During a recent visit to the Shizuoka Cancer Center, a leading medical and research institution in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, I found myself confronting two realities at once.
The first was an impressive expression of modern medicine: advanced treatment, exacting research and an institution seeking to connect clinical care with pharmaceutical innovation. The second was quieter but more powerful. Nearly every patient I passed was facing cancer and beside most stood a relative whose life had also been changed by the diagnosis.
A hospital may contain some of humanity’s most advanced knowledge. It also contains some of its oldest fears.
In such a place, medical excellence is anything but an abstraction. In a hospital, every scientific advance eventually arrives at one person in a vulnerable moment. Every diagnosis enters a life filled with memories, relationships, responsibilities and hopes. Illness inhabits one person but its consequences touch a family and a community.
This is where any serious consideration of health resilience should begin.
Health resilience is not one program within transformation; it is part of transformation’s capacity to serve human life
Dr. Ghazi Faisal Binzagr
The term is commonly associated with the ability of health systems, including hospitals, to withstand emergencies: pandemics, natural disasters, supply shortages or sudden pressure on medical capacity. These capabilities are indispensable. COVID-19 demonstrated, however, that a health emergency does not remain within healthcare. It also moves through families and schools, work and travel, economies and supply chains, and ultimately into the heart of national decision-making and security.
Yet a health system may remain operational while the health of society deteriorates.
Health resilience must therefore mean more than keeping institutions functioning through crisis. It must encompass the ability of a society to cultivate health before illness, respond intelligently when illness arrives and preserve dignity and meaning when medicine cannot restore the body to what it once was.
Such resilience is not created by strong institutions standing apart. It grows when their knowledge and capabilities remain connected — to one another and to the human being they ultimately serve.
Not far from the cancer center, at the University of Shizuoka, I encountered two practical examples of how such connections are cultivated.
Japan and Singapore are very different yet each has cultivated something approaching a national miracle
Dr. Ghazi Faisal Binzagr
Students of pharmaceutical sciences were being trained in the administration of medicines, including injections, although many would never perform such procedures professionally. The purpose was not to blur professional boundaries but to prevent pharmaceutical knowledge from becoming detached from human experience. A medicine is not only a compound to be formulated, tested or dispensed. It eventually enters a living body, carried by trust and accompanied by consequence.
Nearby, the university’s botanical garden, used in pharmaceutical, nutritional and food studies, extended the same principle in another direction. If the training connected medicine to the person who receives it, the garden connected modern science to the living world from which much medical knowledge first emerged. It did not ask students to choose between inherited observation and scientific rigor but to understand how one can inform the questions the other tests.
The cancer center, the pharmaceutical training and the botanical garden were not simply three interesting encounters. Together, they revealed that health resilience depends not only on the strength of individual institutions but on their capacity to remain connected: to the person who suffers, to the professional who carries responsibility, to the society in which illness occurs, and to the sources from which medicine continues to learn.
Saudi Arabia’s transformation gives this understanding immediate relevance. Vision 2030 has widened the connections through which the Kingdom understands progress, while COVID-19 revealed how inseparable health is from the economy, education, mobility and national security. Health resilience is not one program within transformation; it is part of transformation’s capacity to serve human life.
The burden of chronic disease makes this urgent. Diabetes affected an estimated 5.3 million Saudi adults in 2024, with an age-standardized prevalence of 23.1 percent. At such scale, illness cannot be treated as a succession of isolated clinical episodes. It is a continuous human reality and care must learn to become continuous with it.
Behind those numbers, in Saudi Arabia today is a person who can sleep while their glucose levels continue to be monitored. As family members rest nearby, readings can reach health institutions, helping reveal change, anticipate risk and guide care. Technology does not replace the concern of those beside that person; it allows the health system to join them in caring, extending institutional capability into the home without displacing the relationships that make it a place of belonging.
But continuity cannot begin only after diagnosis.
Through my years with the Saudi Sports for All Federation, I have witnessed how accessible movement, rooted in families, neighborhoods and communities, can turn health from something medicine repairs into something society creates. Health transformation, Sports for All and the Kingdom’s quality of life ambitions shape the same human life from different directions.
The encounters in Shizuoka formed part of a larger Japanese lesson. Japan’s longevity is a civilizational achievement but it is also requiring the country to reconsider care, independence, community and purpose. Its value lies in the knowledge it continues to accumulate: how to support older people within their communities, connect medical and long-term care, use technology to strengthen human presence rather than replace it, and ensure that years added to life remain years of contribution and belonging.
Japan’s use of robotics offers a striking example. Wearable systems can assist movement, surgical robots can extend the physician’s precision and robotic avatars can enable people confined by illness or disability to participate from afar. The machine matters but the deeper achievement is human: preserving agency and belonging when physical strength changes form.
Saudi Arabia is shaping new systems while its population remains comparatively young; Japan is adapting established systems as longevity transforms society. Their differences make them valuable to one another. The opportunity is not simply to transfer solutions but to discover how health systems can remain technically advanced, socially connected and fully human.
My years in Japan have reminded me of another country I have visited and studied repeatedly for more than a decade. Singapore’s achievement lies not in one health program but in its practice of national transformation: balancing access, quality and affordability while connecting health to housing, mobility, economic sustainability and quality of life.
What has impressed me most is the movement between scale and detail. National objectives provide direction; close observation reveals where policy must be refined. Concepts are tested against daily life and reconsidered whenever progress in one field creates consequences in another.
Japan and Singapore are very different yet each has cultivated something approaching a national miracle — not perfection but a distinctive capacity built from history, necessity and human effort. Saudi Arabia brings its own: the energy of a society transforming at exceptional speed, technological ambition joined to enduring family bonds, and a vision placing quality of life within national progress.
The invitation is larger than an exchange of best practices. It is for societies to bring their finest qualities into a deeper relationship. No country contains the complete wisdom the future requires. Through the quality of their connections, nations may create possibilities that none could produce alone.
These reflections return me to where they began: the Shizuoka Cancer Center and to the unsettling lesson cancer itself offers about change. Life depends upon change: cells divide, organisms adapt and societies renew themselves. Yet not every change serves life. Growth detached from the order that sustains the whole can become destructive.
The analogy must not be pushed too far. But it raises a question at the heart of every national transformation: How can change strengthen the whole rather than advance one part at the expense of others?
Speed is not, by itself, evidence of progress, nor is the accumulation of technology or wealth. A healthy transformation holds together economic sustainability, good governance, security and a quality of life that reveals what they are ultimately for. Its measure is whether the whole has grown more capable of sustaining human life — especially when life becomes vulnerable.
For vulnerability is not a temporary defect that successful societies will eliminate. It is part of being human. We begin life dependent upon others. Many will encounter illness or disability. Those who live long enough will experience some loss of physical capacity. A society reveals its understanding of progress not only in how it celebrates strength but in how it accompanies people when strength changes form.
Arabic and Islamic tradition offers a name for the wisdom such a society requires. The physician was often called “al-hakim,” the wise one. The word implied more than command of remedies. It joined knowledge with judgment, the body with the person and the act of treatment with responsibility for the balance of life.
Perhaps the future asks us to enlarge this meaning beyond the individual physician. The wisdom of al-hakim may become a collective quality: science exact enough to determine what can be done; judgment broad enough to ask what should be done; and societies humble enough to place their finest knowledge in one another’s service.
For we are embodied beings but we are not bodies alone. We are memory and relationship, aspiration and responsibility, matter and spirit. Medicine can preserve life and relieve suffering. Society must help ensure that the life preserved can still find belonging, dignity and meaning.
The future of health will not be decided only by what medicine becomes. It will also be decided by what society remembers a human being to be.
Ebola has reached a seventh province in the Democratic Republic of Congo after an infected man travelled across the country and through Rwanda and Uganda. Virologist Placide Mbala said the government is seeing signs of declining transmission but remains cautious about the outbreak.
DRC detected the outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo virus in mid-May; nearly 3,400 people have since died.
Published On 12 Sep 202612 Sep 2026
More than 7,000 Ebola cases have been recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) worst outbreak of the deadly disease, according to figures from Congolese authorities.
The DRC officially detected the latest outbreak in mid-May, but experts suspect it had been spreading under the radar for weeks before.
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Of the 7,022 registered cases, 3,398 people have died, according to DRC authorities. Currently, 837 people are in isolation or receiving treatment.
The outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo virus, DRC’s 17th Ebola epidemic, began in the northeastern Ituri province.
It has since spread across conflict-plagued, remote eastern and northern regions where armed groups have roamed for decades, the presence of the state is weak and health infrastructure is largely lacking.
Earlier this week, one case of the disease was confirmed in a seventh province, South-Ubangi, which is in the northwest of the country bordering the Central African Republic and Congo-Brazzaville.
Most of the recorded cases remain in Ituri, where Ebola has been detected in schools in the days after the post-summer holiday return to classes, causing alarm among parents and health workers.
“We are very worried because we don’t know which child comes from which family or what the health status of the members of that family is,” Angele Magani, a mother of a schoolboy in Bunia, Ituri’s provincial capital, told the AFP news agency.
“We are so scared, even though the school authorities reassure us about the health measures that have been put in place,” she added.
Bunia school official Roger Mungimbo told AFP that “there is a mandatory hand-washing system with soap, and we have also done everything possible to have a maximum of 30 pupils per classroom”.
“We regularly make the children aware that they must not touch each other, must not greet each other and must wash their hands regularly,” he added.
Ebola, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the last 50 years, is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids and can cause severe internal and external bleeding and organ failure.
The world’s deadliest outbreak in West Africa in 2014-2016 was the Zaire Ebola virus. That epidemic killed more than 11,325 people, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The Bundibugyo strain currently seen in DRC has no approved vaccine or treatment currently, although several potential treatments and vaccines are being tested.
NHS GP Dr Amir Khan says a common method for dealing with nosebleeds is not correct
Dr Amir Khan has explained how a common method for treating nosebleeds is not right(Image: No Appointment Necessary)
Dr Amir Khan has offered guidance on how to properly treat a nosebleed, revealing that many people have been receiving incorrect advice. The well-known TV doctor and NHS GP, recognised for his regular slots on ITV’s This Morning and Lorraine, discussed the matter with his followers on the latest instalment of his podcast, No Appointment Necessary.
His explanation may come as a surprise to some who have been instructed to do something entirely different when dealing with a nosebleed. Co-host Cherry Healey appeared to be among them, as she questioned him about the advice people have given her for managing a nosebleed.
She said: “You know when someone gets a nosebleed, they always get told to put their head back. It’s so awful when you get a nosebleed and someone tells you that because it’s what you don’t want to do. Is that true?”
The doctor responded: “No. It used to be that, but it’s not head back. It’s head forward. Yeah, because if you go back, you could swallow the blood and then cause all sorts of issues.”
He then outlined what you should do instead, saying: “First of all, you want to pinch the soft bit of your nose just underneath the bone. I’m talking like this now because I’m doing it. So pinch that bit as tight, as tight as you can and then lean forward.
“So head between your knees or lean as far forward as you can for, you’ve guessed it, 15 minutes. 15 to 20 minutes is when anything is bleeding.
“That’s how long you need to put pressure on it.” Cherry then replied: “Because that’s how long it takes to clot.”
His advice is important because many people have been given incorrect advice. McGill University in Canada says the tilt-the-head-back method is a ‘common misconception’.
Its website states: “First aid standards have changed throughout the years, making it difficult to keep up with the right practice. Tilting your head backwards is common misconception. Currently, Red Cross standards and most clinicians inform us to sit neutral, tilt head slightly forward, pinch the bridge of the nose, and wait for 10-15 minutes.”
NHS advice on what to do if you have a nosebleed
The NHS website advises that if you experience a nosebleed, you should sit down and lean forward, with your head tilted forward and your mouth open; pinch your nose just above your nostrils for 10 to 15 minutes; and breathe through your mouth. It adds: “Holding an icepack (or a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel) on the top of the nose may help reduce the blood flow. But the evidence to show it works is not very strong.”
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It also provides guidance on what to do for the 24 hours following a nosebleed. To reduce the likelihood of another nosebleed, for 24 hours afterwards, it recommends you should try not to pick your nose, blow it, or pick any scabs.
It also suggests avoiding lying down flat, doing any heavy lifting or strenuous exercise, or consuming hot drinks or alcohol.
Dr Amir Khan tells patients what not to say in his practice
The doctor’s guidance comes a day after he shared with Instagram followers a list of things he does not want to hear from his patients. The reassuring post, which we reported about on Friday, stated people should not apologise for their weight, their toenails, or their hairy legs.
He said: “Please, you’re having a medical examination, I am not bothered about anything else. “He also said people should not apologise if they feel the need to cry, or if they cannot remember the name of their tablets. And he said: “Please don’t say things like I’m sorry to waste your time.
“If something is worrying you enough that you’ve come to make an appointment to come and see me, that’s what I’m here for.” He concluded by noting: “The only thing that I care about is that you feel able to tell me what’s really going on.
“Because the thing you might be embarrassed about might actually be really important, and I can’t help something you feel ashamed to tell me. So, come as you are, cry if you need to, don’t shave anything on my account, and please stop apologising for just being a patient. You’re not an inconvenience, you’re literally the reason why I’m here.”
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Within the increasingly specialized field of peptide and metabolic signaling inquiry, AICAR has emerged as a particularly intriguing molecular subject due to its theorized relationship with cellular energy regulation, mitochondrial communication pathways, and adaptive biochemical signaling environments. Although often associated with metabolic research discussions, AICAR occupies a broader scientific position believed to extend beyond simple energy-oriented investigation. Research literature increasingly suggests that the compound may participate in highly nuanced intracellular processes connected to stress adaptation, nutrient sensing, enzymatic communication, and molecular resilience mechanisms across diverse research models.
AICAR, formally known as 5-Aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide, is structurally related to naturally occurring intermediates involved in purine biosynthesis. Because of this relationship, the molecule has attracted considerable attention in biochemical research environments focused on cellular metabolism and signaling coordination. Investigations purport that AICAR may function as an indirect activator of AMP-activated protein kinase, commonly abbreviated as AMPK, a regulatory enzyme frequently theorized to operate as a cellular energy sensor within the system.
AMPK itself has become a major point of interest in contemporary molecular science because of its proposed involvement in maintaining energetic equilibrium under fluctuating environmental conditions. Research indicates that when energetic stress signals accumulate within cellular systems, AMPK-associated pathways might influence a wide range of downstream biochemical activities involving glucose handling, lipid signaling, mitochondrial turnover, and protein synthesis coordination. Due to AICAR’s theorized interaction with this signaling network, the compound has become deeply integrated into experimental metabolic frameworks.
One of the most discussed properties of AICAR involves its potential relationship with mitochondrial biology. Mitochondria, frequently characterized as central energetic regulators within cellular systems, remain heavily studied due to their possible participation in longevity-associated signaling, oxidative balance, and adaptive cellular responses. Scientific literature suggests that AICAR exposure in controlled research settings may correlate with shifts in mitochondrial biogenesis signaling pathways. It has been hypothesized that this relationship might involve transcriptional regulators such as PGC-1α, a coactivator frequently examined in mitochondrial adaptation research.
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Because mitochondrial functionality intersects with numerous branches of biochemical inquiry, AICAR has gradually entered investigative discussions involving endurance-associated metabolic adaptation, cellular resilience environments, and nutrient-sensing systems. Researchers have theorized that the peptide-related compound may provide insight into how cells adapt under resource-limited conditions, particularly in environments characterized by altered energetic availability.
Another area of increasing scientific curiosity involves the potential relationship between AICAR and glucose metabolism pathways. Research indicates that AMPK-associated signaling networks may influence glucose transporter activity and intracellular glucose utilization mechanisms. Within these frameworks, AICAR has been explored as a molecular research tool with the potential of assisting investigators in mapping the biochemical hierarchy involved in carbohydrate-associated signaling environments.
Importantly, these investigations do not merely focus on isolated metabolic reactions. Instead, contemporary scientific inquiry increasingly examines metabolic signaling as part of a larger communication network connecting cellular stress responses, inflammatory mediators, redox balance systems, and transcriptional regulation mechanisms. Within this broader perspective, AICAR may represent more than a singular metabolic modulator. It might instead serve as a biochemical bridge connecting energetic signaling to adaptive cellular communication networks.
Research literature has also explored the possibility that AICAR-associated pathways may intersect with autophagy-related signaling. Autophagy, a tightly regulated intracellular recycling mechanism, remains a prominent topic within longevity-oriented and degenerative-condition research domains. Investigations suggest that AMPK-associated activation environments might influence autophagic coordination through interactions with mTOR-related signaling pathways. Because AICAR appears connected to AMPK-associated activity, scientists have theorized that the molecule may help researchers better understand the balance between anabolic and catabolic cellular states.
The relationship between AICAR and mTOR signaling has generated considerable attention in molecular biology discussions. mTOR, or mechanistic target of rapamycin, is widely recognized as a nutrient-responsive regulatory complex associated with growth-related cellular processes. Research models suggest that energetic stress signaling may suppress certain mTOR-associated activities while promoting cellular conservation mechanisms. Within this context, AICAR has become increasingly valuable as an investigative compound for studying how systems prioritize energetic resources during fluctuating environmental conditions.
Beyond metabolism-centered inquiry, AICAR has also entered conversations surrounding cardiovascular signaling research. Investigations purport that AMPK-associated pathways may participate in vascular regulation, endothelial communication, and oxidative stress adaptation. Some researchers hypothesize that AICAR-related signaling environments could assist in clarifying how cellular systems respond to energetic strain within circulatory tissues. Although many mechanistic questions remain unresolved, the peptide-associated molecule continues to attract interest in biochemical discussions involving cellular oxygen utilization and stress-response coordination.
Neurological research domains have likewise shown growing interest in AMPK-associated signaling pathways. Cellular energy regulation within neurological tissue remains a major focus of contemporary investigation due to the substantial energetic demands associated with neural communication. Scientific discussions increasingly propose that metabolic imbalance, mitochondrial dysfunction, and impaired energetic adaptation might intersect with neurodegenerative signaling environments. Within these frameworks, AICAR has occasionally been examined as a research compound with the potential of illuminating relationships between energetic sensing pathways and neuronal maintenance mechanisms.
Another compelling dimension of AICAR research involves inflammatory signaling environments. Chronic inflammatory activity has become increasingly recognized as a contributing factor across multiple degenerative conditions and longevity-associated biological shifts. Research indicates that AMPK-associated pathways may interact with inflammatory mediators and oxidative stress regulators. Consequently, AICAR has entered exploratory discussions focused on how energetic signaling networks may influence broader cellular communication systems tied to inflammation-associated processes.
Interest in oxidative stress biology has further expanded AICAR’s research relevance. Oxidative balance remains essential for maintaining stable intracellular environments, particularly under metabolically demanding conditions. Some investigations suggest that AMPK-associated signaling might influence antioxidant regulatory pathways and mitochondrial stress adaptation responses. Within these experimental contexts, AICAR has been hypothesized to serve as a useful molecular tool for studying how cells attempt to preserve equilibrium when exposed to fluctuating energetic or oxidative conditions.
Although many mechanistic uncertainties remain unresolved, AICAR persists as a compelling molecular subject whose properties may contribute to a deeper understanding of how energetic regulation influences cellular coordination across complex biological systems. In modern scientific inquiry, where interconnected signaling pathways increasingly define research priorities, compounds such as AICAR may remain valuable tools for exploring the sophisticated architecture underlying metabolic adaptation and cellular communication throughout the system. Researchers interested in more useful peptide data are encouraged to visit www.corepeptides.com.
References
[i] Hardie, D. G. (2011). AMP-activated protein kinase: An energy sensor that regulates all aspects of cell function. Genes & Development, 25(18), 1895–1908. https://doi.org/10.1101/gad.17420111
[iii] Corton, J. M., Gillespie, J. G., Hawley, S. A., & Hardie, D. G. (1995). 5-Aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleoside. A specific method for activating AMP-activated protein kinase in intact cells? European Journal of Biochemistry, 229(2), 558–565. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1432-1033.1995.tb20498.x
[iv] Narkar, V. A., Downes, M., Yu, R. T., Embler, E., Wang, Y. X., Banayo, E., Mihaylova, M. M., Nelson, M. C., Zou, Y., Juguilon, H., Kang, H., Shaw, R. J., & Evans, R. M. (2008). AMPK and PPARδ agonists are exercise mimetics. Cell, 134(3), 405–415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2008.06.051
[v] Jäger, S., Handschin, C., St-Pierre, J., & Spiegelman, B. M. (2007). AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) action in skeletal muscle via direct phosphorylation of PGC-1α. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(29), 12017–12022. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705070104
FORMER glamour model Katie Price has shared a worrying health update about her mum, Amy, amid her terminal illness battle.
Amy Price was diagnosed with a terminal lung disease called Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) back in 2017 with the irreversible scarring of the lungs making it difficult for her to breathe.
Amy Price Katie Price posed up together at the screening of her Sky documentaryCredit: PAAmy Price has been in and out of hospital amid her ongoing battle with a terminal diseaseCredit: Instagram
During a Good Morning Britain interview in May, Katie, 48, told how her mum was “really not well.”
The admission came two months afterAmy washospitalised in Marchafter being diagnosed with an infection.
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Amy has been in and out of hospital, battling the cruel disease for years.
Now, Katie has shared a health update on her mum and it doesn’t sound positive as she’s made a return to the hospital.
The glamorous 74-year-old made sure she was right by her daughter’s side for her big night.
Katie told how her mum enjoyed seeing her, Princess and Junior Andre on TV at the NTAsCredit: GettyKatie and her sister Sophie believed her mum was going to die while filming her documentaryCredit: Instagram
She wore a beautiful white and blue floral dress and was seen posing up for snaps with a beaming Katie.
ANTWERP, Belgium: Soccer great Marc Overmars is stepping down as Royal Antwerp’s sports director due to health issues.
Overmars, who joined the Belgian club in 2022, explained his decision in a letter to supporters published on Wednesday as he mentioned “all the fatigue that has built up over the years and the enormous amount of stress.”
The former Netherlands, Arsenal, Barcelona and Ajax winger recovered from a mild stroke in December 2022.
“You all know that my health has not been optimal,” he wrote. “But now I feel very clearly that I can no longer cope with this hectic, stressful professional life.”
Overmars previously spent nearly a decade as director of football at Ajax, the Dutch club where he began his playing career but resigned after he was found to have sent inappropriate messages to several female colleagues. He apologized for his behavior.
“My energy is now completely depleted. If I do not listen to my body now, my doctors say there is a very high risk of things ending badly,” Overmars said. “So I have to make a drastic decision and completely stop my professional activities for the time being.”
Dana Williamson, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s onetime chief of staff, is seeking to delay her criminal sentencing date for political corruption because of health issues, according to documents filed last week in federal court.
Williamson’s attorney McGregor Scott, asked the court to delay her Sept. 17 sentencing and seal documents related to her health condition.
Scott submitted documents that reference a Sept. 4 surgery that Williamson underwent, medical records, and a text message from Williamson’s mother about the surgery.
Williamson underwent a liver transplant earlier this year, prompting a judge to delay a February hearing in her case.
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the requested sentencing delay.
Williamson, a veteran political consultant who also formerly worked for former Govs. Jerry Brown and Gray Davis, admitted she took part in a scheme from 2022 to 2024 to skim campaign funds from then-U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, now a leading candidate for governor, and divert the money to Becerra’s then-chief of staff.
She also admitted in her plea deal to filing a false tax form in 2024 and lying to FBI agents that same year.
Beyond lying to the FBI about the scheme involving Becerra, Williamson misled federal authorities on another topic, the plea agreement stated.
She lied to FBI agents when asked about the state’s lawsuit against video game company Activision Blizzard Inc., details contained in the November indictment against Williamson and other public records show.
The midfielder, who will return to training in two weeks, will miss Wednesday’s Champions League game against Arsenal.
Published On 8 Sep 20268 Sep 2026
Scotland midfielder Scott McTominay has had successful surgery on a minor heart issue on Tuesday and will return to training in two weeks’ time, his club Napoli said.
The former Manchester United player recently experienced a heart rhythm disorder, something which is not considered serious but did require surgery.
“On Tuesday morning, Scott McTominay underwent an ablation procedure at Spire Manchester Hospital. The operation was a complete success,” the Serie A club said in a statement.
“McTominay will rest for two weeks and then resume training.”
McTominay, 29, has been a key player for Napoli since joining from Manchester United in 2024, scoring 27 goals in 82 matches.
But he was off-form in their opening two Serie A games.
Napoli previously said McTominay would miss Scotland’s upcoming Nations League fixtures against Slovenia (twice), Switzerland and North Macedonia.
Napoli, who have just three points from their opening three Serie A games this season, host Arsenal in the Champions League on Wednesday and then play Bologna and Fiorentina before the international break.
LOS ANGELES: Just days before two teenagers carried out a mass shooting at a San Diego mosque, federal law enforcement officials warned the parents of one of the shooters that their son was making concerning comments about school shootings on the dark web, according to new details included in a recently filed lawsuit.
The mother of Caleb Vazquez alleges in her lawsuit that Park Mental Health Treatment of San Diego failed to intervene despite signs that her 18-year-old son posed an imminent threat to himself and others. Vazquez was living there and receiving treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including depression and psychotic episodes, the lawsuit says. The court filings follow a number of high-profile convictions of guardians who provided teenagers with weapons that were later used in mass shootings.
The FBI called Vazquez’s mother on the evening of May 14, and she said she immediately left a message with the treatment facility to notify its staff, according to the lawsuit, filed in a San Diego court on Aug. 31. Vazquez’s mother again shared the FBI’s warnings with her son’s therapist on May 15 and with a program director later that night.
On May 18, the morning of the shooting, employees at the facility contacted Vazquez’s mother to tell her that he was missing. Video surveillance footage subsequently showed Vazquez leaving the property at 8 p.m. the night before.
Vazquez’s parents were driving around looking for him on the morning of the shooting. Vazquez and another teenager killed three people at the San Diego mosque that day before taking their own lives.
It is unclear whether Vazquez was allowed to leave the previous evening or whether he broke facility rules by doing so. Park Mental Health offers a range of treatment options, some of which advertise 24-hour surveillance, while others provide more limited counseling.
The center did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Saturday afternoon. In a previous statement to radio station KPBS, Park Mental Health disputed the assertions in the lawsuit.
“While it is understandable that his parents might seek to blame someone in their time of loss, this lawsuit is misguided in that neither Park nor its employees are responsible for Mr. Vazquez’s actions,” the statement to KPBS read. “Only he and his coconspirator bear responsibility for their conduct and, ultimately, his death.”
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment Saturday, citing agency policy.
The FBI’s alleged contact with Vazquez’s parents was not the first sign of his mental deterioration.
Vazquez had been hospitalized for roughly three days in January 2026 after telling a classmate that he wanted to carry out a school shooting.
Almost exactly a year earlier, Vazquez was flagged to law enforcement for exhibiting alarming behavior and idolizing Nazis, prompting police to confiscate 26 guns from his father under a 2014 California law allowing firearms to be taken from people considered dangerous.
Authorities have said Vazquez met the other shooter, Cain Clark, 17, online and that both were radicalized there. Police have not shared more details about how they knew each other or specified whose weapons were used in the shooting.
The lawsuit was filed on the same day that North Carolina authorities announced the indictment of a 17-year-old in connection with the shooting.
A MARRIED At First Sight star has tearily opened up about a five-year health battle she’s been going through.
Erica Roberts, who rose to fame on the dating show in 2023, took to social media to share her frustration as she’s been left with even more unanswered questions following further medical tests.
MAFS’ Erica Roberts has emotionally opened up about a health struggle she’s been facing for the last five yearsCredit: Instagram/ericarobertss_The TV star got teary as she explained to followers her confusion and frustration at what’s going on with her bodyCredit: Instagram/ericarobertss_
In a new video, the reality star explained that she has been having blood tests for the last five years which have consistently come back with worrying results – including a low white blood cell count.
Erica recently underwent yet another blood test and was met with the same results.
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After being told by doctors that they don’t know the reason for the abnormalities in her results, Erica explained that she’s feeling sick of the ongoing situation.
“It’s just frustrating because I really feel like I’ve been trying to change my lifestyle, do what I can to be healthy and just try to figure out what’s going on with my body and It’s just frustrating, I feel like I’ve been the healthiest that I’ve ever been in my whole entire life, so why are my levels dropping?
Erica underwent a private blood test which has made her even more worried something isn’t rightCredit: Instagram/ericarobertss_She is best known for appearing on MAFS in 2023Credit: Channel 4
“Why is it getting worse? I just don’t know what to do anymore, it’s so frustrating,” said Erica with tears in her eyes.
She continued: “This has been going on for five years, like, every single time I get my bloods done with my doctor I’m like, ‘What can we do?’ and they’re just like, ‘Oh we’ll just keeping checking it’ and I just don’t feel like that’s good enough.”
The emotional star explained that undergoing a blood panel test with private brand Biosensitive meant she was able to see her results more in depth – and has caused her to become more worried about the situation.
“Now I know that I just need to push my GP or just go private because there is clearly something going on and it needs to be fixed,” said Erica.
The star explained in the video that she suffers from health anxiety and told fans in the comment section she has already been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and an underactive thyroid.
Hashimoto’s disease is an autoimmune condition that attacks the thyroid gland and can lead to an underactive thyroid.
The association uses its website, email lists, newsletters and neighbourhood flyers, and it enlists volunteers who walk around to make sure residents know about upcoming events. The association also has a welcome wagon to greet new neighbours and tell them what’s happening.
Kathi Eckert, a retired teacher who has lived in Hiltonia for more than 10 years, said personal contact still matters. Wearing a grey 250th-anniversary T-shirt and baseball hat, she chatted with people around the lawn before settling in with the group gathered along the street.
“We are so inundated with media, emails, ‘noise’ that it is hard to focus on what’s going on in our little world. A personal ‘reaching out’ to someone is so much more meaningful than just sticking a flyer in their screen door,” said Eckert, who informally lets neighbours know about upcoming events. “It’s not always possible, but we try.”
Even with those efforts, reaching people who are not already involved can be a challenge. Eckert said some neighbours may hesitate to attend because they assume the group is already well-established.
“We do tend to see a lot of the same people here, because I think we all have that same intent to keep community,” Eckert said. “But I have also heard that some people won’t come because they think we’re a clique. We’re not a clique unless we exclude people, and we don’t do that. We open this to everybody.”
The challenge is not only getting people through the door but creating the conditions for them to feel they belong once they arrive. For Reese, inclusivity means thinking beyond who is invited to how you’ve curated the space for the people who are there.
“If you are trying to host a gathering with the intent of getting a wide variety of people, some folks are going to have a question of, am I going to be safe there? And have you done your due diligence to make sure that I am?” she said. “These things don’t just happen, and I do think that we are in a moment where intentionality feels even more important.”
To create a space where people feel welcome and able to participate, Community Plate works to remove economic and other barriers. Guests can share a story or listen, bring a dish, buy something simple, or just come and eat. Organisers also encourage people to take leftovers home for themselves or neighbours who could use a meal. Their toolkit outlines ways to make community meals more accessible.
“We do our best to meet people where they are,” said Schatz.
But even the most intentional gatherings won’t work for everyone. Carter Florence, vice president of programmes at Meals on Wheels America, said there’s “no one silver bullet” when it comes to creating social ties. Through community dining and home-delivered meals, her organisation uses food as an entry point for social support, helping to build relationships and reduce isolation.
“For some people, the idea of eating with a group of people they may not know is actually really uncomfortable, and that wouldn’t be a very positive situation,” she said. “But the idea of someone that I’ve maybe seen periodically coming by and delivering a meal may be more beneficial.”
The individual nature of connection is what makes scaling these programmes complex. “You really want to be able to offer the type of connection that’s going to be most beneficial” for each person, Florence explained.
The idea has also made its way into policy. A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, published in July, highlighted how food-based activities are appearing in national and local strategies to strengthen social ties.
The report shows, for example, how Japan’s national loneliness plan includes community cafes and meal-delivery programmes. Seoul has introduced convenience stores where residents can prepare and share meals alongside accessing other forms of support. Several European countries have also backed communal-eating initiatives. The programmes differ, but they reflect a recognition that food can function not only as nutrition but also as a way to create social connections.
Back in Hiltonia, by early evening, people were folding up their chairs and packing the remains of their dishes to take home. The community’s next gathering was already planned for August: a National Night Out, where neighbours would block off the street and share another potluck.
Green and Kroon stayed until the end, helping clean up before leaving about 7pm. While at the event, their next-door neighbours introduced them to a couple who recently moved into the area. The two couples chatted about life in Hiltonia and the house the newcomers were moving into. Green and Kroon hope to get to know their new neighbours better and plan to visit them once they have finished unpacking.
It was a small example of what organisers hoped the potluck would accomplish: turning neighbours who might otherwise remain strangers into people with a reason to meet again.
While they are still building relationships in the area, Kroon said they have made some close friends here.
“It’s hard to start forming these things,” she said. “But if there’s already something established that you can show up to, it’s a lot easier.”
Gaza City — Whenever Mervat Radwan hears the community kitchen in her displacement camp will serve lunch that day, she breathes a sigh of relief.
She takes a cooking pot and walks to the community kitchen with her nephew, six-year-old Ubay.
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The meal is rarely enough for the seven people in her household, so she has to supplement it with whatever else she can find. A can of tuna, beans or peas from an aid parcel can help make the meal stretch further.
“Sometimes they give us a cooked meal, but it isn’t enough for seven people, so I try to find something besides it,” she told Al Jazeera.
Community kitchens are a vital source of food for families with little or no income in Gaza, but their operations have fluctuated sharply in recent months.
The kitchen near Radwan’s displacement site was closed for almost two months before resuming services for just two days a week.
Daily production in Gaza fell from about 1.5 million meals via 165 kitchens in mid-March to 698,000 served by 102 kitchens by July, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Community kitchens across the Gaza Strip have seen their operations fluctuate, leaving families with fewer and less reliable sources of cooked meals [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
This substantial reduction in the number of community kitchens operating in the Gaza Strip and the meals they serve has been attributed to severe funding shortages and rising operational costs, with charities facing difficulties securing sufficient food or cooking supplies.
Tinned food and charity
Radwan, 45, became the guardian of her three nephews when an Israeli air attack in northern Gaza on October 18, 2024, killed her 38-year-old brother Mohammad and his wife, Anwar, 33, and their one-year-old son, Yosuf.
Their three other children survived, but Nayef, now 14 years old, had shrapnel lodged in his head; Habib, 11, suffered burns to his body, while Ubay, who is now aged four, had also sustained severe burns.
For the past nine months, they have lived in a tent in Deir el-Balah with Radwan, her 70-year-old father, and her 40-year-old sister, Sanaa.
None of the carers has a regular source of income, so they are reliant on aid and charity to make it through to the next day.
The children have been left psychologically scarred by the loss of their parents, and their frail state is compounded by the family’s inability to source the basic necessities for existence, including food.
“It’s not just about taking them in; there is a lot of responsibility … food, drink, expenses, everything they need,” Radwan said.
When food is scarce, the adults skip meals so the children have enough to eat.
“My elderly father won’t eat until he knows his grandchildren have had enough … Maybe this is the most we can do in these difficult circumstances,” Radwan said.
Fresh vegetables are increasingly difficult for Mervat Radwan to afford, but she tries to include them in the children’s meals to keep their diet varied [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Meat is an unaffordable luxury, and even fresh vegetables are difficult to find due to their scarcity and high costs. Some organisations operating in Gaza occasionally distribute vegetables, but their supply is sporadic.
For little Habib, his recovery relies on the food he eats, with a doctor telling Radwan that he must drink water frequently and eat foods with high water content, such as cucumbers, regularly.
But 1kg of cucumbers costs about 15 shekels ($4.50) and tomatoes cost 10 to 12 shekels ($3-3.60), prices the family can barely afford.
“If Ubay wants cucumbers, and the children like cucumbers, I buy three cucumbers, that’s it,” she says.
The World Food Programme said in July that even when there was food in markets, many households in Gaza struggled to source fresh vegetables, fruit and protein due to high prices.
About 77 percent of households in Gaza reported difficulties in this area, because their limited incomes were not enough to secure these costly staples.
The family’s limited diet is now affecting the children’s health. Habib has been suffering from kidney stones for about a year, which doctors said is due to his diet that is high in salt and almost completely based on canned goods.
Changing Habib’s diet is difficult when fresh food items are expensive and aid supplies, which the family relies on, consist mostly of tins of food.
For families like the Radwans, food assistance from charities helps them live another day, but a lack of diversity in their diets is costing them their health.
Thousands of low-income patients, some seriously ill, are scrambling to find new doctors as they lose access to UCLA Health physicians after a longtime Medi-Cal contract was not renewed.
Under the contract that expired June 30, UCLA had been providing specialty care to 9,000 medically frail patients from Health Care LA, an association of nonprofit clinics that serve patients covered by Medi-Cal, the state program for the poor.
“Many of these patients have been waiting for months to be seen by UCLA specialty medicine providers and are now being told they cannot receive the care they desperately need,” Health Care LA said in a Thursday news release.
The patients had gone to UCLA for cancer and infectious-disease treatments, high-risk women’s services, major organ transplants and other specialty medicine care, the association said.
A Friday news conference that Health Care LA had scheduled to detail the problems patients faced in getting care was abruptly canceled when the two sides said they had reached a tentative agreement on how to transition the patients to other doctors over the next year.
“To help ensure a smooth transition for patients, both organizations have agreed that established UCLA Health patients, individuals with existing appointments, and patients requiring other agreed-upon services will continue to be cared for at UCLA Health facilities,” Phil Hampton, a university spokesman, said in a statement.
Although some patients will continue to be seen by UCLA doctors, he said, “accepting an unlimited number of new referrals presents challenges given existing capacity constraints and the need to preserve timely access for existing patients.”
Sabra Matovsky, chief executive of Health Care LA, said in an interview on Thursday that UCLA had declined to renegotiate the contract.
“They never even asked us for a raise,” she said, “They just want us out.”
She said that university officials had pointed to “capacity issues” at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, including in the emergency room and dozens of specialty clinics.
“To solve this by pushing out Medi-Cal patients while you continue to expand and market and take on other patients is not a solution,” Matovsky said.
Hampton said UCLA had offered to extend the contract, but Health Care LA rejected the offer.
The end of the Medi-Cal contract disappointed some UCLA medical professionals who have been urging the public university to provide care to more of L.A. County’s low-income residents.
“It feels like this is profits over patients,” said Dr. Patrick Samones, a fellow at UCLA Health, who trained at the university in family medicine.
“UCLA is one of L.A.’s most important healthcare institutions,” said Samones, who represents members of the Committee of Interns and Residents, which is part of Service Employees International Union. “We feel it has a duty to serve all Californians.”
In recent years, UCLA Health has been expanding fast and now has almost 300 locations throughout Southern California, including in wealthier places such as Montecito, Malibu and Westlake Village.
At the same time, it provides less care to Medi-Cal patients than its sister university health systems: UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco and UC Davis, according to university statistics.
Last year, about 15% of UCLA Health’s net patient service revenue came from Medi-Cal, according to the university health systems’ annual report. The four other UC health systems each received about 22% of that revenue from Medi-Cal.
About 40% of L.A. County residents are insured by Medi-Cal, according to a recent report by the California Health Care Foundation.
Hampton said the net patient service revenue data from the annual report doesn’t capture UCLA’s “extensive contributions to caring for Medi-Cal patients” and isn’t “a fair basis for comparing academic health systems.”
He added that with the university’s expansion of clinics, “we are providing substantial specialty care to Medi-Cal and Medicare patients” throughout L.A. County.
“Unlike county-owned hospitals, UCLA Health relies almost exclusively on patient care revenue to fund operations, expand access, recruit clinicians and invest in facilities and technology,” he said.
Hampton said UCLA has other contracts to serve Medi-Cal patients, which will continue. The health system also provides more than $270 million in unreimbursed care for low-income patients each year, he said, as well as primary and urgent care for people experiencing homelessness.
In addition, UCLA is spending $500 million to create a new neuropsychiatric hospital in Los Angeles’ Mid-Wilshire neighborhood, he said.
“We continue to fortify our region’s safety net despite growing access demands and challenges,” Hampton said.
In the most recent fiscal year, he said, Medi-Cal patients comprised 26% of 336,600 inpatient days and 34% of 156,000 emergency department visits.
“UCLA Health’s long-standing commitment to serving vulnerable populations in Southern California is well-established,” he said.
Hampton said the net patient service revenue data doesn’t reflect the complexity of care delivered by UCLA and is affected by Medi-Cal reimbursement rates and payment policies, which vary by region and health plan.
“Over time, Medi-Cal reimbursement has not kept pace with the cost of providing care, and UCLA Health has experienced increasing payment denials and delays,” he said.
UCLA specialists had been caring for Health Care LA’s seriously ill patients under the contract since 2009.
“They were the provider that did all the complicated care,” Matovsky said. “UCLA was our go-to.”
Islamabad, Pakistan – Staff nurse Razia Noreen was at a medicine cupboard on the nursery ward of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Islamabad’s largest public-sector hospital. She was two doors from the babies in her care, preparing the morning’s injections.
As she shut the cupboard door, she saw through the nursery’s glass panel a light too sharp and too red to be anything ordinary. She did not wait to understand what it was.
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It was 6:38am on Wednesday, August 26. Elsewhere in the ward, her colleague, Sister Nasreen, was already running out, shouting for help.
At 56 seconds past 6:38am, according to security camera timestamps later logged by a government inquiry committee, Noreen rushed into the nursery.
Eight seconds later, she emerged carrying a baby. She tried to go back in. She could not. By 6:40am, the room was gone, swallowed by smoke so thick that the security cameras could no longer see through it.
Noreen was recalling this eight days later, in a plain office beside the hostel warden’s room at PIMS, dressed in a pale pink shalwar kameez, her dupatta loose over one shoulder.
“There was a proper blast,” she told Al Jazeera. “Everything turned to smoke.”
Fifteen newborns had been in that nursery. Fourteen died. The baby Noreen carried out was the only one who lived.
On Thursday, Noreen was given an award by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for her courage. But for the nurse, the trauma of that Wednesday morning was still raw.
Barely two hours after meeting the prime minister, she sat down and talked, at length, about what happened inside.
Rescue workers had to break the concrete grill and then a window to gain access to the ward [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]
‘Save the babies’
Noreen had been on duty since 8pm the previous night, working a routine dawn medication round with Sister Nasreen, with less than two hours left before the end of her shift.
When she saw the light through the nursery glass, she says she did not stop to work out what it was.
“I just told my sister nurse, save the babies,” she told Al Jazeera. “I went in. I didn’t think about what would happen next.”
Noreen said the fire was coming out of the side of the air-conditioning unit facing her.
“The AC was right in front of me, and the fire was coming out of its side,” she said. “We don’t know what was happening behind it. That’s just what I saw.”
The government’s interim inquiry, submitted on August 28, states that the precise cause of the fire “is not yet conclusively established”, with evidence pointing variously to the air conditioner, an incubator or an electrical short circuit.
Inside the nursery, Noreen reached the nearest baby. There was no time to choose between 15. She carried the infant out and handed her to Dr Abdul Rehman, a doctor who had been inserting a feeding tube in the next room and emerged into the corridor moments after her. Then she turned back.
“I thought I’d get five, six, seven, eight more of them out,” she said. “But the fire was moving faster than I was.”
A second doctor, Dr Rimsha, who had been doing rounds nearby and saw the same light Noreen had, followed her in.
The two of them, and later Sister Nasreen, tried to crawl back through the smoke below the worst of the heat. A sudden loss of power plunged the room into darkness. They could not get through.
Noreen’s phone, left behind on the medication table when she ran in, sat inside the burned ward overnight. Hospital guards found it and returned it to her the next afternoon. Its case is still scorched and cracked.
Noreen, Dr Rimsha and Sister Nasreen instead moved to where a separate rescue team was lowering babies from an adjoining gynaecology ward. They stood there catching newborns and running them to the neonatal intensive care unit until the smoke became too thick to remain.
The government’s inquiry later found that the available evidence “does not support generalised allegations that front-line medical and nursing staff simply abandoned the newborns”.
Ask Noreen what a nurse is to a newborn separated from its mother, and she has one answer: its first mother.
“A mother who gives birth endures a pain no one else can stand in for,” she said. “But once a baby is in our hands, no one else is watching over it the way we are, checking their oxygen, their feeding, whether they’re breathing right, every two hours, whatever else is happening around us. That is why we are their first mother.”
Noreen’s phone, left behind in the nursery during the fire. Hospital guards recovered it and returned it to her the next day [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]
‘I am very happy with the children’
Noreen, 38, has spent 21 years in government nursing, the last 17 of them at PIMS. She trained in Karachi right after school, at the age of 17, before a transfer brought her to PIMS in 2009. She has never married.
“Thank God, I am very happy with the children,” she said, when asked about it directly.
Born in Punjab’s city of Sahiwal, she was one of seven children. Her father, Victor John, was a pastor; he died when she was in the eighth grade. Two of her sisters have died; a third, also a nurse, lives in Lahore.
Her mother, 83, a retired government school teacher who is hard of hearing, lives in Lahore with one of Noreen’s brothers.
Noreen herself has lived in the PIMS staff hostel, across from the ward where she works, for most of the past two decades.
With her own phone trapped inside the burning ward, Noreen could not call her family herself.
Noreen’s niece happened to be staying with her that week. It was the niece the warden found, and who got word to the family in Lahore: Noreen was safe.
‘It’s always the two of us’
On the morning of the fire, Noreen and Sister Nasreen were the only two nurses on duty in a nursery holding 15 babies, backed by two doctors, one of them two rooms away. She says it was not an unusual night.
“Sometimes there are 20 babies, sometimes 25,” she said. “It’s always the two of us.”
Doctors on her ward work 36-hour shifts, she said, arriving at 8am and going off duty at 2pm the following day.
Handover between nursing shifts, checking each baby’s medication, feeding and vital signs, takes roughly 45 minutes given the numbers involved. The cost of drugs can also run to tens of thousands of Pakistani rupees per injection, all provided by PIMS to its patients.
“Sometimes we get a break, sometimes we don’t,” she said. “When the workload is heavy, even the water we carry with us goes back home untouched.”
No fire drill had been run in the nursery before August 26, not even after an earlier fire at a nearby PIMS hostel in July.
Asked what is required after an incident like this, she does not hesitate.
“We should all have proper drills. If a fire starts, everyone needs to already know what to do.”
She lists what should follow: extinguishers within reach, cross-ventilation to clear smoke, and a rehearsed evacuation route for babies who cannot walk or call out for help.
Broken windows at the PIMS building housing the nursery, hours after the August 26 fire [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]
‘Golden letters in history’
Until the fire, almost nobody outside her own ward knew her name, Noreen says.
“I have almost no presence in the main hospital,” she said. “Nobody there knows who I am. I work in the nursery, in my own department. I never imagined that saving one baby would take me this far.”
She travelled on Thursday to meet the prime minister in a car the government sent.
During the meeting, Sharif called her “the nation’s daughter” and said her act would be remembered “in golden letters” in Pakistan’s history.
He confirmed Noreen will formally receive the country’s Sitara-i-Khidmat (Star of Service) award at a ceremony on March 23, and handed her a cheque for 10 million Pakistani rupees ($36,000).
She used the meeting to say what she had already told her own colleagues privately.
“My fellow nurses work with just as much dedication,” she said. “This was a very heartbreaking incident.”
‘I haven’t slept since that day’
Eight days on, Noreen is unwell. She has had a fever of 102 to 103 degrees Fahrenheit (38.9C to 39.4C) on and off, and a cough she says came from smoke she breathed in from the fire that morning — a morning she will never forget. She takes an antibiotic and sleeping tablets at night. Neither has worked as it should.
“I haven’t slept, not since that day,” she said. “I take the tablets, I drink the cough syrup, but sleep doesn’t come. I close my eyes, and I open them again.”
Asked whether the same dawn shift keeps replaying in her mind, she did not need the question finished.
“The whole incident. The same babies. The mothers’ screams, and the babies’ screams, how they must have screamed. Those are the things that don’t let me sleep.”
She was signed off on medical rest only the day before this interview. Colleagues have been steadying her since.
“I would just start crying, sitting there,” she said. “They supported me like I was a child.”
But the nights are still hers alone.
“It comes back to the same thing,” she said. “When I’m in the hostel, when I’m alone, it all comes back.”
Nurse Razia Noreen meets Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Islamabad on September 3, 2026, where he presented her with a cheque for 10 million Pakistani rupees ($36,000) and announced she will receive the Sitara-i-Khidmat (Star of Service) civil award [Handout/Pakistan Prime Minister’s Office]
‘That, I regret’
The baby Noreen carried out — she hasn’t been named yet, according to the nurse — remains in the neonatal intensive care unit a week on.
Born preterm at just over a kilogramme (2 pounds, 3 ounces), the baby was already unwell before the fire. She remains critical.
Noreen met the baby’s parents for the first time the day before the meeting with the prime minister.
“She [the baby’s mother Asifa] hugged me and thanked me, and cried, and I cried with her,” Noreen said, “because for the rest of the children, my heart is still exactly where it was.”
She has told the mother the same thing she tells herself.
“I said, look, your child survived such a huge storm, she will survive what comes next, too. You pray, and I will pray.”
Asked what she would tell other nurses, Noreen urged them to work with honesty and without conditions.
“When you work somewhere with honesty, the reward comes eventually,” she said. “It came to me after 21 years. Work with the same loyalty. That is our real strength.”
Then, unprompted, she returned to the 14 babies who died.
“I do regret it,” she said. “I could not save the rest of the children. That, I regret.”
Country implements state of emergency in Sarawak’s Serian district after air pollution reaches ‘hazardous’ levels.
Published On 5 Sep 20265 Sep 2026
Malaysia has declared a state of emergency in a district in Sarawak state after haze caused by wildfires in neighbouring Indonesia increased air pollution to “hazardous” levels.
King Sultan Ibrahim “has consented to the declaration of emergency throughout Serian Division, Sarawak, following haze conditions that have reached air pollution levels hazardous to public health and safety”, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s office said in a statement on Thursday.
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The declaration followed a formal request from the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee after the region’s Air Pollutant Index reached levels warranting consideration of a local emergency.
Under the order, 647 schools in Serian will close from Monday until at least the end of next week, alongside government and private offices, plantations, construction sites and quarries, with only essential services continuing to operate.
The state’s disaster management authorities said a three-day cloud-seeding operation launched on Thursday would be extended to at least Monday, citing forecasts of “more conducive cloud formations” during that period.
Sarawak State Disaster Management Committee chairman Douglas Uggah Embas, speaking at a news conference in Kuching, stressed that the emergency applied only to Serian, not the entire state, but urged residents there to take the situation seriously.
“Please minimise outdoor activities and avoid strenuous activities outdoors,” he said.
Sarawak, in the northern part of Borneo island, has been heavily affected by haze for weeks, as have the neighbouring states of Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia.
Other Southeast Asian countries like Brunei have also reported smoggy conditions. Singapore announced it would start providing daily haze advisories from Friday evening, after the 24-hour air quality readings entered the unhealthy range, the first since 2023.
It has also hit the Philippines, where President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the suspension of classes in the capital region, Metro Manila, as well as more than a dozen provinces on Friday.
This year’s transboundary haze, which originates from fires burning across Indonesia, particularly the Kalimantan region and Sumatra island, is part of a wider seasonal wildfire crisis in the archipelago country.
Scientists say temperatures are expected to peak this month, potentially intensifying the fires by bringing hotter and drier conditions across the region.
Trash fills a street in Havana in March. A U.S. Embassy health alerts issued Friday follows earlier reports of gastrointestinal illnesses on the island tied to water supply problems, garbage accumulation and prolonged power outages. File Photo by Ernesto Mastrascusa/EPA
Sept. 4 (UPI) — The U.S. Embassy in Havana issued a health alert Friday over a significant increase in diarrheal illnesses across Cuba, linking the rise to the continued deterioration of the island’s water and energy infrastructure.
The embassy said unreliable electricity and water supplies are affecting general hygiene as well as food refrigeration, storage and temperature control, accelerating spoilage.
Recent cases have shown a significant increase in pathogens including E. coli, norovirus and Shigella, as well as other gastrointestinal pathogens that can cause vomiting, fever and severe dehydration.
Health Alert – U.S. Embassy Havana, Cuba (September 4, 2026)
Location: Cuba
Event: The U.S. Embassy has noted a significant increase in diarrheal illness across Cuba, associated with the continuing degradation of the water and energy infrastructure. This degradation affects… pic.twitter.com/jSA636mete— Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Cuba (@USEmbCuba) September 4, 2026
The embassy advised travelers and U.S. citizens in Cuba to take extra hygiene precautions and exercise caution with dairy products, meat, seafood, eggs and other perishable foods if they are uncertain about how the products were stored.
It also recommended avoiding tap water and considering bringing a personal supply of basic medications, including acetaminophen, ibuprofen, antibiotics and oral rehydration solutions, “given local medication shortages.”
The latest alert follows earlier reports of gastrointestinal illnesses on the island. In July, Periódico Cubano reported an increase in people experiencing vomiting and diarrhea in several parts of Havana as residents complained of water supply problems, garbage accumulation and prolonged power outages.
The health warning came days after the embassy issued a security alert Wednesday over a notable increase in thefts and vehicle-related crimes in Havana.
Incidents included items taken from vehicles, including parts such as side mirrors and windshield wipers, and attempts to steal entire vehicles amid worsening economic conditions and rising crime, Martí Noticias reported.
Shohei Ohtani was out of the lineup Thursday and his availability is a “day-to-day situation,” manager Dave Roberts announced before the Dodgers’ series finale against the St. Louis Cardinals.
The area around Ohtani’s right biceps and neck was bothering him during the Dodgers’ loss Wednesday, Roberts said.
“It just wasn’t firing the way he wanted it to,” Roberts said. “That’s why I think you saw some grimacing and some kind of shaking of the arm just trying to get it to fire and he couldn’t do that.”
Ohtani was not made available to talk before the game, and he declined requests for comment twice during the Dodgers’ road series in Detroit this past weekend. He last spoke to reporters on Aug. 17.
Ohtani’s health has been scrutinized for much of the season and even more over the last week. He hasn’t pitched since July 3 because of soreness and threw a bullpen session last Friday in hopes of pitching one inning Sunday against the Detroit Tigers. But, not feeling “100%,” as Roberts put it, Ohtani didn’t return to the mound, and his throwing progression stalled.
Though Roberts described Ohtani’s ailment as an overall issue, including his left knee and right biceps, he remained in the lineup. Roberts said then that he’d been given no indication that swinging the bat was affecting Ohtani, but if that changed, the manager would have no problem with sitting the superstar.
Wednesday, as Ohtani went 0 for 4 in the midst of a two-for-23 skid, his body language sounded alarm bells.
“I saw the same thing that everyone saw,” Roberts said after the Dodgers’ 8-6 loss to the Cardinals. “I saw the shaking of the arm, I saw the wincing, and clearly the swings aren’t who he is. And so, obviously, there’s some compensation. So I’m going to talk to him, and then I’ll make a decision about his availability.”
Roberts said a stint on the injured list was unlikely “but not impossible.”
“Ideally, he takes it as a mental and physical day,” Roberts said. “And then it’s just getting together with him later [Thursday] and seeing how the day is and how [he responds to] the day of rest. … At that point in time, we can make a decision as far as [Friday].”
Managing Ohtani’s health will continue to be a priority for the Dodgers. He’s been dealing with lingering knee soreness and inflammation since at least mid-June, and his biceps issue has flared several times this season.
Ohtani’s buildup back to pitching has been halted twice since he received an Orthovisc injection to lubricate the knee joint over the All-Star break.
As valuable as Ohtani is to the Dodgers as a pitcher, his offensive impact is needed far more, especially with left-hander Tarik Skubal added to the rotation. If continuing to try to pitch jeopardizes Ohtani’s production with his bat, it may be in the team’s best interest to take pitching off the table for him.
Tommy Edman was penciled into the leadoff spot and will play center field, while Alex Call will be the designated hitter and bat eighth.
Gaza City, Gaza Strip – In the stifling heat of Gaza City, Dr Rizq Sufyan Abo Halima sits in a small tent pitched in an alleyway, waiting for his next patient.
The tent was a last resort for the doctor, given that the high demand and low supply of properties in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s genocidal war have made finding an affordable surgery impossible.
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“The stifling rise in temperatures was my first challenge,” he told Al Jazeera. “I had to adjust the corners of the tent and lift it at the ends to allow air to pass through.”
His old clinic, Smile One, in Sheikh Zayed City in northern Gaza, was bombed during the early days of the war in 2023.
The 31-year-old built a new clinic in May last year, next to where his current tent is pitched, in Gaza City’s al-Nasr neighbourhood. But three months later, it too was destroyed when Israeli forces assaulted the area, just weeks before the ceasefire last October.
He is now forced to conduct operations and other emergency dental procedures in the tent close to the ruins of his former surgery. When the electricity supply stops, which is frequent, there is little he can do but sit in his tent and wait for the power to come back on.
Finding another office would be the obvious solution, but residential and commercial units are hard to find in Gaza and those few that remain are unaffordable.
More than four in five buildings in Gaza City and northern Gaza have been completely destroyed or severely damaged in Israel’s war, according to the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
Fewer than one in five buildings in Gaza can still be used and Israel’s ban on building materials has made repairs impossible. That has created a skewed supply situation, which has made prices of office spaces or homes unaffordable.
“Before the war, I used to rent an entire apartment for my clinic for 500 shekels ($166) a month, but today I cannot afford the prices of remaining apartments at all,” he said. Now, the cost is closer to $1,000.
Dr Rizq’s previous dental offices were bombed by Israeli forces during the war on Gaza [Nour Abo Aisha/Al Jazeera]
Heat is better than high costs
Using a tent is the cheapest alternative Dr Abo Halima could find, and he does not want to pass on what he calls the excessive price of building rent to his customers, who are already suffering immense personal and financial hardships.
“If I had rented an apartment for my clinic instead of a tent, the cost of one filling to teeth would have doubled for the patient,” Dr Abo Halima said.
“I am here, enduring the harsh summer heat, so that I can protect people from the high prices that I will inevitably have to charge if I rent an apartment, in addition to the fact that I have no other options at all.”
Dr Abo Halima treats his instruments with care. He sterilises them regularly to protect them from dust and germs and hires a security guard. After all, the thin canvas walls offer little protection from thieves.
Despite his best efforts, the collapsed, resource-starved economy in Gaza means that dental care is a luxury for many patients.
One of them, 25-year-old Yousef Abo Halima, sums up the situation in a few simple words: “I can handle the harsh heat inside the tent, but I certainly cannot afford the high costs of fillings at clinics that operate inside apartments”.
Avoiding the expense of having his dental practice in a high-rent building, Dr Abo Halima is able to charge patients less [Nour Abo Aisha/Al Jazeera]
Difficult choices
After Heba Rihan, 23, graduated from Al-Aqsa University with a major in general nursing, she struggled to find work in her field.
So she made an arduous daily journey from the south of the Gaza Strip to the west on foot, looking for work. She eventually found Dr Abo Halima’s clinic in May and began working there.
Now, one of the most regular parts of her job is explaining to patients that the high cost of treatment is due to the scarcity of materials and other issues related to the war and Israel’s siege on Gaza.
“One day [a patient] came in deep pain… When he asked how much the filling cost and was told it was 350 shekels ($116), he didn’t have the money. He asked directly about the tooth extraction, which is only 50 shekels ($17),” she said.
“He decided to extract his original tooth because he could not bear the pain or the cost. That was the most painful moment I’ve ever had here.”
Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo says he is taking full responsibility for his ‘recent personal failure’ after entering a no-contest plea to a charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
Romo was arrested July 23 in Wisconsin on suspicion of operating while intoxicated (OWI). He also received citations for having an open container of an alcoholic beverage in a moving vehicle and unsafe passing, but they were dismissed Tuesday morning by a Milwaukee County judge.
The same judge found Romo guilty of the OWI charge and took away his driving privileges for six months. Romo also must pay $834, and an ignition interlock device must be installed on any vehicle owned or operated by Romo or registered in his name for a minimum of one year.
In a statement posted to Instagram soon after, Romo indicated he is taking the situation seriously.
“This morning, I faced a recent personal failure by pleading no contest to a civil offense for OWI in Wisconsin. I own this completely,” Romo wrote.
“Multiple back surgeries ended my career earlier than I expected and left me with constant, debilitating pain. That pain led to a dependence on pain medication, and my efforts to get off those medications led to an over-reliance on alcohol.
“As I have taught my three young sons: when you fall short, you stand up and take full responsibility. That is an important first step. The harder and more important step is examining the path that brought you here and making the changes necessary to move forward.
“That path requires honesty.
“None of this is an excuse. These are my failures, and I take responsibility for them.”
Romo spent all 13 of his NFL seasons with the Cowboys and has been the lead NFL game analyst for CBS Sports since 2017. On July 31, the network placed Romo on indefinite leave and tapped J.J. Watt to fill in alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz.
He said Tuesday that he is “working closely with a team of doctors to address my health and make the necessary changes” in his life.
“The past month has been difficult, but it has also been personally significant,” Romo wrote. “It has required me to confront and own my mistakes fully — to the Lord, to myself, to my family, and now to the public.”
Romo added: “As I turn my attention to my health, my family, and, in time, my return to CBS, I kindly ask for privacy during this period.”
Clash with Pennsylvania comes as US records highest number of measles cases in decades.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has removed two measles-associated deaths reported by the US state of Pennsylvania from the federal government’s national tally, in a move directed by the agency’s director, according to US media.
The move comes as the US records its highest number of measles cases in 35 years, and as concerns have grown of the administration of US President Donald Trump’s response to the outbreak.
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Erica Schwartz, who was sworn in as CDC director in August, ordered the deaths to be excluded from the agency’s weekly measles update, according to current and former officials quoted by several US media organisations, including the New York Times.
The CDC had initially added the two cases to the website tracking national measles deaths, but later removed them, posting a notice saying it was reviewing additional information about the cases.
“At this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles,” the CDC website read on Tuesday.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced on August 25 that two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents had died in cases it classified as “measles-associated”. They were the state’s first such deaths in 35 years.
“My deepest sympathies are with the loved ones who are facing this unimaginable loss,” Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen said in a statement following the announcement.
“As a physician, I want to make sure that people understand that the MMR vaccine is safe and provides the best protection we have against measles.”
Questions over health policy
The CDC’s change comes after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic ahead of his appointment to the role, publicly questioned Pennsylvania’s cases last week.
In a post on X, Kennedy said the announcement “may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers”.
During a Fox News town hall on Saturday, Kennedy said he wanted Health and Human Services, a federal agency, to redirect resources to chronic disease and deaths linked to foodborne illness and away from infectious disease.
“Demagogue politicians are constantly trying to scare us about infectious disease, and we take the attention away from the chronic disease that is being caused … by big food companies, by big pharmaceutical companies,” Kennedy said on Fox News.
The CDC’s decision has raised concerns over whether the Trump administration will accelerate second-guessing state public health determinations.
Pennsylvania has disputed the federal account of what information was provided to the CDC, saying the deaths were reported to the agency’s measles response team and that state epidemiologists thoroughly investigated both cases.
Health experts have questioned several of the Trump administration’s health policies since the president took office for his second term in January 2025.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to roll back recommended childhood immunizations and split the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate doses, falsely suggesting that the combined vaccine can be lethal.
Several top medical organisations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), have said spacing out the doses can create unneeded barriers to vaccines. That can in turn increase the number of unvaccinated children.
Olivia Attwood The Price of Perfection has returned for a brand new season
Olivia Attwood The Price of Perfection has returned for its third series (Image: Optomen/ITV )
Former Love Island star Olivia Attwood has been left horrified after a worrying health discovery when travelling the world.
Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection is a documentary series following the reality TV star who explores the UK’s obsession with cosmetic treatments, beauty standards and body modifications.
It has since returned to ITV2 for its third series, with brand new episodes being released every Tuesday at 9pm. Episodes are also available to stream on ITVX, with a new instalment dropping today (September 1).
Tonight’s episode marks the fifth in the series and follows Olivia as she travels to Seoul, South Korea as she joins those who are drawn to the K-beauty standards. K (Korean) beauty is a term for skincare, cosmetics, and beauty practices that originate from South Korea, which includes treatments that Olivia dubs “out of this world“.
The former Love Island star is also seen getting treatment herself, but it wasn’t long before she was horrified by what she saw. Just minutes in tonight’s episode, Olivia is seen getting a scalp analysis, showing what her scalp looks like up close. However, she was unimpressed by what she saw.
After seeing her hair follicles on screen, the star squealed in disgust as she said: “Ew. That is minging.” Covering her face with her hands, Olivia then heard a breakdown of what was seen on screen.
Describing her “thin hair”, Olivia was told she has “hair loss” issues meaning if left, things could become worse. She asked: “So my hair is going to fall out?” before looking at the camera in shock.
Seung Pyo, global manager, told the star she needed more nutrients for her hair to grow thicker and healthier. Olivia replied: “Yeah, I need help. Clearly. I am so ready, I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life.”
Getting her treatment, Olivia is then seen chatting to Brits who have lived in South Korea for five years as they opened up on the beauty treatments available.
Later in the episode, the star was seen “recovering from another surprise” after she was informed of excess body fat and other treatments on offer.
Season 3 of The Price of Perfection is now streaming on ITVX, and the just-aired fifth episode explores the cosmetic treatments that even celebrities have received. A synopsis for the instalment teases: “Olivia travels to Seoul, South Korea – the home of K-Beauty. She joins Brits who are drawn to their beauty standards, and gets treatments herself.”
However, ITVX issued strong guidance alongside the episode which reads: “With strong language from the start and graphic scenes of surgery.”
Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection is available to stream on ITVX
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