Walmart recalls apple juice sold in 25 states (incl. Mississippi) for slightly elevated arsenic levels – National & International News – MON 26Aug2024

Walmart recalls apple juice sold in 25 states (incl. Mississippi) for elevated arsenic levels.

Stranded Boeing astronauts to remain on ISS until February 2025.

Israeli right-wingers push bigger response after surprisingly restrained Hezbollah retaliation.

NATIONAL NEWS

Walmart recalls apple juice sold in 25 states (incl. Mississippi) for elevated arsenic levels

Walmart and a Dutch supplier have issued a recall for 9,535 cases of Great Value brand apple juice sold at Walmart stores in 25 states, including Mississippi.

The recalled product is sold in six-packs of 8-ounce plastic bottles with the UPC code 0-78742-29655-5 and has a “Best if used by” date code of DEC2824 CT89-6. If you have purchased a recalled product, you can return it to the store with a receipt for a refund, or just throw it away.

The product was found to have 13 parts per billion (ppb) of inorganic arsenic, which is slightly above the 10 ppb deemed safe to consume by the FDA. The recall was originally issued on August 15 but has now been upgraded from unclassified to a “class 2” recall. This indicates a situation which is unlikely to cause “serious adverse health consequences”. However, “use of, or exposure to, a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences”.

No illnesses have been reported in connection with this recall. Symptoms to watch out for include vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, numbness and muscle cramping.

According to the FDA, the most usual source of elevated inorganic arsenic is contaminated drinking water. Regular exposure to inorganic arsenic has been linked to cancer and birth defects.

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Stranded Boeing Starliner crew to remain on ISS until February 2025

NASA and Boeing announced over the weekend that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams will remain on the International Space Station until February 2025 when they will return on a Space-X craft. The pair launched in early June for what was supposed to be an 8-day test flight mission for the Boeing Starliner crew capsule. Soon after launch, several thrusters on the craft failed and helium leaks were detected.

The Starliner’s first crewed launch had already been delayed twice this year when helium leaks and other issues cropped up. NASA and Boeing engineers have spent the last several weeks trying to understand the thruster issues. Ultimately, they concluded they did not understand the problem well enough to have confidence in Starliner to bring Wilmore and Williams back safely.

Now the plan is to return Starliner to earth uncrewed some time in September. Wilmore and Williams will instead return on a Space-X Crew Dragon craft, which will arrive at the ISS next month. The Crew Dragon will arrive with two astronauts instead of the four they planned for, so that there’s room for Wilmore and Williams to join the craft’s scheduled return flight in February.

The Space-X craft will also be bringing two Space-X compatible suits for the astronauts. One of the concerns about bringing them back on another craft is that Space-X requires a specific configuration of space suit, which is not interchangeable with the Boeing suits the astronauts have.  

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Israeli right-wingers push bigger response after surprisingly restrained Hezbollah retaliation

On Sunday, the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon launched about 300 Katyusha rockets and an unknown number of attack drones over the Israeli border. This was, it seems, the long awaited response to Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah military command Fuad Shukur in Beirut last month. There had been a rapidly escalating exchange of fire over the border for much of last week, which many feared was going to spiral into an all-out regional war. 

Considering that Hezbollah is estimated to have hundreds of thousands of rockets in its arsenal, their response was surprisingly limited. The group did not even deploy the much heavier payload projectiles it is known to have, and restricted its fire to military targets.

Israel’s response to the barrage was also surprisingly limited, by their standards. The signal from both sides was that neither wanted a full blown escalation. Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah announced in a broadcast that he considered the Shukur matter closed, for now. 

Back from the brink, for now

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly chose the most “cautious” response options presented to him, showing uncharacteristic moderation after beating the war drum loudly for months. Either President Biden has at last succeeded in convincing Netanyahu that the US isn’t interested in going to war on Israel’s behalf, or Netanyahu is bowing to the reality that Israel simply can’t sustain an all-out military assault on its northern border while still bogged down in Gaza.

However, former defense minister Benny Gantz (who is considered a “moderate” on Israeli standards) and security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (who is on the far right) are loudly criticizing Netanyahu for pulling back from the brink of an all out war with Hezbollah. Citing the months-long displacement of about 100,000 Israelis from the northern border, both Gantz and Ben-Gvir demanded a broader response, a “decisive war” in Ben-Gvir’s words, to allow Israelis to return to their homes safely.

While such messages appeal to Israel’s increasingly jingoistic populace, a “broader response” would in no way speed the return of Israelis to their homes in the north. The best way to obtain that outcome quickly is for Israel to sign on to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, something Netanyahu has so far refused to do. 

Meanwhile Iran has yet to respond militarily to Israel’s assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital Tehran, which took place hours after Shukur’s assassination. Iran is similarly uninterested in sparking a wider war. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi says any action Iran takes in response will be “definite, calculated and accurate”.