Random News and Notes 22 August

On this date:

• 1350 – John II, also known as John the Good, succeeds Philip VI as king of France.
• 1485 – Henry Tudor defeats Richard III at Bosworth. This victory establishes the Tudor dynasty in England and ends the War of the Roses.
• 1717 – The Austrian army forces the Turkish army out of Belgrade, ending the Turkish revival in the Balkans.
• 1777 – With the approach of General Benedict Arnold‘s army, British Colonel Barry St. Ledger abandons Fort Stanwix and returns to Canada.
• 1849 – The Portuguese governor of Macao, China, is assassinated because of his anti-Chinese policies.
• 1849 – Using a fleet of some 200 pilotless balloons, Austria launches what is considered history’s first remote aerial attack on August 22, 1849. The blitz over Venice is part of a counteroffensive against the city, which had overthrown Austrian rule a year before and briefly gained independence as the Republic of San Marco. 
• 1851 – In the first race of the America’s Cup, the U.S.-built schooner America bests a fleet of Britain’s finest ships in a race around England’s Isle of Wight.
• 1864 – The Geneva Convention of 1864 for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field is adopted by 12 nations meeting in Geneva.
• 1911 – The Mona Lisa, the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, is stolen from the Louvre in Paris, where it had hung for more than 100 years. It is recovered in 1913.
• 1922 – Irish revolutionary, military leader and Sinn Fein politician Michael Collins is killed in an ambush in west County Cork, Ireland.

• 1942 – Brazil declares war on the Axis powers. She is the only South American country to send combat troops into Europe.
• 1945 – Conflict in Vietnam begins when a group of Free French parachute into southern Indochina, in response to a successful coup by communist guerilla Ho Chi Minh.
• 1962 – OAS (Secret Army Organization) gunmen unsuccessfully attempt to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle.
• 1962 – The world’s first nuclear-powered passenger-cargo ship, NS Savannah, completes its maiden voyage from Yorktown, Va., to Savannah, Ga.
• 1968 – First papal visit to Latin America; Pope Paul VI arrives in Bogota.
• 1971 – Bolivian military coup: Col. Hugo Banzer Suarez ousts leftist president, Gen. Juan Jose Torres and assumes power.
• 1971 – FBI arrests members of The Camden 28, an anti-war group, as the group is raiding a draft office in Camden, NJ.
• 1975 – US President Gerald Ford survives second assassination attempt in 17 days, this one by Sarah Jane Moore in San Francisco, Cal.
• 1989 – Nolan Ryan becomes the first pitcher in major league history to register 5,000 career strikeouts. Ryan would go on to rack up a total of 5,714 strikeouts, over 1,500 more than his closest competition.
• 1995 – During 11-day siege at at Ruby Ridge, Id., FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi kills Vicki Weaver while shooting at another target.

We start the news in Ottawa where Canadian PM, Mark Carney, decided committing economic seppuku was a good idea. The PM unilaterally suspended talks on a trade agreement with the US. In a statement he called the terms unfair and promised a dollar-for-dollar response and support for affected workers and businesses affected by new 50% US tariffs.

With all due respect to our neighbors to the north, their economy is wholly dependent on US trade. Nearly 80% of all Canadian exports go to the US and ~60% of their imports come from America. Meanwhile, around 12% of US exports head north and total trade with Canada is less than 10% of the US economy. As the saying goes; When America sneezes, Canada catches a cold.

In a medication mixup at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown, four joint replacement patients received potassium phosphate instead of the anesthetic mepivacaine during spinal injections, leading to cardiac arrests, severe reactions, and paralysis. Hospital CEO Dr. Shubhada Jagasia apologized deeply to the patients and families, confirming the pharmacy mistake affected only those four after a full review.

Tennessee authorities are investigating the self-reported incident, while the hospital has implemented new safety steps like separate storage for high-alert drugs and dual verifications.

Whilst researching this story – for some reason I thought potassium phosphate was one of the cocktail ingredients for lethal injection, it is not – it seems this particular mixup is not new. A quick scan of the Google results show at least a dozen potassium phosphate switched for bupivacaine/mepivacaine in the last 15 or so years. Regardless, that hospital, the pharmacist, pharm tech, anesthetist and surgeon and anyone else who had contact with those patients are in for a rough time.

We talked about the wildfires in Europe a bit earlier this summer. Well, it seems the mostly man made blazes have caused some UXO (unexploded ordnance) to detonate. In case you weren’t aware, bombs, mines and artillery shells dating back as far as the Franco-Prussian war litter the European landscape. Nearly every year someone is killed by one and they turn up in construction sites pretty regularly. To the point that unless it is a really large or significant location, I don’t even pay attention anymore. In Belgium alone, disposal teams handle over 3,000 calls yearly, clearing 200 to 250 tons of munitions.

The sheer numbers of UXO being found this summer is staggering though.

Blasts from old ordnance have hit France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, with wildfires burning away vegetation that once concealed the explosives.

That thing that never happens? Yeah it’s happening in Pennsylvania. I dunno why it took this long to surface, but DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin sent a letter to the PA Secretary of State Al Schmidt, identifying 8,594 potential non-citizen voter registrations through matches of names, birth dates, addresses, and Social Security numbers with federal immigration files. Similar letters went to California, New Jersey, and Nevada with even higher estimates, offering data sharing to verify and remove ineligible voters.

Pennsylvania officials responded by requesting the data methodology, citing past inaccuracies in federal databases because of course the Trump administration cannot be right. There need to be prosecutions and convictions over this.