Author: damazah@gmail.com

* Patients go home same day Eleos Specialist Hospital, Abuja, has commenced Thulium Fiber Laser Enucleation of The Prostate (ThuFLEP). The procedure involves using a special LASER technology which was recently introduced to completely remove the enlarged prostate without any surgical cuts to the body. With this new LASER, the enlarged prostate is completely removed no matter the size. It offers the advantage of no surgical cuts, little or no blood loss, with the patient going home either same day of the procedure or just a day after the procedure.  Other advantage of the procedure includes the fact that the…

Strategies for lowering carbon emissions from hydrocarbons and waste must overcome the challenges related to catalyst durability and the presorting of waste. Reforming low-value carbon sources with carbon dioxide (CO2) offers an industrial-scale pathway …

Belgium topped Group G with a 5-1 win over New Zealand at the World Cup on Friday, overtaking Egypt for a spot as they played to a 1-1 draw with Iran in a simultaneous kickoff.Leandro Trossard scored a brace for Belgium while star Kevin de Bruyne added a third by the 66th minute, the European side set for a commanding win – and their first of the tournament after consecutive draws against Egypt and Iran. Elijah Just pulled one back for New Zealand in the 84th minute but subsequent goals from Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Saelemaekers ensured Rudi Garcia’s side…

The spirit of Václav Havel and Jiří Bartoška lives on at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), and attendees of the 60th edition of the Czech fest will feel a sense of continuity and legacy, a reminder of the long history of the festival, along with innovations and updates that the team always looks to add regularly when it makes sense. In fact, Kryštof Mucha, who joined the festival team in 1997, became its executive director in 2004 and has added the role of chairman of the board of the KVIFF Group, says for him and his colleagues, it is all…

On the day he was notified that he was a finalist for the 2019 Thomson Reuters Young Journalist Award, Amos Abba anticipated a flourishing long-term career. Down the line, his investigations into water contamination by a multinational company, illegal activities of loan sharks, and the erroneous Nigerian military airstrikes that killed civilians held power to account and established him as an award-winning journalist at the peak of his profession. But today, he no longer works as a full-time journalist in Nigeria. “I was just exhausted,” Mr Abba said. “If I had depended on my take-home for the month, it was…

Nigel Farage’s campaign against the World Health Organization (WHO) is moving to the US with a new board of lobbyists, raising questions over why the Reform UK leader is involved in an American pressure group.The Action on World Health campaign, co-founded by Farage, is relocating to the US state of Delaware as a charitable foundation and grassroots non-profit.As part of its relaunch, it has hired Farage’s longtime friend and Brexit campaigner Andy Wigmore for its board, alongside Gerry Gunster, an American lobbyist and political strategist who worked on Farage’s leave campaign for the 2016 EU referendum.Andy Wigmore. Photograph: Future Publishing/Getty…

Key eventsOpening summaryThe UK is set to get some respite from this week’s record-breaking heat over the weekend, but much of the rest of Europe remains in the grip of an intense heatwave as it shifts eastwards.Germany provisionally recorded its highest ever temperature yesterday with 41.3C near the city of Saarbrücken close to the French border. Forecasters say the hottest conditions are now spreading into central and eastern Europe, including Poland and the Balkans, over the weekend.The Ironman European Championship taking place tomorrow in Frankfurt has been forced to adapt to the extreme conditions, with organisers shortening both the cycling…

Sneaky worms Taenia solium can infect people in two ways: by eating cysts in undercooked meat or ingesting eggs through fecal contamination. The parasite infects pigs, and when they ingest eggs from feces, the worms hatch in the pigs’ guts, bore through the intestines, get into the bloodstream, and migrate into a variety of tissues and muscles. There, they form into encapsulated larvae called cysticerci. If a person eats undercooked meat containing cysticerci, the larvae will develop into adult tapeworms in the person’s intestinal tract and live there, possibly for years. Meanwhile, those infected people will be shedding eggs in…

Two weeks before Josh Simons stood down as the Makerfield MP for his benefit, Andy Burnham was at Salts Mill in Shipley celebrating the life and work of the poet Tony Harrison. It was a small gathering, with actors, directors, writers and family members paying homage. Burnham wasn’t the only politician to speak; Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, is another fan (in 2020 he put down an early day motion in parliament that recognised how Harrison had “always written, and spoken, for the people”). But Burnham’s was the most incisive illustration of how literature in general and poetry in…

Tracy Hutchinson has a rare mutation of the TP53 geneTracy Hutchinson I started to wonder if something funky was going on when multiple people in my family got cancer around the same time. In 1990, my older sister Rebecca was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, when she was 21 and I was 14. While she was undergoing rigorous chemo, my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer. Rebecca passed away in 1994 and then, a couple of years after that, my dad got bowel cancer. While he was undergoing treatment, my mum got cancer in her other breast. She survived that,…