We love Adam Sandler’s ‘SNL’ characters and his movies ‘Billy Madison,’ ‘The Wedding Singer,’ and ‘Big Daddy,’ but did you know that the Sandman has also bizarrely predicted some of the most devastating events in recent history? Here are just a handful of the tragedies foreseen by the world-famous comedian.
1. Waco Siege
Via Wn.com/Ibtimes.com
In the wake of the 1993 tragedy, which involved Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and 75 other people perishing during an FBI raid on the cult’s compound, few knew that a young Adam Sandler had predicted the incident in his stand-up act. Tapes now reveal Sandler would often spend several minutes on stage repeatedly uttering the phrase, “Something’s coming to Waco. Something dark.”
2. The Death Of Princess Diana
Via Supertran.net / Express.co.uk
The infamous 1997 car crash that claimed the life of Diana, Princess of Wales shocked the world, but hardcore Sandler fans immediately made the connection to one seemingly out-of-place scene from 1996’s Happy Gilmore, in which Sandler looks directly into the camera and says, “Our Queen’s eldest, the beautiful flower, will wilt under a Parisian bridge.”
3. BP Oil Spill
Via Celebritywatchdog.com / Cbsnews.com
In 2010, a massive oil rig explosion resulted in the discharge of nearly 5 million barrels of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, as was strangely foretold on a 2005 episode of Late Night With Conan O’Brien, when guest Adam Sandler’s T-shirt simply read, “BP OIL SPILL IN FIVE YEARS.”
4. 2010 Haitian Earthquake
Via Trailers.apple.com / News.nationalpost.com
The U.N. estimates that 222,570 people were killed and 300,572 injured during this tragedy, which are only slightly off from Sandler’s Funny People estimates of 220,000 deaths and 400,000 injuries.
5. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Via Youtube via jimbo21cmb / Wikipedia
Most recently, the case of the missing Malaysian passenger flight on March 8, 2014 almost too perfectly echoed the lines from a 1993 Saturday Night Live “Opera Man” sketch: “A missing plane-ah / It’s from Malaysia / Make me insane-ah / This will all make sense in due time.”
Clearly, Adam has a knack for divining when bad things will happen! We can’t wait to see which of his predictions will occur next. Until then, we’re left with his chilling words from ‘You Don’t Mess With The Zohan’: “Water shall overtake the eastern seaboard. Man, woman, child, and animal. All will drown.”
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Another person has been reportedly killed while attempting the ice bucket challenge. Sergio Cardozo reportedly died on camera while doing the ice bucket challenge with two fellow friends. In the video, Sergio is seen sitting on a chair with a helmet on as two friends are holding a bucket from a balcony. The two friends are holding a plastic trash bin full of ice water and drop the whole trash bin on his head.
The "ice bucket challenge gone wrong/slippery bucket" version of the rumor got a boost on Twitter when a parody account spread the video without attribution. Many users appear to have mistaken the account for that of the rapper Drake, as both accounts have the same display name:
Close examination reveals that the Twitter handle of the parody account is not spelled correctly.
An earlier claim made by the same site involved the second scenario, in a somewhat self-contradicting narrative. In that version a woman named Latasha Brown accepted the ice bucket challenge from a Facebook friend, only to die in under a minute due to a heart attack or hypothermia:
Latasha Brown accepted a friendly online challenge invite from her best friend via Facebook the challenge is to toss a bucket of ice cold water over your body. [Latasha] Brown died from hypothermia 30 seconds later her frozen body was rushed the the hospital where coroner Will Jackson declared her death.
The ice bucket challenge continues to be a popular topic of discussion on social media sites, but thus far no verifiable reports of serious injury or death resulting from the challenge have emerged.
observation:
Chances are you've seen the "ice bucket challenge" mentioned on Facebook or Twitter, especially now that celebrities and other notable figures have been participating in the meme. But as new entries are posted, a rumor suggesting ice bucket challenges can be fatal has circulated as well, with a few versions of the tale often accompanying posts about the social media trend. Users have asked about the rumor, and concerns about the safety of the ice bucket challenge have proliferated.
Several variations have been suggested as part of the ice bucket death rumor, but most frequently the ill-fated charitable party is said to have fallen victim to a slippery ice bucket or died of shock after being exposed to freezing water. One such claim suggesting the former originates from a "satirical" website, alleging that a teenager was killed by a falling ice bucket in an incident captured on video:
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Residents of Ferguson, Missouri, were newly infuriated this week to learn from an autopsy report that Michael Brown, the man whose killing by a police officer on August 9 has set off days of ferocious clashes between police and protesters, had been shot six times. People who are unfamiliar with police work can reasonably ask, why was an unarmed man shot so many times, and why was deadly force used at all?
To put what happened in Ferguson in proper context, we need to understand how police officers are trained. The overwhelming majority of police departments in the United States train their officers in what is referred to as "continuum of force," which views confrontations with the public as a series of stages.
It starts with an officer's mere presence or spoken instructions, and becomes steadily more coercive, from the use of commands ("disperse;" "put the hands up") to physical force, with things such as batons, Tasers, pepper spray, and finally, if all else fails or an officer's life is threatened, deadly force. That is, bullets.
An officer need not go through each and every stage of the continuum. It is left to his or her discretion if and when to skip any or most of the stages. And it is important to emphasize that, even when an officer opts for deadly force, it is never intended to kill the suspect but to eliminate the perceived threat. Since police are trained to shoot in the center of the body, the use of this force will often result in death.
Police officers receive between 70 and 120 hours of training in the use of deadly force from the technical angle — that is, how to fire their guns accurately. But little in their training modules touches upon the psychological, physiological and social aspects of the use of deadly force. This is a mistake. Police training should include extensive and ongoing emphasis on what happens to the officer, the suspect and the community when coercive force is used. Officers must be prepared to cope with stressful encounters that they believe call for firing their weapon at a suspect.
This is not the kind of training that individual police departments should work out on their own. It should be developed as a national standard by experts in the field of police studies, sociology, psychology and physiology.
Police also receive practically no training in stress management; if a department decides to offer such training, it is usually on an experimental basis and not incorporated long term. But without learning to manage stressful encounters, officers will find themselves again and again in situations in which human life — that of the person the force is used against or the police officer who shoots — is sacrificed because of an error of judgment.
Researchers have shown that under the stress of a deadly force encounter, a series of physiological changes occur. Visual perception becomes seriously impaired: Up to 70% of the peripheral vision is affected. This visual impairment often creates an inability to assess how many shots are needed and if indeed the suspect has been incapacitated to the point of posing no more threat to the police officer or others.
It's not possible to say that the number of shots in the Brown case represent a police officer attempting to "execute" the teenager, but rather they likely reflect the outcome of a tremendous stress that the officer experienced while shooting.
Policing as a profession, in addition to being about the use of force, is also about the individual discretion of officers, and this is difficult to explain to a non-police audience. It is rooted in a sense of suspicion, the idea that anything can happen on the streets, and it is related to officers' personal experience but also the experiences of his or her colleagues, the so-called war stories that mobilize and organize much of officers' behavior on the streets.
It is a horrible tragedy when a police officer takes somebody's life, especially when the person was not armed. However, the public makes a dangerous presumption when it assumes that police officers, police departments or any other law enforcement bodies are out there to execute members of the public. Policing is a dangerous profession, as George Orwell once wrote: "Men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard … them."
Yes, police must be enabled to use coercive force, but they must be trained thoroughly in how to use it.
They are trained as soldiers and expected to perform as social workers at least 90% of the time. And then in a split of a second, they have to be soldiers again. It's quite a trick.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Sheryl Moore’s son lay on the bed before her. Soon, she knew, her 16-year-old boy would be taken off life support — another life lost to bullying.
Alexander “AJ” Betts Jr. attempted suicide in July 2013, the Des Moines Register reported at the time. He died shortly thereafter. Betts’s mother said he had been outed as gay about a year and half before his death. His friends told KCCI that schoolmates constantly made fun of him, ridiculing him for being gay, for being half African American, and for his cleft lip.
“He’s different. He doesn’t add up to what they’re used to,” Noah Lahmann, the teen’s best friend, told the news station.
Before he died, Betts had a request: Donate my organs. A 14-year-old boy received Betts’s heart, according to a letter Moore received, but she said his eyes were rejected.
A Food and Drug Administration’s guidance for donor eligibility says men who have had sex with men in the past five years “should” be ruled as “ineligible” for donating certain tissues, labeling their behavior a “risk factor.”
“My initial feeling was just very angry because I couldn’t understand why my 16-year-old son’s eyes couldn’t be donated just because he was gay,” Moore said, according to KCCI.
The FDA’s guidance reflects its ban on blood from men who have sex with men. That policy is a by-product of the AIDS crisis that ripped through the gay men’s community decades ago.
The FDA explains its much harder line regarding blood as such: Men who have had sex with men “at any time since 1977 (the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States) are currently deferred as blood donors” because “a history of male-to-male sex is associated with an increased risk for exposure to and transmission of certain infectious diseases, including HIV.”
Critics have long called the policy discriminatory, but the FDA says it’s necessary: “FDA’s deferral policy is based on the documented increased risk of certain transfusion transmissible infections, such as HIV, associated with male-to-male sex and is not based on any judgment concerning the donor’s sexual orientation.”
In the Journal of the American Medical Association, Glenn Cohen, a bioethics law professor at the Harvard Law School, wrote that the United States should repeal the rules about blood. “We think it’s time for the FDA to take a serious look at this policy, because it’s out of step with peer countries, it’s out of step with modern medicine, it’s out of step with public opinion, and we feel it may be legally problematic,” he told CBS.
Cohen notes some contradictions in the FDA blood ban: Men who have sex with HIV-positive women or sex workers are banned for only a year.
Last summer, the American Medical Association voted to end the ban. According to Time magazine, William Kobler, a board member for the the association, said in a statement, “The lifetime ban on blood donation for men who have sex with men is discriminatory and not based on sound science.”
In an e-mail to Time, a spokesman for the FDA wrote, “Although scientific evidence has not yet demonstrated that blood donated by [men who have sex with men] or a subgroup of these potential donors does not have a substantially increased rate of HIV infection compared to currently accepted blood donors, the FDA remains willing to consider new approaches to donor screening and testing.”
Rules, guidelines and recommendations governing organ and tissue donation are not as clear as the FDA’s ban on blood. The nonprofit organization United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has a contract to facilitate organ procurement and transplants in United States. That contract covers “specified solid organs” such as hearts, livers, lungs and kidneys, but not eyes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On top of that, it adds, “Technically, all UNOS policies are voluntary.”
In Betts’s case, his liver, lungs, kidneys and heart all found recipients. Unlike blood, as long as a recipient gives consent to any associated potential risks (such as HIV transmission) after counseling, certain organs can be donated. But because his mother could not confirm to the donor network that her son hadn’t been sexually active in the five years before his death, Betts’s eyes were rejected.
“This is archaic,” Moore told KCCI. “And it is just silly that people wouldn’t get the life-saving assistance they need because of regulations that are 30 years old.”
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
In a phishing scam similar to the Casey Anthony confession video hoax, in July 2011 messages were spread via Facebook entreating those of a prurient bent to examine a video showing a spider under a girl's skin.
There was no such video, however. Those who click the proffered link found themselves confronted by an "Age verification" confirmation box that read "Are you older than 18 years of age? Those who activated the button granted their permission for the link to be shared with their Facebook network. In this manner, the unsuspecting initiated the dispatch of automated entreaties to view the non-existent video to all of their contacts, thus luring even more people into the scam.
Those who did click the "age verification" link eventually arrived at a (fake) YouTube page where they were asked to complete an online survey before being
allowed to view the video. This survey generated traffic and revenue for the scammers. Some who clicked on the fake YouTube page reported being taken to a hardcore porn page.
A later version of the scam offered a link to a video of a father who dropped his daughter to catch a foul ball at a baseball game. While there was video of such an occurrence, the link offered in the Facebook phishing scam actually took those who clicked it to the "spider under a girl's skin" con.
While such forms of phishing are not themselves viruses or trojans, they do sometimes entice the unwary into unwittingly downloading viruses or trojans via clickjacking — items labeled as one thing turn out to be very different things (e.g. the "Play" button mentioned above that instead grants permission for the scam to send notifications about the video to the dupe's contact list). While sometimes those "very different things" might be survey scams, at others they will be malware intended for installation on the user's computer. Therefore, it's a mistake to assume all buttons labeled "Play" or "Confirm" actually are what they appear to be
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Rumors of a mass crime spree referred to as a "real life" imitation of the film The Purge are heavily circulating on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
According to the rumors, real life The Purge imitations
are set to begin at 8 p.m. Friday until 6:30 a.m. Saturday, with one rumored for 15 August through 16 August in Louisville, Kentucky.
Other cities subject to "Purge" rumors include Jacksonville, Florida, Detroit, Michigan, and Cleveland, Ohio, with at least one mentioned for later in August.
Given the virality of this rumor it's quite likely "Louisville's the Purge" will morph into panics and whispers in other cities as the social shares generated by the story live on via Facebook and Twitter throughout the summer.
The scare has been a topic of conversation and intrigue across the local social web, and it appears many residents are genuinely fearful such an event could come to pass. Making matters worse, the rumor has filtered into the blogosphere, along with suggestions that the "threat" is credible.
School events in and around Louisville have been canceled due to the rumor, and police have addressed growing concern among residents.
Louisville Metro Police Department Sgt. Phil Russell said of the fears:
A number of people have reached out to us. We're going to take any threat that we receive seriously, particularly one that encourages and incites violence against our community … We're going to take that seriously and investigate that as thoroughly as we can. As a department, I believe that we're adequately prepared for anything that could arise."
Student reporters in Louisville claim to have identified a student who accidentally started what they've called the "Purge hoax," though the teen's name was not supplied:
The site linked in the tweet above quotes the unnamed student as saying that he tweeted the image as a joke after watching the film, and did not intend to kick off any panic:
I was sitting in my house and watching 'The Purge,' and I thought of the tweet and picture that started it. But didn't think it'd get that big from there. I didn't mean any harm by this at all. I love my city[.]"
Police declined to confirm the student's rumored link to online "Purge" fears.
While it appears police are taking Purge rumors seriously in Louisville, no evidence has emerged to suggest a cause other than intense social media panic.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
In April 2003 Starbucks Corp. ended its operations in Israel by closing the six stores it had in that country. The coffee giant had first placed outlets in Israel in August 2001, creating a joint venture with Delek Group, the publicly-traded Israeli conglomerate, for this
purpose.
As evidenced by the e-mail quoted above, Starbucks drew criticism in the U.S. for the closure. In the U.S. anything that smacks of preference bestowed upon Arab interests or short shrift given to Israeli interests is perceived as something that needs be protested. This simplified world view reduces complex matters to ones of good guys versus bad guys, and that this system proves wholly useless when other factors interfere does little to lessen its comfort value.
Starbucks didn't remove itself from Israel because it was pro-Arab or anti-Israeli; it did so because this was the business decision that appeared to make the best sense. Although the corporation gave somewhat muddled explanations for its pull-out from Israel — sometimes citing the danger of terrorist attacks, sometimes making passing mention of "operational challenges" — the reasons for the retreat were Starbucks' difficulties in dealing with its Israeli partner and the underperformance of its six stores in that country. (Starbucks was a latecomer to an already-saturated Israeli market, didn't adapt well to local market conditions, and offered little to distinguish itself from its competition except higher prices). As Chief Financial Officer Michael Casey said about the cessation of Starbuck's operations in Israel, "It's a difficult place to do business, as you can imagine. And we've had some disagreements of philosophy with the partner. You put those two together and we just decided it was a good time to stop."
As Starbuck now says of the decision on its "Facts about Starbucks in the Middle East" web page:
Q: Is it true that Starbucks closed its stores in Israel for political reasons?
A: We decided to dissolve our partnership in Israel in 2003 due to the on-going operational challenges that we experienced in that market. After many months of discussion with our partner we came to this amicable decision. While this was a difficult decision for both companies, we believe it remains the right decision for our businesses.
Starbucks continues to perform well in Arab countries. Though one might suppose anti-American sentiment would undercut the coffee maker's business there, its product has proved popular even in countries where Americans are not well loved. Since Starbucks opened its first overseas outlet in 1996, it has developed into an international presence with more than 23,000 stores worldwide in 65 countries outside North America such as Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
All of this has led to additional opposing rumors, that Starbucks either supports Israel through financial contributions (to that country's military) or that it is a "Muslim operation" whose CEO has bragged about his hatred for Israel:
For Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Israel has always been a fraught topic. Raised in a Brooklyn Jewish family, he’s been accused of supporting Israel and also of not supporting Israel, although in general he keeps his religious sentiments and committments very private.
The recent Israel-Palestinian conflict in Gaza has brought the hullaballoo to an all-time high, getting Schultz in trouble with both sides. Activists using the boycott app Buycott called for consumers to stop buying Starbucks coffee, saying Schultz is a “propagandist for Israel.” The effort mentioned that he was honored by Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox organization, in 1998, and said that the company "sponsors fundraisers for Israel," although it didn't provide specifics to support that claim.
Starbucks responded to the accusations that it's somehow on Israel's side by updating and reposting policy on the Middle East, which explains that it supports neither the Israeli government, nor the army, nor, indeed, any political or religious cause. At which point, wouldn't you know it, pro-Israel activists took umbrage, calling in their turn for their own boycott.
“If he’s so concerned that anti-Israel boycotters will hurt his business, let’s show him what pro-Israel folks can do!” authors of the counter-boycott petition wrote about Schultz.
Neither is correct: although Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz may have personal sympathies for Israel, the company does not contribute money to that country, nor does it support (either morally or financially) other countries in that region:
Regardless of [our partners'] spectrum of beliefs, Starbucks has been and remains a non-political organization. We do not support any political or religious cause. Additionally, neither Starbucks nor the company’s chairman, president and ceo Howard Schultz provide financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army in any way.
Q: Is it true that Starbucks or Howard Schultz provides financial support to Israel?
A: No. This is absolutely untrue. Rumors that Starbucks or Howard provides financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army are unequivocally false. Starbucks is a publicly held company and as such, is required to disclose any corporate giving each year through a proxy statement.
Q: Has Starbucks ever sent any of its profits to the Israeli government and/or Israeli army?
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
On 12 September 2008 at 4:22 p.m. in California's San Fernando Valley, a commuter train carrying 225 riders collided at a combined speed of 83 mph with a freight train run by a crew of three. In what came to be known as the Chatsworth crash, 135 people were injured (of which 87 were taken to hospitals, 46 in critical condition), and 25 died.
One of the deceased was 49-year-old Charles E. Peck, a customer service agent for Delta Air Lines at Salt Lake City International Airport. He had come to Los Angeles for a job interview at Van Nuys Airport because gaining work in the Golden State would have allowed him to wed his fianceé, Andrea Katz of Westlake Village. (The pair had put off getting hitched until they were living in the same state.) This would have been his second marriage; Peck had three grown children from a previous
union.
His fianceé heard about the crash from a news report on the radio as she was driving to the train station to pick up her intended. Peck's parents and siblings (who live in the Los Angeles area) joined her.
Peck's body was recovered from the wreckage 12 hours after the accident. Yet for the first eleven of those hours, his cell phone placed call after call to his loved ones, calling his son, his brother, his stepmother, his sister, and his fianceé. In all, his various family members received 35 calls from his cell phone through that long night. When they answered, all they heard was static; when they called back, their calls went straight to voice mail. But the calls gave them hope that the man they loved was still alive, just trapped somewhere in the wreckage.
The barrage of calls prompted search crews to trace the whereabouts of the phone through its signal and to once again look through what was left of the first train, the location the calls were coming from. The calls searchers finally found Peck's body about an hour after the calls from his cell phone stopped.
Charles Peck had died on impact. Yet long past his death, his cell phone had continued to reach out to many of those he cared most about, and ultimately led rescuers to his mortal remains. (As far as investigators revealed, they never found Peck's cell phone.)
Ironically (and tragically), another cell phone may have played a pivotal role in causing the Chatsworth crash, the deadliest in Metrolink's history. Preliminary investigation revealed the engineer running the commuter train had failed to heed a red signal light, instead impelling his train onto a single track where a Union Pacific freight train coming the opposite direction had been given the right of way. According to teens cooperating with the investigation, they had been exchanging text messages with that engineer as the train left the station and received a final text message from him just before the collision (22 seconds before impact, according to the preliminary timeline worked out by the National Transportation Safety Board).
Barbara "for whom the ma bell tolls" Mikkelson Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/deadcall.asp#YsUKOiOcOPQirRxo.99
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Despite the anti-Russian sanctions drive, the US DoD opposes American lawmakers in wanting to buy Russian-made helicopters for the Afghan forces, said Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport.
“Despite the protests from the congressmen, suggestions of American-made alternative options, the Pentagon-level US officials are insisting on buying the Russian helicopters,” Rosoboronexport deputy head Igor Sevastyanov told journalists on Thursday.
He added that some people in the US military told the Russians that they would prefer some of the Russian arms, including helicopters, to be used by the US troops if it were possible, but it's not due to political reasons.
The US and Russia signed three separate contracts for supplying a total of 70 Mil Mi-17V5 helicopters to Afghanistan. Afghan pilots favor them for reliability and a record of deployment in the country dating back to the Soviet military campaign in the 1980s. Russia has delivered 45 aircraft, and a possible extra order is on the table.
Some US lawmakers have been campaigning to derail the supplies, with tension intensifying in February 2014, when the US and Russia had a major fallout due to the political crisis in Ukraine.
Washington targeted a number of Russian companies with its sanctions, including those selling arms. This put on hold a contract with the Russian Weapons Company, the importer of authentic Kalashnikov-family small weapons from Russia. The plan before the sanctions were imposed was to deliver up to 200,000 units annually, sparking a hike in demand for the legendary weapons in the US.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
The World Health Organisation has said clinical trials of a preventative vaccine for the Ebola virus, produced by British pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline, may begin next month and be made available by 2015. There is currently no available cure or vaccine for the virus that causes the severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. Ebola has claimed close to 1,000 lives in the latest epidemic that was first reported in March and spread across West Africa. Fatality rate can approach 90 per cent, although the …
latest outbreak has reportedly killed around 55 to 60 per cent of those infected. According to a French news wire, Agence-France Presse, the world health body’s Head of Vaccines and Immunisation, Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, told French radio on Saturday that it planned to begin the clinical trials in the United States and Africa. He added that he was optimistic about making the vaccine commercially available. “We are targeting September for the start of clinical trials, first in the United States and certainly in African countries, since that’s where we have the cases. “We think that if we start in September, we could already have results by the end of the year. “And since this is an emergency, we can put emergency procedures in place, so that we can have a vaccine available by 2015,” Bele said. Several vaccines are being tested, and a treatment made by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, ZMapp, has shown promising results on monkeys and may have been effective in treating two Americans recently infected in Africa.
Meanwhile, three people on Saturday have been isolated at a Ghana hospital for showing symptoms of the Ebola virus. The three persons are being kept at the Nsawam Government Hospital in the eastern region of the country for observation. According to Myjoyonline.com, blood samples of the patients have been taken for laboratory test at the Noguchi Memorial Institute. Among the patients was a 16-year-old girl who went to the hospital on Thursday with blood in her urine. The second person, a 56-year-old man, also came to the hospital from a nearby village, Adawso, with blood in his urine. The third patient was reported to have blood in his urine and faeces and was in a feverish condition. He is a 53-year-old driver. Meanwhile, the Ghana Health Service is awaiting test results of a Burkinabe, who was admitted at a health facility in Bawku for showing signs of the virus in the northern region of the country.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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