LONDON – A blaze that broke out at London’s historic Somerset House on Saturday required around 125 firefighters to bring it under control, according to the London Fire Brigade.

Smoke was seen rising over central London from the building’s roof as firefighters worked from a crane to douse the flames. The building was once home to the Royal Navy but is now used as a cultural center. A gallery inside the complex houses Vincent Van Gogh’s self-portrait of himself with a bandaged ear.

Somerset House Trust director Jonathan Reekie told Britain’s PA Media that the fire broke out in the west wing of the building, where offices and back-of-house facilities are located. There are “no artworks in that area,” PA Media reported Reekie as saying. Around 125 firefighters and 20 fire engines were deployed to Somerset House, according to the London Fire Brigade.

The crews fought flames located in part of the building’s roof, the fire brigade said in a statement, with two of the brigade’s 32-meter (nearly 105 foot) ladders being used. It said the brigade had been called shortly before midday and had brought the fire under control by shortly before 7 p.m. local time. The cause of the fire is not yet known, the statement said, and Somerset House has been closed to the public. (CNN)…[+]

TEL AVIV –  An Israeli strike has killed at least ten people in Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said, prompting Hezbollah to launch a barrage of retaliatory rockets at Israel.

All of those killed in Lebanon were Syrian nationals. A woman and her two children are among the dead, according to the ministry. The strike also wounded at least five, two of which are in critical conditions. They include three Syrians, one Sudanese and one Lebanese, the ministry said. Two of the Syrians are in critical condition and undergoing surgery at a nearby hospital.

The Israeli military said it struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Nabatieh overnight. The death toll from the strike is one of the largest in southern Lebanon since Israel launched its war on Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7 that killed around 1,200 people. Mohamed, 14, was about to go sleep when he saw a missile hit a warehouse nearby. He told CNN rescuers worked through the night to retrieve the dead bodies from under the rubble, where they found a decapitated body and a severed arm.

Pointing to the sky buzzing with the sound of an unseen drone, Mohamed said: “They are always flying over here 24/7, sometimes they fly so low you can see them.” Referring to the victims, who are believed to all be Syrian migrants, Haitham, a Syrian national guard at a nearby company, said: “They escaped one war and got killed in another.”  Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon launched a volley of rockets towards Ayelet Hashahar in northern Israel in response to the strike, the group said in a statement. (CNN)…[+]

GAZA – Doctors in war-torn Gaza have detected a case of polio for the first time in 25 years, health officials said, as international aid bodies call for a pause in the conflict to make way for a vaccination drive.
Traces of poliovirus were found in a 10-month-old child in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, the health ministry said in a statement late Friday, adding that the baby had not received any polio jabs. Previously, UNICEF said poliovirus was detected in environmental samples from Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah in July, with stool samples of three children being sent to a lab in Jordan for testing.
Polio is a highly contagious disease that mainly affects children under the age of 5. It targets the nervous system and can cause paralysis and death in extreme cases. The resurgence of the virus – eliminated in most of the developed world – highlights the struggles facing Gaza’s two million residents, who have lived under Israeli bombardment since October last year. Many people in the enclave are deprived of food, medical supplies and clean water, with up to 90% of the population internally displaced.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attack, according to officials. The Hamas attack killed more than 1,200 Israelis, with 250 taken hostage, according to the Israeli government.
The health ministry said it will work with UNICEF to vaccinate children under 10 years old in Gaza, adding that more than a million doses are available. Two rounds of vaccination are expected to be launched this month and next across Gaza, UNICEF said in a news release Friday, adding that it will target more than 640,000 children.
But a pause in hostilities is needed to make way for an effective polio vaccination campaign, it said, alongside the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and the World Health Organization, all calling for a halt to the fighting. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called the proposal “a must,” noting the “ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”
International mediators are making an urgent push for Israel and Hamas to reach a broader ceasefire and hostage deal next week, after high-stakes negotiations in Qatar saw them put a fresh proposal to the warring parties. Gaza has been polio-free for the last 25 years, UNICEF said. (CNN)…[+]

GENEVA — The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday urged manufacturers to ramp up production of mpox vaccines to rein in the spread of a more dangerous strain of the virus.
The WHO on Wednesday declared the mpox surge a public health emergency of international concern — its highest alert level — with Clade 1b cases soaring in the Democratic Republic of Congo and spreading beyond its borders.
“We do need the manufacturers to really scale up so that we’ve got access to many, many more vaccines,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters. The WHO is asking countries with mpox vaccine stockpiles to donate them to countries with ongoing outbreaks. Two mpox vaccines have been used in recent years – MVA-BN, produced by Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic, and Japan’s LC16.
Harris said there were 500,000 MVA-BN doses in stock, while an additional 2.4 million doses could be produced quickly, if there was a commitment from buyers. For 2025, an additional 10 million doses could be produced, upon a firm procurement request. “LC16 is a vaccine that is not commercialised but produced on behalf of the government of Japan. There is a considerable stockpile of this vaccine,” Harris added, saying the WHO was working with Tokyo to facilitate donations.
The Doctors Without Borders charity said countries with vaccine stockpiles but no outbreaks “must donate as many doses as possible” to affected countries in Africa. It urged Bavarian Nordic to lower its prices, saying MVA-BN was out of reach for most countries where mpox is a threat. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the world’s largest humanitarian network, said it faced significant challenges tackling mpox.
Bronwyn Nichol, IFRC senior public health emergencies officer, said most vaccine stocks were in wealthy nations, and those sent to Africa so far were “a drop in the bucket”. “There is a critical shortage of testing, treatment, and vaccines across the continent. These shortages are severely hampering the ability to contain the outbreak,” she said. The WHO, headed by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is due to issue temporary recommendations to countries on handling the mpox surge.
There are two subtypes of the virus: the more virulent and deadlier Clade 1, endemic in the Congo Basin in central Africa; and Clade 2, endemic in West Africa. The upsurge in the DRC is being driven by outbreaks of two different Clade 1 strains, Tedros told a meeting Thursday of the UN health agency’s Standing Committee on Health Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response. The first is an outbreak in northwest DRC of what was previously known as Clade 1, now called Clade 1a. This outbreak is primarily affecting children and is spread through multiple modes of transmission, he said.
The second in northeastern DRC is a new offshoot of Clade 1 called Clade 1b, which was first detected in September last year and is spreading rapidly, mainly through sexual transmission among adults. The spread of Clade 1b, and its detection in neighbouring countries, were the main reasons behind the WHO sounding its highest alarm. “It’s a complex picture, and responding to each of these outbreaks, and bringing them under control, will require a complex, comprehensive and coordinated international response,” said Tedros. (Jamaicaobserver)…[+]