At the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, health care workers are racing to open new treatment centres and increase testing. But after years of war, the deadly virus is just one of the many challenges they face.
“We are at one of four Ebola treatment centres in Bunia. A 48-year-old woman, a mother of five, has come here feeling unwell.
Doctors are asking questions and assessing her before taking her back to be tested for Ebola. “The woman is one of the first patients at the new treatment centre, which was built from the ground up less than 24 hours ago.
As soon as they took him to the isolation unit, he suffered a stroke. For a few tense moments, the doctors wait for him to stabilise before taking him for testing.
Doctors won’t know for several hours whether he’s positive or not. And yet, that’s an improvement from just two weeks ago, whethey concentrated testing in Kinshasa, 1,000 miles away, which delayedng critical diagnoses by several days.
“Is this a laboratory?” I ask. “This is the laboratory.” We are the first journalists here in Bunia to see laboratory workers testing the rare Ebola strain that has fuelled the outbreak. “We were very surprised by the speed of this outbreak.
I can say that we have a giant backlog of samples. We got overwhelmed with work here very quickly. So last week we were able to run 36 samples per day. And right now we are able to run 372 samples per day.” “
These samples from suspected Ebola cases have just come into this laboratory. Right now it takes about eight to 12 hours to get the test results, but they’re working to get that down to two hours.”
Reducing the time it takes to transport samples is essential to slowing the outbreak. At this clinic, the painstaking process of disinfecting the entire facility is underway after the deaths of two health care workers from Ebola.
New structures are also being built to isolate and test suspected Ebola cases and protect other patients. But beyond Ebola, medical workers here are also caring for victims of a broader war that hasn’t stopped just because a deadly virus is spreading.
Inside, we met a wounded Congolese soldier who asked us not to name him for fear of reprisal. He says Ebola has worsened an already dire situation after years of fighting.
At the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, health care workers are racing to open new treatment centres and increase testing. But after years of war, the deadly virus is just one of the many challenges they face.By Bethlehem Feleke, Michael Anthony Adams, Yasu Tsuji, John Hazell and Monica Kovora
French Open: Rafael Joder 6-7 1-3 Alexander Xavier*
Zverev roars as he grabs a break for a second-set lead. It was a tough game for Jodar, who played as if he were hitting uphill. This is the level of Zverev hitting the ball on the return.
French Open: Alexander Zverev wins first set 7-6 (7-3) in a tiebreak.
Along with his serve, Alexandre Xavierou has an impressive tiebreak record on Paris clay. A loose forehand from Joder gives the German two points away, with two points to come.
Zverev hung tight on the baseline, pushing Joder, then pulled the German in with a drop shot. Zverev races to meet it and execute a backhand winner.
Three set points: He only needs one. Zverev finds the first serve and breaks. Another seed will take it. A 66-minute opening set from the youngster after trailing 5-2.
(A.P)
French Open: Rafael Nadal takes Alexander Zverev in a tiebreak.
Rafael Juder saves a break point in the tie-break. Alexander Zverev was timing his charge, using his deep position to find passing shot angles as he raced to a 40-0 lead, but the youngster held firm.
Serving for the set, Rafael Jodar made two forehand errors, giving Alexander Zverev three break points. The German, in a very deep withdrawal position, steps to the forehand and breaks, with Zverev leading 5-4 and on serve.
(A.P)
French Open: Rafael Nadal breaks Alexander Zverev to advance in quarterfinals
Rafael Joder has played five sets in each of his last two wins against Pablo Carreno Busta (3 hours 41) and Alex Michelson (4 hours 16).
But the youngster has made a fast start, breaking Alexander Zverev in the first set, and will serve for the set!
French Open: Alexander Zverev saves break points in the opening game.
Rafael Joder and Alexandre Xavierio walk on Court Philippe-Chatrier. But their opening two games spanned 17 minutes, with the young Spaniard saving two break points on Xavier’s serve.
Jodar, 19, started the year ranked 168th in the world. He is making his debut in Paris and is bidding to become the first debutant to reach the semifinals there since a certain Rafael Nadal in 2005. Jodar has the most wins on clay this season.
Xavier, meanwhile, is the second seed and is now the heavy favourite to win his first Grand Slam title at the age of 29. The German had a giant chance with Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic out and Carlos Alcaraz injured.
Rafael Joder in action (Reuters)
An emotional Marta Kostyuk celebrates a historic French Open win against Elina Svitolina for Ukraine.
An emotional Marta Kostyuk celebrated her victory over compatriot Elina Svitolina in the name of the Ukrainian people after advancing to her first Grand Slam semi-final at the French Open.
Kostyuk, 23, became the first Ukrainian woman to win the last four games of a match since reaching the semifinals of Roland Garros, defeating her idol Svitolina 6-3, 2-6, 6-2.
Kostyuk has won 17 matches in a row and is unbeaten this season. His inaugural match in Paris last week came after a missile attack narrowly missed his parents’ home in Kyiv.
A first Ukrainian semi-final was guaranteed as Kostyuk played seventh seed Svitolina. At least 18 people died in Ukraine last night after a massive airstrike by Russia.
French Open: Marta Kostyuk dedicates victory to Ukraine and praises Elina Svitolina
Marta Kostyuk sheds tears at the start of her court victory. She dedicates the win to Ukraine and praises her idol Elina Svitolina. It was a special moment for him after reaching the semi-finals of a major tournament for the first time and making 25 appearances in the main draw of a Grand Slam.
“I want to start with the historic match we played today with Elena. It was a very difficult night again in Ukraine, especially in Kyiv; many people died, and I want to dedicate this match to the Ukrainian people and their resilience.
“And of course I want to point out the incredible impact she had on Elena and Ukrainian tennis, on Ukrainians, and on me and everyone watching.
(Reuters)
French Open: Game, Set and Match! Marta Kostyuk is on the move.
It was an amazing last four games by Marta Kostivic; what a fantastic level.
Kostyuk has now won 16 matches in a row on clay, unbeaten on the surface this season. And at the age of 23, she has reached her first Grand Slam semifinal. She will play eighth seed Mira Andreeva on Thursday for a place in the final.
There’s a cute moment on the net when Kostyuk and Elina Svitolina hug. Svitolina has been Kostivka’s inspiration, but is it the passing of the baton? Kostyuk became the first Ukrainian woman to reach the final four at Roland Garros.
Marta Kostyuk celebrates her 6-3 2-6 6-2 victory over Elina Svitolina (Reuters)
French Open: Marta Kostyuk cruises to victory
The result is a wonderful addition from Marta Kostiuk. At 2-2, the 15th seed took off, firing winners and controlling critical volleys to win three games in a row. She will serve for a spot in the semifinals, leading 5-2 in the decider.
AI is getting expensive, and some companies are cutting back on use in an effort to reduce costs.
That group includes Uber, which recently instituted internal usage limits as a way to cut down on its excessive AI spending.
Bloomberg reports the company created a new rule that sets a monthly limit of $1,500 per employee and per agent on coding tools, including Anthropic’s Cloud Code or Cursors. The company says usage can be tracked through an internal dashboard that every employee has access to, although, in some cases, limits can be exceeded with permission.
This news is perhaps not too surprising, since in April the company’s CTO revealed it. The ridesharing giant had spent its entire annual AI budget in just four months. It appears that Uber encouraged employees to use AI “as much as possible” and even competitively ranked their internal use on internal leader boards, the report said. first reported.
Also Also, Uber’s COO, Andrew McDonald, recently raised doubts about the productivity impact of AI during a podcast appearance, saying “it’s very hard to draw a line” between the use of AI and new consumer features.
Uber’s cuts raise a broader issue the tech industry is currently facing:
As enterprises pour money into AI, where exactly is the return on investment? In fact, AI ROI remains so far a largely theoretical phenomenon. Everyone is hopeful that the investment will eventually come to fruition – although some companies are clearly getting a little restless while they wait.
When Sabik Kohran crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon, he suddenly became emotional.
It wasn’t because he had just completed one of the most prestigious races in the world. It wasn’t just because he survived 26.2 miles. This was because during that race, the timeline he had envisioned for himself had entirely changed.
“It was crazy because I was like, ‘We did it,'” Cohran says. “I didn’t really know how well I was doing until the last two to three miles. Then I said, ‘Wait, we’re going to PR by 12 minutes. So finally I killed it, and when I crossed that finish line… I said, ‘Oh my God, there’s no way.'”
There were many emotions during the race. As the mile markers passed, so did the personal records. Cohran saw his 10-mile and half-marathon PRs set. As much as life has been for him, he has kept his head up and kept moving forward.
Both of Cohran’s legs were amputated at the age of two and he was given prosthetics at the age of four. There was no voice of sympathy inside his house. There was perspective.
“My mother and grandmother always reiterated that you can’t change it. It’s who you are,” he says. “So I’ve always had the mentality of, ‘Nobody’s going to come save you.’ You’ve got to do it yourself.'”
This mentality shaped his approach to sports as he grew up. He was not interested in sitting on the sidelines or being treated differently. At Schaumburg High School, he played football, wrestled, played lacrosse and basketball, and stayed active any way he could. There was no limit.
However, ironically, running was not initially part of that identity. In fact, he spent most of his younger years avoiding it whenever possible.
“I’ve never run other than lacrosse,” Cohran says, laughing. “I’d say, ‘Yeah, I don’t have legs, so I can’t run these laps. ‘I always get myself out somehow.”
His life changed when he finally received running prosthetics in October 2024 after years of wishing. And it changed everything.
Running is more than fitness
Cohran says that like many people who get involved in endurance sports later in life, the miles eventually became much more than exercise.
“Running restored my youth,” he says. “Not that I felt like I was missing anything, but I always felt like I knew I could be fast. You see people with these prostheses and I knew I could be fast, too.”
Once they got access to walking blades, they never looked back. The running community immediately embraced him, especially when he finished the Chicago Marathon in under four hours during his first attempt.
Cohran did not know how well he was performing and did so until others were surprised by the fact that it was his first marathon. However, what surprised him most wasn’t the attention. The surprise was the effect it had.
He remembered receiving a message from a physical therapist who brought in a patient who had recently lost his leg in a race. The man was in low spirits, but he brightened up after seeing and hearing about Cohran’s accomplishments.
Such moments changed the way he handled himself.
“You have to approach every moment in public with some restraint,” he says. “You never know who’s watching and might be inspired by what you’re doing.”
Boston Marathon
Pain
While Cohran’s story seems inspiring on the outside, the physical side of marathon training can sometimes be brutal.
Before the Chicago Marathon, he trained in prosthetics that weren’t designed for long-distance running. The accumulation of sweat inside the binders caused constant pain and instability.
“I had to clean my feet every two to three miles,” he says. “I’m saying my feet were bleeding. I would have to walk around the house.”
There were moments when despair overcame him because there simply had to be a different way. Eventually, doctors adjusted the fit, added padding, and introduced anti-perspirant sprays that changed everything.
“The Chicago Marathon was my first race; I didn’t have to stop at all,” he says. “First official race, honestly.”
It took some time to get used to the moving blades. The first time he ran over them, he realised something almost immediately: he didn’t know how to stop.
“The first time I ran I started screaming,” he says. “I was like, ‘I could die on this sidewalk.’ ”
Conditioning became another major adjustment. Unlike the sports he participated in throughout high school, distance running required continuous output without breaks, which forced him to learn pacing almost entirely through trial and error. His longest run before the Chicago Marathon was about four miles.
Now, as mileage has increased and marathon times have rapidly decreased, Cohran’s goals have evolved just as quickly.
Boston Marathon
He still hasn’t finished dreaming
At 27, Cohran already has his sights set on bigger stages and bigger achievements. One of them is to run all the major marathons in the world by the time you reach your mid-30s.
But there is another goal that is making it even more difficult.
“Double amputee world record,” he says. “I want that record. I’m definitely coming for that record.”
The current world record sits at 2:40:25, and while Cohran knows how ambitious that sounds, he has never lowered his expectations.
“Many people want to call 27 old,” he says, “but LeBron got his first ring at 27.”
Beyond racing, he hopes running and content creation will eventually become his full-time focus. Currently, he balances training, social media and his day job at Dick’s Sporting Goods, often stretching his week to nearly 70 hours.
He keeps thinking about putting more effort into his running and creating content to inspire others. He would also like to start a run club and give some public speaking. More than anything, he wants people to see possibilities when they look at him.
“If they can look at me and say, ‘Okay, he’s doing that. I can do that too. I want that too,’ Cohran says. “Running teaches you to trust and believe in yourself. At this point I have 100 percent confidence and trust in everything I do. And running helped me achieve that.”
New Mexico lawmakers said on Monday they are seeking documents from multiple public and private institutions as the first major step in their effort to tell the full story of what Jeffrey Epstein did in the state — and whether anyone else should be prosecuted for crimes there.
A committee known as the New Mexico Truth Commission expects to send subpoenas to 14 targets this week. This includes federal agencies that have investigated Epstein in the past –
the US Department of Justice and the FBI – as well as state and local law enforcement agencies that have investigated Epstein. Demands are also expected to be filed against Epstein’s former banks – Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chaseas well asand the Santa Fe Institute, a non-profit scientific research institute that Epstein supported.
Members said that if the committee finds evidence that someone has committed a crime that can be prosecuted, it will refer the case to an appropriate law enforcement agency in New Mexico or elsewhere.
The goal is to “create a thoroughly documented public record”, Republican state Rep Andrea Reeb said at a meeting at the New Mexico State Capitol. We will tell what happened, who was responsible, and do it with the evidence survivors deserve and the law demands.
Reeb is one of four members of the bipartisan commission.
The commission is already working with the New Mexico Justice Department.
which has reopened a criminal investigation that was closed in 2019 at the request of federal prosecutors in New York. That agency is also seeking Epstein records from federal authorities.
Epstein, who bought a ranch outside Santa Fe in 1993 and typically visited several times a year, was never charged with crimes in New Mexico, despite allegations of sex crimes dating back decades.
At least 10 women have alleged that Epstein groomed or abused them at his 10,000-acre ranch in the mid-1990s, an NBC News review of court testimony, lawsuits and other records found. Half were teenagers when they said Epstein harmed them. Until the beginning of this year, no law enforcement agency had searched the farm.
The lost opportunities in New Mexico are part of a pattern with Epstein that began with a state investigation in Florida, where he was accused of paying underage girls for sex. In 2008, he reached a plea deal with state and federal prosecutors, sparing him serious prison time and ending investigations into his activities in other states. He was required to register as a sex offender in Florida and New York, but not in New Mexico.
Federal investigators in New York took up the case in 2019 after the Miami Herald published a disclosure. About the plea bargain. The New York prosecution of Epstein left the New Mexico area largely uninvestigated. After Epstein’s death in prison, prosecutors went after his partner Ghislaine Maxwell; the charges were briefly mentioned at her trial in New Mexico. He is now in federal prison.
In January, the Justice Department released millions of documents related to Epstein, including new information about efforts in 2019 to shut down the state investigation and new allegations of crimes in the area, the most disturbing being an unfounded allegation that two bodies were buried on the property. The revelation set off a fire in New Mexico and ultimately led to the determination of what happened at the ranch.
Commission members said Monday that their work will focus on the experiences of survivors. They will look not only at sex trafficking and financial crime allegations but also potential “medical and scientific crimes”, said state Rep Mariana Anaya, a Democrat. He didn’t say anything else about it.
The commission, whose work is funded by money collected by the state in its settlement with Epstein’s banks, is also expected to recommend changes to state laws to close gaps that could prevent authorities from prosecuting Epstein or others.
The commission heard from Rachel Benavidez, a survivor who says she was abused by Epstein while working as a licensed massage therapist at the farm, and from the family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most vocal victims, who died by suicide last year.
Benavidez said, “We know that Jeffrey Epstein could not have acted alone. The web of this evil network extends to academia, science, medicine, politics, finance and government.”
Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian has reportedly submitted a resignation letter to the Supreme Leader’s office, Fox News said, citing an Iranian media report.
According to the report, which cited an unnamed Iran International source, Pezeshkian said in the letter that his administration was excluded from major decision-making processes in Iran, while radical factions within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had taken control of key matters.
The report further claims that Pezeshkian wrote that he is unable to govern effectively or fulfil his legal responsibilities under such circumstances and has therefore requested to step down immediately. Iran International also said it was unclear whether the office of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei would accept the resignation.
However, an official in Iran’s presidential office rejected these reports.
The baseless and controversial statements of a young fame-seeker regarding the presidency’s positions should not be taken seriously,” said Seyed Mehdi Tabatabai, vice president of the Communications and Information Dissemination Department of the Presidential Office.
The childish behaviour of some misguided elements should not spread the false narrative that the youth do not have the capacity to play a role in governing the country.
Iran is full of thoughtful youth who have not had the opportunity to excel in management.
Rejecting reports of the resignation, he said, “The spreading of rumours by controversial foreign networks is a continuation of the previous ridiculous media game. They have published their wishful thinking in place of reality.
President Pezeshkian will not turn back from serving the people, just as the Iranian nation will not turn back from the path of solidarity and resistance. He will take his desire to break the unity of the Iranian nation to the grave.”
Russia on Monday strongly condemned France’s detention of a Russian-owned oil tanker in the Atlantic Ocean, calling the action illegal and warning that Moscow would take steps to protect its shipping operations.
According to Reuters, reacting to France’s seizure of the tanker Tagore, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia considered the move illegal.“
We consider such actions illegal,” Peskov said.
He said detaining the ship “borders on international terrorism”. The Kremlin also said Russia is taking measures to ensure the safety of maritime cargo transportation and will continue to do so in light of the latest incident.
Tanker on suspected sanctions violation
The sharp reaction came after France announced the detention of a tanker, the Tagore, on suspicion of being part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” used to circumvent Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine war.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the ship had been intercepted in international waters in the Atlantic with the support of Britain and other partners.
According to French officials, the tanker had departed from Murmansk in northwestern Russia and was heading towards Cameroon when it was stopped 400 nautical miles west of Brittany.
Authorities said the ship was sailing under a suspected false Cameroonian flag andthat the French Navy was escorting ity pending further investigation.
The detention has also triggered a criminal investigation in France. The Brest prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation into the ship’s failure to prove its nationality.
the absence of a flag and its refusal to follow authorities’ orders, according to news agency AFP.
The prosecutor’s office said the tanker’s Russian captain refused to follow French Navy instructions during the interception, adding that “it proved necessary to take control of the ship”.”
It is unacceptable for the ships to circumvent international sanctions, violate the law of the sea and finance the war that Russia has waged against Ukraine for more than 4 years,” Macron said.
Comprehensive action against Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’
The detention is the latest in a series of actions taken by France against ships allegedly linked to Russia’s sanctions-evasion network.
According to AFP, French maritime authorities said Tagore was already under EU and US sanctions and had changed flags several times before, a practice known as “flawing the flag”.
Since September France has boarded several other suspected Russian-linked tankers, some of whom were later released after paying fines.
Western countries have imposed sanctions on hundreds of ships believed to be helping Moscow continue oil exports despite sanctions imposed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
About 600 ships belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet” are currently subject to EU sanctions. Russia has repeatedly criticised such actions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin previously described the detention of Russian ships by Western countries as “theft.”
