AFP

A second US death was linked to monkeypox on Tuesday as health authorities published a study describing how two previously healthy young men experienced inflammation of the brain and spinal cord as a result of the virus.

There have been nearly 22,000 US cases in the current global outbreak, which began in May, but new infections have been falling since mid-August as authorities have distributed hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses.

The latest fatal case involved a severely immunocompromised resident of Los Angeles County who had been hospitalized, the local health department said, without revealing further details about the case.

“Persons severely immunocompromised who suspect they have monkeypox are encouraged to seek medical care and treatment early and remain under the care of a provider during their illness,” the department said.

The first US death linked to the viral illness occurred in Texas and was announced on August 30, although authorities said that as the person was severely immunocompromised, they were investigating what role monkeypox had played.

The current global outbreak is primarily affecting men who have sex with men.

Historically, the virus has been spread via direct contact with lesions, body fluids and respiratory droplets, and sometimes through indirect contamination via surfaces such as shared bedding. 

But in this outbreak, there is preliminary evidence that sexual transmission may also play a role.

– Brain and spinal cord inflammation –

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meanwhile published a report about two unvaccinated men in their 30s who experienced brain and spinal cord inflammation after testing positive for the virus.

The first, patient A, was a gay man in his 30s from Colorado whose symptoms began with fever chills and malaise but progressed to rashes on his face, scrotum and extremities, with swabs of lesions testing positive for the virus.

He also developed lower extremity weakness and numbness, was unable to empty his bladder, experienced a persistent and painful erection, and was hospitalized.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed brain and spinal cord inflammation, and he was treated with the oral monkeypox antiviral tecovirimat as well as other drugs, and began to improve at two weeks.

He was released but continued to have left leg weakness and required an assistive walking device at one month followup.

A second person, patient B, was also a gay man in his 30s from the capital Washington. His fever, rashes and muscle pain progressed to bowel and bladder incontinence and progressive flaccid weakness of both legs.

Brain and spinal cord inflammation was confirmed on MRI and he was intubated in an intensive care unit, where he was treated with intravenous tecovirimat, as well a drug to reduce inflammation, and finally blood plasma exchange.

He remains in hospital but can walk with the assistance of a device.

The report said the underlying mechanism behind the two cases was unclear — it might have been direct invasion of the central nervous system, or an autoimmune response triggered by monkeypox infection elsewhere in the body. 

The remains of a US sailor killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor over 80 years ago were buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery, a spokeswoman told AFP.

Herbert Jacobson, nicknamed Bert by his relatives, was 21 years old when he was reported missing after the surprise attack by Japanese warplanes on the morning of December 7, 1941.

The assault, which catapulted the United States into World War II, damaged or destroyed most of the US fleet stationed at the Hawaii naval base, and resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 Americans.

It was the deadliest attack on US soil until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Jacobson was among the more than 400 men who lost their lives aboard the USS Oklahoma, one of four battleships sunk by Japanese torpedoes.

The ship was refloated two years later, after which any recovered remains were buried at a military cemetery in Hawaii.

An attempt to identify the remains through dental records was made some years later, though it was largely unsuccessful.

A new campaign was launched in 2003, with a subsequent one in 2015, to use more advanced identification methods, such as DNA matching.

Since 2003, according to the US defense agency managing the program, 361 individuals have been successfully identified among the USS Oklahoma remains, including those of Bert Jacobson in 2019.

His funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, located across the river from Washington, had been previously postponed due to the Covid pandemic.

Russia said Tuesday it was carrying out “massive strikes” across the Ukrainian frontline and accused Kyiv’s soldiers of abusing civilians in territories recaptured in a dramatic counter-offensive.

Moscow’s retaliation came after it was forced to pull back troops from swathes of the northeast, particularly in the Kharkiv region, following Kyiv’s lightning assault to wrest back terrain.

The territorial shifts marked one of Russia’s biggest setbacks since its troops were repelled from Kyiv in the earliest days of the nearly seven-month-long war, yet Moscow signalled it was no closer to agreeing to a negotiated peace.

“Air, rocket and artillery forces are carrying out massive strikes on units of the Ukrainian armed forces in all operational directions,” the Russian defence ministry said in its daily briefing on the conflict.

“High-precision” strikes have also been launched on Ukrainian positions around Sloviansk and Konstantinovka in the eastern Donetsk region, it added.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said that in the Kharkiv region, reports were emerging of “outrageous” treatment of civilians.

“There are a lot of punitive measures… people are being tortured, people are being mistreated and so on,” Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Russia’s allegations came after Ukrainian authorities claimed to have found four bodies of civilians with “signs of torture” in the recaptured eastern village of Zaliznychne.

Moscow also pushed back on Tuesday against what it called growing “bias” at United Nations’ human rights bodies, a day after a top UN official condemned Moscow’s “intimidation” of people in Russia opposed to its war in Ukraine.

– ‘Shift in momentum’ –

Ukrainian forces launched their counter-offensive in early September, seemingly catching Russia’s military off guard. 

Images posted by the Ukrainian military showed crates of munitions and military hardware scattered across territory abandoned by Russian forces.

Around the northeastern town of Balakliya, AFP journalists saw evidence of fierce battles, with buildings destroyed or damaged and streets mostly deserted.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Ukraine had completed “stabilization measures” in more than 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 square miles) of recaptured territory, and was working to do the same in a similarly sized area.

“The remnants of occupiers and sabotage groups are being discovered, collaborators are being detained, the entire security is being restored,” he said in his evening address.

In the northeast, dozens of areas including the cities of Izyum, Kupiansk and Balakliya have been retaken, Ukraine said.

Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region have since September 6 reclaimed more than 300 settlements and areas home to around 150,000 people, said deputy foreign affairs minister Ganna Maliar.  

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that Washington would soon provide another tranche in its multi-billion-dollar effort to supply arms to Ukraine.

Kirby said it is too early to say whether gains by Ukraine signal a turning point in the overall war.

“What you’re seeing is certainly a shift in momentum by the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said, but Zelensky should be the one to “determine and decide whether he feels militarily they’ve reached a turning point.”

Despite the “dramatic events… it’s war and war is unpredictable,” Kirby added.

– Germany holds back –

Ukraine Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told French daily Le Monde in a Monday interview that the war has entered a new phase with the help of Western weapons.

Kyiv has nonetheless ramped up its calls for Western allies to rush more sophisticated weapons to help in its fight. 

“Weapons, weapons, weapons have been on our agenda since spring. I am grateful to partners who have answered our call: Ukraine’s battlefield successes are our shared ones,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

But Germany was once again under the spotlight for failing to deliver Leopard battle tanks that Kyiv is seeking.

“Not a single rational argument on why these weapons cannot be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses,” said Kuleba, after Chancellor Olaf Scholz dodged a question on the issue on Monday, saying only that Germany would not “go-it-alone” on weapons deliveries.

In a phone call, the German leader urged Putin to “come to a diplomatic solution as quickly as possible, based on a ceasefire, a complete withdrawal of Russian forces and respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Ukraine”.

A prominent Republican senator introduced a bill on Tuesday that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy in all 50 US states.

The proposed legislation, which has no chance of passage in the Democratic-held Senate, came under immediate fire from the White House and Democratic lawmakers.

Abortion rights have been in the spotlight since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to the procedure in June, leaving the decision on whether to allow it to individual states.

The bill proposed by Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, would make abortion illegal after 15 weeks nationally except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

Graham, an ally of former president Donald Trump, said such a law would “get America at a federal level that is fairly consistent with the rest of the world.”

Graham’s bill would leave in place, however, the even more severe restrictions on abortion enacted in about a dozen conservative states since the Supreme Court decision.

But it would restrict abortion in a number of Democratic-led states in which the procedure is currently allowed after 15 weeks.

Abortion rights have become a hot-button issue ahead of November’s mid-term elections and Graham’s move is an apparent attempt to strike a middle ground and quell a potential backlash against the Republican Party over its hardline anti-abortion stance.

Graham had previously said abortion should be decided by the states, and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told CNN on Tuesday that most Republican members of the body believed it should still be regulated at the state level.

Democrats, who have been using the abortion issue to mobilize voters in November, immediately condemned Graham’s bill.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it would “strip away women’s rights in all 50 states” and was “wildly out of step with what Americans believe.”

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, said that “if Republicans get the chance, they will work to pass laws even more draconian than this bill — just like the bans they have enacted in states like Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.”

Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko told the US Congress Tuesday that the platform ignored his security concerns, with his testimony coming as company shareholders greenlit Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover deal.

The shareholder decision clears the way for the contract to close, even as billionaire Musk tries to exit it. Twitter has sued him to force it through, but analysts said testimony by Zatko, the social network’s former security chief, will put more pressure on the company as it heads to court next month.

“I’m here today because Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators and even its own board of directors,” Zatko, a hacker widely known as “Mudge”, told the hearing.

He said that, during his time as head of security for the platform from late 2020 until his dismissal in January this year, he tried alerting management to grave vulnerabilities to hacking or data theft — but to no avail.

“They don’t know what data they have, where it lives, or where it came from. And so, unsurprisingly, they can’t protect it,” Zatko said during his opening remarks to the Judiciary Committee.

“Employees then have to have too much access (…) it doesn’t matter who has the keys if you don’t have any locks on the doors.”

Zatko testified that he brought concrete evidence of problems to the executive team and “repeatedly sounded the alarm”.

“To put it bluntly, Twitter leadership ignored its engineers because key parts of leadership lacked competency to understand the scope of the problem,” he said.

“But more importantly, their executive incentives led them to prioritize profits over security.”

Twitter has dismissed 51-year-old Zatko’s complaint as being without merit.

But revelations of his whistleblower report in the US press in August were perfectly timed for Tesla chief Musk, who has used it as part of his justification for abandoning his unsolicited $44 buyout bid.

– ‘Elephant in the room’ –

In his report, Zatko directly refers to questions asked by Musk about bot accounts on Twitter, saying the company’s tools and teams for finding such accounts are insufficient.

Musk has listed bot accounts as among the reasons to justify his walking away from the deal. Twitter is suing to force him to complete the buyout, with a trial set to go ahead on October 17.

Zatko’s testimony “puts more pressure on Twitter camp ahead of Musk/Twitter trial,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told AFP.

“The Twitter shareholders approving this deal was a no brainer but now the major challenge begins with the Musk trial,” he said.

“The elephant in the room is the Zatko situation which could be an albatross for the Twitter camp and throw this deal off track.”

If Twitter prevails at trial, the judge could order the Tesla chief to pay billions of dollars to the company, or even complete the purchase.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal declined to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, citing the Musk litigation, Senator Chuck Grassley said.

Zatko insisted he had not made his revelations “out of spite or to harm Twitter.”

“Far from that, I continue to believe in the mission of the company,” he told Tuesday’s hearing.

Musk, himself an avid Twitter user, did not comment immediately on the hearing — but tweeted a popcorn emoji as Zatko spoke, suggesting he was watching the proceedings closely.

Russia said Tuesday it was carrying out “massive strikes” across the Ukrainian frontline and accused Ukrainian soldiers of abusing civilians in territories recaptured in a dramatic counter-offensive.

Moscow’s retaliation came after it was forced to pull back its troops from swathes of the northeast, particularly in the Kharkiv region, following Kyiv’s lightning assault to wrest back terrain.

The territorial shifts marked one of Russia’s biggest setbacks since its troops were repelled from Kyiv in the earliest days of the nearly seven-month-long war, yet Moscow signalled it was no closer to agreeing to a negotiated peace.

“Air, rocket and artillery forces are carrying out massive strikes on units of the Ukrainian armed forces in all operational directions,” the Russian defence ministry said in its daily briefing on the conflict.

“High-precision” strikes have also been launched on Ukrainian positions around Sloviansk and Konstantinovka in the eastern Donetsk region, it added.

The Kremlin accused Kyiv’s army of abusing civilians in territory it had recaptured.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said that in the Kharkiv region, reports were emerging of “outrageous” treatment of civilians.

“There are a lot of punitive measures… people are being tortured, people are being mistreated and so on,” Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Russia’s allegations came after Ukrainian authorities claimed to have found four bodies of civilians with “signs of torture” in the recaptured eastern village of Zaliznychne.

Moscow also pushed back on Tuesday against what it called growing “bias” at United Nations’ human rights bodies, a day after a top UN official condemned Moscow’s “intimidation” of people in Russia opposed to its war in Ukraine.

– ‘Too early to tell’ –

Residents reported that Russian troops had killed villagers, the regional prosecutor’s office said, announcing a war crime probe.

Ukrainian forces launched their counter-offensive in early September, seemingly catching Russia’s military off guard. 

Images posted by the Ukrainian military showed crates of munitions and military hardware scattered across territory abandoned by Russian forces.

Around the northeastern town of Balakliya, AFP journalists saw evidence of fierce battles, with buildings destroyed or damaged and streets mostly deserted.

By Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine’s forces have retaken a total of 6,000 square kilometres (2,320 square miles) from Russian control.

In the northeast, dozens of areas including the cities of Izyum, Kupiansk and Balakliya have been retaken, Ukraine said.

Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region have since September 6 reclaimed more than 300 settlements and areas home to around 150,000 people, said deputy foreign affairs minister Ganna Maliar.  

Ukraine has also claimed significant gains in the southern Kherson region, where the Ukrainian army also said it had recaptured 500 square kilometres.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assessed that the Ukrainians had made “significant progress”, due to their resilience as well as US support.

“It’s too early to tell exactly where this is going. The Russians maintain very significant forces in Ukraine as well as equipment and arms and munitions. 

“They continue to use it indiscriminately against not just the Ukrainian armed forces but civilians and civilian infrastructure as we’ve seen,” Blinken said on Monday.

– ‘Turned the tide’ –

A US think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, tweeted: “Ukraine has turned the tide in its favour, but the current counter-offensive will not end the war.” 

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told French daily Le Monde in a Monday interview that the war has entered a new phase with the help of Western weapons.

Kyiv nonetheless ramped up its calls for Western allies to rush more sophisticated weapons to help in its fight. 

“Weapons, weapons, weapons have been on our agenda since spring. I am grateful to partners who have answered our call: Ukraine’s battlefield successes are our shared ones,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

But Germany was once again under the spotlight for failing to deliver Leopard battle tanks that Kyiv is seeking.

“Not a single rational argument on why these weapons cannot be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses,” said Kuleba, after Chancellor Olaf Scholz dodged a question on the issue on Monday, saying only that Germany would not “go-it-alone” on weapons deliveries.

In a phone call, the German leader urged Putin to “come to a diplomatic solution as quickly as possible, based on a ceasefire, a complete withdrawal of Russian forces and respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Ukraine”.

Away from the battlefield, Ukraine’s allies were grappling with an energy crisis after Russia curtailed deliveries to the bloc. 

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin appealed for EU unity in the face of Russian “blackmail” over energy supplies, and for more sanctions on Moscow.

Seeking emergency measures to bring down soaring energy prices, the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, called an extraordinary meeting on September 30.