Thomas Burke, HMS assistant professor of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, was preparing to begin a 10-year cooperative effort between Mass. General and Benghazi Medical Center to develop an emergency care infrastructure when tragedy struck. Just hours before Burke was scheduled to meet with John Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, the US consulate was attacked.

Lewis Cantley, the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is leaving Harvard to head the new cancer center at New York City's Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. His appointment is effective Oct. 15.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeons said at a news conference yesterday that the hospital has approved a patient for transplant surgery — the first double arm transplant above the elbow to be performed in the United States. Bohdan Pomahac, HMS associate professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is quoted.