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BUNIA, Congo — Congo’s fast-moving Ebola outbreak has now killed over 2,300 people and become the deadliest outbreak of the disease on record in the Central African nation.

The outbreak unfolding in one of Congo’s most vulnerable regions is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever, with 4,945 cases including 2,325 deaths, according to government data released overnight into Monday.

This is Congo’s 17th and largest Ebola outbreak. The toll eclipses that of the country’s 2018-2020 outbreak when 2,299 deaths out of 3,481 cases were recorded.

The latest data shows 101 new cases and 33 deaths reported in the previous 24 hours. Over 1,000 people have recovered, while 730 remain in hospitals or isolation.

The outbreak has infected and killed more people at a greater speed than any other outbreak in history. The World Health Organization has said it is on track to surpass the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the deadliest on record with more than 11,000 deaths.

There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for the current outbreak across six provinces in Congo’s east. Trials for those are ongoing in Ituri province, the epicenter.

Most new cases and deaths are being reported outside of people being monitored. Challenges also include strikes by some unpaid health workers, threats by rebel groups, anger from long-traumatized communities, territories difficult to reach due to bad roads, and misinformation asserting that Ebola isn’t real.

WHO warned over the weekend that the outbreak is still moving at an “exceptional pace” ahead of efforts to track it, noting that it reached a weekly record of 579 cases and 304 deaths in the previous week.

“A substantial scaling up of response activities is underway to get ahead of the outbreak,” the agency said.

On Friday, United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher announced the allocation of an additional $30.5 million and the deployment of 20 more staff to aid the response on the frontlines.

“This is a wake-up call,” Fletcher said. “We need speed, scale and solidarity before this virus gets even further ahead of us.”

A Russian court on Monday convicted a prominent opposition politician for speaking out against the war in Ukraine and sentenced him to 11 years and one month in prison in the latest crackdown leading up to next month’s parliamentary election.

The verdict against Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko party, was another step by the Kremlin to stifle dissent since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. Yabloko is the only official political party overtly opposing the war.

In a separate ruling Monday, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld its earlier decision to bar Yabloko from the ballot in the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary vote, denying an appeal by the party.

The moves against Shlosberg and Yabloko highlight the Kremlin’s intolerance toward any criticism of the war, now in its fifth year.

It was Shlosberg’s second trial in 2 years

Shlosberg, 63, is Yabloko’s deputy chairman and served in the regional legislature of Pskov from 2016-21. He stood trial in the city of Pskov, some 370 miles northwest of Moscow, on charges of “discrediting” and spreading “false information” about the Russian military.

The charges stemmed from a debate in which he called for ending the war and from posting on his Telegram channel a British tabloid front page featuring an image of a bloodied woman next to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the headline: “Her blood … his hands.” Shlosberg has rejected the charges as unfounded.

It was the second trial for Shlosberg in the last two years. He has also been designated a “foreign agent,” a label that carries strong pejorative connotations in Russia and brings additional government scrutiny. He was convicted of violating the foreign agent regulations.

In December 2025, he was placed in pretrial detention on the new charges and has been behind bars ever since. He is one of several prominent Yabloko members in recent years to be jailed or designated a “foreign agent” as Kremlin pressure on the party has mounted.

Yabloko called the sentence ‘barbaric’

In his final statement to the court Friday, Shlosberg said that for 30 years, Russia has traveled “a path from hopes for freedom to the almost complete destruction of human and civil rights and freedoms.”

He said the war in Ukraine has “changed the lives of every Russian citizen without exception,” and predicted that once its true death toll becomes known, “the entire country will shudder.”

Yabloko said Shlosberg received a “barbaric sentence” for “love of the Motherland and calls for a ceasefire.” In a statement on Telegram, the party said Shlosberg will appeal.

Amnesty International denounced the verdict against Shlosberg.

“His arbitrary prosecution and sentencing are blatant reprisals for exercising his right to freedom of expression to call for peace,” said Marie Struthers, the group’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia director.

“The Russian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Lev Shlosberg and quash his conviction,” her statement added. “They must repeal legislation criminalizing peaceful anti-war expression, end the persecution of Yabloko members and supporters, and respect the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and political participation for all Russians.”

Supreme Court upholds removing Yabloko from the ballot

In Moscow, the Supreme Court upheld its ruling of a week ago to remove Yabloko from the ballot in the election for the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, denying an appeal by the party.

The Central Election Commission in July had allowed Yabloko on the ballot along with 10 other parties. Young social media users and many Russian opposition figures in exile have since come out in support of Yabloko, urging voters to back the party, once a leading liberal voice in parliament that later lost its bloc of seats as the Kremlin tightened its grip on politics.

In recent years, Yabloko was the only registered opposition party that opposed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Its campaign slogans for this year’s election included, “For a ceasefire agreement, diplomacy, and peace!” “Our goal is to prevent nuclear war!” and “For a Russia free from fear and political repression!”

Several Kremlin parties publicly assailed Yabloko for its anti-war stance after it got a slot on the ballot. The Motherland Party filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court, demanding its removal from the ballot, accusing Yabloko of copyright infringement and exceeding campaign spending limits. The party also viewed Yabloko’s stance on Ukraine as unlawful and tantamount to calling for the violation of Russia’s territorial integrity.

Yabloko rejected these accusations, but the Supreme Court sided with the Motherland Party.

As the court met Monday on Yabloko’s appeal, the party’s supporters gathered outside the courthouse and Russian media reported that several dozen people were detained.

Liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky, who co-founded Yabloko in the 1990s and chairs its political committee, deplored the court’s ruling in an online statement. It marked “a serious, deepening crisis in the Russian political system and a lack of understanding of a desired future,” he said.

“People begin to feel this more acutely, regardless of their political views and positions,” he said, adding that Yabloko’s campaign “for peace and freedom” hit this particular “sore point.”

Yabloko chairperson Nikolai Rybakov told reporters after the ruling that the party will continue its fight by lodging a complaint to the Presidium of the Supreme Court and possibly going to the Constitutional Court.

“We achieved the main thing: The whole world knows how many people in Russia want peace, want to live normally, and to raise children under a peaceful sky in their country,” Rybakov said.

Regarding the prison term handed to Shlosberg, Rybakov said, “Our feelings are with Lev and other political prisoners who have fought and are fighting for peace, for people to not die.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Monday it is temporarily pausing construction of a contentious border construction project in Texas’ Big Bend National Park while the head of the agency tasked with building the wall visits to do an “on-the-ground evaluation.”

The project through the national park in southern Texas has faced fierce bipartisan opposition by critics who say it is marring the area’s pristine environment. They argue the region’s rugged and remote terrain already serves as a deterrent to migrants and smugglers. Border crossings in the area have historically been lower than other regions and have dropped even further over the past two years.

“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” Rodney Scott, who heads Customs and Border Protection, said on X. Scott said over the next couple of days, he was going to “listen to local leadership, community members, and stakeholders” to address what he said were “real” national security threats while protecting the park.

While it isn’t clear whether the brief suspension portended a more permanent halt to the construction in the area, it reflected the intensity of the bipartisan opposition and was a rare concession from the administration on a signature promise of the president’s that it has raced to complete.

Congress gave the Trump administration $46 billion last summer to build a wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and the administration has been charging ahead and waiving numerous regulations in an effort to swiftly build the wall.

Scott has said that he expects the first layer of the wall to be built by the end of next year.

But the administration has run into fierce opposition in Texas especially when it comes to construction in and near Big Bend National Park and a state park to the west.

Customs and Border Protection earlier this year backed off of plans to build a 30-foot-tall bollard wall through the parks but was still moving forward with other border protection measures such as a new road, lights, miles of barriers designed to stop cars from crossing the border, and technology such as fiber optic cables to be buried under the fences.

That has sparked opposition from Democratic and Republican sheriffs in the region, former national park officials, local residents who rely on the parks for their livelihood, and from some Texas elected officials. Critics have said it will scar the rugged landscape that attracts tourists who raft down the Rio Grande and take advantage of some of the clearest night skies in the U.S. to gaze at stars.

Last week, bulldozers were seen clearing land at the park, sparking even more concern and raising questions from one of the state’s Republican senators. Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to the state’s attorney general, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin over construction concerns.

“My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain offers its own source of deterrence for any illegal migrants crossing into the United States. The dangerous terrain includes steep mountains, deep canyons, and expansive deserts which they believe act a natural barrier that limits large-scale movements,” Cornyn wrote.