The Israeli military is saying sirens warning of a hostile aircraft infiltration have been sounded in the northern area of Sasa. The details were under review, it added on Telegram.
Australia’s climate change minister, Chris Bowen, says he has made it “crystal clear” that he expects industrial polluters including BHP to reduce their onsite emissions after leaked documents revealed that the world’s biggest miner has backtracked on climate action. An exclusive investigation based on documents leaked to by the Guardian and the ABC show BHP has scrapped a project to significantly reduce global emissions, delayed vast renewables projects in the Pilbara and war-gamed options to push the electrification of its polluting diesel truck and train fleets into the next two decades. It did so despite internal memos as recently as 2023 saying that: “Urgent decarbonisation in line with BHP’s public commitments effectively underpins [the Western Australian iron ore division’s licence to operate, sustain and grow.” Experts and analysts say the slowdown in BHP’s decarbonisation progress shows the failure of a key climate policy, the safeguard mechanism, and the influence of the diesel tax break the federal government gives to big miners including BHP. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Bowen said on Tuesday that BHP was still subject to the safeguard mechanism and he had made his expectations “crystal clear” to emitters publicly and privately. He said the safeguard did “provide some flexibility” because the roughly 200 major industrial polluters that it applied to faced “different challenges and opportunities” to cut emissions. “But I want to see all large emitters reducing emissions onsite,” he said. “That applies to BHP and everyone else.” Earlier the resources minister, Madeleine King, said she was not concerned about the revelations and BHP was “doing their job”. “BHP is committed to cutting emissions,” she told ABC radio. “They will make their commercial decisions, as do others. BHP and other miners are subject to the safeguard mechanism.” The independent MP Kate Chaney said the safeguard needed to be tightened so companies had stronger incentives to cut emissions onsite, rather than pay for an unlimited number of contentious carbon offsets. “It’s important that companies have flexibility in the way they reduce emissions, but it’s the government’s job to drive ambitious decarbonisation for a safe climate and stable economy,” she said. Chaney said the government should also reform the diesel fuel tax credit scheme that gives some industry a full rebate on the 52.6c a litre applied to fuel. Chaney said the rebate should be limited for the “largest and most profitable companies like BHP” but left in place for farmers and small businesses. She said the current version, under which BHP receives more than $600m a year in fuel tax credits, meant “we have our foot on the break and accelerator at the same time”, as the incentive to keep burning diesel was greater than that to cut emissions by shifting to renewable energy and electric trucks and trains. “Large resource companies like BHP produce a huge chunk of Australia’s emissions,” she said. “Without strong decarbonisation from these companies, Australia will not be able to meet its emissions targets and international commitments. “But companies will always play within the rules that have been set. This speaks more to weakness in government policy than a failure of business.” In a statement, BHP said it was making significant strides in emission reduction, cutting emissions by 36% from 2020 levels. It has a medium-term target of 30% by 2030 and a goal of net zero by 2050. BHP points to analysis that it is one of the best performers on emission reductions of large publicly listed companies and has transitioned 70% of its energy use to renewables. The company blames its slowed progress on operational decarbonisation on the lack of availability of battery-electric trucks. It says it is trialling the technology but it is not yet ready to deploy at scale. Fortescue, one of its main competitors, says the technology is ready and has ordered hundreds of battery-electric trucks. It is expecting to be able to run without any fossil fuels for 24-hour periods by 2027, though it recently was responsible for a spike in emissions.
By the time Jalaj Jha begins getting ready for work each morning, he already feels drained. Awakening in a cramped room in Delhi, with no ventilation except a rattling fan pushing hot air around, the 24-year-old gig worker has ahead of him a 12-hour shift delivering groceries. “I barely sleep three or four hours in this heat,” Jha said, wiping dust off his motorbike, which he uses for deliveries. “I wake up exhausted. It feels like my body is pulling me down.” It is only 7am, but the temperature is already 30C (86F) – the lowest temperature of the day. During the day it can soar to more than 45C (113F). This week, Delhi registered the hottest May day in the last two years, and the warmest May night in 14 years. Rising temperatures are turning cities across south and south-east Asia into places where workers can no longer recover from the heat. A new report by US-based People’s Courage International (PCI), using research in Delhi, Dhaka, Kathmandu, Jakarta and Quezon City, has found hotter nights, combined with the urban heat island effect – the trapping of heat inside dense cities – are leaving millions of informal workers exhausted before a new workday even begins. For delivery riders, construction workers and street vendors living in cramped settlements with little ventilation or unreliable electricity, sleep itself is becoming difficult. The inability to rest and cool down is worsening heat-related illnesses, reducing productivity and pushing already vulnerable workers into deeper economic stress. The crisis is worsening in south Asia as climate change is predicted to triple the chance of pre-monsoon heatwaves, such as a 15-day one that turned deadly last month. Scientists say night-time temperatures are rising faster than daytime temperatures across much of the region, reducing the hours people once relied on to recover from extreme heat. Across Asia, the International Labour Organization estimates that more than 70% of the workforce are exposed to excessive heat at some point during their jobs, with informal workers among the most vulnerable. This has a big impact in countries like India, where nearly 90% of workers are employed in the informal economy. Lost wages, dizziness and fatigue Experts warn that cities across the region remain poorly prepared for worsening heatwaves. Some governments, including Delhi’s, have introduced heat action plans and advisories, water kiosks, early warning alerts and directions to reschedule outdoor work during peak afternoon heat. But researchers say most responses remain reactive and fail to directly address the needs of workers living and working in extreme heat. The PCI report, based on interviews with more than 2,200 internal migrant workers across the five cities, found nearly eight in 10 said extreme heat was disrupting their livelihoods or households. Workers reported losing wages because they could not work full shifts, spending more money on water, medicines and transport, and struggling with headaches, dizziness and fatigue during long workdays outdoors. “Heat impacts are silent and generally creep up on workers,” said PCI researcher Ameena Kidwai. Workers reported impacts across their lives – including at home and work, on their commute, as well as on their mental health and sense of community, Kidwai said. Ajay Kumar, 32, a roadside vegetable vendor in Gurugram on the outskirts of Delhi, spends hours every day pulling a three-wheeler rickshaw loaded with vegetables through dense traffic after buying produce from a wholesale market 7km away. “Every day my head spins with the heat. But I have no option but to work for my family,” said Kumar, who has four children. Researchers describe this growing exhaustion as a “recovery deficit” where workers begin each day already physically depleted. Sleep deprivation, they say, is contributing not only to lower productivity and worsening health, but also to anxiety and emotional exhaustion. Kumar, who moved from a village in Bihar in search of work four years ago, lives with his wife and children in a cramped room with no ventilation except for a rusty fan. He said he wanted to buy a cooler this summer but could not afford one. “I barely make Rp300-400 ($3-4) a day. Most of that goes in feeding my family,” he said. “I keep some water with me and damp my gamcha [scarf]. That helps my head.” At night, Kumar’s family often sleep on the open terrace of their building because the room becomes unbearably hot. “But even then, it takes me hours to fall asleep.”
Iran has poured cold water on suggestions that a deal with the US is imminent, pointing to the confusion in US positions and Israeli interference as key factors in why a complete agreement is proving difficult to secure. Speaking at the weekly foreign ministry press briefing, Esmail Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s negotiating team, also said future management of the strait of Hormuz was a matter for Oman and Iran to reach agreement on, and that it was not tolls that were being proposed but “fees for navigational services”. Referring to the state of the talks, Baghaei said: “It is correct to say that we have reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion. But to say that this means the signing of an agreement is imminent – no one can make such a claim.” He also insisted that a ceasefire in Lebanon had to be included in the memorandum of understanding that would lead to Iran allowing commercial shipping through the strait, and the US lifting its blockade of Iran’s ports. By contrast, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, still held out hope that a deal could be reached on Monday, but there appeared to be a mounting list of unresolved problems in what was intended to be a roadmap to reopening the nuclear talks that Trump abandoned in February in favour of war. Rubio said it took time to receive an answer from the Iranian political system but he emphasised: “Either we will have a good deal or we will deal with this issue in another way, and we prefer to have a good deal.” Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, Rubio said there was a “pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the strait [of Hormuz], get the strait open, enter into a very real, significant, time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter, and hopefully we can pull it off.” The plan reportedly being considered would restore full access to the strait of Hormuz in 30 days after any deal to end hostilities between the two countries. Under the proposed framework, Iran would use a 30-day post-ceasefire period to remove mines from the strategic waterway, Reuters reported on Monday, citing a Middle East diplomatic source speaking to Nikkei. Amid the efforts to reach a peace deal, the US military’s Central Command said on Monday that US forces have carried out strikes on southern Iran in “self-defence”. The strikes targeted missile launch sites and Iranian boats seeking to lay mines, Centcom was quoted as saying. It said the military will defend US forces “while using restraint” during the ongoing ceasefire. The US president, Donald Trump, said in a post on Truth Social on Monday that the deal would either be “great and meaningful, or there will be no deal at all”. Trump added that he had asked countries including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey to join the Abraham accords en masse to normalise relations with Israel. He said he spoke on Saturday to the leaders of those countries, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which have already signed the accords, a set of agreements to normalise relations with Israel. “I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords, and that, if Iran signs its Agreement with me, as President of the United States of America, it would be an Honor to have them also be part of this unparalleled World Coalition,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. He cited “all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together”. Barbara Leaf, a former US assistant secretary for near east affairs, said: “Suffice to say there are no takers among those who are not part of the Abraham accords to join that agreement. You are not going to get Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to do that. Absolutely not.” She said the proposal had been greeted with “stunned silence” when Trump put it to the regional leaders by phone at the weekend. The Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, suggested the Abraham accords plan would not make the emerging deal any more palatable to Israel, describing the deal as disturbing and bad for the region. He said the Israeli government was at “an all-time low in its ability to influence decisions in Washington”. In his press briefing, Baghaei also said no nuclear issues, such as what to do with the Iranian stockpile of highly enriched uranium, would be tackled in the memorandum except for a commitment to negotiate in the next 60 days. Trump, under mounting pressure from critics inside the Republican party, wants the memorandum to contain a commitment by Iran to dispose of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, even if the precise method is not detailed. In previous rounds of talks with the US, Iran has said it is willing to down-blend the enriched uranium, but it will not permit the transfer of the stockpile to either the US or Russia. It has spoken of suspending domestic enrichment for as long as five years, but not the 20 years sought by the US. Iranian officials also claimed the political outcry about the deal inside the US was placing pressure on Trump to backtrack on plans to release as much as $12bn (£9bb) in frozen Iranian assets held in Qatar. The governor of Iran’s central bank, Abdolnaser Hemmati, travelled to Qatar on Monday. The release of the assets is a central Iranian demand, but has painful parallels for Trump, who lambasted Barack Obama for giving $1.7bn to Iran in cash at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal. Baghaei, referring to the chaos in Washington, said: “You are faced with a wave of dismissals, contradictory statements, opposition from Congress and also opposition from parts of public opinion.” Trump by contrast has dismissed his critics, saying he would not “listen to losers who are critical of something they know nothing about”. The deal contains nothing on Iran’s ballistic missiles or support for its regional proxy groups; as such, it contrasts with Trump’s promise that the war would end with Iran’s complete surrender. Baghaei accused Israel of trying to scupper the deal, saying nothing else should be expected of the Israelis. On the strait of Hormuz, Baghaei said talks were held on Monday between Omani and Iranian officials. He claimed the reason Oman and Iran were trying to establish a reliable and effective mechanism to ensure safe passage in the strait was precisely because “we believe in the use of this international waterway for free trade and safe navigation”. Rejecting claims the Iranian plan amounted to nationalisation of an open waterway, he said that if “navigation services are provided, plus necessary measures to protect the environment of the strait, these require the collection of fees. The term tolls should not be used. We do not charge tolls. I think we should be careful in the choice of words.” European and Gulf states are likely to see this as a distinction without a differences, especially if commercial shipping is in effect required to seek Iran’s navigational services. Inside Iran, many commentators saw the imminent deal as a roadmap to a hostile coexistence aimed at managing the tension, rather than ending it. The sense that the war for now may be reaching its endgame was underlined by reports that Iran’s officials would reconnect Iran to the international internet within a week after a vote by the supreme national security council. Iranian officials, facing soaring inflation of food prices, are nervous about the public reaction once internet controls are lifted. The spate of executions inside Iran continues unabated.
More than 350 French towns have recorded their highest-ever temperatures for May as France and the UK set national heat records amid an extreme early-summer heat event that could see the mercury rise to 40C in parts of Spain by the end of the week. The UK’s Met Office said the country’s all-time record for May was broken when a temperature of 34.8C was recorded at London’s Kew Gardens. Météo France said late on Monday that new monthly highs for May had been recorded at 352 weather stations mainly in western France, with the highest – 37.1C – registered near Hossegor, in the south-western department of Landes. “This is an unprecedented event with a one in 1,000 chance of happening at this time of year based on the climate from 1979 to 2025 and virtually impossible in the preindustrial era,” Christophe Cassou, a climate scientist, told Le Monde. More new highs are likely to be set in France, Spain and the UK, forecasters said, with temperatures exceeding norms by 12C or 13C in what Météo France described as a “premature, remarkable and long” heat episode expected to last several more days. France’s national weather agency said the record temperatures were caused by a heat dome, with hot air from Morocco trapped under an area of high pressure, adding that Europe could expect such events to “occur more and more often and earlier and earlier, and to be more and more intense”. Models have already estimated that, with the effects of climate breakdown, June heatwaves are now about 10 times more likely in Europe than they were in the preindustrial era, and the same trajectory is becoming visible for May. “This extension of the heatwave season is entirely characteristic of the effects of climate change,” Robert Vautard, a climate researcher, told Agence France-Presse. “Eventually, we will be seeing similar heat events in April and October.” Thirty-one of metropolitan France’s 96 administrative departments have been placed on high-temperature alert until Tuesday, including eight on level orange, the second-highest, requiring residents to “take precautions”. It was first time the country’s national heat warning system has been activated during May since it was introduced in 2004. Météo-France said in a bulletin on Monday that temperatures could climb locally to near 36C in multiple towns and cities, and to 37C on Tuesday. “The west of the country will see temperatures several degrees higher than ever recorded in May,” it said. The mercury rose past 35C in the western towns of Niort and Nantes and reached 34.3C in Poitiers, while the capital, Paris, approached 33C. Much of the north-western region of Brittany was expecting temperatures of between 33C and 35C on Tuesday. Le Parisien newspaper said the national temperature average, measured at 30 weather stations across the country, hit a record 24.4C on Monday, against a previous high of 23.7C dating back to 1944. The figure has not yet been confirmed by Météo France. A man died during a 10km running race in the Paris suburb of Maisons-Alfort on Sunday, civil defence services said, reportedly after suffering a heart attack, while 10 more runners had to be taken to hospital in critical condition after the race. The hot spell in Spain – where temperatures in some southern areas hit 38C over the weekend, between 5C and 10C higher than normal – is also expected to continue through the week, said Rubén del Campo of the state meteorological office Aemet. “The other really notable thing is that the situation is going to last until at least the end of the week. In fact, it could get even hotter on Thursday and Friday, with temperatures of at least 34C across most of the country,” del Campo said. Widespread highs of 36-38C in the Guadiana, Guadalquivir and Ebro valleys are expected between Wednesday and Friday, he added, saying that “in some of those areas, temperatures could reach 40C”. Del Campo also said much of the country could expect so-called “tropical nights”, in which the night-time temperature does not drop below 20C. Parts of the UK could enter a heatwave, with temperatures exceeding 26C to 28C – depending on the location – for three days. In France, night-time temperatures must also stay above a certain level for an official heatwave to be declared.
Four senior lawyers, including the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, have written to Keir Starmer urging him to request that Indian prosecutors drop charges against the British national Jagtar Singh Johal on the basis that continued prosecution would be in manifest breach of the double jeopardy rule which prevents someone being tried twice for the same offence. Johal has been held in an Indian jail for eight years, and in March last year was acquitted of the terrorist charges laid against him in a court in Punjab. The court found the prosecutors had “miserably failed” to present any reliable evidence, despite having had seven years to do so. Despite his acquittal, Johal faces eight essentially duplicate cases filed by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), all based on the same “confession” printed on a sheet of paper that his supporters claim he signed after he was tortured by police with electricity and threatened with being burned alive. The letter urging Starmer, as a former human rights lawyer, to recognise the legal justice in intervening has also been signed by the distinguished barrister Lady Helena Kennedy, the former Lord Advocate for Scotland, Dame Elish Angiolini, and Geoffrey Robertson KC. It is hoped that the calibre of the letter writers might galvanise Starmer to intervene. In their letter, the four say it would be “entirely appropriate” for the UK government to ask the Indian government to drop the remaining case since domestic Indian proceedings would have acquitted Johal of all charges against him. The double jeopardy rule, they say, “reflects a basic and intuitive principle that in a just system, no one should be repeatedly prosecuted, tried or punished for crimes of which they have already been convicted or acquitted. The prohibition of double jeopardy exists across multiple areas of international law, including international human rights law, international criminal law and international humanitarian law. It is generally considered to form part of the right to a fair trial, which itself is part of customary international law, meaning it applies to all states, irrespective of whether they are party to a particular treaty or agreement.” They further point out that “the basic protection against double jeopardy is recognised in over 50 national constitutions, and is firmly established in common law jurisdictions, including Canada, Australia, Ireland, Israel, the US and New Zealand, as well as India and the UK.” They say the rule is also incorporated in Indian domestic law, and so to ask for his release would be showing due deference to the Indian legal system. They say they understand that “the UK cannot interfere in the legal systems of other countries, however it is vital that the executive and its agencies of every state respect the rule of law and uphold international minimum standards, particularly in cases involving the death penalty. “United Nations legal experts have found that Johal is arbitrarily detained, having been targeted for his activism exposing human rights abuses against India’s Sikh community.” Jagtar’s brother Gurpreet, who is based in Dunbarton, said “the prime minister needs to recognise this is not a legitimate legal process – it is a rigged game designed to punish my brother for his human rights activism, and it is endless. “He and his lawyer get called to the court, the NIA finds a pretext for delay, the judge agrees to a two-month adjournment … rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, Jagtar’s life is slipping away and the prime minister does nothing. Sir Keir Starmer knows arbitrary detention when he sees it. He knows what double jeopardy is. It’s time for him to show some leadership and bring Jagtar home.”
When Donald Trump launched a pre-emptive war on Iran with Israel in February, many in the country hailed the campaign as the crowning triumph of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political and diplomatic career. Three months on the regime is still in power in Tehran, Trump is chasing a deal that will reopen the strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, and the reported terms have provoked alarm, dismay and anger in Israel. “Israel is completely beholden to the decisions of a capricious, hollow and desperate American president,” Nahum Barnea wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, one of several commentators who condemned both the deal and the Israeli prime minister. “The greater the fury, the greater the roar, the greater the defeat,” he added, in a scathing account of Netanyahu’s strategy before and during the campaign that the US called Operation Epic Fury and Israel named Operation Roaring Lion. “If the agreement currently being talked about is signed, the damage will be even worse. The billions that will flow into the regime’s pockets will go a long way.” At the beginning of the war Israel’s security elite warned that Netanyahu risked sacrificing the country’s most vital foreign policy asset, bi-partisan support in the United States, in pursuit of regime change in Iran and possibly a boost in an election due by October. Almost three months on, US opinion polls indicate that a body blow to a decades-old legacy may be the conflict’s most enduring legacy for Israel. Israel has been not only locked out of negotiations with Iran, it has not even been updated on their progress, according to the New York Times. Its government has been forced to resort to drawing on regional allies and their espionage networks surveilling Iran’s leadership. The deal that Trump’s team is negotiating may put some constraints on Iran’s nuclear programme, but there was broad consensus they would be less restrictive than an agreement reached by Barack Obama’s administration in 2015. Netanyahu criticised that deal, officially known as the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA), in Washington DC at the time. “The emerging agreement is far worse than the previous one,” Ben Caspit wrote in Ma’ariv, highlighting the risk that fallout from the war and ceasefire deal could accelerate Iran’s nuclear programme, rather than destroying it as Netanyahu had promised. “If they [Iran] do come to possess a nuclear bomb, it will be Bibi’s bomb.” The assassination of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei removed the man who set up the nuclear programme but also held off the final stage of creating a weapon, he added. Israel’s other concerns going into the war, including a regional proxy network and a ballistic missile arsenal that caused death and destruction across Israel, do not appear to be on the table at all. Far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition are now pushing him to challenge the US president on a partial ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, implemented under pressure from Washington. “It is time for the prime minister to bang on Trump’s table and inform him that we are returning to war in Lebanon,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, wrote on social media on Monday. Worry about threats from Iran and its allies are probably behind polling that showed strong Israeli support for the decision to go to war with Iran, even after weeks of missile attacks. Immediately after the ceasefire, more than a third of Jewish Israelis said they were very or somewhat unhappy about it, compared with just over a quarter who were very or somewhat happy the fighting stopped, according to the Israel Democracy Institute. Backing for the government declined, however, as the conflict dragged on with no sign of the regime change Netanyahu had promised. Even in April, when there might have been more cause for Israeli optimism about continued US pressure on Iran, Israelis were disappointed with the government’s handling of the war. Just over a third rated the government’s performance positively, the same survey found. Not all criticism was aimed at Netanyahu, and not all those unhappy with the deal regretted the war, but the outline of Trump’s apparent plan found few champions in Israel. “To Trump’s credit, it needs to be said that at least he tried,” Ariel Kahana wrote in the Hebrew-language daily Israel Hayom. “His bold willingness to unleash the United States’ tremendous firepower on Iran is tens of times preferable over the historic impotence that was shown by all of his predecessors. “The bottom line is that Iran can and is presenting to the world a victory picture by dint of the very fact that it is still standing. Trump, for the time being, does not have a similar counter-picture of his own to show. That isn’t very good news for the Israeli people.”
The World Health Organization has warned that the Ebola outbreak is outpacing response efforts and countries neighbouring the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are at high risk from the disease. “We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us,” said the WHO’s director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as he urged neighbouring countries to take immediate action. Addressing an online meeting of the African Union about the outbreak, he also announced there had been 220 suspected deaths so far in the current Ebola outbreak and that he would travel to the DRC on Tuesday with Chikwe Ihekweazu, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies programme. Tedros’s announcement came as attacks by residents on health facilities in Ituri province, the centre of the outbreak, hampered the response. First on Saturday and again on Sunday, residents of Mongbwalu town in the DRC attacked the Mongbwalu general referral hospital. Dr Richard Lokodu, medical director of the facility, told Reuters that 18 Ebola patients had fled on Saturday after “unidentified individuals” burned tents, erected by Médecins Sans Frontières, where patients were being isolated. The hospital came under four waves of attacks on Sunday, he added, by young people mobilised by relatives of a religious leader who died of Ebola. Seven other patients escaped and Congolese police and soldiers had to intervene to restore order. A suspected patient who was in critical condition with haemorrhaging died in the second attack while trying to flee from his bed. The perpetrators of the attacks had wanted the bodies of the Ebola victims released for burial, Lokodu added. In a similar incident, a crowd on Thursday set fire to a treatment centre in Rwampara, near Bunia, after authorities refused to give them the body of a victim they wanted to bury themselves. The burial of bodies, which can be highly contagious, is handled by authorities for containment of the disease, but some families prefer traditional burials, which involve washing and touching the body. In previous outbreaks that has been proved to be a key driver of the spread of the disease. Earlier this month, Tedros declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern” after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths were reported in the DRC and two deaths in neighbouring Uganda. On Monday, Uganda announced two more Ebola cases, taking the total number of confirmed cases in the country to seven. The new cases are both Ugandan health workers in a private health facility in the capital, Kampala, the country’s health ministry said in a statement. The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which has no approved treatment or vaccine. The hotspots are Rwampara, Mongbwalu, Nyankunde and Bunia areas in the north-east DRC province of Ituri, a commercial and migration hub and a gold-rich region where conflict between militias allied to the Hema and the Lendu ethnic groups, who are fighting over land and the mineral, has killed more than 50,000 people since 1999. Cases have also been reported in Butembo and rebel-controlled Goma, both in North Kivu province, and Bukavu city, also rebel-held, in South Kivu province. On Monday, Tedros said containing the outbreak was complicated by Ituri and North Kivu being insecure and the lack of an approved vaccine. Reuters contributed to this report