A man in North Carolina was left astonished after he found a massive, mysterious object on a remote hiking trail. According to the New York Post, Justin Clontz, who is a groundskeeper at a luxury campsite, said he was “shocked” to find the massive object covered in dense metal sheets held together by unearthly-looking bolts.

The debris, which appeared to be covered in burnt carbon fibre, is at least 3 feet wide, about an inch thick, and stands at nearly 4 feet tall, according to the outlet. Though the object was burned, the surrounding area showed no signs of damage.

“It’s once in a lifetime you know, it doesn’t happen every day. We don’t know what it is. We just know that it’s not from up here,” Mr Clontz told a local TV station.

He explained, ”I just tied a rope to it and drugged it out with a lawn mower. It’s a one in a million chance that it lands especially if it landed somewhere off the trail in the woods you’d have never found it, but it just happened to land on the trail.”

See the pic here:
 

Man astonished by finding mysterious object along NC mountain trail
byu/gaukonigshofen inNorthCarolina

Experts speculate the object could have fallen to earth from SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, according to Space.com. Astronomer Jonathon McDowell added on X that the debris ”definitely looks consistent with being a bit of the Crew-7 Dragon’s trunk which reentered on a path right over this location on Tuesday.”

Notably, The Dragon spacecraft consists of two main parts: the capsule and the trunk. The trunk supports the spacecraft during ascent and carries unpressurized cargo. Typically, the trunk burns up in the atmosphere during reentry, but occasionally, parts can survive and fall back to Earth.

The owner of the campsite Glamping Collective said that they plan on reaching out to aerospace experts to figure out what exactly it is and where it came from.

”Space debris was not on our list of things we expected to be having conversations about. The only thing we’ve been able to come up with is that it’s some type of space debris that fell. It doesn’t look like anything off of an aeroplane,” said Matt Bare, owner of The Glamping Collective.

No injuries were reported in connection with the suspected piece of space junk.

A University of North Carolina graduate student has been charged in the fatal shooting on Monday of a professor at the school’s Chapel Hill campus, the university said on Tuesday.

Court records show Tailei Qi, age 34 according to media reports, was charged with first-degree murder and carrying a gun on an educational campus in the shooting of Zijie Yan, an associate professor in applied physical sciences at the school since 2019.

A university website showed Qi was a doctoral student who had joined Yan’s research group in January 2022.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the shooting in a campus lab on Monday afternoon. Reports of shots fired prompted an hours-long lockdown at the school, which has a student population of about 32,000, along with about 4,100 faculty and 9,000 staff members.

Public schools nearby also were locked down on their first day of class after summer break.

On Tuesday, the university said it had set up a hotline for students and faculty who needed to talk about the incident as well as those who need other counseling services.

“We know that the wounds of this tragedy will not heal quickly,” Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in an email announcing Yan’s death to the campus community.

He said the university would ring the campus bell tower and hold a moment of silence on Wednesday afternoon in Yan’s honor.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Chapel Hill, North Carolina:

A faculty member of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was shot dead on campus on Monday afternoon, and a suspect has been taken into custody, according to a school spokesman, CNN reported.

The incident caused people to seek shelter for several hours while police investigated.

At 1:02 pm ET, shots were reportedly fired at the school’s Caudill Laboratories. Shortly after 2:30 pm, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz confirmed that a suspect had been taken into custody.

The suspect’s and the faculty member’s names were not right away disclosed. UNC Police Chief Brian James stated on Monday night that it was still too early to determine the motive behind the shooting, according to CNN.

“We really want to know the ‘why’ in this case and what led to it,” James said, adding that the gun used in the shooting had not been found.

“This loss is devastating and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community. We will work to rebuild that sense of trust and safety within our community,” Guskiewicz said, as reported by CNN.

Around 1 pm, the school had sent out a warning to the students instructing them to take cover, later adding that a suspect was still at large. Later on in the afternoon, the university gave the “all clear”.

According to officials, classes and campus events on Monday and Tuesday were cancelled.

The school’s second week of the fall semester is currently underway. Around 32,000 students attend the university, together with over 4,000 faculty members and 9,000 staff personnel, CNN reported.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Debris is scattered around the Pfizer facility on July 19, 2023, in Rocky Mount, N.C., after damage from severe weather.
| Photo Credit: AP

The fallout from a Pfizer factory being damaged by a tornado could put even more pressure on already-strained drug supplies at U.S. hospitals, experts say.

Wednesday’s tornado touched down near Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and ripped up the roof of a Pfizer factory that makes nearly 25% of Pfizer’s sterile injectable medicines used in U.S. hospitals, according to the drugmaker.

Pfizer said all employees were safely evacuated and accounted for, and no serious injuries were reported. The drugmaker is still assessing damage.

Here’s a closer look at the possible effects.

What are sterile injectables?

The North Carolina plant produces drugs that are injected or through an IV.

The plant makes drugs for anesthesia, medicines that treat infections and drugs needed for surgeries. The latter are used in surgeries or intensive care units for patients who are placed on ventilators, said Mike Ganio, who studies drug shortages at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

The Pfizer site does not make or store the company’s COVID-19 vaccine or treatments Comirnaty and Paxlovid.

How big is the site?

Pfizer bought the eastern North Carolina factory in 2015 as part of its acquisition of the drugmaker Hospira.

There is more than 1.4 million square feet of manufacturing space, or the equivalent of more than 24 football fields, and 22 packaging lines.

Pfizer says well over 2,000 people work there.

How will this affect hospital drug supplies?

It will likely lead to some long-term shortages while Pfizer shifts production to other locations or rebuilds, said Erin Fox, senior pharmacy director at University of Utah Health.

“If Pfizer falls out, it makes it that much harder for other companies to make up the difference,” Mr. Fox said.

The specifics of which drugs might be involved in a shortage and how long that shortage will go aren’t clear.

“Anyone who is aware of this event is basically holding their collective breath at this point, hoping for the best and waiting for news,” Mr. Ganio said.

He noted that drugmakers tend to ship finished products quickly from manufacturing sites, which may limit how much inventory was damaged by the twister.

How can hospitals handle shortages?

They have several tools to soften the impact for patients.

Some hospitals have started increasing inventories of stored drugs instead of relying on regular deliveries from a wholesaler. Mr. Ganio said that it’s particularly true of drugs that hospital executives know will be hard to get.

Hospitals also may switch to different forms of a drug by giving a patient an antibiotic pill instead of an IV if that person can handle it. If a larger vial size of a drug is more readily available, they may order that and then fill several syringes with smaller doses ready for use.

Aren’t hospitals already dealing with drug shortages?

Yes, it’s been happening for years. But recently, hospitals have been dealing with shortages for things like chemotherapy drugs, pain medications and local anaesthetics.

The impact of drug shortages isn’t limited to hospitals. The also affect more routine care delivered through drugstores and doctor’s offices.

Overall, there were 309 active drug shortages in the U.S. at the end of June, according to the University of Utah Drug Information Service. That’s up from 295 at the end of last year and the highest total recorded since 2014.

What will Pfizer do?

The company hasn’t said what happens next. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on July 20 on Twitter that the company was “working urgently to determine the best way to get back online as quickly as possible, while ensuring the safety of our people”. Drugmakers can shift manufacturing to other locations. But that can be complicated because they must reroute raw materials — usually made elsewhere — to other locations and may have to train workers to make a product.

Pfizer also may have to figure out whether to cut production of another product to squeeze in more manufacturing at the new site.

“It’s not always as easy as just flipping a switch to increase production,” Mr. Ganio said.