Tag Archives: brain damage

Europeans to take new steps against Russia over UK spy

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite, Slovenia's Prime Minister Miro Cerar and Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy attend a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 23, 2018. Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Pool via Reuters

By Noah Barkin and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union member states agreed at a summit in Brussels to take further punitive steps against Russia in the coming days for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, as Moscow accused the bloc of joining a London-driven hate campaign against it.

Late on Thursday, in a boost for British Prime Minister Theresa May, the 28-member EU collectively condemned the attack on a former Russian spy and said it was “highly likely” Moscow was responsible. They also recalled the EU ambassador to Russia.

“Additional steps are expected as early as Monday at the national level,” summit chair Donald Tusk told reporters.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris and Berlin would be among countries taking further rapid and coordinated measures which other leaders said would include the expulsion of Russian officials and possible other retaliatory actions.

“We consider this attack a serious challenge to our security and European sovereignty so it calls for a coordinated and determined response from the European Union and its member states,” Macron told a news conference.

Standing beside him, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EU countries would debate what measures to take “and then act”.

One senior official familiar with discussions said the extent of measures in the coming weeks could be “surprising” and not confined to expulsions. There is no talk of more economic sanctions, whose enforcement has divided the EU in the past.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said he was likely to announce the expulsion of several people on Monday, after returning to Prague and consulting with his foreign minister.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said she was ready to expel Russian spies, whose activities she said were deeply harmful: “It is certain that a coordinated action will be taken next week, maybe at the start of it,” she said. “It’s absolutely obvious that the network exists and that it acts aggressively.”

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis stressed that national governments wanted to retain control of the details in an area where they guard their sovereignty from Brussels. But most of those present would go home and prepare suitable steps.

Russia has denied responsibility for the March 4 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the first known offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War Two. A British judge said on Thursday that both victims may have suffered brain damage from the attack.

BRITISH EXPELLED

Moscow retaliated against May’s move to expel 23 Russians by announcing the expulsion of the same number of Britons.

On Friday, the Russian foreign ministry described the EU accusation as “baseless” and accused the bloc of spurning cooperation with Moscow and joining “another anti-Russian campaign deployed by London and its allies overseas with an obvious goal: to put another obstacle on the path to the normalization of the situation on the European continent”.

In Moscow, the expulsion of British diplomats went ahead, a convoy of minibuses speeding out of the embassy compound to applause after British embassy staff said their goodbyes in the courtyard under a light snowfall.

A special charter flight is expected to fly the diplomats back to Britain later on Friday.

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, on a visit to Kiev, signaled that Paris was considering expelling Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain. “You will see,” he said.

The summit statement hardened previous EU language on Russia’s alleged role as French President Emmanuel Macron and others helped May overcome hesitation on the part of some of Moscow’s friendlier states, some of whom questioned how definitive Britain’s evidence is.

“What we will now consider in the coming days is whether we want to take individual action relating to Russian diplomats in Ireland,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told reporters.

“We’re not going to expel people randomly.”

Welcoming the solidarity she secured from the summit, May told reporters on leaving: “The threat from Russia is one that respects no borders and I think it is clear that Russia is challenging the values we share as Europeans and it is right that we stand together in defense of those values.”

Still, some said they could ill afford Russian retaliation against their own Moscow embassies, some of which employ barely a handful of accredited diplomats.

Austria said it did not plan to expel Russians.

(Additional reporting by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Dmitry Madorsky in Moscow and Richard Lough, Gabriela Baczynska, Robin Emmott and Elizabeth Piper in Brussels; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alastair Macdonald)

Boy, 6, fights for his life after South Carolina school shooting

Sheriffs and officers at the scene of the South Carolina School Shooting

By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) – A first grader who was shot and wounded by a 14-year-old boy accused of killing his father before he opened fire outside a South Carolina elementary school is “fighting for his life,” a fire chief and the boy’s family said on Thursday.

Jacob Hall, 6, was struck in the leg on Wednesday afternoon during a shooting spree that also wounded another boy and a first-grade teacher at Townville Elementary School, about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Atlanta.

Police said the teenager crashed a pickup truck into a fence around the rural school’s playground after he fatally shot his father, Jeffrey DeWitt Osborne, 47, at their home about 2 miles (3 km) away. The teen, who has not been named, is in custody.

“I hate my life,” he said before firing a handgun at the school, the Greenville News reported, citing the aunt of a 6-year-old girl who was headed outside for recess at the time.

The incident was the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. schools that has fueled debate about access to guns in America. Many schools have beefed up security precautions since 2012, when a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Hall’s family said in a statement the 6-year-old was a “very sick little boy.” The message, provided through the Greenville Health System Children’s Hospital where he remains in critical condition, said a bullet tore through his femoral artery, causing massive blood loss that led to a “major brain injury.”

Billy McAdams, chief of the Townville Volunteer Fire Department, choked up on Thursday as he asked for prayers for “little Jacob,” whom he had helped treat at the scene.

“He’s still fighting for his life,” McAdams told a news conference.

Teacher Meghan Hollingsworth, who was shot in the shoulder, and the other boy, also 6, according to media reports, were treated and released.

McAdams credited fellow first responders and the school’s staff for taking action to prevent another school massacre. Hollingsworth shepherded students inside to safety and urged medical staff to care for the injured children before her, he said.

Jamie Brock, a 30-year veteran of the Townville Volunteer Fire Department, was unarmed when he confronted the shooter and pinned him down for police, McAdams said.

Brock has declined media interviews, saying he wanted the focus to remain on the victims.

“The true heroes of yesterday’s senseless tragedy are the teachers that put their lives on the line to protect the students,” Brock said in a statement read by McAdams at the news conference. “This will not take us down.”

Authorities said they did not know of any connection between the shooter and the school victims but had ruled out terrorism and ethnicity as motivating factors.

The suspect, who was home-schooled, was emotional when he called his grandparents Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.

His grandmother “could not make out what he was saying because he was crying and upset, and so they went to the house, and that’s when she discovered her son and called 911,” coroner Greg Shore told reporters. The teenager was gone.

His mother offered no insight into his motive in a statement released to media on her behalf on Thursday.

“Our entire family is absolutely shocked and saddened by the senseless actions of our son and grandson,” the statement said.

(Additional reporting Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Bill Trott, Lisa Shumaker and Paul Tait)

Study shows extent of brain damage from ZIKA infection

MRI images obtained in the case of an 18-year-old woman with confirmed Zika virus infection in Brazil

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A report released on Tuesday shows in graphic detail the kind of damage Zika infections can do to the developing brain – damage that goes well beyond the devastating birth defect known as microcephaly, in which the baby’s head is smaller than normal.

The current Zika outbreak was first detected last year in Brazil, where the virus has been linked to more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly, which can cause severe developmental problems.

Prior research has shown the Zika virus attacks neural progenitor cells – a type of stem cell that develops into different types of nerve or brain cells.

The latest research, published in the journal Radiology, draws from imaging and autopsy findings linked with confirmed Zika infections done on 17 infants and fetuses cared for at the Instituto de Pesquisa, in Campina Grande in the state of Paraiba in northeastern Brazil, where the infection has been especially severe.

The study also included reports on 28 fetuses or newborns with brain anomalies whose mothers were suspected of having Zika during pregnancy.

Nearly all babies in each group had ventriculomegaly, a condition in which the ventricles, or fluid-filled spaces in the brain, are enlarged.

While most of the fetuses had at least one exam showing abnormally small head circumference, suggesting they had microcephaly, three of the fetuses with ventriculomegaly had normal head circumference, but severe ventriculomegaly.

Nearly all of the fetuses or babies in the confirmed Zika group and nearly 80 percent of those in the presumed Zika group also had abnormalities of the corpus callosum – a large bundle of nerves that facilitates communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

In all but one of the cases studied, the researchers found instances in which developing neurons did not travel to their proper destination in the brain.

In many cases, the babies’ skulls seemed to have collapsed on themselves, with overlapping tissues and abnormal skin folds suggestive of a brain that had stopped growing.

“From an imaging standpoint, the abnormalities in the brain are very severe when compared to other congenital infections,” said study co-author Dr. Deborah Levine of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School.

As with other reports, the paper suggests that Zika does the most harm in the first trimester of pregnancy. The researchers plan to keep following the cases to see what impact prenatal Zika infections have on future brain development.

There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is a close cousin of dengue and chikungunya and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected.

Zika is carried by mosquitoes, which transmit the virus to humans. A small number of cases of sexual transmission have been reported in the United States and elsewhere.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Dan Grebler)