"We have been in contact with all four instructors and are assisting them during this time," Brand said.
Rescued hostages said suffering from malnutrition; leaning on each other for support Doctors at Sheba hospital say Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan, and Andrey Kolzov are constantly seeking each other out.See also: FOUR high-profile resignations hit Israel's government, Ben-Gvir says there's now a 'big opportunity' to achieve 'victory' in Gaza
Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan, and Andrey Kozlov were found to be malnourished during initial medical tests at Sheba Medical Center on Saturday, but the mental influence of their captivity had yet to be established.
The Kan public broadcaster reported Sunday evening that after initial conversations with the four, medical professionals noted that the rescued hostages spoke about awful experiences they had been subjected to in captivity while also saying that their captors cared about their wellbeing.
Jan said that as a "cynical" gesture, his captors made him a cake for his birthday.
Staff at the hospital told the media that the four rescued hostages did not sleep on Saturday night, their first night back in Israel after their rescue, and instead stayed up talking to their families and among themselves.
The doctors also told Kan that the four were constantly seeking each other out, indicating their continued need to lean on each other for support.
The rescued hostages have begun to talk about their experiences, according to various reports.
Channel 13 reported on Sunday that Ziv said he had learned Arabic from Al-Jazeera broadcasts he watched in captivity and that their captors made them read the Quran and pray every day.
Argamani has also begun to share some of what she went through, telling her family that she narrowly avoided death four times in captivity, according to Channel 12 news.
According to a Monday Ynet report, Argamani learned Arabic while she was in captivity and used it to become a spokesperson for other female hostages she was held with before they were released in November during a weeklong truce. Before they were separated, Argamani would use the Arabic she learned to get things the hostages needed for them.
She said she had been held in four different apartments during her eight months in captivity and that in the last location, the family made her wash their dishes. Ynet reported that she also cooked at times with basic ingredients she was provided with.
Describing the rescue on Saturday, Argamani said she was washing the dishes when she heard a shout from the living room and saw people with their faces covered who told her they were from the IDF.
"At first, I thought they were making fun of me, and I didn't move, but then he asked me, 'Can I throw you over my shoulder?' and I realized what was happening," Channel 12 quoted her as saying.
She added that on the way to the extraction spot, their truck broke down.
"It was scary. The soldiers were brave. In a matter of one second, I may not have been here today," she said.
Argamani was taken to see her mother, Liora, who is suffering from terminal cancer, but her father, Yaakov, said that Liora's advanced illness made communication between the two difficult.
"I believe she understood what was happening. There was a foggy response, but Liora is in a bad way, and she barely looked at Noa," Yaakov said.
Doctors at Ichilov Hospital, where Liora is a patient, told Ynet that Noa has become actively involved in her mother's treatment since her return, seeking extensive information from the medical team and asking questions.
Shortly after Noa was taken captive, Liora appealed to Hamas to let her daughter go so that she could see her before she died.
Kozlov also reunited with his family on Sunday after his parents landed from St. Petersburg. In a video of the reunion, he could be seen falling to his knees and bursting into tears as soon as he saw his mother.
Argamani, Jan, Kozlov and Ziv were abducted from the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re'im on the morning of October 7, when 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in a murderous rampage across southern Israel.
Israeli officials, attendees, and hostages, have all provided information that the majority of those that were killed were victims of Israeli fire.
Officers of the police's elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit, along with Shin Bet agents, on Saturday morning simultaneously raided two multi-story buildings in the heart of Nuseirat, where the four hostages were being held by Hamas-affiliated families and guards of the terror group, according to the military.
They fail to mention that eyewitness statements reveal Israel, and possibly the US, used the Gaza-aid pier and humanitarian aid trucks, alongside aerial bombardment and machine gun fire, to achieve this 'success': US cell IN Israel helped rescue 4 hostages, operation included airstrikes that killed 210 Gazans in Nuseirat refugee camp massacre
Hamas's government media office claimed at least 274 people were killed amid the operation, an unverified figure that also does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Finland to offer bird flu vaccine to select groups of people, a possible global first
The vaccine campaign will be limited, with doses set to be available to groups including poultry farmers, veterinarians, scientists who study the virus, and people who work on fur farms housing animals like mink and fox and where there have been outbreaks.
Flashbacks to the contrived coronavirus crisis where they culled millions of mink, and contaminated the local water table.
In an email, Mia Kontio, a health security official at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, told STAT the country was waiting for 20,000 doses to arrive, but planned to administer them "as soon as the vaccines are in the country."
The decision to start providing vaccines reflects fears that people in close contact with infected animals could contract the H5N1 virus themselves. The virus is, for now, not particularly adept at infecting humans or, more importantly, spreading among them. But scientists worry that as the virus infects more mammalian species, and if it encounters more human cells, then the higher the chances are that it evolves to become more of a threat to people.
What are the chances that this rollout will actually hasten the viruses adaptation?
The Finnish campaign also comes as the U.S. faces an H5N1 outbreak among dairy cattle — previously a species scientists thought wasn't susceptible to the virus. Three dairy workers have had confirmed infections tied to the outbreak, and although the infections were all mild and there were no signs of forward transmission to other people, the cases underscored the risk to people who have contact with infected animals.
"The concern here is about the animal-human interface," said Marc Lacey, the global executive director for pandemic at CSL Seqirus, the maker of several H5 vaccines, including the one Finland is planning on using.
Other countries are discussing deploying H5 vaccines or are working to secure supplies, Lacey said. The U.S., for example, last week hired CSL Seqirus to build up the number of H5 flu vaccine doses it has available. But Finland was the first country he knew of that actually planned to use the vaccine, at least in recent years outside research studies.
So it's basically untested. Meanwhile there was an outbreak on a 'fully vaccinated' duck farm in France.
The vaccine to be administered in Finland is designed off a different avian influenza virus called H5N8, but researchers say the shot should still confer protection against H5N1. It's the hemagglutinin component of the vaccine — the H part — that's the main target. The vaccine also includes an adjuvant, a component that deepens the generated immune response.
European regulators authorized the vaccine, which is known as Zoonotic influenza vaccine Seqirus, based on a number of studies showing that it elicited immune responses that scientists think would be protective against avian influenza. Researchers can't run traditional efficacy trials with such products because the virus isn't circulating among people, so they're typically approved based on these immunogenicity studies. The immunization is approved as a two-dose vaccine, with doses given at least three weeks apart.
So it's likely that the studies are seriously flawed at best, or, like the Covid jab studies, utterly corrupt.
Isabella Eckerle, a virologist at the Geneva Centre for Emerging Viral Diseases, said that vaccinating people at high risk of exposure to the virus could protect them, but she said the world should not rely on human vaccination to prevent the H5N1 situation from worsening. Instead, health officials should work to limit transmission broadly, including among animals. Such efforts could include improving the use of personal protective equipment, or PPE, on farms, she said.
(In the U.S., health officials have made PPE available to dairy farms, but few have taken them up on the offer. Milking parlors can be hot and humid, meaning it's not particularly pleasant to wear goggles, gowns, and masks.)
"The most important thing would be not to have this virus circulating," particularly in mammals, Eckerle said.
She added that other flu vaccines can't always halt transmission, even if they reduce the risk of serious illness. It's possible then these vaccines will perform similarly.
"They might prevent symptoms or disease, but we don't know if they prevent infection," she said.
Does that mean people could be infected and contagious but because they're asymptomatic they won't be aware?
Scientists have worried H5N1 could pose a pandemic threat since its discovery nearly 30 years ago. But in just the past few years, the virus has expanded its global footprint and its list of victims, spreading to just about every corner of the world and sickening and killing scores of wild and domesticated birds. It's also found its way to an increasing number of mammals. The dairy cow outbreak — which thus far has only been seen in the U.S. — is the latest twist in its history.
The majority of animals that have died, were culled. Some experts have noted that this is actually preventing birds from developing immunity to the virus.
Finland, in particular, has been dealing with H5N1 outbreaks not just among birds, but on its fur farms, with at least 71 farms having cases last year. While most of the farms housed foxes, it's the spread of the virus in mink in particular that heightens concerns. The receptors the virus uses to infiltrate their cells are thought to be similar to ours, possibly providing the virus with a training ground to become better at infecting our cells. Moreover, mink can be infected by avian and human flu viruses simultaneously, which could allow the viruses to swap genes and for the resulting pathogen to become more adept at spreading among people.
Last month, Finnish authorities announced expanded surveillance measures for the virus on the country's fur farms; those measures will be in place through the end of September, a stretch when officials said the risk of transmission to the farm animals from wild birds was at its highest. But officials noted that Europe has documented fewer infections in wild bird populations this year than have been seen in the recent past.
Poland's prime minister says no "external forces" were involved in the explosion at the Mesko arms factory
So far there are no grounds to assume that behind the explosion at the Mesko factory in the town of Skarzysko-Kamienna "was some external force."
This was stated by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. According to him, he received information about the incident from Polish Interior Minister and the city administration. The relevant services are on the spot and "will check every detail," Tusk said.
Comment: China-based commentators provide some more detail:
As noted, attacks like this are relatively rare, particularly against tourists and foreigners, however there have been a number of seemingly random, violent, attacks in recent years in China, and in Japan: (May 2024) Man kills 2, injures 21, in hospital knife attack in China's Yunnan province
Meanwhile, over in the West, there appear to be more frequent, irregular spikes in similar kinds of attacks: