Ebola outruns the response in DR Congo, with half the deaths in twenty days

The outbreak that is moving faster than the people chasing it

The UN’s senior Ebola coordinator, Julien Harneis, spoke to reporters on Friday. He said the epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo is “growing exponentially” and now covers an area bigger than France [2]. That phrase is not decoration. It means the number of new cases each week is set by the number of cases the week before. The outbreak grows on a share of itself. The response grows only by whatever is added to it. Harneis put it plainly: “It is growing faster and wider than the Ebola response” [3].

The numbers behind the phrase. More than 5,000 people have been infected since the outbreak was declared on 15 May [2]. Half of all the deaths recorded so far happened in the last twenty days [1]. It is spreading roughly three times faster than the 2014-16 West Africa outbreak, which killed more than 11,000 people and remains the worst on record [1][2]. Africa’s public health agency, the Africa CDC, says this one is on course to become the largest in the world [4].

The death toll depends on who is counting and when. Harneis and the wire reports on Friday put it above 2,500 [2][3]. The Guardian’s explainer, published the same morning, said more than 2,000 [4]. Both are drawn from a count that runs days behind events, in provinces where the roads are bad and health posts are shut.

Two things made this outbreak different from the start. The strain is Bundibugyo, a rarer type of Ebola for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment [2]. And the first infections, in the north-eastern province of Ituri, were misdiagnosed as typhoid and malaria. Experts now think the virus was circulating from about February, three months before anyone declared an outbreak [1]. It has since reached five more provinces and crossed into Uganda [2].

The response is being eaten by the thing it is fighting. More than 260 attacks on health workers have been reported in six months, and eight have been killed [3]. More than 160 have caught the virus, and 43 of those have died [3]. Aid workers say many local people believe the outbreak is a hoax, and react with anger when health rules stop them washing and burying their own dead [3]. Eastern Congo has had three decades of war. The M23 rebel group that holds parts of North Kivu announced new limits this week on shared taxis and passenger boats between rebel-held and government-held areas [1]. Those are the routes a tracing team travels.

What changes now: the World Health Organization has allocated 70,000 doses of Ervebo, the existing Ebola vaccine. Fifty thousand go to front-line health workers. The other 20,000 go into a clinical trial, to find out whether a vaccine built for a different strain works against this one [1]. Nobody knows yet that it does. Harneis also said the money currently funding the response runs out within weeks [3]. Save the Children counts at least 180 Congolese children who have lost both parents or carers since May [1].

For anyone who follows outbreaks, the number to watch is not the death toll but the doubling time, meaning how many days it takes for cases to double. Help sized to last month’s outbreak arrives too small, every time.

Six months of the Iran war, and both sides say the other one should fold

The war the United States and Israel began in February is half a year old and stuck [5][10]. On Friday Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said it was time to stop. “It is better that we bring the war to an end now,” he said, arguing Iran was in a position of strength [5]. That came a day after the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, promised the toughest financial penalties yet and said they would collapse Iran’s government [5][7]. Iran said its answer to any new threat would be “devastating” [6]. President Trump said Iran was not ready to make the right deal, and claimed “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz [8].

Hormuz is the pinch point. Before the war roughly a fifth of the world’s shipped crude oil and liquefied natural gas passed through it [9][11]. On Thursday, seven commodity ships crossed, half the previous day’s tally, and none of them a very large crude carrier [9]. Iran keeps the strait partly shut. The US runs a naval counter-blockade of Iran [5].

Prices depend on which day you read. Brent crude, the international benchmark, traded at $93.82 on Friday morning after gaining more than 7% in five days [9]. A Middle East Eye analysis published the same day describes the six-month picture differently. It puts Brent’s settled range nearer $85-90, up from about $60 in January, a rise of roughly 50% [11]. Both are true; one is a live quote, the other an average across a volatile half-year.

What is striking is how small that rise is by historical standards. The 1973 Arab oil embargo took about 7% of world supply off the market and quadrupled prices [11]. The 1979 and 1990 crises each blocked 6-7% of supply and more than doubled prices [11]. This time 10-14% of global supply is unreachable and prices have risen by half. The reason is that the shock was absorbed elsewhere. The International Energy Agency released 400 million barrels of emergency stock [11]. China, the world’s largest crude importer, stopped buying at wartime prices and drew on strategic reserves of more than 1.2 billion barrels. That let it cut seaborne crude imports by over three million barrels a day [11].

Inside Iran the pressure is real, and not obviously political. Rice costs 60% more than before the war and beef 150% more, while wages buy about half what they did a year ago [10]. Ahmad Karimi, a 52-year-old Tehran taxi driver working 15-hour days, told the AP: “We have virtually given up on many things” [10]. Hadi Kahalzadeh, an Iran economy specialist at Brandeis University, makes a blunt point. Iran’s practised ability to survive sanctions is exactly what stops economic pain turning into the political change Washington is betting on [10].

The war is also widening. Iranian missiles have hit Gulf states and Jordan, neither of them party to the fight [12]. Tehran has now threatened Bulgaria, whose parliament approved the use of Bezmer air base in July for refuelling American military aircraft [12].

Europe has the money for an army and not the people

The European Union’s 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine is turning into a shopping list. A European Commission official told Euronews that Kyiv wants the next tranche spent on anti-ballistic missile systems [13]. The choice is between American Patriots and the Franco-Italian SAMP/T NG, with an order expected before September [13]. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, condemning a Russian strike on the Kyiv region overnight on Wednesday, said Europe was working to give Ukraine anti-ballistic defences [13].

The awkward half of Europe’s rearmament is not equipment. Andrius Kubilius, the EU’s defence commissioner, says the bloc needs to move around 100,000 troops quickly to deter a Russian test of NATO [14]. European intelligence services date that test to about 2030 [14]. But the European Parliament warned as far back as 2024 that “European armed forces face severe recruitment and retention problems,” and industry groups say nothing has fixed it [14]. Emmanuel Jacob heads the European Organisation of Military Associations and Trade Unions. He put it in one line: “we need to have enough people to deal with these investments” [14]. The EU has an 800 billion euro rearmament plan, and NATO has raised its spending target to 5% of national income [14]. Neither produces soldiers.

Meanwhile Moscow signalled it is listening. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia is open to new proposals on Ukraine, provided they reflect “realities on the ground” [15]. That is shorthand for keeping the territory it holds. Talks have largely stalled while Washington is busy with Iran [15].

Three governments call an Israeli decision shameful, and Turkey issues a warrant

Britain, Canada and Australia issued a joint statement on Friday calling Israel’s decision “shameful” [16]. Israel will not open a criminal investigation into the strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza on 1 April 2024 [16]. Three of the dead were British; the others were Polish, Australian, Canadian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen [16]. The Israeli military said an armed guard travelling with the convoy had not been declared, and was wrongly identified as a Hamas fighter [16]. It found “serious failures” in the process, but said the commanders’ decisions raised no reasonable suspicion of a crime [16]. Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Hillel Newman, said there was no criminal intention and therefore no criminal responsibility [16]. The three governments noted the announcement landed on World Humanitarian Day, and pointed to a wider count: 186 aid workers killed in 2025 [16].

Separately, a Turkish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and another Israeli official on a genocide charge [17]. It covers Israel’s interception of a Gaza-bound activist flotilla earlier this year [17]. Netanyahu’s office dismissed it as an attempt by President Erdogan to intimidate Israel [17]. Neither warrant is likely to be executed. Both change where Israeli officials can safely travel, and what other courts are asked to consider next.

In Syria, something quieter closed. Mazloum Abdi, who leads the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said the merger of Kurdish military, security and administrative institutions into the Syrian state is “complete and finished” [18]. It follows a January agreement that Washington called historic, and it ends, for now, the Syrian Kurds’ long push for self-rule [18].

The weather event that 2027 will be named after

Britain’s Met Office said on Friday that the El Nino now forming is likely to be the strongest in living memory, and probably the largest since the 19th century [19]. El Nino is a periodic warming of the eastern Pacific caused by weakening trade winds. It comes every two to seven years and lasts nine to twelve months. While it runs, it shifts rainfall and drought across the world. A typical one warms equatorial Pacific surface waters by 1-2C, and 2C is already considered major. The Met Office forecast is more than 3C [19]. Adam Scaife, its head of long-range forecasting, said the event would “far exceed our recent experience” [19]. The office expects 2027 to replace 2024 as the warmest year on record [19]. China’s National Climate Centre says the same thing from the other side of the Pacific: possibly the strongest ever recorded [20].

The bill for the last round is still being added up. China raised the death toll from July’s Typhoon Maysak to at least 159, with ten still missing [21]. The storm flooded the south-western region of Guangxi, and 107 of those deaths came from dam breaches at reservoirs [21]. More than 1.6 million people were affected in the two worst-hit cities and over 320,000 were moved [21]. Three typhoons hit China in July. Natural disasters that month left 318 people dead or missing nationwide, and caused 57.15 billion yuan ($8.5 billion) in direct losses [21]. In Peru this week, El Nino rains flooded homes in Lima, closed roads and cut access to Machu Picchu [20].

Briefly, elsewhere

Bolivia. President Rodrigo Paz fired his economy minister, Jose Gabriel Espinoza, on Friday, and that was not the worst of his week [22]. His main congressional ally broke with his party, and a sudden fuel price rise threatened new street protests [22]. An influential adviser was arrested over the shooting of a woman who says she has evidence of corruption in his government [22]. Nine months in, six of his original fifteen ministers remain [22].

Pakistan. The military said security forces killed 49 fighters in raids on hideouts [23]. Twelve died in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on the Afghan border, and 37 in Balochistan, the country’s largest and emptiest province [23]. Islamabad says both the Pakistani Taliban and Baloch separatists operate from Afghanistan with Indian help; Kabul and Delhi deny it [23].

Myanmar. Hundreds of troops have been clearing villages since July around Dawei, on the Andaman Sea [24]. A Russia-backed special economic zone is planned there, with a deep-sea port and a power plant [24]. The junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, pitched the project to Thailand this month and to Vladimir Putin in Moscow this week [24]. It is sold as a shipping route that bypasses the Strait of Malacca [24].

North Korea. Pyongyang has published 19 statements attacking Japan since early June, nearly double the previous three months [25]. Kim Yo Jong, the leader’s sister, called Japan’s military build-up a serious threat needing countermeasures [25]. Japan already aims to spend 2% of national income on defence, and is under US pressure to reach 3.5% [25].

The story nobody’s covering

More than 30% of children under five in Benin are stunted, according to figures tracked by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition [26]. Stunted means shorter than they should be for their age, because of long-term poor nutrition. Stunting caused in a child’s first thousand days is mostly permanent, and it affects brain development and health for life [26].

What makes the AP’s reporting from N’dali, in northern Benin, worth reading is the reason it persists in a farming country with food in it. Sabi Bera Zakari, a farmer whose two young daughters a sociologist believes are stunted, said height was not something he worried about [26]. Boris Gloni, who spent years working on hunger there, says some families believe giving children milk and eggs will make them greedy enough to steal more [26]. The goats and chickens in the compound are not dinner. They are savings, sold when an emergency comes [26]. Benin’s government wants stunting below 30% by 2030 [26].