The Polish Minister for Special Affairs, Stanislaw Zaryn, warned today that “we must be prepared in the event that mercenaries from the Wagner Group are used against Poland”. This was stated this Thursday in an interview, where he also confirmed that these mercenaries are training with the Belarusian Army, less than 100 km from Minsk.

“At the moment there are around a thousand Wagner members in Belarus,” he explained, adding that some estimates say that there may be up to three thousand. “It is not clear what mission they will finally carry out,” he added.

In addition, Zaryn has assured that the arrival of these mercenaries in Belarus “was like a gift for the Belarusian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who perhaps thought that with them he could ensure his power.” However, he has warned that this group can quickly get out of his control and become a problem for Belarus itself.. “They are convicts and war criminals who will always be causing problems wherever they are,” he asserted.

In relation to the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border and the construction of a wall, Zaryn explained that “many countries came to our border to take note and learn”. “Lithuania and Latvia have opted for less advanced solutions. It's your decision. Our barrier is undoubtedly one of the most modern physical border barriers. Many countries envy us for an initiative that has been so successful,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin assured this Thursday in his meeting in St. Petersburg with African leaders that they can trust that Russia will continue to be a reliable supplier, after Moscow unilaterally withdrew from the grain export agreement between accusations against Kiev of not complying.

“In the coming months, we will be ready to provide Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, the Central African Republic, and Eritrea with between 25,000 and 50,000 tons of grain at no cost,” Putin announced, adding that Russia has grown commercially despite of the pandemic and sanctions.

At the meeting, Putin highlighted that during the first half of this year, Russia has exported almost 10 million tons of grain to various African countries, in contrast to the 11.5 million that were shipped in all of 2022.

On the other hand, after meeting with the current head of the African Union, the president of Comoros, Azali Assoumani, Putin has stated that he will intercede so that this body can become a full member of the G20, according to the Interfax news agency.

The Russian president has stressed that his country has been one of the first countries to respond to the request of the African Union in this regard and is confident that progress can be made by the G20 summit to be held in September in New Delhi, India. On it.

“Russia is ready to do everything possible to promote the strengthening of the sovereignty of African states and to help Africa become one of the key partners in the multipolar world,” Putin said. For his part, Assoumani conveyed to the Russian president the concern of the African continent regarding the consequences that the war in Ukraine has brought with it, especially in terms of food security and rising fuel prices.

The leader of the Republican minority in the United States Senate, Mitch McConell, has been the protagonist of a new viral episode in the American public sphere. This past Wednesday, at a press conference, the senator was totally paralyzed for half a minute when he was going to receive questions from the media.

McConell, 81, was assisted by other senators from his team, who helped him back off the podium. A few minutes later, he was able to return to the press room and attend to the media.

This is not the first episode of confusion or lapses by US leaders. There are already several incidents involving President Joe Biden, 80, who despite his advanced age, has assured that he will present his candidacy for the next national elections in 2024.

The truth is that the American political leadership is remarkably aged. McConell and Biden are joined by Donald Trump (77), Bernie Sanders (81), Nancy Pelosi (83), Dianne Feinstein (90) or Chuck Grassley (89), all with a significant presence in the Senate.

Nearly three million people suffer from multiple sclerosis in the world -55,000 in Spain, according to data from the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN)- a chronic, autoimmune and degenerative disease that affects the nervous system.

This Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) updated its list of essential medicines and, for the first time, incorporates drugs for the treatment of this disease, and others such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and infectious diseases.

What is the essential medicines list?

“Essential medicines are those that cover the priority health needs of the population and that, in a properly functioning health system, must be available at all times, in the appropriate pharmaceutical form, with guaranteed quality and at prices that individuals and the community can pay”, highlights the organization.

These medicines lists are updated by WHO every two years, and used by more than 150 countries, to determine the medicines that best suit their context and health priorities, and thus be able to compile their own list of essential medicines.

Three key medicines

The list includes cladribine, glatiramer acetate and rituximab, three drugs that delay and slow down the progression of this disease, which is another great step forward towards equal access to health and medicines.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, warned at the press conference that “increasing prices and disruptions in the supply chain make it increasingly difficult for all countries to guarantee constant and equitable access to many quality-assured essential drugs.

Other news

WHO has also incorporated, for the first time, multidrug fixed-dose combinations for the prevention of heart and blood vessel disease, particularly cholesterol-lowering agents with one or more blood pressure-lowering agents with and without acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).

In addition, two new treatments have been added to treat cancer: pegylated liposomal doxorubicin for Kaposi's sarcoma and pegfilgrastim to stimulate the production of white blood cells and reduce the toxic effect of some anticancer drugs on the bone marrow.

In addition, two new drugs have also been added for the treatment of alcohol use disorder.

UFOs and alien life are in the news again. In a four-hour hearing, members of the Oversight Committee of the United States House of Representatives heard testimony from three ex-servicemen on Wednesday about the activities of the American government with objects from other worlds.

David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, even recounted under oath that the Pentagon has been working and experimenting with unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) of alien origin for decades.

These statements have been denied by the US government.. Susan Gough, a spokeswoman for the American Defense Department, explained to Fox News Digital that there is “no verifiable information to corroborate claims that there are programs related to the possession of extraterrestrial materials.”

In a statement to NBC, Gough has appealed for collaboration to clarify any type of sighting: “We welcome the opportunity to speak with any government employee who believes they have relevant information.”

However, there are classified government documents on UFOs and aliens, which is why the hearing was called in the Capitol. Senator Chuck Schumer has told the Wall Street Journal the importance of declassifying these documents: “It will be very useful for the American people to see exactly what is there. Because otherwise, there will be all kinds of rumors going around.”

Gough, referring to government workers, has stressed the importance of these documents remaining classified. “Every individual must protect classified information and must not share it with the media, the public or anyone who does not have access to it,” he said.

The famous Swiss 'ufologist' Giorgio Tsoukalos has shared on his Twitter profile an extensive reflection on the information uncovered by Grusch, assuming that his statements are true: “Unless we have all been deceived by a group of madmen, Planet Earth has learned that we're not the only intelligent beings in the Universe. It's ridiculously exciting.”

The 'ufologist', protagonist of an iconic 'meme' several years old, has tweeted a new version of the joke, in which “I told you” is written.

At least five children died and four other adults were injured in a traffic accident in central Egypt after the vehicle they were traveling in collided with a motorcycle and fell into the Nile River, official media reported today.

The accident took place at night on a secondary road in eastern Sohag province in central Egypt, the official Egyptian news agency MENA reported.

According to the first investigations, the driver of the vehicle in which the minors were traveling lost control of the steering wheel and collided with a motorcycle that did not have a license plate and, as a consequence, fell into a channel of the Nile River, said the source, who added that the security forces and ambulances went to the scene of the accident. Among the five minors killed, two of them, ages 8 and 10, were brothers, the source said.

Thousands of deaths in accident

Earlier this month, at least three people were killed, including two children aged 2 and 3, and 42 others injured after a wedding bus collided with a truck on a highway in southern Egypt.

Traffic accidents in Egypt are common due to speeding and poor road conditions, and they leave thousands dead each year.

In 2021, traffic accidents claimed the lives of 7,101 people, compared to 6,164 deaths in 2020, representing an increase of 15.2%, according to a report by the Egyptian official statistics agency CAPMAS, published in August 2021. last year.

The Australian authorities confirmed this Thursday that they have sacrificed 43 pilot whales that were stranded, along with another 54 that died the day before, on a beach in the southwest of the country.

“The operation did not go as well as we expected. It was obviously not the desired outcome,” Peter Hartley, an officer with the Department of Biodiversity and Conservation for the Western Australia region, where the mass stranding occurred, said in a video.

The regional Park Service on Wednesday sighted a group of nearly 100 pilot whales stranded on Cheynes Beach, a protected inlet in Western Australia that is surrounded by a park and nature reserve.

More than fifty whales lost their lives that day, while rescue teams, veterinarians, marine wildlife experts and some 250 volunteers initially managed to tow the survivors into deep water. However, hours later this group was once again stranded.

“Veterinarians evaluated the whales and confirmed that they showed signs of rapid deterioration.. Our team then determined that the most appropriate and humane action was to euthanize the remaining ones to avoid prolonging their suffering,” the regional Park Service said on social media.

Australia, like the neighboring country of New Zealand, is the scene of frequent strandings of whales and other marine mammals, without experts having been able to clarify the exact reasons. However, it is believed that they may be linked to diseases, navigation errors, sudden changes in the tides, the pursuit of predators or extreme weather conditions.

In September 2022, most of the 230 pilot whales that stranded on a remote island in the Australian region of Tasmania died, which, like Cheynes Beach, are on the migratory routes of various cetacean species. That stranding in Tasmania occurred two years after some 470 pilot whales were stranded in the same place, of which only a hundred could be rescued.

Yemen is a country torn apart by war since 2015. Insecurity, hunger and fear are the constants in the lives of Yemenis. NGOs consider theirs the worst humanitarian crisis in history. The war between government forces (backed by Saudi Arabia) and Houthi rebels (armed by Iran) has caused 4.5 million internally displaced people and more than two-thirds of the population is living below the poverty line.

We are talking about a country with thousands of civilian deaths and many diseases: the largest cholera outbreak of our century has occurred in Yemen. And poverty: more than 7.4 million people need nutritional assistance and 2.3 million children under five suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization.. At least the war has been on pause since the truce reached by the UN in April 2022.

The consequences could be catastrophic on an environmental, humanitarian and economic level.”

Can things get worse? It is always possible. The country only lacks an ecological catastrophe and it is brewing on the Yemeni coast of the Red Sea. The FSO Safer, an oil tanker in an advanced state of decomposition that could spill more than a million barrels of oil, is still moored there.. “The consequences could be catastrophic in the environmental, humanitarian and economic sphere,” says the United Nations.

The Safer is an oil storage and transfer vessel 362 meters long (length) and 70 meters wide (beam). It was built in 1976 in Japan as the oil tanker Esso Japan, with 406,640 deadweight tons.. It is capable of storing up to three million barrels of crude.

The ship has been moored off the coast of Yemen since 1988, but if it is a problem today, a huge problem, it is because of the civil war that is raging in the country.. In March 2015, during the first days of the conflict, the Safer was captured by Houthi forces when they seized control of the coastline near its Red Sea mooring point north of the city of Al Hudaydah.

The magnitude of the catastrophe

The Safer contains 1.14 million barrels of crude; four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez. That ship, which ran aground in Alaska on March 24, 1989 with millions of liters of crude oil in its holds, ended up spilling 37,000 tons into the sea.

According to the United Nations, a massive spill from the Safer would destroy virgin reefs, coastal mangroves and other marine life throughout the Red Sea.. Thus, it would expose millions of people to highly polluted air and cut off the supply of food, fuel and other vital products.

Fish stocks would take 25 years to recover and cleanup would cost more than €18 billion

Fish stocks would take 25 years to recover. Coastal communities would be hardest hit: hundreds of thousands of jobs in the fishing industry would be lost almost overnight. The cost of cleaning up this hypothetical catastrophe is estimated at more than 18,000 million euros.

That is if the FSO Safer does not explode before. the risk is real. Since the turbine that normally injects inert gases into the storage tanks is not in operation, nothing prevents the increasing presence of explosive gases due to fuel evaporation.

rescue operation

On May 30, the operation coordinated by the United Nations began to prevent the spill. A group of experts from a salvage company traveled to this point in the Red Sea to prepare the Safer for the transfer of its oil. The works have already begun and should continue for 19 days, the time that is estimated to take to pump its more than one million barrels of crude oil to another ship.

In the absence of anyone more willing or able, the UN has stepped up and assumed the risk of carrying out this very delicate operation.”

“In the absence of someone else willing or able to perform the task, the United Nations has stepped up and assumed the risk of carrying out this most delicate operation.. The ship-to-ship transfer of oil that has begun is the next critical step to avoid an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe of colossal scale,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres.

The risk of breaking the hull

According to the United Nations, generous donors, private companies and citizens have contributed some 110 million euros to the plan to prevent the spill. With that money, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) bought the ship Nautica in March to transfer the crude.

At the moment, no agreement has been reached for the sale of oil.”

But another 20 million is still needed to end the extraction works (a donation can be made here). In total about 130 million, which is actually very little if we remember that the cost of cleaning would be more than 18,000 million euros.

Then it will be necessary to see who gets the oil, if the Government of Yemen or the Houthi rebels. “At the moment, no agreement has been reached for the sale of oil,” says Achim Steiner, director of UNDP.

However, even if the “rescue” ends successfully, the Safer will continue to be a “threat to the environment”, according to the UN. The problem is that it contains viscous hydrocarbon residue that threatens to break your hull.

The Peruvian Army has denounced this Wednesday that a military helicopter has been the target of an attack by an armed group in the Ayacucho region, where a minor has been shot.

The Joint Command of the Armed Forces of Peru has indicated that the incident took place around 06:00 (local time) in the Llochegua district, in the south of the country, when a military helicopter was “attacked by a column of terrorist criminals receiving bullet impacts in the fuselage”.

The aircraft, however, has been able to carry out maneuvers to return to the Peruvian town of Pichari, which is located a few kilometers away, but in the Cuzco region.

“At 8:45 a.m., it was learned that a 13-year-old adolescent was injured as a result of the terrorist attack with a projectile from a minor weapon, causing a slight injury to her right leg,” reads a statement in which the Army indicates that the minor has been airlifted to a hospital where she is stable.

The authorities have reiterated their commitment to pacify the VRAEM area, which is the designation used by the Peruvian security forces to refer to the valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, an area in which the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla is present.