Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is poised to receive a new kidney - from his son. Johnson, who disclosed in January after suffering a public dizzy spell that he's on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, said today that 25-year-old Daniel Johnson will be the donor of the kidney. The superintendent expressed pride in his son. "It's not something that I asked him to do, he chose to do this for me," said Johnson, who has battled a potentially life-threatening inflammation of the kidneys called glomerulonephritis for decades. "He's a lot like me. He just looks at it like, I'm getting a tuneup. Let's get this done and move on."
Young men who abuse methamphetamine are twice as likely to suffer a stroke compared to female users, an Australian study has found. A research review by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales investigated the connection between meth use and stroke. The analysis, published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, found a haemorrhagic stroke - caused by a bleed into the brain - rather than a clot (ischaemic) is the most common type of stroke associated with taking the drug. Of the 370 published studies screened, 77 were selected for inclusion. There were 81 haemorrhagic and 17 ischaemic strokes reported. This is "strikingly" high compared with the rates of haemorrhagic stroke in the general population among the under 45s, the authors wrote. Both types of stroke were about twice as common in males, the research found.
A New South Wales pilot who made an emergency landing at Sydney's Bankstown Airport has been praised for keeping his cool after his plane's landing gear failed to deploy. The twin-piston Piper Navajo freight-carrying plane was forced to make a belly landing last night due to a mechanical failure, with the young pilot walking away from the incident unharmed. The pilot spent nearly an hour circling the city until he eventually landed at 7.38pm local time. He handled the situation very well, according to Wagga Air Centre managing director Chris Cabot. "I spoke to him on the phone and we went over the procedures a few times and he kept his cool."
The mayor of Florence has apologised for yelling "Allahu akbar" (God is great) at his Venetian counterpart after a debate on terrorism. The two mayors were at a conference in Rimini, on Italy's Adriatic coast, when the bizarre encounter happened. They had just left a debate in which Luigi Brugnaro, the Mayor of Venice, said that if any terrorist was thinking of attacking his city, he would be shot by security forces within seconds. "If someone shouts 'Allahu akbar' while running through St Mark's Square, we'll shoot them," Brugnaro said. "A year ago, I said [they'd be shot] after four steps. Now I'm saying it would happen after three." After the debate, Dario Nardella, the Mayor of Florence, burst into a room yelling "Allahu akbar". The incident was caught on camera. Media commentators said if it was a joke, it was in poor taste. In response, Nardella wrote an apology on Facebook. "It was not my intention to offend anybody, least of all the Muslim community."
