Four Team USA swimmers – including Jessica Long, one of the most successful Paralympians of all time – face a ban and loss of earnings after appearing to question the disability of a teammate on social media.

Long – who has won 18 career gold medals across six Paralympic Games – was barred from attending the closing ceremony in Paris alongside Gia Pergolini, Julia Gaffney and Anastasia Pagonis.

They face several other punishments, too, pending appeal. Long and Co would be barred from competing for the national team until next spring or attending Team USA’s trip to Washington DC. Their stipends would also be withheld.

As detailed by the Washington Post, they are accused of taking aim at Christie Raleigh Crossley, who won five medals, including two golds, over the summer.

The swimmer has reportedly faced questions over her disability for several years. The 37-year-old suffered neck and back injuries after being struck by a drunk driver in 2007.

Raleigh Crossley sustained a brain injury in a hit and run the following year and then, in 2018, she experienced paralysis down her left side due to a brain tumor

World Para Swimming toasted the American on social media, only for her Spanish counterpart Sarai Gascon Moreno to comment: ‘S9? It’s a joke?’. Long replied to the Spaniard: ‘I stand with you’.

Gaffney, meanwhile, commented on another Instagram post about Raleigh Crossley: ‘Not a positive impact. Intentional misrepresentation is never cute’. Those words prompted Pagonis to write ‘this’, while Pergolini added: ‘Well said’

Raleigh Crossley said that the saga led her to separate herself from her teammates while in Paris, the Washington Post reported.

‘I went from enjoying a world record to being utterly devastated that the entire world seems to think I was a cheater and that I was somehow faking the hole in my brain and the cyst in my spinal cord,’ Raleigh Crossley said.

‘To be told online by all of these bullies that I am not somehow disabled as I appear, just because I can swim faster than them, it’s pretty devastating.’

Her teammates’ comments were reportedly found to have violated the USOPC’s code of conduct, which requires athletes to ‘respect members of Team USA and the U.S. Delegation to the Games’ and ‘act in a way that will bring respect and honor to yourself, your teammates.’

A USOPC spokesperson told the Post: ‘We can confirm that sanctions have been imposed on several athletes due to unacceptable behavior.

‘It is important to uphold the standards expected of Team USA athletes, and we remain committed to addressing any actions that undermine our values.’

Thousands of walkie talkies used by Hezbollah fighters have detonated across Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds of people including mourners at a funeral, witnesses and security sources have reported.

The second wave of carnage comes a day after thousands of exploding pagers used by the group left almost 3,000 people injured and a dozen dead, including civilians and children.

Security sources have now confirmed that hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, at around the same time as the compromised pagers.  Lebanese media has also reported that home solar energy systems have blown up in several areas of Beirut.

The attacks amount to the biggest security breach in Hezbollah’s history, with the  group and its backers Iran condemning Israel and labelling it ‘mass murder’.

Israel has since declared the start of a ‘new phase’ of war in the Middle East, though it was careful not making any official comment on the pager or walkie-talkie explosions.

The latest explosions this afternoon have hit the country’s south and the capital Beirut, where dramatic time-lapse video shows multiple plumes of smoke rising above the skyline in different locations almost simultaneously.

Mourners were among the injured after multiple explosions occurred at the site of a funeral for three Hezbollah members and a child who were killed by the exploding pagers yesterday, according to reports.

Beirut’s hospitals are reportedly still at full capacity following yesterday’s attacks, with medical aid being rapidly diverted to the already crippled country as it deals with the catastrophe.

The repetition of the clandestine attacks, which Israel has not taken responsibility for, will raise already spiking tensions in the region to fever pitch, with Israel moving additional troops to its northern border and Lebanon’s foreign minister warning that the blasts are an omen of a widening war.

Without directly mentioning the detonations, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant praised the work of the IDF and Israel’s security services, telling them ‘the results are very impressive.’

He added that, following months of war in the Gaza Strip, the ‘centre of hravity is shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces.

‘We are at the start of a new phase in the war – it requires courage, determination and perseverance’, he said.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned this afternoon that the strikes could be a precursor to a large-scale confrontation between Israel and Lebanon.

‘The logic of making all these devices explode is to do it as a pre-emptive strike before a major military operation,’ he said.

‘These events confirm that there is a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon and everything must be done to avoid that escalation.’

It has been alleged that Mossad, working in collaboration with Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF), was behind yesterday’s pager attacks, with Hezbollah officials already laying blame for the latest attacks with Israel.

Officials in Jerusalem have thus far declined to comment on yesterday’s pager blasts, but Axios reports that two sources ‘with knowledge of the operation’ confirmed Israel’s involvement.

The unnamed sources allege that the walkie-talkies were booby-trapped in advance by Israeli intelligence and then delivered to Hezbollah as part of its emergency communications system, which the group had planned to use during a war with Israel.

As well as security sources, weapons experts and regional analysts have also suggested that Israeli intelligence would have been capable of staging the pager attacks.

It has been widely theorised that intelligence services could have infiltrated the supply chain to plant a small quantity of high explosives within the pagers before they were delivered to Lebanon in the spring.

These rigged devices were subsequently distributed to thousands of unsuspecting members across the political, military, operational and medical branches of Hezbollah before they were eventually detonated on Tuesday afternoon.

The death toll rose to 12, including two children, according to the Lebanese health ministry, while nearly 3,000 people were injured, including many of the militant group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.

A Taiwanese pager maker denied that it had produced the pager devices which exploded in the audacious attack.

Gold Apollo said the devices were made by under licence by a company called BAC, based in Hungary’s capital Budapest.

Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, who studied in London and lists ‘disaster management’ as one of her skills, is listed as the Chief Executive of the company.  She has denied any involvement with the pagers.

Pictures from Lebanon have shown the exploded communication devices, while further images from today showing damaged two-way radios.

Hezbollah, which is proscribed as a terror organisation by the UK, US and others, has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.

Earlier today, the group said it had attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets in the first strike at its arch-foe since the pager blasts.

The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, fuelling fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.

And after Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday declared that Israel was expanding its war aims to enable the return of evacuated civilians to their homes in the north of the country, the IDF has today moved additional troops to the border with Lebanon.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of a regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation on many fronts.

‘Hezbollah wants to avoid an all-out war. It still wants to avoid one. But given the scale, the impact on families, on civilians, there will be pressure for a stronger response,’ said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement earlier today that it would continue to support Hamas in Gaza and Israel should await a response to the pager ‘massacre’ which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalised or dead.

Dozens of victims sustained severe facial injuries, with doctors explaining how they were forced to cut out victims’ eyeballs.

Others had their hands blown off, or suffered gaping wounds in their abdomen had they concealed the pager on their hip.

Professor Elias Warrak, an ophthalmologist at Mount Lebanon University Hospital in Beirut, told the BBC he had never had to remove so many eyes in his 25-year-career, describing the experience as a ‘nightmare’.

‘Most of the patients were young men in their twenties and in some cases I had to remove both eyes,’ he said, adding that he operated until 4am Wednesday morning and still had more patients to treat when he returned a few hours later.

At least 12 people are confirmed dead, including at least two children – one girl aged eight and an 11-year-old boy – according to Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad.

The Iranian Red Crescent said on Wednesday it had dispatched ‘rescue teams and eye surgeons’ to Lebanon to treat the wounded.

Iranian Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement that he ‘condemned the terrorist act of the Zionist regime’, referring to Israel.

‘Closing a circle from the air, fighter jets attacked the building where the terrorists were operating,’ the IDF said in a statement.

‘In addition, warplanes attacked the organization’s military buildings in five different areas in southern Lebanon.’

The Israeli military added in a statement this morning that it would ‘continue to operate against the threat of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in order to defend the State of Israel.’

The majority of men worry about it.

And while there’s not much they can do naturally to make their penises bigger, there are several health conditions and lifestyle factors that can make them smaller.

In fact, the length of a man’s penis can decrease by up to an inch or so for various reasons.

Smoking, for example, may contribute to shrinkage by damaging blood vessels crucial for maintaining an erection, meaning men get less big during sex.

But having too much sex can also decrease the size of one’s member over time due to a build-up of scar tissue.

Dr Mary Samplaski, a urologist and director of male infertility at the University of Southern California, told Men’s Health that age and chronic disease could cause the penis to lose a consistent level of tumescence.

Tumescence is the penis’ ability to swell and become erect when a man is aroused.

Over time, this can lead to about an inch of loss. However, it’s difficult to measure.

She said: ‘There’s not really a medical tool for measuring penis shrinkage. What we do know is that smoking and age can cause a decline in testosterone production.’

Testosterone, a male sex hormone, is essential for maintaining sex drive and erections.

Smoking, for example, has been shown to damage blood vessels throughout the body, causing them to narrow and prevent blood from flowing to the penis. This can lead to weaker erections or the inability to hold an erection.

Penile shrinkage and erectile dysfunction may also be a sign of America’s number one killer – heart disease.

Similar to smoking, heart disease leads to narrow blood vessels and reduced blood flow to the penis, which can lead to shrinkage over time.

Heart disease also causes plaque to build up in the arteries, reducing blood flow to the penis.

Dr Samplaski also pointed to obesity as a culprit of penile shrinkage. This is because fat contains enzymes that convert testosterone to estrogen – a female sex hormone.

Without enough testosterone, the penis may shrink or shrivel up.

In some cases where the penis appears smaller, it might not actually be shrinking.

LowER abdominal fat can pull the organ inward or envelope the shaft, which makes it look smaller.

Therefore, losing weight can help pull the penis out more and make it seem larger.

And oddly enough, having too much sex could lead to small amounts of shrinkage, as sex could lead to small injuries around the penis. However, it’s difficult to quantify how much is too much.

This causes scar tissue to build up, decreasing elasticity of the penile tissues and reducing the size of both a flaccid and erect penis.

Additionally, exposure to cold temperatures could divert blood flow away from the penis to vital organs, leading to shrinkage. This has been dubbed ‘winter penis,’ which experts note is just a ‘normal physiological response to the cold.’

However, the size goes back to normal once temperatures warm up.

While lifestyle factors can play a role in penis size, shrinkage can be inevitable for some men as they age.

The penis and testicles tend to get smaller with age, largely due to poor blood flow from blood vessels naturally stiffening.

Age also increases the risk of erectile dysfunction, which affects half of men ages 40 to 70 at some point and as many as one in six chronically.

Sustained periods of erectile dysfunction have been shown to slightly reduce penis size, as tissues in the penis gradually become weaker and lose elasticity. This means that during an erection, the penis might not stretch out as far, making it look shorter.

Not all shrinkage may be preventable, but Dr Leslie Deane, professor and chief of urology at Howard University, told Men’s Health that consistent exercise can help boost testosterone levels needed to sustain erections and prevent size losses.