Horn region, in the Greater Horn. That is about 10.4 million, that is just a staggering figure,” said Liesbeth Aelbrecht, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) incident manager for the greater Horn of Africa emergency.
“What our colleagues are seeing in clinics and in hospitals, since the beginning of this year, are the highest level of severely malnourished children who are now coming to these facilities with medical complications since the crisis began three years ago.”
Echoing that alert, World Food Program (WFP) Senior Emergency Officer Dominique Ferretti said that almost three years of drought had given way to rains and devastating flash floods: “While we just concluded a rainy season which performed better than predicted, one rainy season is not enough to bring an end to the crisis.”
Although long-awaited rains arrived in March across the eight-member Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) region – encompassing Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda – and with it the hope of relief, flash-flooding inundated homes and farmland, washed away livestock and closed schools and health facilities.
The result was the highest number of reported disease outbreaks in the greater Horn of Africa so far this century. Their frequency can be linked directly to extreme climate events, according to the UN health agency.
Ms. Aelbrecht noted ongoing outbreaks of cholera and measles, together with “very high numbers” last year and this year, including malaria cases.
“So, with the impact of flooding, we see these diseases worsening. Malaria, I would like to remind you, is one of the biggest killers in the region.”
EUROPE
BAN LIFTED ON KEY MEDICINE
Leading scientists at the independent Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) have confirmed that albumin, a critically important medicine for the NHS, can now be safely derived from UK plasma donors.
Human albumin (HA) treatments are made of plasma proteins from human blood. They are given to thousands of critically ill patients every year to replace blood loss from trauma such as severe burns or injuries, and those suffering from conditions such as liver disease or sepsis.
However, until recently, the use of UK-donated plasma to manufacture plasma-derived medicinal products has been banned as a safety precaution against the spread of Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD). The NHS instead relied exclusively on imported plasma-derived products, primarily from the USA.
In 2020, the ban on using UK-sourced plasma to manufacture immunoglobulins, another type of plasma-derived medicinal product, was lifted.
The MHRA can now confirm that, following further review of the evidence, the CHM has also recommended lifting the ban on treating patients with UK albumin.
All organizations authorized to collect blood and blood components, and manufacturers of plasma-derived medicines, must continue to abide by the same robust safety standards and risk mitigation measures adopted for immunoglobulin manufacture such as the use of leucodepletion (filtering the white blood cells from donated blood to reduce the risk of adverse reactions), high-risk donor deferral and the ability to trace donations between donor and patient.
Medicines in the UK are reviewed and evaluated by expert teams at the MHRA and CHM before they can be approved for UK use. Any medical products made from UK-derived plasma will be evaluated to the same criteria as those made from non-UK plasma.
NHS Blood and Transplant collects plasma in two ways: through its three dedicated plasma donor centers in Birmingham, Reading and Twickenham, and by recovering plasma from regular whole blood donations. The plasma from both sources can now be used to make albumin for the NHS.
