The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Sunday declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda a “public health emergency of international concern”, posing risks to neighbouring countries.

The WHO said the outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency, but that countries sharing land borders with the DRC are at high risk for further spread.

The UN health agency said in a statement that 80 suspected deaths, eight laboratory-confirmed cases and 246 suspected cases had been reported as of Saturday in the DRC’s Ituri province across at least three health zones, including Bunia, Rwampara and Mongbwalu.

International spread documented, WHO says

The DRC health ministry had said on Friday that 80 people had died in the new outbreak in the eastern province.

The 17th outbreak in the country, where Ebola was first identified in 1976, could in fact be much larger, given the high positivity rate of the initial samples and increasing number of suspected cases being reported, the WHO said.

The outbreak is “extraordinary” as there are no approved Bundibugyo virus-specific therapeutics or vaccines, unlike for Ebola-Zaire strains, it said. All but one of the country’s previous outbreaks were caused by the Zaire strain.

The DRC-Uganda outbreak poses a public health risk to other countries, with some cases of an international spread already documented, the agency said, advising countries to activate their national disaster and emergency-management mechanisms and undertake cross-border screening and screening at main internal roads.

In Uganda’s capital, Kampala, two apparently unrelated laboratory-confirmed cases, including one death, were reported on Friday and Saturday, from people travelling from the DRC, the WHO said.

A laboratory-confirmed case was also reported in the DRC capital of Kinshasa from a person returning from Ituri, the WHO said.

Bundibugyo virus-disease contacts or cases should not travel internationally, unless as part of a medical evacuation, the WHO said.

The agency advised immediately isolating confirmed cases and monitoring contacts daily, with restricted national travel and no international travel until 21 days after exposure.

At the same time, the WHO urged countries not to close their borders or restrict travel and trade out of fear, as this could lead to people and goods making informal border crossings that are not monitored.

The DRC’s dense tropical forests are a natural reservoir for the Ebola virus.

The often-fatal virus, which causes fever, body aches, vomiting and diarrhoea, spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons, contaminated materials or persons who have died from the disease, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing this week may have produced modest results by the standards of US-China summits but it highlighted a clear benefit for China: after the extremes of last year’s trade war, the countries have reverted to their familiar economic and strategic standoff.

Two days of talks between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping underscored that even after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and the ensuing trade detente the two sides reached late last year, Washington and Beijing are still locked in the contest that Trump inherited when he started his second term.

For the United States, that means that the most troubling aspects of the relationship — from what it considers Beijing’s mercantilist trade policies to its efforts to increase its military clout in the Indo-Pacific — remain largely unaddressed.

But for Xi it offers some breathing room and a return to a more predictable set of challenges. He appeared to describe the change this week with a new framework for the countries’ relations he called “constructive strategic stability.”

Trade War Truce

China came out ahead, given the retreat from the Trump administration’s brash approach on trade from early 2025, said Scott Kennedy, a China expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Compared to where we were a year ago, with 145pc tariffs and the US really trying to push China and the rest of the world to fundamentally change, we’ve had a counterrevolution and we’re back at stability,” Kennedy said.

Trump brought to the Thursday-Friday summit some of America’s most powerful executives, from Tesla’s Elon Musk to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, but most had little to show for their time, aside from a lavish banquet.

The meeting also did not secure any public commitment from China to help the US end the war in Iran that has roiled global markets and dented Trump’s approval ratings.

“The summit projected stability but it left the stalemate intact,” said Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

It “produced modest, marketable and managed outcomes, which is about all the US-China relationship can bear right now.”

Asked for comment, a White House official said, “President Trump leveraged his positive relationship with President Xi of China in order to bring home deliverables for the American people,” citing the sale of Boeing aircraft and agricultural agreements to expand American exports.

A spokesperson with the Chinese embassy in Washington called the meetings between Xi and Trump “candid, in-depth, constructive and strategic,” adding that they “explored the right way for two major countries to get along with each other.”

With last year’s trade war, Trump appears to have overestimated the power of tariffs to coerce China into unilateral concessions, analysts say. Beijing retaliated with its own tariff hikes and threatened to choke off supplies of critical minerals needed by US industries, forcing an uneasy standoff.

Since then, the White House has shown itself unwilling to bear the economic consequences that would come with applying the other forms of US financial and technological leverage, such as sanctions on China’s major banks.

Reflecting the change in tone, there was no public mention this week of many long-standing US demands, such as for China to address industrial overcapacity that its trade partners say unfairly floods their markets with low-cost goods.

China appears content with the fragile truce as it navigates a weak domestic economy and seeks to shore up technologies it hopes will turn the tide in long-term competition with the US.

Senior Trump administration officials had downplayed a desire for big outcomes even in the run-up to the meeting, saying there was no rush to extend a trade truce, expiring in five months, which the leaders reached after talks in South Korea in October.

‘Below Expectations’

A person familiar with the trade negotiations said China wanted a longer extension of the truce than the Trump administration was willing to give, as well as reassurances over pending US investigations likely to revive some tariffs on goods entering the US that were struck down by the Supreme Court this year.

Overall, neither side put much on the table for the summit, the source told Reuters, adding that some commercial deals could be saved for the fall, when Xi is expected to make a reciprocal visit to the White House.

The source requested anonymity to speak candidly about the negotiations.

The summit’s thin commercial results contrast with Trump’s 2017 visit to China, when companies accompanying him signed deals and memorandums of understanding valued at $250 billion.

This week’s meeting produced no breakthrough on selling Nvidia’s advanced H200 artificial intelligence chips to China, likely to the relief of Republican and Democratic China hawks in Washington, who had warned the administration against feeding China’s AI development.

Though still not confirmed, Trump said Boeing had sealed a deal for China to purchase 200 jets, well below the 500 anticipated and the 300 Beijing agreed to purchase during the 2017 visit.

The White House official said the US had established a new Board of Trade that US officials had mentioned as a joint mechanism to lower tariffs on non-sensitive goods, but offered few details.

Wendy Cutler, a former acting deputy US Trade Representative, called the economic deliverables “way below expectations.” For China, however, the meetings were a positive move toward clear-eyed competition, said Cui Shoujun, a professor of international affairs at Renmin University in Beijing.

The summit showed that Washington and Beijing are “no longer aspiring to pull China-US relations back to a cooperative golden age, but instead acknowledging the long-term nature of competition and disagreement,” he said.

Soaring diesel prices since the onset of the Iran war are draining already tight US school district budgets, making it more expensive to bus students and run generators in a shock officials say they will not be able to afford for long.

School districts from Yakima, Washington to Waco, Texas are tapping emergency funding reserves to keep buses running. In remote Alaska, officials are scrambling to secure enough fuel to keep the lights on, according to Reuters interviews.

“It’s more than a straw on the camel’s back, it’s like a haystack,” said Yakima Superintendent Trevor Greene.

The stress reflects one of many knock-on impacts of the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has disrupted the flow of around a fifth of the world’s oil supplies.

Since the war started in late February, fuel prices have posted one of their most rapid climbs on record. The spike has upended economies around the globe.

It has caused enough pain in the US to be a political liability for President Donald Trump ahead of November mid-term elections when his Republican party is trying to maintain slim majorities in the US Congress.

US school bus operators are major buyers of diesel, consuming more than 800 million gallons of diesel annually, according to the American School Bus Council.

Since December, the price US fleets of all types pay for diesel fuel has jumped 67 per cent to $5.52 a gallon, an increase that would add about $1.8 billion to the annual cost of operating those school buses, according to a recent analysis by fleet management technology provider Samsara.

That’s a huge challenge for schools already facing tight budgets, said James Rowan, executive director of the Association of School Business Officials International.

“Districts can plan for higher costs, but rapid swings in prices make it very difficult to budget accurately,” he said. “Even districts that have been able to absorb costs this year through reserves or temporary measures — they may not have that same flexibility going forward.”

Close to a third of US school districts are now siphoning money away from other funds or programs to cover their increased fuel costs, while almost a fifth are tapping reserves or rainy day funds, according to a survey of 188 school officials commissioned by the School Superintendents Association (AASA) and conducted during the week of May 4.

School officials are trying to save money by consolidating bus routes, enforcing anti-idling measures, changing fuel purchasing practices, deferring maintenance work and reducing administrative spending and staffing, according to the survey, the results of which were shared exclusively with Reuters.

‘Tremendously underfunded’

Washington State’s Yakima School District executives said the price they pay for diesel was recently up 64pc year-on-year to $6.30 a gallon. At that price, the district would need to pay $213,000 more a year on fuel to operate its 60 buses roughly the equivalent of salaries for two teachers, said Greene.

That is a big burden in an agriculture-dominated school district that has a poverty rate of 86pc, and which is already “tremendously underfunded,” he said.

In the meantime, the district is making piecemeal purchases for its 30,000-gallon diesel tank on days when prices dip, instead of filling it up, as it “limps through the end of the year,” district CFO Jacob Kuper said.

Christopher Mills, superintendent of Thief River Falls Public Schools in northwestern Minnesota, said diesel costs tied to transporting as many as 800 students are up around 30pc since the Iran war began.

The district is working to limit direct impacts on classrooms, Mills said, “but if the prices continue to increase we could be in a position of reducing support services to students.”

Even schools in oil-rich Texas have not been spared. The Waco Independent School District, which has more than 80 buses and average round-trip routes of about 60 miles per day, experienced an 84pc year-over-year increase in the price it paid for diesel in early April, the district said.

Pressure-packed

In Southwestern Alaska’s Yupiit School District, diesel is not used for buses but for classroom heat, and community generators for power.

“If they can’t produce electricity, then we can’t run the school,” Yupiit School District Superintendent Scott Ballard said in a telephone interview from his office in Akiachak.

The district, which serves 550 students, is icebound for much of the year, giving it a short window to get fuel.

So, leaders now face a difficult choice, Ballard said: Do they lock in a price almost 66pc higher than last year or gamble prices will fall? “We’re in a very pressure-packed situation.” At the other extreme, some of the largest US school districts are partially insulated from fuel price swings.

The New York City district, the nation’s largest by population, outsources about 60pc of pupil transportation in arrangements that often shift fuel price changes to contractors, said Paul Quinn Mori, president of the New York School Bus Contractors Association.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest, has been moving away from diesel-powered buses for years. Of its roughly 1,300-bus fleet, 70pc run on alternative fuels or batteries, a district spokesperson said.

“Rising diesel prices continue to impact Los Angeles Unifieds transportation budget; however, the district has taken proactive steps to reduce reliance on fossil fuels through significant investments in clean transportation,” a spokesperson said.

As United States President Donald Trump showered ​praise on his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday, the CEOs of several US aviation, commodities, technology, and finance conglomerates looked to ‌advance their business interests by meeting the heads of powerful Chinese regulators and ministries.

These include GE Aerospace, Boeing, Qualcomm, Cargill, Visa, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup, who held talks with the leading officials of Chinese government agencies such as the commerce ministry, state planner, securities regulator, and central bank, according to official government statements and state-backed media reports published on Friday and Saturday.

The US ​executives travelled to Beijing as part of the business delegation Trump brought to China. They stood behind Trump’s cabinet on Thursday morning as they ​were each introduced to Xi, and later in the evening mingled with Chinese officials and businesspeople at a state banquet.

The executives ⁠are hoping the political goodwill generated by the bonhomie between the two leaders can trickle down to China’s bureaucratic apparatus and unlock regulatory approvals, lucrative purchase deals, ​and even solve thorny issues in the world’s second-largest economy.

The corporate diplomacy push came as analysts questioned the effectiveness of Trump’s strategy to woo Xi into opening up ​China for US companies, as he seemingly left Beijing with far fewer trade and investment deals than in 2017.

“The summit served as a crucial window for attending US CEOs to reinforce corporate diplomacy and directly position their strategic asks with top Chinese authorities,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a Beijing-based managing director at Ankura China Advisers.

Post-summit meetings in Beijing

The chairman of China’s securities regulator and ​Beijing’s party secretary held talks with Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser in China and discussed enhancing cooperation in wealth management and cross-border financing, state-backed media said on Saturday.

Beijing ​Party Secretary Yin Li said China welcomed Citigroup to expand its business further and help attract more international companies and investment to the country, the state-backed Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Wu ‌Qing, chairman ⁠of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), also met Fraser, the regulatory body said in a statement. The two exchanged views on issues including the global economic and financial environment and the opening up of China’s capital markets.

Citi has been trying to deepen its onshore China capital markets presence after exiting a joint venture and applying in 2023 to set up a wholly owned securities brokerage firm, which is still awaiting regulatory approval.

Separately, the vice governor of the People’s Bank of China and the ​director of the State Administration of Foreign ​Exchange met with David Solomon, chairman ⁠and CEO of Goldman Sachs, the foreign-exchange regulator said in a statement.

Meanwhile, China’s commerce minister Wang Wentao met with Visa’s Ryan McInerney, Cargill’s Brian Sikes, and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, though details about the discussions were not disclosed in official Chinese communication.

Nvidia ​CEO Jensen Huang, known for engaging with locals on overseas business trips, strolled around central Beijing on Friday, trying ​local food and taking ⁠pictures with scores of fans.

After leaving Beijing on Friday, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that China had agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets and 400-450 GE Aerospace engines, with a potential for the order to rise to as many as 750 planes. The orders, if finalised, would mark Boeing’s first major Chinese deal in nearly a ⁠decade.

As Trump ​and Xi exchanged pleasantries over tea at the Chinese leader’s Zhongnanhai residence, the CEOs of Boeing ​and GE Aerospace met with the heads of China’s state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), in a move analysts said was likely aimed at securing a delivery timeline for the jet and ​engine purchase orders.

A looming 18-day strike at South Korean chip giant Samsung that has triggered worries within the government, rattled foreign investors and threatened global supply chains rests on one crucial question: who should share in the spoils of the AI boom?

More than 45,000 workers are threatening to stage the largest strike in the conglomerate’s history from May 21, reducing production of memory chips that are crucial components in AI data centres, smartphones and laptops, as Samsung and its union struggle to find a compromise over bonus payouts.

Samsung Electronics, which has reaped huge profits from a global memory shortage, has offered to pay generous bonuses to staff. But it wants to give 27,000 memory chip employees at least six times more than its other workers in its logic chip design and manufacturing businesses.

Its union argues that the firm’s other 23,000 workers —responsible for making AI chips for Tesla and Nvidia — who often work in the same buildings as their memory colleagues should not be left behind, despite suffering billions in losses in recent years as the foundry business floundered.

Reuters reviewed hundreds of pages of transcripts covering Samsung internal wage negotiations and spoke with more than 10 workers, including union leaders, and sources familiar with the discussions.

They spoke of deep divisions, described employee departures and revealed how this could be traced to — and threaten — Samsung’s unusual goal to become the world’s only semiconductor company offering a “one-stop” shop that spans different types of chips and services, unlike more specialized competitors like Micron or TSMC.

The internal discussions showing friction between the company divisions and employee departures have not been previously reported.

JPMorgan estimated the strike could impact Samsung’s operating profit by 21 trillion won to 31 trillion won ($14.08 billion to $20.79bn), while sales losses could stand at about 4.5 trillion won.

Samsung’s Device Solutions Division includes three main businesses —memory, system LSI, and foundry — and the AI boom has made these divisions wildly unequal in profitability. Samsung is the world’s top memory chipmaker by sales but also makes televisions and smartphones.

The issues are “partly self-inflicted by the company,” Namuh Rhee, a Yonsei University professor and chairman of a Korean corporate governance group, said on social media.

He said Samsung’s move to put different businesses together created a complex business structure that results in a valuation discount while causing conflicts of interest and limiting business opportunities. “Samsung must enable foundries to become self-reliant.”

Talent drain threat

Discontent among Samsung workers grew last year after rival SK Hynix abolished its bonus pay cap for 10 years. This resulted in bonuses more than three times higher than those offered to Samsung workers, which later lured some people to jump ship.

In March, Samsung proposed that memory chip workers receive bonuses that would top those of SK Hynix employees, or 607 per cent of their annual salary, according to transcripts of its wage negotiations. The company’s memory and ​logic chip businesses used to receive the same bonus plan.

But employees in its other businesses who work primarily on logic chips, such as “base die” which are crucial components of AI chips, would receive bonuses of 50pc to 100pc, according to the documents.

Union officials argued that the big gap ​in bonuses would push logic chip employees to leave for the memory unit or for other companies, crippling it after Samsung Chairman Jay Y. Lee said he wants to be the “clear No. 1” in the logic chip market by 2030.

“If the memory division gets 500 million won while the foundry division only ‌gets 80m won, ⁠what motivation would those employees have to keep working?” said union leader Choi Seung-ho during negotiations, according to the transcripts.

Some workers said an exodus was already underway. A worker who identified himself by his surname, Lee, a foundry engineer in Pyeongtaek, said his team has shrunk sharply in the past couple of years as some of them moved to Samsung’s memory division and SK Hynix.

Two other employees who declined to be named said many of their colleagues are currently applying for jobs with SK Hynix and other companies. SK Hynix did not provide an immediate comment.

The union’s demands include requests for Samsung to abolish a bonus cap of 50pc of annual salaries and allocate 15pc of annual operating profit to a bonus pool distributed to workers.

Samsung negotiators say performance bonuses should be paid out according to merit.

“They, the logic chip business, posted losses in the trillions of won and ​honestly, if it had not been for our company, they probably ​would have gone out of business or closed down,” said Samsung ⁠executive and negotiator Kim Hyung-ro, according to the transcripts. “So how can you justify giving performance bonuses?”

“The company still has faith in this business and continues to invest consistently in facilities — and in reality, those investments are being funded with money earned from the memory business.”

In a statement, Samsung said “the logic chip business is a strategically significant business which we have continuously invested in, guided by our long-term vision.”

“Samsung Electronics will offer its ​employees the best compensation in the industry” with the latest proposal, it said.

During his first year back in office, United States President Donald Trump’s blustery negotiating style won him concessions from countries on issues ranging from tariffs to armed conflict.

But with Iran, that same brand of coercive diplomacy, marked by public threats, insults and ultimatums, seems to have hit a wall and may be undermining his own efforts to end a war that has shaken the global economy.

With the two sides deadlocked, Trump has signalled growing frustration over the 11-week-old crisis but has shown little inclination to soften his harsh diplomatic approach toward Iran’s leaders.

That does not bode well for a quick negotiated settlement, fueling fears that the current standoff — and its unprecedented shock to world energy supplies — could drag on indefinitely with periodic bouts of brinkmanship.

Among the ‌main obstacles, analysts say, is the Iranian rulers’ mindset, including their need to save face with their own domestic audience, despite US-Israeli strikes having killed many top leaders.

Though Iran has essentially maintained a chokehold on the vital Strait of Hormuz, giving it considerable leverage, Trump has persisted with a diplomatic playbook characterised by maximalist demands, unpredictability, mixed signals and scathing language.

Even more significant, analysts say, is Trump’s insistence on emerging from the conflict framing it as an absolute victory for the US — even if this doesn’t match the reality on the ground — while the Iranians must accept total defeat, which they are not likely to do.

“That inevitably gets in the way of reaching a reasonable deal because no government, not just Iran’s, can afford to be viewed as having capitulated,” said Rob Malley, a former Iran negotiator in the Obama and Biden administrations.

The continuing impasse with Iran comes as Trump faces domestic pressure over high US gasoline prices and his own low approval ratings after he embarked on an unpopular war ahead of November’s midterm elections. His Republican Party is struggling to maintain control of Congress.

White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales defended Trump’s diplomatic approach based on what she said was a “proven track record of achieving good deals” and insisted that the Iranians were showing increasing “desperation” for an agreement.

“President Trump is ⁠a master negotiator who always sets the right tone,” she said.

Apocalyptic threat

His most chilling words came last month when he threatened in a social media post to wipe out Iran’s civilisation unless it reached a deal — a message that administration officials told the Wall Street Journal was improvisational and not vetted as part of a national security strategy.

Trump ultimately backed down and agreed to a truce. But since his profanity-laced Easter Sunday threat to destroy Iran’s bridges and power grid, he has repeated that warning, including to reporters on Air Force One returning from China on Friday.

And last week, Trump told reporters they would know that the current ceasefire had collapsed if they saw “one big glow coming out of Iran”, which some interpreted as a threat to deploy nuclear weapons, something he has insisted he would never do.

Trump has reserved some of his toughest words for Iran’s leaders, calling them “crazy bastards”, “lunatics”, and “thugs”, and Tehran has responded with its own extensive campaign taunting him with graphic memes and social media posts.

He has repeatedly insisted that Iran has been completely crushed despite evidence to the contrary, said they were “begging” for a deal — only to have the Iranians deny it — while oscillating between demands for “unconditional surrender” and calls for a negotiated settlement. The Iranians, however, have claimed it as a win to have simply survived the military onslaught, showing they can exact a big economic price.

There has been no effort inside the White House to persuade Trump to show greater restraint in his messaging on Iran, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

While opinion polls show his MAGA movement has mostly stood with him, some prominent figures who have supported him in the past have spoken out against the war and criticised his more extreme threats.

Social media after midnight

Some of Trump’s harshest statements, often delivered on his Truth Social platform after midnight, have come at critical junctures, such as last month when he abruptly announced a blockade of Iran’s ports and it then retaliated, imperilling the already-fragile ceasefire.

On Monday, Trump dismissed the latest peace proposal from Iranian officials as a “piece of garbage”.

“The lack of strategic patience and ‌inconsistency of the president’s ⁠rhetoric undercuts whatever message he wants to send,” said Dennis Ross, a former senior Middle East adviser in Democratic and Republican administrations.

During Trump’s visit to Beijing, he mostly refrained from tough verbal attacks on Iran while preoccupied with important relations with China, Tehran’s ally and oil customer.

But some analysts suggested it would be best for Trump, who often speaks publicly and gives impromptu phone interviews to reporters, to tone down his rhetoric for good if he is serious about finding an off-ramp in the conflict.

“He talks too much,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters last month during a visit to Turkiye.

Trump — a former New York real estate developer who touts himself as a master deal maker — has long insisted that being unpredictable is a negotiating tactic aimed at keeping opponents off-balance.

This approach has helped him gain concessions in some cases when he has sought tariff agreements with trading partners, though he has often settled for less than his initial demands. In some conflicts, such as the swift US military campaign against Venezuela that led to the capture of its leader and last year’s talks that secured a ceasefire in the Gaza war, his pressure tactics have also yielded results.

With the ⁠Iranians, Trump — who campaigned on a promise to keep the US out of foreign wars — wants to look dangerous to intimidate them into giving ground over their nuclear program and other issues, analysts say.

But former US officials who have negotiated with Iran say this is not likely to work, especially given the entrenchment of its clerical and military establishments and the country’s pride in its long history.

In fact, Trump’s threats may have emboldened Iran’s new rulers, considered more hardline than their slain predecessors, who have even less trust for him following US attacks twice in the past year while the two sides were still in negotiations, analysts say.

“There’s been this false perception that if you just put enough pressure on Iran, they’ll capitulate, but that’s just not how it works with Iran,” said Nate Swanson, ⁠a former State Department official who served on the Iran negotiating team until July.

Barbara Leaf, former Middle East envoy under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, said that in addition to the president’s rhetoric, his Iran campaign has been hindered by “a giddy assumption that Iran was a Venezuela-like problem for resolution (and) wholesale misunderstanding of the regime’s inherent resilience”.

And some experts believe Trump’s approach, which he has said is primarily aimed at ensuring Iran has no path to a nuclear weapon, could backfire.

The US military campaign, coupled with Trump’s coercive diplomacy, might make Iran more — rather than less — likely to ramp up efforts to eventually develop a nuclear bomb so that it might shield itself like nuclear-armed North Korea, analysts say. Iran has long insisted on ⁠its right to enrich uranium but says it is only for peaceful purposes.

Adding to the tensions, Trump and the Iranians appear to be operating on different clocks - the impulsive president typically wants a quick deal so he can move on, while Iranian delegations have a history of dragging out talks.

Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, an academic in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a US Gulf ally, said the president could tone down his rhetoric but Iran’s intransigence is more to blame for the current stalemate than Trump’s “threats and bombastic comments”.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, said leaders in Tehran may be interpreting Trump’s erratic approach as a sign of desperation and believe they can wait him out.

“In some ways, Trump plays right into their hands,” he said.

Indian veteran Virat Kohli said he has nothing left to prove and would consider playing the 2027 One-Day International (ODI) World Cup only if he can still contribute meaningfully.

The 37-year-old, who retired from Twenty20 Internationals after India’s 2024 World Cup triumph and ended his 123-test career last year, is now active only in the ODI format.

Kohli played 13 ODIs last year, scoring 651 runs, and returned to the Indian Premier League after last representing India in January. He has already struck one century in the current IPL season.

Asked about his prospects for the 2027 World Cup, Kohli said he remains ready to represent India but would not pursue selection unless convinced he could add value.

“If I can add value to the environment that I’m a part of and the environment feels like I can add value I’ll be seen,” Kohli said on a podcast of his IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore.

“When I arrive to play, I put my head down, I work as hard, if not harder, than anyone else. And I play the game in the right way.

“I prepare for the fact that I will field 50 overs every ball like it’s the last ball I’m going to play in my career, and I will bat that way and I will run between the wickets that way, and I will do everything possible for the team.

“After operating like this, if I have to be in a place where I have to prove my worth and value, that place is not meant to be for me. And I am very clear in my head from that perspective.”

Kohli, a former India captain, has featured in 311 ODIs, amassing 14,797 runs at an average of 58.71. Only Sachin Tendulkar, with 18,426 runs, has scored more in the format.

Now in his 17th year of international cricket, Kohli has faced scrutiny over consistency, particularly after back-to-back ducks against Australia last year, but responded with strong performances against South Africa and New Zealand.

“Look, if you go to your workplace, and if people say we believe in your abilities, and then a week later they start questioning the way you operate, it’s like, why?” Kohli said.

“Either tell me on day one I’m not good enough or I’m not needed. Or if you’ve said I’m good enough and you say we’re not even thinking otherwise, then be quiet.”

The 2027 ODI World Cup is scheduled to be held in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia in October and November next year.

A rodent-borne virus with a scary name. A mid-ocean cruise ship in quarantine. Several people dead and more falling sick.

It is no wonder that an outbreak of the Andes strain of hantavirus on a luxury liner in the Atlantic has revived some Covid-era trauma and panic online.

That has presented a dilemma to health officials: how to communicate quickly and clearly about a virus which is not new and unlikely to cause a pandemic, but where knowledge gaps remain — without inadvertently fomenting fear.

“Hantavirus thread incoming,” posted the health department of Illinois state in the US earlier this week about a risk-free case unrelated to the MV Hondius cruise ship outbreak.

“But you have to promise to read this whole thread before panic-texting your group chat. Deal?”

In interviews with Reuters, half a dozen health officials said they were trying to learn from mistakes around Covid, providing information on hantavirus with more empathy while addressing uncertainties and tackling falsehoods.

“We spend half of our time discussing how we will communicate,” said Gianfranco Spiteri, emergencies lead at the EU’s European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

During Covid, many governments were slow to react or in denial, public messaging was sometimes confusing and contradictory, restrictions and vaccine rollouts were applied differently around the world, and misinformation and politicisation proliferated.

That helped fuel modern mistrust of institutions.

For example, faith in public health institutions declined in 20 of 27 EU countries between 2020 and 2022, one study showed.

Juggling the communications

Spiteri and others at the forefront of the hantavirus response spoke about the need to balance explanations of why it is a serious global health event with reassurances that risks to the public are low, and honesty over the open questions about a virus that has rarely spread among humans before.

“There are people who say we are overdoing it, and on the other extreme, that were not doing enough,” he said. “We always base our messages on the evidence we have.”

From a look at social media, their efforts are still a work in progress, with many people needlessly fretting about a return to lockdowns, social distancing and masks.

“We have kind of lost perspective,” said Gustavo Palacios, a professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the US who is originally from Argentina and a hantavirus expert.

An outbreak can be a major public health event deserving attention and action, but without becoming a pandemic, he noted.

Some posts online falsely present hantavirus as a bigger existential threat than Covid, or promote protections like the ivermectin anti-parasite drug, vitamin D and zinc without scientific evidence. False conspiracy theories are popping up too — that it is a side effect of the Pfizer vaccine or a hoax to boost pharmaceutical profits.

Sander van der Linden, a psychology professor at England’s University of Cambridge and misinformation expert, said the public needed more support in how to interpret information, including potentially showing them conspiracy theories they may face in the event of an outbreak.

“We need to do more preparatory work to create resilience in the population,” he said.

As of Thursday, there had been three deaths from 11 reported hantavirus cases in the outbreak, all people who had been on board the Hondius. Dozens of other passengers are being monitored as they return to around 20 countries.

Unlike Covid, there are established measures to control hantavirus’ spread, officials said. The strain has circulated in parts of Argentina and Chile for decades and the ship samples show no meaningful variation from that virus.

“I’m definitely seeing improvements,” said Gabby Stern, former head of communications at the World Health Organisation (WHO) until September last year, referring particularly to sharing what you know when you know it.

“It seems like the public health community has absorbed crucial lessons, although not all of them.”

‘Emotional reaction’ to cruise ship

The WHO was quick to reassure the public, holding regular press conferences, issuing alerts and tackling misinformation in social media Q&As since the outbreak was disclosed on May 3.

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus even took the unusual step of an open letter to the people of Tenerife, where the Hondius docked on Sunday.

“But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another Covid,” he wrote. “The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low. My colleagues and I have said this unequivocally, and I will say it again to you now.”

Some started more slowly: in the US, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention put out its first information on May 8, five days after the news broke, but has since increased the pace of communications.

“One of the things this is teaching us is a lesson we should have learned from Covid: what we say is really important,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.

The cruise ship hantavirus narrative has not helped, echoing the infamous outbreak on the Diamond Princess docked off Japan early in the Covid pandemic in 2020 — where 14 people died and nearly a quarter of the 3,000 passengers and crew became infected.

“The whole cruise ship thing is a very significant memory from the beginning of Covid,” said Krutika Kuppalli, associate professor of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre.

“There’s an emotional reaction that is stirring people.”

The resemblance was not lost on Laura Milln, 40, in Tenerife, as passengers began to disembark at the beginning of this week under strict infection-control measures.

Seeing WHO boss Tedros arrive on the island with Spanish officials to help oversee the hantavirus response took her back.

“It gave me the impression that this isn’t just the flu, otherwise all these people wouldn’t be coming,” she said at a playground, adding that overall she understood their involvement helped ensure the right measures.