BUNIA, Congo (AP) — At least 500 people have died out of over 1,500 confirmed cases in Congo’s Ebola outbreak, authorities said, as frontline workers threatened to go on strike on Monday over unpaid benefits and poor working conditions.
The outbreak has recorded 1,561 cases, including 506 deaths, since it was declared on May 15 as the spread continues to outpace response, Congo's Ministry of Health said in its latest update on Sunday night.
Frontline workers deployed in Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak, issued a 24-hour notice on Sunday threatening to strike if authorities fail to pay them and improve their working conditions.
The workers include mostly health professionals who have been laboring with little rest as they battle attacks from angry residents and widespread skepticism about the virus.
In the notice to the government, a copy of which was seen by The Associated Press, the workers both in and outside hospitals said they had not been paid benefits since the outbreak began and they do not have adequate supplies for their work.
They also complained of poor salaries, the "arrogance" of teams sent from Congo's capital of Kinshasa, and the “excessive” use of labor from other provinces without prioritizing local labor in Ituri, as well as the lack of adequate equipment.
The strike threats come just days after enrollment for clinical trials started, raising concerns in the epicenter about its possible impact. Any strike could also hamper efforts to slow the spread of the outbreak, which is now confirmed in three eastern provinces including North Kivu and South Kivu.
The lack of approved vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo virus, which is responsible for the latest Ebola outbreak, has complicated response efforts. The more common Zaire virus, for which there is a vaccine, was responsible for most of Congo’s past 16 outbreaks of the disease.
Officials are yet to identify the outbreak’s patient zero and still need to trace possibly tens of thousands of people who have come in contact with infected individuals.
The first month of this Ebola outbreak was already the worst on record, the World Health Organization has said.
A woman walk past the Evangelical Medical Center, in Bunia, eastern Congo, Friday, July 3, 2026, where Ebola clinical trials are scheduled to take place, (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
A view of health workers at the Evangelical Medical Center Bunia, eastern Congo, Friday, July 3, 2026, where Ebola clinical trials are scheduled to place, (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
A health worker stands at the Evangelical Medical Center, in Bunia, eastern Congo, Friday, July 3, 2026, where Ebola clinical trials are scheduled to take place. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
President Donald Trump plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on Wednesday while attending the NATO summit in Turkey, the White House said. Kyiv is trying to refocus Trump’s attention on the conflict with Moscow and Trump has publicly mused about Syria’s role in the Middle East.
The Trump administration will not seek new bids to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday as he faced new questions about the troubled project and the taxpayer money involved. Like Trump, Burgum said he’s 100% sure vandals caused the damage.
And fallout continues after Trump intervened on behalf of star U.S. forward Folarin Balogun, whose red-card suspension was lifted, allowing him to play in a World Cup match against Belgium on Monday. FIFA’s extraordinary move to grant the U.S. an exception triggered outrage in Europe. Norway’s coach called it “bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.”
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Trump may be preparing to install his own team at the Smithsonian Institution after a White House report branded its leadership, especially at the National Museum of American History, as radical activists who cannot be trusted.
Trump already revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian with an executive order targeting funding for programs advancing what he called “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology.”
Historian Lonnie Bunch, the Smithsonian’s current secretary, is the first African American to lead the institution. In an unrelated interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bunch said “America’s greatest strength, it’s not running away from its history, but it’s understanding how that history shaped us and continues to shape us.”
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Trump got what he wanted from NATO at last year’s summit: an alliance whose members had largely acceded to his demands to step up their defense spending.
This week, when he meets leaders in Turkey, his mission is to enforce that pledge.
The speed with which most NATO countries have tried to heed Trump’s call to spend 5% of their annual gross domestic product on defense over the next decade underscores how the U.S. president has reshaped the alliance and bent it to his will — even as he continues to spar with its members over the Iran war, his flirtation with annexing Greenland, and various personal tiffs.
Trump leaves Monday evening for the summit, and for days leading up to the trip has been airing grievances about how much the U.S. spends on defense compared with other countries. That’s despite efforts from Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary-general, who tried to feed the ego of the tempestuous U.S. leader in an Oval Office meeting last month.
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Trump on Sunday posted a falsified image of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding an Air Force One that had been spray-painted with graffiti.
It came months after another racist post by the president that showed the couple as primates in a jungle. That one was deleted after stiff, bipartisan backlash.
The latest image shows the Obamas smiling and waving at the top of stairs alongside a baby blue and white presidential plane with graffiti painted on it that included the Democrat’s campaign slogan “Yes We Can,” “Obama” and “BLM,” short for Black Lives Matter. The post also shows graffiti in Arabic on the plane that says the phrase “alhamdulillah,” which means “praise be to God” or “thank God.”
Trump has a yearslong record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas, and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric. That includes everything from feeding the lie that Obama was not born in the United States to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries and posts that have sparked anger on his Truth Social website.
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Trump intervened on behalf of star U.S. forward Folarin Balogun, whose red-card suspension was lifted in a decision that allows him to play in a World Cup match against Belgium on Monday.
Balogun, the American leader with three goals in the tournament, received a red card for stepping awkwardly on the right ankle of Tarik Muharemović of Bosnia-Herzegovina in a 2-0 round of 32 win on Wednesday, triggering an automatic one-game suspension.
FIFA announced Sunday that the suspension had been lifted for the round of 16 match, an extraordinary move that triggered praise from Trump and outrage from Belgium’s team. It appeared to be the first time since 1962 that a red card during a World Cup didn’t result in a suspension.
Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino after the game asking FIFA review the red card, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
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The Trump administration will not seek new bids to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday as he faced new questions about the troubled project and the taxpayer money involved.
Like Trump, Burgum said he was 100% sure that vandals caused the damage to the century-old Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Trump has charged that a 350-foot gash was cut into the pool’s liner in the midst of recent renovations, while Burgum described it as multiple cuts adding up to that figure. He also said the pool would have to be at least partially drained in the coming week to finish the repairs.
The repairs will not be opened up to new contractors, he said.
“We’ll use the same company, because they did a fantastic job,” Burgum told CNN’s “State of the Union.” ”Thankfully, the vandalism was small. It was bad. I mean, it could cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair, so then it could fall into a felony ... just like damaging any other government property could. But the job that was done to fix the Reflecting Pool was done extremely well.”
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President Donald Trump plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on Wednesday while attending the NATO summit in Turkey, the White House said. Those discussions will come as Kyiv tries to refocus Trump’s attention on the conflict with Moscow and as Trump has publicly mused about Syria’s role in the Middle East.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly confirmed the meetings in a call with reporters while previewing the upcoming summit in Ankara, where Trump also plans to meet with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday. Before returning to the United States on Wednesday, Trump is scheduled to have a news conference, Kelly said.
Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy comes as Russia’s war in Ukraine is now in its fifth year. Both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin held phone calls with Trump on Saturday, congratulating him on the July Fourth commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, center, arrives ahead of the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, Monday, July 6, 2026. (Abdullah Güçlü, Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks during a media conference at the end of the NATO summit as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listen in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
A worker wades through the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as crews install fireworks ahead of the America 250 July 4th celebration on the National Mall, Thursday, July 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
FILE - President Donald Trump holds the FIFA World Cup Winners Trophy as FIFA President Gianni Infantino looks on during an announcement in the Oval Office of the White House, Aug. 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
