Former US president Bill Clinton talked with his family on Tuesday as he rested comfortably in an intensive care unit a day after undergoing a quadruple bypass operation on Monday, his office said.
"He is awake and alert" at the Columbia-Presbyterian Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, according to a statement released by his office late Tuesday afternoon.
Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death among Americans, killing about half a million people each year. Clinton's case has focused attention on how the disease can progress silently for many years before it leads to pain from angina or a heart attack. Clinton, 58, did not have a heart attack.
But in recent months, Clinton's doctors said he experienced chest pain and shortness of breath with physical activity without realizing what the symptoms were due to. Last week they occurred while he was resting at his home in Chappaqua, New York, and he sought medical care. An angiogram, performed at Westchester County Medical Center, showed that, in retrospect, they were the pains of angina from blockage in four coronary arteries.
He was immediately transferred to Columbia-Presbyterian where, in a four-hour procedure, a team of surgeons led by Dr. Craig Smith, the hospital's chief of cardio-thoracic surgery, took blood vessels from Clinton's chest and left leg and sewed them to arteries feeding his heart, creating detours for the bloodstream around segments that were dangerously choked with plaque.
Clinton's Web site (www.clintonfoundation.org) has received more than 65,000 messages of support, including 25,000 on Monday.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not