The World Health Organization declared the Ebola disease outbreak caused by a rare virus in Congo and neighboring Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths. WHO said the outbreak doesn’t meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency like COVID-19, and advised against the closure of international borders. WHO said on X that a laboratory-confirmed case has also been reported in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the outbreak’s epicenter in the eastern province of Ituri, suggesting a possible wider spread. It said the...

Russia targeted eight regions of Ukraine in its latest nighttime drone and missile barrage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday, with local authorities reporting that the strikes wounded more than two dozen civilians, including three children. Russian forces fired 524 attack drones and 22 ballistic and cruise missiles, Zelenskyy said. Dnipro and the surrounding central region of Ukraine bore the brunt of the attack, officials said. The barrage continued a recent spiral of long-range strikes that have grown in scale following a May 9-11 ceasefire that U.S. President Donald Trump said he asked Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to...

The Philippine Senate convened an impeachment court Monday for the trial of Vice President Sara Duterte over criminal charges, in a time of deep divisions that erupted into an exchange of gunfire last week in the chamber. The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to impeach Duterte last Monday over alleged unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and a public threat to have the president assassinated if she herself were killed due to their political disputes. The vice president, who has announced her plan to seek the presidency in 2028, has denied the charges but has refused to answer the allegations...

Peruvian electoral authorities confirmed on Sunday the official results of the first round of the presidential elections in early April, with Keiko Fujimori and Roberto Sánchez advancing to the runoff on June 7. The final vote count was released Friday, but it had to be confirmed by Peru’s National Elections Board to set the second round as none of the candidates received more than half the valid votes. The 50-year-old congresswoman Fujimori, the daughter of the late President Alberto Fujimori and candidate for Fuerza Popular, gathered 2.8 million votes, or 17.19% of the total. She reached a presidential runoff for...

The Israeli military began intercepting boats on Monday morning that are part of the latest wave of flotilla activists attempting to break the blockade of Gaza. More than 50 vessels departed from the port in Marmaris, Turkey, last week in what the organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla described as the final leg of their planned journey to Gaza’s shores. The organization’s livestream on Monday showed activists aboard several vessels putting on life jackets and raising their hands before a boat carrying troops approached. Israeli troops wearing tactical gear boarded the ship, and the livestream abruptly ended. Many of the...

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has been released from a hospital in Tehran after more than two weeks, her supporters said Monday. They called for Mohammadi, 54, to remain at home to receive follow-up care and daily physiotherapy. Mohammadi was urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran on May 1 after she fell unconscious. She was released on bail nearly 10 days later and transferred to the hospital in Tehran, where specialists examined her. She was awarded the Nobel in 2023 while in prison and has been jailed repeatedly throughout her career. Her latest imprisonment...

A Hong Kong court started hearing final arguments Monday in the national security trial of two organizers of the large vigils remembering the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Hong Kong for decades was the only place in China where a large-scale public commemoration of the crackdown was held. The vigils were banned in 2020, and the two former organizers were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law that has virtually stifled the city’s pro-democracy movement. Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, two former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China,...

A former assistant principal at an elementary school in Virginia is due in court for trial, accused of ignoring warnings that a 6-year-old student brought a loaded gun to school that was later used to shoot his first-grade teacher. Ebony Parker’s criminal trial is set to start Monday in Newport News, Virginia. Parker is charged with eight counts of felony child neglect, one for each of the eight bullets in the gun that was brought into the classroom of Richneck Elementary schoolteacher Abby Zwerner in January 2023, prosecutors have said. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in...

The Congolese health minister announced the opening of three treatment centers in the Ituri region in eastern Congo on Sunday evening as he visited the region amid the ongoing Ebola outbreak. “We know that the hospitals are already under stress because of the patients,” said Samuel Roger Kamba, the health minister, while visiting Bunia, the capital and largest city in Ituri. “But we are preparing to have treatment centers at all three sites in order to be able to expand our capabilities.” The World Health Organization declared the Ebola disease outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday,...