US Drone strike kills five militants in northwest Pakistan

A U.S. drone strike killed five militants in Pakistan’s volatile northwest on Wednesday, security officials and residents said, as the country’s security forces press ahead with an offensive in a Taliban stronghold near the Afghan border.

Two missiles slammed into a house in a village in the Datta Khel area in the border region of North Waziristan, security officials said, injuring two militants, besides the five dead.

The bodies of the five people killed were charred beyond recognition, one of the villagers told Reuters.

Drone strikes in Pakistan resumed in June after a gap of six months, during which the Pakistani government pursued peace talks with the Taliban. Pakistan announced an anti-Taliban offensive in North Waziristan within days of the resumption.

The United States had long urged Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban stronghold in remote, mountainous North Waziristan.

The Taliban use the region to prepare bombs, hold kidnap victims, stage public executions, and as a launch pad for attacks on Afghan and NATO troops across the border.

The military ordered the entire civilian population of North Waziristan to leave before launching the ground offensive but residents said most of the militants also moved out.

Many have probably gone into hiding in Afghanistan or elsewhere in Pakistan, including in thickly forested valleys further south.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan; Writing By Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Has US Found Cure For Ebola?

The family of Nancy Writebol, one of the missionary medical practitioners that contracted the Ebola virus while on a joint Samaritan’s Purse-SIM team, was already planning her funeral as she lay stricken with Ebola in Liberia amid the disease’s deadliest recorded outbreak.

She and her colleague, Dr. Kent Brantly, who have both been flown to the United States are defying odds to stay alive…and seem to be getting better.

Writebol’s two sons expect to communicate with her soon, Johnson said. The family was considering funeral arrangements for her just last week, days after she became sick, David Writebol said through Johnson.
“Yet we kept our faith, (and) now we have real reason to be hopeful,” David Writebol said in a statement read by Johnson.
Her improved condition may not be unconnected with an experimental, U.S.-manufactured drug, ZMapp, which she and her colleague were given in Liberia, although it has never been subjected to clinical trials.
The medicine is thought to work by preventing the virus from entering and infecting new cells, reports CNN. It’s a three-mouse monoclonal antibody — meaning mice were exposed to fragments of the Ebola virus, and the antibodies generated within the mice’s blood were harvested to create the medicine.
Have we found a cure?
Internist and gastroenterologist, Dr. Jorge Rodriguez however said while Brantly and Writebol’s conditions actually improved after taking the drug, the serum shouldn’t be seen as a miracle cure.

“Let’s be cautious. We don’t even know really if this serum is working,” said Rodriguez.
“I’m glad now that these patients were brought to a hospital where so many tests can be done, where they can see the response of their body to this serum. We don’t know if these patients are naturally getting better, or whether the serum is really doing something.”
Writebol and Kent are being treated at the Emory University Hospital, Atlanta, in special isolation units.
1,603 cases of infection has been reported across Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, with 887 of them dead as of Friday, according to the World Health Organization said

Dozens of Australians Lift Train to Free Man Whose Leg Was Trapped

Dozens of Australians tilted a train Wednesday to free a whose leg was trapped between a carriage and a platform, with authorities praising their efforts as an example of “people power”.

The man was boarding in the Western Australia city of Perth when he slipped and became jammed in the five-centimetre (0.4-inch) gap between the carriage and the station, operator Transperth said in a statement.

Passengers were initially told to move to the opposite side of the train in the hope their weight would shift it away from his leg, a passenger who gave his name as Nic told The West Australian newspaper.

But when that failed, staff told commuters to get off the train and about 50 of them lined up in a row along the platform to tilt the carriage away from the man so he could be lifted out.

“It is the first time we’ve seen something like this happen,” Transperth spokeswoman Claire Krol told AFP.

“We were really fortunate that the staff were there straight away… and all of the passengers not only listened to the instructions from staff, but pitched in and helped.

“This is a real case of passengers of working together… and people power are the perfect words to describe it.”

Transperth said the man was treated by paramedics but was able to catch a later train.

“The end result here is: really lucky for the man involved, but really nice as well to see that everyone came together as a community,” Krol added.

EBOLA: Nurse Who Treated Sawyer Dies, 5 More Cases Confirmed

One of the nurses who attended Patrick Sawyer, the first Ebola victim in Nigeria, has died.

Health Minister Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu made this known in Abuja August 6, Punch reports. He also revealed that 5 other medical practitioners involved in treatment contracted the virus.

“Nigeria has now recorded seven confirmed cases of Ebola Virus Disease. The first one was the index case, which is the imported case from Liberia of which the victim is now late. Yesterday, 5th August, 2014, the first known Nigerian to die of the EVD was recorded and this was one of the nurses that attended to the Liberian. The other five cases are currently being treated at the Isolation Ward in Lagos.”

Sawyer, a US citizen was travelling from Liberia, the center of Ebola epidemic, to Nigeria and was admitted to a Lagos hospital where he died from the symptoms of the deadly disease last month.

Two days ago the case of infection was confirmed by the Nigerian officials: the health worker contracted  the disease while treating Sawyer.

Since February the deadly virus has claimed more than 700 lives in West Africa, mostly Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, and keeps spreading in the continent.

Brutus the giant crocodile attacks shark in Australia

(AFP)Tourists in northern Australia have been left stunned by two fierce animals going head-to-head — a massive saltwater crocodile wrestling with a bull shark in its jaws.

Andrew Paice was on an hour-long wildlife cruise on the Adelaide River with his partner and seven-year-old daughter on Tuesday when they spotted something unusual on the riverbank.

Earlier they had watched as crocodiles, including the huge 5.5-metre (18-feet) male known as Brutus, leapt out of the water to eat a piece of buffalo meat held out on a pole to them.

“It was on the way back to the jetty, we went past Brutus again, he was up on the bank,” Paice told AFP from Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory on Wednesday.

“As we were going past, we noticed that there was a fin. We thought it was a barramundi (fish) or something.

“And the guide took the boat in for a closer look and lo’ and behold… it was a shark.”

Brutus, who is thought to be about 80 years old and is missing a front leg and most of his teeth, is well known in the area, and the Northern Territory News described the battle as “Jaws v Claws”.

Speculation is that the prospect of a fish dinner was tasty revenge for a croc that was thought to have lost his limb to one of the sharks who inhabit nearby waters.

“But from listening to other people, it was probably more likely a big crocodile (which took his front leg). But who knows? It was either a crocodile or a shark,” Paice said