An American father has been put on a ventilator after being struck down by a ‘mystery respiratory infection’ while in the Philippines for his mother’s funeral. 

Armando Ramos, 53, from California, has tested negative for Covid and the flu — leaving doctors struggling to work out the cause of his illness.

The father-of-three — who has no underlying conditions — has also been intubated and suffered a collapsed lung, brain inflammation and kidney problems.

He is being treated at a hospital in Manila after his sore throat progressed into chest pains and breathing problems within five days. He had flown to the country in early August.

His daughters Emma and A.J. Gaines-Ramos told local news the illness felt like a ‘cruel deja vu’ with the Covid pandemic.

‘Right now, it’s a mystery,’ Emma told the publication. ‘Every day, we still don’t know what’s happening to him.

‘It’s traumatizing, in the sense, when the pandemic first occurred, nobody knew what was happening.

‘You’re kind of just treating the symptoms, but not getting to the source of it. 

‘That’s what it feels like is happening right now.’

A.J. added: ‘It’s a cruel deja vu with the pandemic. Every day, anticipating his state and not knowing, it’s scary.’

Mr Ramos had flown to the Philippines from Chula Vista, California, in early August for his late mother’s funeral.

He attended the ceremony where he placed a vase containing her ashes inside a mausoleum.

He began to suffer from a sore throat and persistent tiredness and five days later he went to hospital when his symptoms progressed to chest pains and breathing problems, where doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia and placed him on a ventilator.

His condition continued to deteriorate with his daughters saying that as well as lung, brain and kidney problems, he also had complications with his heart and liver.

He was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital as doctors battled the infection.

Recently, doctors also pumped bacteria-filled fluid from his lungs. 

Tests for viral infections were negative, but it was not clear whether swabs had also been carried out for bacterial infections — like streptococcus pneumoniae.

He is also being tested for meningitis, a condition where an infection causes inflammation of the fluid and membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. This can be caused by a bacterial or viral infection. 

The father has already been in hospital for a week battling the illness.

Over the last few days, there have been some signs of improvements with his kidney function improving and a rise in oxygen levels in his blood — although he remains in the ICU.

Doctors say he will likely be in the unit for at least another two weeks while they wait for his condition to improve. 

The daughters’ mother has flown out to be by his bedside.

They added that their father was otherwise healthy and would exercise regularly. 

The family revealed their case in a GoFundMe where they are appealing for $50,000 to help cover international hospital bills. Currently, they have raised $20,000.

The legacy of infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar has ignited a fiery dispute among his own flesh and blood, who are now squabbling – and threatening to kill – over a dazzling array of his prized possessions. 

The notorious cocaine kingpin, who was shot and killed in 1993 as he attempted to flee from law enforcement on a rooftop in Medellin, was the proud owner of a jaw-dropping collection of extravagant cars, slick motorbikes, snowmobiles, high-end designer threads and even aeroplanes.

Nicolás Escobar, 53, who proudly proclaims himself ‘Don Pablo’s favourite nephew,’ believes his uncle’s possessions are now rightfully his, and is dedicated to preserving the invaluable articles by staging an exhibition. 

But his very own father, Roberto Escobar, is a former accountant for the cartel. And in true narco fashion, has threatened to kill his own son if he attempts to claim the rights to Pablo’s memorabilia, according to Nicolás. 

‘He [Roberto] still thinks he can do what he wants, that he’s in the mafia, that he is a boss,’ Nicolás said, pointedly addressing his father as ‘that man’ rather than ‘dad’.

‘One day, my sister called me and told me not to try and enter [my father’s] house… If you enter, she told me, someone would kill me, because our father gave the order,’ he told The Telegraph.

For years the prized possessions of the world-famous cartel boss were on display in a museum managed by Roberto. 

A rosy-hued Harley Davidson, a small private jet, a horde of rare photographs and a handgun that allegedly once graced the palm of none other than legendary American gangster Al Capone are just some of the items that were shown to the public. 

Nicolás waxed poetic about the collection, calling it a treasure trove of ‘old and luxurious’ marvels that deserve their place in the limelight.

The museum was very popular with tourists flocking for a glimpse into the high-flying life of the billionaire drug lord, but it was demolished earlier this year when local government officials allegedly discovered the building was constructed without proper permission. 

But others claim officials in Medellin wanted to tear down the museum in an attempt to dissociate the city from its enduring reputation for drug smuggling and violence against law enforcement. 

Nicolás now wants to re-house his uncle’s collection of memorabilia in a new facility, one which would preserve the history of the Escobar legacy without glamorising it. 

‘What Hollywood shows is not real… it wasn’t glamorous,’ Nicolás said. 

But it’s no wonder the late Escobar amassed such a collection of rare and valuable items. 

During his time at the helm of the Medellin Cartel he controlled over 80 per cent of the cocaine shipped to the US, earning him the rank of one of Forbes Magazine’s ten wealthiest people in the world. 

Escobar entered the cocaine trade in the early 1970s, collaborating with other criminals to form the Medellin Cartel.

By the mid-1980s, Pablo Escobar had an estimated net worth of $30 billion and cash was so prevalent that Escobar purchased a Learjet for the sole purpose of flying his money.  

More than 15 tons of cocaine were reportedly smuggled each day, netting the Cartel as much as $420 million a week.

For much of his time at the top of the narco heap, Escobar earned popularity by sponsoring charity projects and soccer clubs, sharing some of his riches with local communities and in doing so was painted as something of a Robin Hood figure.

But terror campaigns run by Escobar’s henchmen resulted in the murder of thousands, and slowly began turning the public against him – all while law enforcement agencies from the US were cooperating with Colombian police to tear down his empire. 

Colombian law enforcement finally caught up to Escobar on December 2, 1993 in a middle-class neighbourhood in Medellin. 

A firefight ensued and, as Escobar tried to escape across a series of rooftops, he and his bodyguard were shot and killed.

AFL champion and Fitzroy legend Matthew Rendell is fighting for life after suffering a heart attack

• Matt Rendell is in a critical condition in a Melbourne hospital
• Former AFL great suffered a heart attack over the weekend
• The 64-year-old played 164 games for Fitzroy over a decade at the club 

By Dan Cancian For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 09:38 EDT, 26 June 2023 | Updated: 09:47 EDT, 26 June 2023

Ukraine launched attacks on Russian forces in the key southern Zaporozhzhia region and on the eastern front today, a Russian official said, in what observers believe could be the start of Kyiv‘s long-expected offensive.

Ukraine has not offered any confirmation but expectations have built for months over when its forces, bolstered with Western weapons and training, would launch a counter-offensive in a bid to reclaim land occupied by Russian forces.

Pro-war Russian bloggers reported intense battles today on the Zaporizhzhia front near the city of Orikhiv, around the mid-point of the ‘land bridge’ linking Russia to the Crimea peninsula, seen as one of Ukraine’s main potential targets.

‘At the moment, active combat is ongoing in the region between Orekhovo and Tokmak,’ Vladimir Rogov, an official with Russian occupation authorities, wrote on the Telegram messaging service, referring to a locality known in Ukrainian as Orikhiv. 

Alexander Sladkov, a correspondent for Russian media, wrote on Telegram of ‘intense fighting’ in the area. 

‘The enemy is undertaking incredible efforts, attacks. In vain. Our forces are holding on. The front line is stable,’ he wrote. 

The information could not be independently verified and so it was impossible to assess the degree to with Ukraine’s operation was underway.

Ukraine’s army said only that ‘the adversary remains on the defensive’ in Zaporizhzhia, in a Facebook post. It said it destroyed four missiles and 10 drones, out of some 20 that Russia had fired at ‘military installations and critical infrastructure’.

The fighting comes as the humanitarian and environmental cost climbed after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam unleashed destructive flooding in a different part of Ukraine’s south.

Russia said on Thursday that its forces had fought a two-hour battle with Ukrainian troops in the early hours in the Zaporizhzhia region, which neighbours the flood-hit areas.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the Ukrainian offensive involved 1,500 soldiers and 150 armoured vehicles.

‘The enemy was stopped and retreated after heavy losses,’ he said.

Ukrainian officials have said their forces are ready for a long-expected counteroffensive but that there would be no formal announcement when it begins.

In its few comments, Ukraine has reported gains of territory in the east around the city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces captured last month after nearly a year of the deadliest ground combat in Europe since World War Two. 

But Kyiv has said virtually nothing about the southern front, widely assumed to be the focus of its main assault as it tries to push towards the coast and cut Russia’s access to Crimea. 

In his nightly video address, delivered on a train after a visit to the flood zone in the south, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked Ukrainian troops and repeated earlier claims of success in Bakhmut, but gave no further account.

‘We see every detail. But it’s not time to talk about it today,’ he said.

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar described heavy fighting in the east, where she said Ukrainian troops had mainly held off Russian attacks.

On the southern front she said only that battles were continuing for the settlement of Velyka Novosilka and that Russian troops were mounting ‘active defence’ at Orikhiv.

Ukraine has been attacking targets deep in Russian-held territory for weeks in preparation for its assault.

The initial days of the counter-offensive have been overshadowed this week by a humanitarian disaster after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam holding back the waters of the Dnipro River that bisects Ukraine.

Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate homes flooded in the war zone, vast nature preserves have been wiped out and the destruction to irrigation systems is likely to cripple agriculture across much of southern Ukraine for decades. 

Emergency services were racing to rescue people stranded by the flood-swollen waters of the Dnipro.

Ukrainian authorities said water levels in a reservoir which had been created by the Kakhovka dam had fallen ‘below the critical point of 12.7 metres (42 feet)’.

They said the reservoir was no longer able to supply households and the cooling ponds at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest.

However late Thursday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said he nuclear plant was continuing to receive water from the reservoir after the dam was damaged.

The plant’s six reactors have been shut down but they still need cooling water to ensure there is no nuclear disaster.

Ukraine meanwhile called on Europe to double power supplies to two gigawatts.

Ukraine accuses Russia, whose forces control the dam area, of blowing up the dam, while Russia accuses Ukraine hitting it with artillery. Ukrhydroenergo, the dam’s operator, said it was most likely mined from the inside.

Kyiv said on Friday it had intercepted a phone call proving that Russian forces in control of the dam had blown it up. Moscow says Ukraine sabotaged it. 

Western countries say they are still gathering evidence but that Ukraine would have no reason to inflict such a devastating disaster on itself, especially right as its forces were shifting onto the attack.

The emergency service has warned the flood water has dislodged land mines that pose a threat to civilians.

The government has also sounded the alarm over the environmental impact, calling it ‘a crime of ecocide’.

Rock n roll icon Tina Turner has died at age 83 after battling what she referred to as a combination of ‘medical catastrophes’ during her rich life.

Her publicist did not specify what Turner’s cause of death was, but said that she died after a battle with an unspecified ‘long illness’.

Turner, whose career spanned five decades, had confronted serious health conditions such as hypertension that led to a stroke and kidney failure, intestinal cancer, and post-traumatic stress disorder.  

Kidney disease 

Ms Turner had severe hypertension since 1978 that went untreated for years, leading to life-threatening kidney disease, one of the top leading causes of death in the US. 

She was prescribed treatment in 1985 but told herself the medications were making her sicker and stopped taking them. She transitioned to homeopathic remedies instead. 

Giddy at her check up to see how successful her more natural treatments were working, Ms Turner said: ‘Rarely in my life had I been so wrong. I had not known that uncontrolled hypertension would worsen my renal disease and that I would kill my kidneys by giving up on controlling my blood pressure.’

She added that her kidneys, which were functioning at less than 30 percent in 2016, were the ‘victims’ of her denial that she needed medicine to survive, adding that she put herself ‘at great danger by refusing to accept the reality that I required daily medication for the rest of my life.’

Kidney failure is the final stage of end-stage renal disease and, without a guaranteed transplant on the horizon, patients can expect to be put on hemodialysis.

The number of American adults who have chronic kidney disease (CKD) is now estimated to be 37 million and more than 562,000 are on dialysis, a process that requires the patient to sit stationary several times a week for hours at a time while a machine that filters the blood, removing waste products and excess fluid from the blood when the kidneys stop working properly. 

Her transplant in 2017 following a stint on dialysis was a success, but the battle was not yet won. 

Transplant recipients are required to take immunosuppressant medications to fend off an attack from their own immune system on the transplanted organ, resulting in an overall weakened ability to fight off infection.

She revealed that she still suffers from long-term ailments from the surgery, including ‘dizziness, forgetfulness, anxiety, and the occasional bout of insane diarrhea’. 

In her 2017 memoir Tina Turner: My Love Story, she wrote: ‘I know that my medical adventure is far from over. There’s always another test, another doctor’s appointment or biopsy to get through.’

She added: ‘We’re both still here, closer than we ever imagined and that’s cause for celebration.’

Stroke 

Ms Turner suffered a stroke in October 2013, three months after her second marriage to Erwin Bach.

She wrote in her memoir: ‘I woke up suddenly and in a panic. A lightning bolt struck my head and my right leg — at least that’s how it felt — and I had a funny sensation in my mouth that made it difficult for me to call out to Erwin for help. I suspected it wasn’t good, but it was worse than I ever imagined. I was having a stroke.’

The ordeal consigned her to a hospital bed for 10 days and she had to relearn to walk after that, kicking off a bumpy road to recovery.

She wrote: ‘Legs for days and muscles of steel from dancing, but I didn’t have the strength to get up. Terrified, I dragged myself over to a sofa, all the while thinking that I couldn’t imagine Tina Turner paralyzed.’ 

Age, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and diabetes are all known to increase the risk of stroke.

The problem occurs when the blood supply to the brain is cut off and parts of the brain become damaged or die. The damage can lead to long-term disability and affect how people think and feel.

Intestinal cancer 

Ms Turner was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016, three years after her stroke. 

Intestinal cancer, also known as small intestine cancer or small bowel cancer, is very rare, accounting for just one percent of cancer cases in the US.

The cancer affects the tubing that carries digested food between your stomach and your colon. The small intestine has several jobs: It is responsible for digesting and absorbing nutrients from food, produces hormones that help with digestion, and helps bolster the body’s germ-fighting immune system. 

A malignant tumor throws all of those functions into question. The exact cause is unclear but it typically begins when healthy cells in the small bowel develop changes, or mutations, in their DNA. 

A cell’s DNA contains a set of instructions that tell a cell what to do. When the DNA becomes cancerous, the cells continue to divide and replicate unnecessarily. The accumulation of these cells forms a tumor. 

Tumors in the small intestine can block the flow of food and impact digestion. As the tumor grows, it can cause pain in the abdomen. If the flow of food is totally blocked, it can cause excruciating pain, nausea and vomiting.

The cancer can sometimes require surgery, though it can also be treated in some cases with chemotherapy.  

Ms Turner underwent surgery to remove the cancerous part of her intestine, an operation that delayed her kidney transplant. 

Post-traumatic stress disorder 

Before their 1978 divorce, Ms Turner suffered abuse at the hands of her ex-husband Ike Turner for 14 years, when she alleged that she endured a broken nose, broken jaw, and multiple black eyes.

She said: ‘I tried to keep myself sane while managing his insanity.’ 

It got so bad that Ms Turner attempted suicide at one point. 

She wrote in her memoir that she told her doctor she was having trouble sleeping so that he would prescribe her pills — she then took all 50 at once, with the intent of ending her life. 

In a 2021 documentary titled ‘TINA’, the icon said: ‘It wasn’t a good life. The good did not balance the bad. 

‘I had an abusive life, there’s no other way to tell the story. It’s a reality. It’s a truth. That’s what you’ve got, so you have to accept it.’

PTSD can affect those who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event for months, or even years. 

The condition first came to prominence when US veterans returned home from the Vietnam War in the 1970s. It was the modern version of ‘shell shock’, a term first coined during the First World War. 

Today, an estimated 13 million Americans deal with some form of PTSD.  

A Dutch man has been left fighting for his life after a petanque ball exploded when it was left near a fire pit.

The man was part of a 14-person bachelor party in the Belgian region of Walloon Stavelot, and had been enjoying some drinks when the boule exploded.

It is understood that the young man suffered severe shrapnel wounds to the head in the incident at a holiday home near the Amblève river on Saturday night.

While the exact circumstances are still being investigated, initial reports said the petanque ball was either in or under a fire pit when it exploded due to the heat.

According to the police, the effect was comparable to the explosion of a grenade, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported today.

As a result of the blast, one of the men present at the party took a metal shard to the head and was rushed to the hospital in a critical condition.

‘As it exploded, someone got pieces in the back of the skull. His days are endangered,’ Belgian publication Sudinfo quoted a police source as saying.

Sudinfo implied that someone at the party had the ‘stupid idea’ of putting the  metal petanque balls in a brazier at their gîte, or holiday cottage.

Petanque, one of the most popular games in France and Belgium, is a form of boules that involves tossing metal balls as close to a smaller wooden ball as possible.

Competition boules are hollow, made by welding two steel half-spheres together before they are heated to around 900 degrees and then finished.

However, cheap boules with metal walls tend to be filled with a sand-like mixture to give them the weight steel-made equivalents would have, and are at risk of exploding when heated to high temperatures.

The tragic incident is not the first time someone has been either seriously injured or even killed in such circumstances.

In 2018, a Frenchman was killed when a petanque ball exploded and sent shrapnel into his skull. The ball was left near a barbecue. At the time, it was reported that paramedics rushed to the scene but were unable to save the 31-year-old. 

And in 2009, a new unsold set of leisure boules sitting on a shelf in a shop’s storeroom in Switzerland spontaneously exploded.

An investigation was launched into the explosion, with the Swiss department store chain Co-op – which sold the sets – issuing an urgent recall.

The incident prompted the German government to issue a statement warning people of the danger of cheaply made boules reaching high temperatures.

The German Petanque Federation (DPA) recommended buying certified boules, and shopping for them in specific petanque shops, as opposed to supermarkets.

The Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) analysed the remaining set, and found they were cheaply made.

EMPA found they had poorly welded seams, and were filled with a sand-like mixture (referred to as ‘mortar’ in some news reports at the time).

The organisation found the sand was damp and contaminated with metal filings, which had become corroded over time. This chemical reaction produced hydrogen gas, which built up inside one of the boules – creating a great deal of pressure. 

Finally, the seam failed, and the ball dramatically exploded, the EMPA reported.

There have been other reported incidents. In 2016, in a German town near Düsseldorf, a petanque ball exploded in the middle of a marquee. The explosion ripped a hole on the tent’s roof, and left a crater in the ground.

A German bomb squad responded, removed the remaining seven boules in the set, and safely detonated them. 

A year later, in 2017, a Thai man became the first known person to be killed by an exploding boule. Reports suggested the players thought soaking the boule in water and then heating them up would help with their performance.

It is understood the man was heating boules when one exploded, sending a metal shard flying that pierced his skull and instantly killed him.