Ebola Outbreak in Congo Surges

The preliminary agreement between Iran and the U. S. excludes another party to the war that got us here Israel. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah threatens US Iran negotiations. I'm Scott Simon. I'm Aisharasco and this is up first from NPR News . As the US and Iran try to move toward negotiating a lasting deal, Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon have agreed to renew their ceasefire deal . It doesn't seem to be holding. We'll tell you more. We'll also look at how the U. S. Iran agreement is being received here in the U. S. among Republican lawmakers. And we'll have the latest on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo where cases of the deadly disease are surging and aid has been slow to arrive. So stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend Iran has once again closed the Strait of Hormuz over Israel's continued attacks in Lebanon. Deadly Israeli airstrike struck Lebanon today, and that was shortly after Israel and Hezbollah renewed a ceasefire agreement. The fighting could have a direct impact on negotiations between Iran and the U. S. aimed at a lasting deal that would include curtailing Iran's nuclear program . And because Jane Araf is in Beirut, Jane, thanks for being with us. Thank you, Scott. Straight of Hormuz closed again and the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is not holding. What's going on? Iran is now saying that it was Washington's job to ensure Israel adhered to the ceasefire in Lebanon. And it's saying that Washington did not fulfill that commitment, and it calls it a violation of the understanding it had with the United States. Iran further says that calls the entire agreement, including open ing the Strait of Hormuz into question . That's after Israeli attacks Friday and Saturday. Those attacks were in the Becca Valley in the East , but mostly in southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces have invaded and are trying to take more territory . Hezbollah is fighting back . Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least fifty five people, including twelve children, according to state media and local officials , and Hezbollah attacks on advancing forces inside Lebanon killed four Israeli soldiers . So not much of a ceasefire. At preliminary agreement President Trump signed on Wednesday with Iran explicitly includes Lebanon and the ceasefire, but as you've reported, it hasn't really been fully enforced . Where does that leave the wider agreement with Iran? Well, as we've seen, Israel believes it's not bound by that wider agreement, which calls for ensuring Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity. In fact, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli military is destroying Lebanese border villages , including infrastructure , making it impossible for two hundred thousand residents to return . And Israeli troops are trying to take a strategic Hezbollah position deeper into Lebanon. Hezbollah has been att acking Israeli tanks and troops to prevent that advance. Earlier this week, you were in Napatia , still a center of fighting. What's life like there? There is an awful lot of destruction, including downtown in the historic Ottoman era market, hundreds of years old . All of that was heavily damaged . We met one of the town residents Najeev Ayad a little further into the city. He was returning briefly to see the damage to his apartment . So a part of the building had collapsed and there was so much rubble it was difficult to get through the door even. There was the sound of artillery in the distance. You could see smoke ris ing. And inside all the glass had been blown out, including the balcony doors. He's saying, You see that castle? See what it looks like . He says the Israelis are still there. And from his balcony, you can see the Beaufort Castle. It's a crusader era fortress on a strategic hill that's now occupied by Israeli forces. Mafia Loki . So he said that as long as Israeli forces are that close, he could never move back. There are now more than one million people displaced in Lebanon. Some had tried to return , but recent fighting has driven them out again. And here's Jane Raff in Beirut. Thanks so much. Thank you. Israel, who went to war with Iran alongside the U. S., has been highly critical of the framework for a potential deal between Iran and the US This has not been received well in the White House where President Trump and Vice President JD Vance used uncharacteristically tough language this week against the US ally . And here's Ron Elvin joins us. Ron. Thanks for being with us . Good to be with you, Scott. President Trump used some what I'll call choice words in an interview this week talking about Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to launch strikes on Beirut right before the MOU was agreed to , words we cannot play on the air. Let's just say that he questioned the Israeli Prime Minister's judgment . Then Vice President JD Vance was asked in an interview with the New York Times whether he thought Israel has incentives for the agreement not to go through and this is what the Vice President posed to Israeli critics. What is your exact proposal ? And you know, you're a country of nine million people . You can't just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have. Why there's kind of rhetoric ? There's so much at stake here, Scott. There's the fragile ceasef ire that may or may not be holding for the moment, as we just heard from Jane Araf. Then there's the fate of the MOU between the US and Iran. There's at least a short term chance for peace in the region , and then there's the future of the relationship between the U. S. and Israel. That's been so important to both for almost eighty years. So two months ago the current war began with coordinated attacks by the U. S. and Israel on Iran and its ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Now the Trump administration wants to dial back, make a deal, or at least start to make one, so the world oil market can recover and stop endangering the U. S. economy and the world economy, but Israel still sees itself fighting a threat at its doorstep from Hezbollah. When the agreement to extend the ceasefire and open the Strait of Hormuz was announced, President Trump hailed it as a success. But it is being questioned by many critics at home , most notably some members of his own party. What can you tell us? Conservative hard line Republicans are saying that this deal seems, if it is a deal , seems to squander the military successes of the past two months, in exchange for little or nothing, beyond a return to where things stood in February when ships were flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. As for nuclear weapons, Iran is apparently only required to say they won't develop them ever , and to have more negotiations on the subject . And in exchange, the U. S. has offered to lift sanctions on Iran and make available some of Iran's financial assets that have been frozen and even set up a fund to rebuild what Iran lost in the recent fighting. So some of these Republicans who object have been doubters for a while. Others say might have been political , let's say, rivals of the president at one time. Others had political scores to settle with Trump. But then you have such loyalists as Roger Wicker, Mississippi Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee . These people seem genuinely surprised and distressed at this turn of events. A wicker for one says that the Iranians will use every penny that they get from this new arrangement to further their ultimate goals , which are death to America, death to Israel . And yet, Trump has lumped all these Republican critics together and dismissed them as, quote, fools. The negotiations, the announcement of the agreement occurred while the President was in France for the G seven . And because the President has so much global responsibility, is under unrelenting pressure at all times, a lot of observers noted , he looked and sounded tired. The Wednesday news conference was especially striking. Trump was rambling, often off topic, lacking his usual bravado , but it was hard not to notice the contrast with French President Emanuel Macron, who was after all thirty two years younger and hosted the summit with grace and assurance. There was a little spat over a picture to be taken with the Italian prime minister, George Maloney. Trump said she'd begged him to take a picture with her. She took strong exception to that. Now the Italian foreign minister has canceled a trip to the U. S. And then Scott at the end of the conference, when the G seven leaders posed for their usual class picture after the meeting, a Trump stood as a caucus of one, while the others conferred and engaged with each other. And Pierre's Ron Elvid, thanks so much. Thank you, Scott. The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo that emerged last month is surging at an unprecedented pace with at least nine hundred cases and nearly two hundred fifty deaths confirmed since then. Health officials there are overwhelmed with cases. Emmett Livingstone just returned from a reporting trip to the region and joins us, Emmett, thanks for being with us. Thank you . You've spent a week in a tour in the area that's at the heart of the Ebola outbreak How bad is it? Yeah , to put it bluntly, the situation is dire. For lots of people, life is still continuing as before, but because it has to. Children are going to school, people are going to church on Sundays and so on, but there's also a growing sense of fear. Ebola is spreading across a huge and difficult to access area. It's also spreading in Bunya, a city of over one million people. And there is a massive international response underway, but this outbreak was caught very late. In the hospitals I visited there was a constant arrival of suspected Ebola patients . And in many cases, because of poor health infrastructure, there's no way to isolate these cases . So they risk infecting others. People are also dying every day. Health personnel also say they don't have enough PPE. Doctors explain to me that lots of PPE like masks or gloves is single use, so there needs to be a constant supply. And because the disease has spread so widely, nurses in rural areas are coming into daily contact with suspected Ebola patients too, and for the most part they have nothing. You of course have been inside Ebola treatment centers and hospitals , how were the healthcare workers coping? I saw a difference between doctors working in Ebola treatment centers and other health personnel. Only a handful of these treatment centers are operating at the moment and they've been set up specifically for Ebola patients. The doctors working there are often world specialists. But then there's the other health personnel, the community nurses or doctors working in small clinics. They're not trained for this, and yet they're highly exposed . Dozens of health workers have already been infected and some unfortunately have already died . And of course, as you said, the number of cases is quickly rising. Our healthcare workers able to keep up doing contact tracing, isolating people who are infected . Yeah, it's actually hard to know for sure because so much of this outbreak is happening out of view. The government says seventy two percent of contacts are being traced, but aid workers are very skeptical of this figure. Some told me off the record that it's probably around forty percent. What this means in simple terms is that the outbreak is out of control. And of course, that means there's a risk of regional spread. Many people are not turning up to hospitals or health centers and are dying unnoticed. Health responders just don't know where all the cases are. So for example, it emerged this week that there have been dozens of suspicious deaths in a displacement camp in Bunya . This camp is right next to the city's airport and the headquarters of NGOs. If it's confirmed to be Ebola, it's spreading right under the nose of the official response. And then isolating suspected patients is also a huge problem. There's no system of triage in many hospitals or clinics, so suspected Ebola patients can be clumped together with others. To give you a concrete example, I visited a hospital forty kilometers outside of Bunya, where there was only one block of toilets for patients . So if you had Ebola or say appendicitis, you had to use the same facilities. Emmett, you've seen so much these past few days. I wonder if there's an image or a moment that stays with you in particular . Yes, there is. I mean, amid all of this complexity and darkness, there were moments of joy . And in particular, in Mongalu, a gold mining town at the heart of the outbreak, I happened to be in the hospital when two patients were released . One was a woman who was a member of staff at the hospital who had been infected, another was a three year old girl. They both looked a little bit dazed but the adult woman was smiling and clutching the little girl's hand. The hospital staff sang and danced, celebrating these patients who had survived the disease . It was a beautiful moments . Well, thank you so much Emmett Livingstone in Kinshasa. Thank you . And you can hear more of Emmett's coverage from the Ebola Epicenter at NPR next week, including a report from the mining town that's at the heart of the outbreak. That's Monday on All Things Considered . And that's up first for Saturday, june twentieth, twenty twenty six , I'm Scott Simon. And I'm Iish co, Dave Mistich, producer today's podcast along with Michael Radcliffe and Danny Henssel. Dee Parvaz was our editor with help from Melissa Gray, Miguel Masias, Tara Neil, and Jacob Finston. Our podcast has been directed by Andy Craig who worked alongside our technical director, David Greenberg. He's got engineering support from J Siz, Simon Las Jlansowsen, and Zoe Vanghoven. Shannon Rhodes is our senior supervising editor. Our executive producer is EV Stone and Katherine Laidlaw is our deputy managing editor. Tomorrow on Sunday story, you've heard of those online scams, right? Where people are either catfished or hoodwinked into forking over their life savings. In some instances, these operations are part of a whole industry where the scam work ers themselves are often trafficked and trapped into doing the work. You're going to want to tune in for that and for so much more. Thank you for listening and for supporting your local NPR station . And if you need to find your local station , go to stations . npr ot org