Odd: Global Edition

The comments under the reel show how travellers are not only confused between Austria and Australia. Instead, some of the most common mishaps among passengers are

Sydney in Nova Scotia and Sydney in Australia
Budapest and Bucharest
Slovenia and Slovakia
Ontario in California and Ontario in Canada
California’s San Jose and Costa Rica’s San Jose

A Brazilian woman was arrested at an airport in Bogota, Colombia, on Monday for attempting to smuggle 130 poisonous dart frogs out of the country, officials said.

The woman was flying out of El Dorado International Airport on her way to São Paulo, Brazil, via Panama when she was detained by authorities, Colombia's environment ministry said in a news release.

After searching her luggage, authorities found the poisonous frogs hidden in film canisters.

"This endangered species is sought after in international markets," Bogota Police Commander Juan Carlos Arevalo said, according to AFP. Arevalo added that private collectors might pay up to $1,000 for each, AFP reported.

In early 2023, a rare but deadly form of meningitis began appearing across the United States, especially among patients who had undergone cosmetic surgery at two clinics in Matamoros, Mexico, a city across the border from Texas.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a notice to alert doctors in May, and they began finding dozens of confirmed and probable cases across the U.S., especially in Texas, as well as in Mexico. Patients who had been to the two clinics were notified that they may have been exposed to the fungus.

A bewildering outbreak
There were three bewildering things about this outbreak: first, the meningitis was fungal rather than bacterial or viral, which is already unusual – but it's even more unusual for a fungal meningitis to appear in young people who aren't immune-compromised.

Second, it was drug-resistant, so none of the drugs on the market could combat it – which meant patients would die without effective treatments.

And third, the fungus was attacking the brain stem with unusual fervor. It was eating away at the blood vessels of the brain stem, breaking and clotting the blood vessels until patients suffered strokes, aneurysms, brain hemorrhages, brain swelling and eventually death.

In a study published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers describe 13 cases of the fungal meningitis, nine of which were fatal, at three Texas hospitals. Three of those patients remain on an experimental medication.

The patients tended to be young women, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who had received epidurals for surgeries like tummy tucks and Brazilian butt lifts between Jan. 1 and May 13, 2023, at the two clinics.

The epidural medications seem to have been tainted with the fungus, which entered the spinal fluid and worked its way up to the brain stem. In the weeks after their surgeries, the patients began reporting headaches and low-grade fevers that soon worsened into horrific medical complications. In total, 12 patients with probable or confirmed cases died in this outbreak..

While there are always risks with epidurals, infections like these are vanishingly rare when proper sanitary procedures and regulations are followed. The investigation in Mexico is still ongoing, but experts believe there was likely a breach of these procedures. At the time, there was a shortage of morphine, a common ingredient in epidural anesthesia, and it's possible the morphine was procured or stored in "less than ideal" conditions, said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, division director of infectious diseases at UTHealth Houston and one of the study authors.

Electronic pagers belonging to members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah exploded simultaneously on Tuesday afternoon, killing at least nine people and wounding around 2,800 across the Middle East nation. The method of attack was highly unusual, if not unprecedented, and raised the specter of an escalation in the Israel-Hezbollah fighting.

The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable
Editorial
Benjamin Netanyahu’s hold on power depends on his nation being at war. The region is paying a high price

In the second world war, guerrilla forces scattered large quantities of booby-trapped objects likely to be attractive to civilians. The idea was to cause widescale and indiscriminate death. The Japanese manufactured a tobacco pipe with a charge detonated by a spring-loaded striker. The Italians produced a headset that blew up when it was plugged in. More than half a century later, a global treaty came into force which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Has anyone told Israel and its jubilant supporters that, as Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group points out, it is a signatory to the protocol?

On Tuesday, pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people – including two children and four hospital workers – and wounding thousands more. This situation is directly analogous to the historical practices that current global arms treaties explicitly prohibit. US media say Israel was behind the attack, and the country has the motive and the means to target its Iran-backed enemies. Israel’s leaders have a long history of carrying out sophisticated remote operations, ranging from cyber-attacks, suicide drone attacks and remote-controlled weapons to assassinate Iranian scientists. On Wednesday it was reported that Israel blew up thousands of two-way personal radios used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds.

This week’s attacks were not, as Israel’s defenders claimed, “surgical” or a “precisely targeted anti-terrorist operation”. Israel and Hezbollah are sworn enemies. The current round of fighting has seen tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the Israel-Lebanon border because of the Shia militant group’s rocket and artillery attacks.

However, the pager bombs were clearly intended to target individual civilians – diplomats and politicians – who were not directly participating in hostilities. The plan appeared to produce what lawyers might call “excessive incidental civilian harm”. Both these arguments have been levelled at Russia to claim Moscow was committing war crimes in Ukraine. It’s hard to say why the same reasoning is not applied to Israel – apart from that it is a western ally.

Such disproportionate attacks, which seem illegal, are not only unprecedented but may also become normalised. If that is the case, the door is opened for other states to lethally test the laws of war. The US should step in and restrain its friend, but Joe Biden shows no sign of intervening to stop the bloodshed. The road to peace runs through Gaza, but Mr Biden’s ceasefire plan – and the release of hostages – has not found favour with either Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Hamas.

The worry is that Israel’s actions lead to a disastrous all-out conflict that would pull the US into a regional fight. The world stands on the edge of chaos because Mr Netanyahu’s continuing hold on power and consequent insulation from corruption charges depend largely on his nation being at war. None of this is possible without US complicity and assistance. Perhaps it is only after its presidential election that the US will be able to say that the price of saving Mr Netanyahu’s skin should not be paid in the streets of Lebanon or by Palestinians in the occupied territories. Until then, the rules-based international order will continue to be undermined by the very countries that created the system.

GP injected mother’s partner with flesh-eating chemical to secure inheritance, court hears
Trial told Thomas Kwan, 53, disguised himself as a nurse and told Patrick O’Hara he was getting a Covid jab

A GP worried about his inheritance disguised himself as a nurse and injected deadly poison into his victim after duping them into believing they were being given a home-visit Covid booster jab, a court has heard.

Thomas Kwan was not injecting Covid vaccine into Patrick O’Hara, prosecutors allege, but a poison that gave his victim a rare and life-threatening flesh-eating disease.

“Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth really is stranger than fiction,” said Peter Makepeace KC as he opened the prosecution case against Kwan at Newcastle crown court on Thursday.

Kwan, 53, is is accused of attempting to murder O’Hara, his mother’s long-term partner and a “potential impediment” to the defendant inheriting her estate.

The court heard Kwan devised an intricate plan to kill 71-year-old O’Hara, who lived in Newcastle with Kwan’s mother, by disguising himself as a community nurse and injecting him with poison.

“It was an audacious plan,” Makepeace told the jury. “It was a plan to murder a man in plain sight, to murder a man right in front of his own mother’s eyes, that man’s life partner.”

The court heard that Kwan was a successful GP and partner at a surgery in Sunderland. The plot to kill O’Hara involved Kwan concocting a fake but “utterly convincing” NHS letter, said Makepeace. It said O’Hara was a priority for a home-visit Covid injection because of his age. A second fake letter offered an appointment on 22 January, between 9am and 1pm. A grateful O’Hara “fell for it hook, line and sinker”, Makepeace said.

The court heard Kwan booked himself into a Premier Inn under a false name, arriving at 2.45am on the day of the appointment, 22 January. Hotel CCTV captured Kwan leaving wearing a long coat, hat, blue surgical gloves and a clinical mask, the jury heard.

Makepeace said Kwan had clearly disguised himself “and of course he needed to. What he is about to do he is going to do in front of his own mother, to a man who knew him and he knows.”

O’Hara did not recognise Kwan behind surgical gloves, mask and tinted spectacles. He didn’t even ask for identification. He shouted up to Kwan’s mother that “the man from the National Health Service had arrived”, Makepeace said.

After a questionnaire, blood pressure test and the taking of blood and urine samples, Kwan’s mother came downstairs, the jury heard, and asked if the “nurse” could take her blood pressure as she had come off tablets because of a rash.

He did this with the mother oblivious to the fact it was her son, the court heard. The jab itself, the court heard, caused “terrible pain” and prompted O’Hara to shout “Bloody hell,” but the “nurse” reassured him the pain was not uncommon. As he left, Kwan’s mother remarked that the visitor was the same height as her son.

Later, Makepeace said, O’Hara started feeling increasing pain and eventually went to A&E where staff assumed the booster had been applied clumsily. The next day, O’Hara’s arm was blistered and discoloured and his GP sent him back to hospital where doctors were baffled, the court heard.

It soon became clear O’Hara was suffering from a rare and life-threatening disease called necrotising fasciitis and specialists had to remove large portions of arm flesh in repeated procedures. He spent several weeks in intensive care.

The court heard Kwan lived with his wife and young son in a detached house on an executive estate in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside.

Kwan has admitted a charge of administering a noxious substance but denies alternative charges of attempted murder, or causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

The trial continues.