PARIS – A donor whose blood was used to transfuse 10 people and to make medicines has been identified as France’s eighth known victim of the human equivalent of mad cow disease, health officials announced Thursday.
Authorities are working to identify the 10 recipients. Once identified, their doctors will inform them they may have been exposed to the disease, the national blood service said.
Officials would not disclose details about the person infected with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but said he or she is still alive. Blood from the donor was also used in to make 88 batches of medicines, enough for several thousand people, officials said.
Gaze Strip: Missiles kill Hamas boss
An Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at a car traveling in the Gaza Strip Thursday, killing a senior Hamas commander who was among the government’s most-wanted fugitives for years – the latest in a series of Israeli assassinations that have weakened the militant group. Adnan al-Ghoul, a founder and the No. 2 figure of Hamas’ military wing, was killed along with a lower-ranking militant. The airstrike dealt another heavy blow to Hamas’ military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, which is responsible for attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis during four years of fighting.
China: Gas blast kills miners
Nearly 150 miners were feared killed by a gas explosion in a coal shaft in central China, the highest recent toll in a cadence of underground tragedies in the country’s hard-pressed energy industry, the government said Thursday. The Work Safety Administration immediately pledged another crackdown on wildcat mines operating without authorization and larger mines that push production beyond a safe pace to keep up with a soaring demand for coal in China’s booming and electricity-starved economy.
North Koreans seeks refuge
Twenty-nine people claiming to be North Korean asylum seekers cut through a wire fence and fled into a South Korean school in Beijing today, a news report said. The group entered the school and identified themselves to school authorities as North Koreans who were fleeing their homeland and wanted to travel to South Korea, the South’s national news agency, Yonhap, reported. Chinese officials have allowed many asylum seekers to leave the country.
Japan: Typhoon death toll rises
Rescue workers and Japanese troops waded through sludge early Friday to search for victims of mudslides in Japan’s deadliest typhoon in over a decade that ripped across the country, killing 67 and leaving 21 missing. Typhoon Tokage, the record eighth typhoon to hit Japan this year, unleashed towering waves and rapid mudslides that demolished homes and flooded dozens of communities when the storm slammed into western Japan Wednesday.
Cuba: Castro injured in fall
Cuban President Fidel Castro’s advancing age – and ultimately his mortality – were brought home Thursday after he fractured a knee and arm when he tripped and fell at a public event. In a communist society where the 78-year-old leader has played a larger-than-life role for more than four decades, the tumble was the latest reminder that Cuba’s commander in chief is an aging man who will not live forever – with an elderly brother as his designated successor.
Austria: Iran cool to nuclear deal
Iran is unlikely to accept European incentives aimed at getting it to suspend uranium enrichment, diplomats said Thursday, raising the prospect of a showdown next month between Tehran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. Envoys from Britain, France and Germany offered civilian nuclear technology and a trade deal to the Iranians in a private meeting at the French mission to international organizations in Vienna. But Western diplomats said they doubt Iran will back down easily.
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