Iran deployed drones and missiles to punishing effect, but knows that its chief weapon is causing economic pain

Whatever happens next, the poor will pay 💲

The Guardian Editorial

More than 3,300 Iranians, including 383😢 children, have been killed since the US and Israel launched their illegal war, authorities said this week. Asked about Wednesday’s ceasefire deadline, Donald Trump first said that he expected to resume bombing, then unilaterally announced that he was extending the truce “until discussions are concluded”.

Orange man flip flops😕

Whatever happens – or doesn’t – ❓with the US-Iranian peace talks due to take place in Islamabad, the costs of this disastrous (illegal❗) conflict will keep growing. The only thing that the sides have in common is that each needs peace, but thinks that it can force the other into significant concessions. (Clearly Donald Trump is dangerous because he has no idea what he is doing.)

The Iranian economy was already in a desperate state, thanks to years of sanctions and state failure. But the system has been built to withstand coercion and so far, the regime has survived the military and strategic pressure piled on it. It also knows the US bill is eye-watering. The White House last week declined senators’ requests to provide a figure, but the Pentagon has reportedly briefed that military costs topped 💲11.3bn in the first six days alone. That’s widely regarded as an underestimate. 

Professor Linda Bilmes, a Harvard public finance expert, suggests that the war is ultimately likely to cost the US $1tn when factors such as interest payments and long-term veteran-related expenses are included.

Those direct costs are only the start. Ricocheting oil prices have enriched those wealthy enough to speculate on their movement with remarkably perfect timing. But the American Enterprise Institute estimates that the total cost to the average US household, including, for example, higher oil prices, is equivalent to 💲410. The Century Foundation suggests that these “economic poisons” are all the harder for US voters to swallow when the conflict is morally and strategically unwarranted.

UK households will be an estimated £480 a year poorer. The UN development program warned that Arab countries faced an economic contraction of between 💲120bn and 💲194bn after just one month of war. Even China, initially relatively sanguine, appears to be growing more concerned about the impact. But, rising food prices hit the poorest – who spend more of their income on sustenance – the hardest. The World Food Program warned last month that 45 million more people, primarily in Asia and Africa, could fall into acute food insecurity.

Need is rising as aid budgets have been slashed. It is obscene that the money squandered on taking lives could have saved so many – 87 million, according to the UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher. It is equally so that more lives will be lost because of this conflict’s economic impact. Peace tomorrow wouldn’t fix the damage. But the longer that this war continues, the greater the devastation that will be wrought.

Iran has deployed its drones and missiles to punishing effect, but knows that its chief weapon is the economic pain it can inflict, primarily through control of the Strait of Hormuz. The International Monetary Fund warned last week that a further escalation could trigger a global recession. Its head, Kristalina Georgieva, had already said that the crisis would remain a threat to the global economy even if it ended overnight. The costs mount over time.  Although the pain is widely spread, it is far from evenly shared. The combination of higher energy, food and fertilizer costs will increasingly hammer poorer and heavily import-reliant nations.

Historic Hampton Roads Virginia Jewish cemetery sadly experienced vandalism

Maine Writer comment- It takes a horrible kind of evil to desecrate any cemetery. To harm Jewish headstones serves no purpose except to unjustly desecrate the deceased and spread antisemitism.

Opinion echo published in The Virginian Pilot newspaper:

The historic Jewish ✡️cemetery of the Virginia Peninsula was vandalized. Whatever the motive, the message was felt.

The small cemetery in Hampton dating back to 1895, doesn’t announce itself. Most people drive past without a second glance. 

But, buried within it are generations of members of the Jewish community whose stories continue to be felt by us today.

Any attempt to single out particular stories feels inadequate. The names left unmentioned are far more numerous, and their contributions no less profound.

But to name a few: Joe Frank rose to become the longest standing mayor of Newport News. Alan Diamonstein, elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1967, helped build one of the first housing development authorities in the nation to finance homes for working families and those with the least. Franklin Blechman, whom people called the “grandfather” of public service on the Peninsula, was a man so embedded in the civic life of this region that a full account of his contributions would fill a book. Walter Segaloff, whose vision gave rise to Achievable Dreams, transformed the lives of thousands of children across Hampton Roads. Many others names — civic leaders, merchants, neighbors, parents — are etched not only in stone but in the institutions, neighborhoods and traditions that define Hampton Roads.

When that cemetery was vandalized, something more than property was damaged.

We don’t yet know the motive. Law enforcement is investigating, and it’s possible this was random destruction rather than a targeted act of hatred. Those facts matter, and we should wait for them.

Yet, here is what we already know: Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated with grim regularity throughout history and even in recent years across the United States, where headstones are toppled and symbols of hate are spray-painted on ancient stones. The pattern is long and it is ugly. Whatever happened here, it landed on a community that carries that history in its bones and a broader community that rejects such hate.

And it landed at a particularly raw moment.

In recent years, Jewish communities across the country, including here on the Peninsula, have navigated a surge in antisemitic threats and activity. Jews make up only 2.4% of the American population yet are the target of 55% of all religious hate crimes in the United States.

The Jewish community of the Virginia Peninsula is not a community apart. It is woven into this place. Jewish families have been here for generations, building businesses along the waterfront, volunteering in schools and hospitals, and partnering with churches and civic organizations across racial and denominational lines. 

In fact, the history of integration on this Peninsula, the determined work of breaking down barriers between Black and white residents, includes Jewish voices and Jewish hands. William and Joanne Roos led the effort at their family’s Nachman’s Department Store in Newport News to be the first store in the city to integrate its lunch counter in the late 1950s. That story is buried in that cemetery, too.

We are a Jewish community that has always believed our fate is tied to the broader community. The same values that ask us to repair the world, to pursue justice and to welcome the stranger, are the values that have put Jewish Virginians side by side with everyone else.

So when someone damages the resting place of those who are woven into the fabric of this region, we ask our neighbors — all of our neighbors — not just to notice, but to stand with us. Not out of fear. Not to invite pity. But because this community has always shown up for others, we ask that you continue to show up and reaffirm the type of community we are.

The names on those headstones aren’t just Jewish history. They’re Virginia Peninsula history. They belong to all of us.

And they deserve to be treated that way.

Eric Maurer of Newport News is the CEO of Jewish Peninsula. 

To learn more about the Jewish Cemetery’s restoration efforts, visit jewishpeninsula.org/cemetery-update.

Americans are not informed about the huge cost of the Donald Trump Iran War but check out European news

348

The Guardian: Generally speaking, when you bomb another country, and that country retaliates, you call it a “war”. Very simple word. Three letters. Even Donald Trump knows how to spell it.

Cost of Donald Trump's Iran War

Echo opinion letter published in The CapTimes news in Wisconsin

Dear Editor: The lies and obfuscation about the true cost of the Iran War by Donald Trump and his minions evoke shades of the Vietnam era.

In a well-documented report in Popular Information by Stephen Semler on May 6, 2026, the actual cost of the first 60 days of the current war with Iran is about 💲72 billion, not the 💲25 billion cited by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, or about 💲1.2 billion per day.

Furthermore, a group of reporters for the Washington Post, Evan Hill, Jarrett Ley, Alex Horton, Tara Copp and Dan Lamothe, have noted that it's "unusually difficult" to obtain satellite imagery from the Middle East, because the U.S. government has asked two of the largest commercial providers of such images, Ventor and Planet, "to limit, delay or ultimately withhold publication of images of the region while the war is ongoing." 

Since the companies have acceded, the journalists have had to review other sources of images, including the European Union and Iran's state affiliated media (as cited by Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, May 6, 2026).

Although some hypocritical Republican members of our U.S. Congress may not be concerned about being complicit with the Trump administration's deceptions, the American public deserves to know the truth. Then the electorate can hold Congress accountable in the November 2026, midterm elections.

From Stephen Austin in Madison Wisconsin

Evangelical Christians must pay attention to care for the world's poorest children: Blessed are the merciful

Echo opinion essay published in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristoff.  

A year after some of the world’s richest men and Donald Trump cut aid for the world’s poorest children, they’re trying to roll out a new public relations narrative:
Aid continues! We’re saving lives from AIDS🤥 Anyway, the aid never really worked, so we’re focused on trade! Building opportunities for American companies while saving babies!

As Jeremy Lewin, the acting under secretary of state for foreign assistance, put it: “Contrary to false media narratives, the data shows that Donald Trump’s foreign assistance review maintained and improved frontline lifesaving programs, while reducing NGO bloat and costs.”

“False media narratives” may refer to my reporting from a series of African countries on children dying as a result of the Trump cuts.

Let’s first concede a few points. American humanitarian aid was never great at nurturing economic growth, but it did save one life every 10 seconds until last year. It’s also true that public pressure led the administration and Congress to retain some lifesaving programs, particularly for H.I.V./AIDS, and to its credit the administration has expanded use of a drug called lenacapavir to fight AIDS. 

Finally, the Trump administration is right that trade is crucial, which is why President Bill Clinton started a fine trade program with Africa; unfortunately, it expires this year, and its long-term future under Trump is in doubt.

None of this changes the fact that this glossy new Trump (fake❗🤥😢) narrative is absurd. Trump’s most lethal policy will almost surely be his 71 percent cut in humanitarian aid from 2024 to 2025. 

A Boston University researcher estimated that the aid cuts cost more than 750,000 lives worldwide in their first year. A recently published study in The Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates the defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030, including 2.5 million children under the age of 5.

Are these figures correct❓ Exaggerated❓ I can’t be sure, and neither can Trump or anyone else, partly because the administration has cut data collection that might help us assess mortality accurately.

Meanwhile, Trump and his aides continue to take steps that will add to the toll.

The administration is now withholding aid for vaccines for poor countries in ways that may cost the lives of vast numbers of children. Trump slashed funding for an international vaccine alliance called Gavi, and now the administration is also refusing to release 💲600 million for Gavi that Congress has already appropriated and that must be spent by September.

Gavi is one of the most cost-effective aid programs in history. One study found that each dollar spent on vaccines in poor countries brings a return of $54 in reduced health costs and other benefits. I was once hospitalized with a serious case of malaria that I caught in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I think it’s a miracle that a few doses of a $3 malaria vaccine can now save a Congolese child’s life — and a scandal that administration officials are willing to let such children die because of ideological hostility toward vaccines.

Gavi also pays for HPV vaccines that prevent cervical cancer, which kills more than 900 women every day worldwide. Cervical cancer is an excruciating, humiliating way to die — it is sometimes diagnosed partly by the odor of rotting flesh — yet a 💲4 vaccine can prevent it. Gavi’s vaccinations have already averted almost one million of these horrific deaths from cervical cancer.

Trump’s cuts have created a budget crisis for Gavi and other aid agencies. It has been magnified because European countries followed America’s lead with cuts to their own aid budgets. Gavi estimates that 600,000 lives will be unnecessarily lost by 2030 as a result. Think of your mother, wife, daughter; multiply by 600,000, and you glimpse the cost of Trump’s destruction of just the Gavi element of American aid.

The Trump administration is also exacerbating global poverty with its catastrophic war with Iran, and not just because the war has displaced more than 2.2 million women and girls in Iran and Lebanon. Because of the war, diesel prices have risen 160 percent in Myanmar and 87 percent in Nigeria, while 40 percent of gas stations have closed in Laos, according to the United Nations. Rising fuel prices are increasing costs of transportation and thus food.

The upshot is that if the Gulf crisis doesn’t end by next month, an additional 45 million people worldwide are likely to suffer severe hunger in the latter part of this year, according to Cindy McCain of the U.N World Food Program.

An even bigger impact may come, after a delay, from shortages of fertilizer, often made with oil and gas byproducts from the Persian Gulf. Perhaps one-third of the world’s fertilizer production will be disrupted if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and shortages will most likely mean lower crop yields, higher food prices and more starvation. 

José Andrés of World Central Kitchen has warned that fertilizer shortages could lead to a multiyear famine beginning as early as the end of this year.

Think of it this way: Artificial fertilizers keep roughly half of humans alive. Without them, the earth would be able to produce enough food to support only about 4 billion people.

Even as the Trump administration has created this crisis, it has unraveled some of the global health systems that would normally save lives of starving children. And Trump administration proclamations of “trade over aid” sound empowering until you realize that what they mean in practice is that America is talking about withholding lifesaving medicines from villagers in Zambia unless the Zambian government sells more minerals to American companies.

A new book, “Into the Wood Chipper,” recounts the reckless way in which DOGE officials dismantled the United States Agency for International Development. Written by Nicholas Enrich, a former top health official at the agency, it chronicles the “callousness, dishonesty and ineptitude” of Trump aides who destroyed programs that they didn’t understand.

“I had no idea you did all this,” Enrich quotes one of the newly arrived officials saying. “As a Republican, when I think of what U.S.A.I.D. does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions.” (In fact, no American aid dollars went to abortions.)

Please excuse my intemperate tone. But in my travels over the last year, I’ve seen children dying because of our aid cuts. This doesn’t feel like policymaking so much as vandalism, accompanied by wasted food, ruined contraceptives and an estimated $6.4 billion spent closing down the United States Agency for International Development (that sum alone could have saved more than one million children’s lives).

Actually, for all my harsh words, Trump is talking about providing emergency financial support for one nation. That’s the United Arab Emirates, which is pinched by the Iran war and may get a lifeline from Washington to support its dirham currency- valued at $0.27 to the U.S. dollar. (Maine Writer- this seems like a fools errand because the U.S. 💲dollar is declining in value.)

So we’re ready to support a country that is roughly as rich as Britain and France and is fueling the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, in Sudan, by arming a militia committing mass murder and mass rape❓ Could one factor be that high-level Emiratis have approved investments of half a billion dollars in a Trump family crypto company❓(aka #TrumpCrimeFamily)

Forget the efforts to dress this show up. The truth is ugly: The world’s richest men are crushing the world’s poorest children.

But Donald Trump is obsessed about building a ballroom.🤢

How did it come to this❓ The cuts in aid break my heart, and I struggle to understand how a country that until recently prided itself on generosity is now slashing aid so that vast numbers of children die. 

Donald Trump ugly memes might be his audition for a future career

Echo opinion published in the Florida Sun Sentinel

Bedeviled by the pope | Pat Beall

Pat Beall is an editorial writer and columnist for the Sun Sentinel, focusing mainly on Palm Beach County issues.

I imagine what would happen if Pope Leo took my calls❓☎️

He’d be a nice guy, of course. Too polite to point out that I am likely just one more heathen, bound to spend eternity as smoldering charcoal.

“My child,” he’d say, “I understand you have questions about the Antichrist. You are not alone, I assure you."

Oh, I know. A world leader posting an image of himself as Jesus Christ laying hands on what appears to be either Jon Stewart or Jeffrey Epstein is not automatically horn-and-tails material.

Or is it❓

“I thought it was me as a doctor,” Trump said about the ugly picture in his hideous post.

Doctors❓ Only with bombs bursting in air, twin eagles threatening, soldiers flying, a cloaked Trump healing, handfuls of white light and the miracle of thick hair no longer in need of a combover.

Well. That explains the robed surgeons. The winged proctologists.

“All this is giving off Antichrist-adjacent vibes,” I’d fret.

And so I’d lay it out for the pontiff. The Great Deceiver will have one great secret which he will tell no one. (Epstein Files.) He tricks good people who should know better. (The 77 million people who voted for him.)

He will seem to have a mortal ear wound, but lo, it was healed, and the whole earth wondered at this. (Massive cotton wad on ear.)

But mostly, I worry, the big evidence is that every devil comes with their own imp.  I speak now of JD Vance.  (Yes, the Hillbilly.)

“Pope Leo XIV should be careful when he talks about theology,” warned the newbie Catholic convert, threatening the 267th pope in a religion that dates to 30 A.D.  (Maine Writer:  This quote from Hillbilly Vance gets a "dummy" of the year award.)

And this, we should note, is not the first time Vance has tussled with a pope. Back in April 2025, he traveled to Rome to meet with Pope Francis, a fierce critic of Trump’s snatch, imprison and sort it out later immigration policy.

Vance smiled and nodded and held to his belief that ordor amoris, the “order of love,” requires that citizens must prioritize their families and those closest to them. Maybe other people, maybe later on.

He told the pope he would pray for his health. The pope died the next day.

Trump mourned his passing by posting an image of himself as the next pope.

Vance said he embraced Catholicism seven years ago because he was fed up with “a society oriented entirely towards consumption and pleasure.” Like massive ballrooms with grand stairs leading absolutely nowhere. Or a skimpily clad lady in a gigantic martini glass on the lawn of Mar-a-Lago. Or a 💲300,000, two-story high golden statue of yourself at your Doral golf club.

Vance looked at this bright shiny basket of iniquities and announced: “That’s my guy❗”🙄

So too did Trump spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain, who compared the president’s torments to those of Jesus. “You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused,” she mourned. Also? “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.”

Then, because Trump cannot help himself, and also because White-Cain told people not to say no, the president followed up with another bit of blasphemy: an image of Jesus with his arm around him, haloed in soft light.

To further prove his spiritual bonafides and teensy-tiny soul, he stripped Catholic Charities of $11 million to house children.

“A lot of people weren’t understanding his humor,” explained Vance of Trump’s holier-than-thou postings.

“Actually, a lot of people were,” the endlessly likeable Leo would tell me on our phone call.

“He is bedeviling us all,” I’d say. “And I’m beginning to think those big ankles are really hooves in hosiery.”

So, is he, or isn’t he❓

“No, Trump is not the devil,” the pope would assure me.

He’s just auditioning for the part.

Pat Beall is a Sun Sentinel columnist and editorial writer.

MAGA Republicans must put an end to the Trump and Hegseth lies about the Iranian Trumpian World War!

Republicans, wake up❗ ⏰ Senator Susan Collins❗

Echo opinion letter published in LandasterOnLine

How much longer can you keep accepting the lies 🤥from Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth❓

Why Iran❓ Why now❓ First it was Iran’s nuclear facilities, but wait, we obliterated them a year ago.

Then it was to change regimes. The defenseless Iranian people were presumably to rise up and overtake the well-armed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. How moronic is that❓

Finally, Trump and Hegseth said we had to destroy Iran’s missile factories, but wait, we obliterated those factories weeks ago.

What was the June 2025, attack on Iran about, anyway❓

So, why❓

Could it be that Iran was at its weakest❓

Or that Israel persuaded Trump to help out❓

Or, worse yet, was it a distraction from the Jeffrey Epstein files❓

So far, tens of 💲billions have been spent on an unnecessary war and, in my view, we are in no way any better.

Aside from the expenditures of war, Republicans are proposing to spend 💲1 billion of taxpayer money for Trump’s gaudy golden White House ballroom.

While the country is at war, Trump is running around showing a picture of his ugly ballroom. Trump appears to be an inhumane person. In my view, he shows no signs of humanity, compassion or decency.

While Trump and his family are reportedly making billions off the presidency, many U.S. citizens are having trouble with gas prices, putting food on the table and paying for healthcare for their families.


George Washington wrote in a 1778, letter: “No punishment, in my opinion, is too great for the Man, who can build ‘his greatness upon his Country’s ruin.’ ”

I believe that Donald Trump should be removed from office for not upholding or defending the Constitution.

From Donald Doolittle Sr. in  West Lampeter Township, Pennsylvania

Hantavirus status report: This virus will continue to mutate and the incubation period is too long to provide rapid response

Report published in the New York Magazine Intelligencer by Nia Prater and Chas Danner.

Julie note- Although I am not a virology expert, my experience preparing for viral epidemics in hospital planning sessions is that viruses mutate.  So, I am not convinced about some of what is reported about what is happening with the Hantavirus today, because, by tomorrow the virus could replicate. That is what viruses do. Nevertheless, the article is a good status report.

An outbreak of the rare and dangerous hantavirus aboard the Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius has left three passengers dead, forced the medical evacuation of several others, and triggered an international health scare. While the unsettling news has prompted concerns of another widespread virus outbreak akin to COVID-19 or avian flu, the World Health Organization has stressed that the overall public-health risk from the Hondius outbreak is low. Here’s what we know so far.

How did the outbreak start? In a bulletin on Monday, the WHO said that it was first contacted about a “cluster of severe acute respiratory illness” aboard the Hondius on May 2, including two deaths and one passenger who was critically ill. Per the organization, the ship left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 and made numerous stops including mainland Antarctica, Tristan da Cunha, Saint Helena, South Georgia, Nightingale Island, as well as Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean.

In the days since, the number of deaths has risen to three. According to the WHO, the first case was a man presenting with a fever, mild diarrhea, and a headache on April 6; he died on April 11 after developing respiratory distress. The second was a woman who left the ship from Saint Helena on April 24 while reportedly experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms. Her condition worsened while traveling on an April 25 flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, and she passed away after arriving at a hospital on April 26. 

In the third case, a woman died on May 2 after presenting with symptoms on April 28.
The New York Times reports that the first two deaths from the outbreak were a couple, a 70-year-old man from the Netherlands and his 69-year old wife, and the pair had reportedly traveled in South America, specifically Argentina, prior to boarding the ship. PCR testing later confirmed hantavirus infection in the wife’s case. The third fatal case is reported to be a German woman.

According to the Associated Press, Argentina’s Ministry of Health has been tracing the travel of the Dutch couple, who had been on a South American road trip, and the authorities are investigating the possibility that the couple was exposed to hantavirus during a bird-watching trip to a landfill in the southern town of Ushuaia, which is also where they boarded the Hondius.

What is hantavirus? According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, hantaviruses are a family of viruses that humans can contract following contact with rodents, which frequently carry the virus, typically by breathing in particles from their dried saliva, urine, and droppings, like when sweeping a shed where rodents have been living.

Hantavirus infections are typically rare, with an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 cases per year globally, but they can result in severe illness and death. Hantaviruses found in the Americas, also known as New World hantaviruses, can cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which presents with common symptoms like fever, fatigue, and muscle aches before progressing to more severe effects such as shortness of breath and fluid in the lungs. HPS has a fatality rate of 12 to 45 percent depending on the strain.

For variants more common in Europe and Asia, also known as Old World hantaviruses, patients can develop hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, which can cause kidney failure and has a fatality rate of one to 15 percent.

The strain of hantavirus linked to the cruise ship appears to be what’s known as the Andes strain, which, per the CDC, is common in South America and has been linked to human-to-human transmission. However, transmitting the hantavirus person-to-person is rare and typically requires close contact in an enclosed space. The Washington Post reports that Argentina, which appears to have a connection to this recent outbreak, has seen an increase of hantavirus cases in recent years and is frequently ranked by the WHO as the nation with the highest rate of the virus in Latin America.

Hantavirus also has a long incubation period with symptoms typically appearing a few weeks after infection but sometimes as many as eight weeks after. On Thursday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said during a briefing that it is “possible” more cases could be reported down the line.
There is currently no cure nor widely available vaccine for hantavirus — surviving severe illness caused by the infection requires prompt medical intervention and ICU treatment.
One of the most prominent cases of hantavirus emerged last year after Betsy Arakawa, the wife of renowned actor Gene Hackman, was found to have contracted hantavirus pulmonary syndrome after the pair were found dead in their New Mexico home. Per the New York Times, it’s believed that Arakawa was likely infected from exposure to deer mice, which typically carry the virus in the state. In 2025, three people in Mammoth Lakes, California, died after contracting hantavirus.

For even more information about hantavirus, infectious-disease expert and doctor Céline Gounder has written an excellent explainer here.

On Thursday, Dutch officials confirmed that approximately 40 people from at least 12 different countries departed the ship at St. Helena to return home on April 24 without contract tracing, per the AP. Oceanwide Expeditions has put the figure at around 30 passengers, six of whom are Americans. Ghebreyesus said the organization has notified the 12 different nations, which, in addition to the U.S., are Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Turky, and the United Kingdom.

Public-health authorities have been working to track the passengers down and perform contact tracing. Two British citizens who left the ship beforehand and returned to the U.K. are self-isolating, as are a small number of their close contacts. Citing Dutch officials, the Dutch news outlet RTL reported that a flight attendant who was aboard the same Johannesburg flight as the cruise passenger who later died from hantavirus is currently experiencing mild symptoms and is being tested at a hospital. France24 reports that a French national is being monitored after traveling on the same flight.
U.S. health officials in Georgia, California, and Arizona confirmed that American passengers from the Hondius are being monitored in their states for infection since returning to the United States, per the New York Times. The Washington Post reports that passengers in Texas and Virginia are also being observed. So far, none of the passengers have shown any symptoms. In a statement, the CDC said it’s “closely monitoring the situation” and that the State Department is “leading a coordinated, whole-of-government response including direct contact with passengers, diplomatic coordination, and engagement with domestic and international health authorities.”
“At this time, the risk to the American public is extremely low,” the statement said.
What is the current status of the ship?
On Monday, Oceanwide Expeditions said there were 149 people onboard the Hondius representing 23 different nationalities. Of the three people who were medically evacuated Wednesday, two were crewmembers who presented with “acute respiratory symptoms” while the third is an asymptomatic individual with a connection to the passenger who passed away on May 2.
On Thursday, the operator shared updated figures regarding the number of passengers at the start of the voyage, saying 114 guests were on board on April 1 when the Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina.

On April 15, six more guests boarded at Tristan da Cunha, bringing the total to 120 including the one deceased passenger.

As of Wednesday, the Hondius has departed Cape Verde, where it was moored off the coast following the detection of the outbreak, en route to Spain’s Canary Islands, which Oceanwide Expeditions estimates it will reach following three to four days of travel. On Thursday, the operator estimated that the Hondius would reach the port of Granadilla, Tenerife, early Sunday.
The remaining people aboard the ship are currently asymptomatic and are reportedly taking precautions like wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
The WHO confirmed Thursday that one of its experts boarded the ship in Cabo Verde and was later joined by two doctors from the Netherlands and an expert from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The four will assess all the remaining people on board and will stay on board the vessel until it reaches the Canary Islands.
What are experts saying? On Wednesday, Ghebreyesus signaled that the outbreak doesn’t pose any wider risk so far. “At this stage, the overall public-health risk remains low,” he said.
Maria Van Kerkhove, a top infectious-disease epidemiologist at the WHO, echoed that sentiment on Tuesday. “This is not the next COVID, but it is a serious infectious disease,” she said, per the Associated Press. “Most people will never be exposed to this.”In an interview with STAT News, Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, put it simply. “It’s not the next pandemic,” he said.
Osterholm continued, “This is one where everyone should just take a breath and know that we are going to bring this to resolution. With adequate respiratory protection, [they could] very well stop all transmission from this point forward.”
Stanford infectious-disease doctor and epidemiologist Abraar Karan also emphasized in an X thread that this poses nothing close to a COVID-like threat, though this particular hantavirus outbreak may be worse than others:
The hantavirus outbreak won’t be anything like COVID — I think that is the wrong comparison. But it can be worse (or at least more complicated) than the usual local outbreaks that occur in Argentina.
First, I suspect there could be a few more generations of infection. Those who left the ship before the outbreak was detected pose the key risk because they may have exposed others unknowingly via close contact. Case 2 who flew on the plane to Johannesburg and the Switzerland case seem to be the only reported ones thus far. Close contact is the key point here.
So it’s likely that more cases will be detected, but there is no reason for any kind of widespread panic. 

Donald Trum and maga Republicans like Senator Susan Collins support chaotic Iranian war and Americans pay the cost

Does anyone in America know what Donald Trump is doing in the Strait of Hormuz? Does Trump himself know❓

Reported in The Hill and Yahoo News by Max Burns

So Chief.....has Iran surrendered yet❓

On Sunday, he boldly announced “Project Freedom,” his scheme to escort commercial ships through the shuttered strait. He then swiftly reversed course just two days later, declaring that the strait would remain closed, even as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was selling Project Freedom to the press. 

While Hegseth touted a plan that no longer existed, Trump again changed his timeline for ending his increasingly unpopular war in Iran.

Trump’s impulsive and contradictory actions in Iran have confounded his generals, his Cabinet and the public since the war began 10 weeks ago. Trump is now so bogged down that he is confounding himself, too. It is time for Congress to exert some constitutional authority and wrap this debacle up before regular

Americans endure even more financial suffering.

Trump has clearly lost the plot of what has become a staggeringly expensive conflict without any clear strategic goal. In fact, the only measurable result of Trump’s Iran strikes has been a spike in the cost of gasoline by more than 50 percent since March. The cost of jet fuel rose so much so quickly that Spirit Airlines had no choice but to declare bankruptcy and liquidate 17,000 previously well-paying American jobs.

Great Depression bread lines😓😔😒😠😟

“For the first time in my life, I have no idea how to face what comes next,” former Spirit Airlines employee Jorge Luis Camacho lamented in a GoFundMe fundraiser, posted shortly after the company shuttered. “Bills have to be paid, and financially, I have nothing.”

Camacho and his former Spirit coworkers will have a hard time finding new work in an economy battered by the Iran war. A Goldman Sachs report published in March estimated that Trump’s war is costing the U.S. economy more than 10,000 jobs each month, with losses concentrated in the leisure and hospitality industries, retail and manufacturing. The economic uncertainty wrought by Trump’s war is now the most potent job-killer in the country.

Indeed, the Iran War may well be remembered for little else besides the rolling job losses and financial hardship it inflicted on working-class Americans who were already grappling with rising consumer prices. Bank of America reports that credit card spending has surged roughly 4.3 percent in March, the most in more than three years, as consumers pile on debt to pay for basic necessities like gasoline. Unsurprisingly, consumer confidence has collapsed to the lowest level ever recorded as most Americans prepare for the worst.

Then there’s the day-to-day expense of running a war without end. The conflict has drained more than $72 billion in taxpayer funds at a time when Republican leaders say there simply isn’t any cash available to extend healthcare subsidies for the 22 million Americans facing skyrocketing premiums. And that’s before Trump heads to Capitol Hill with hat in hand to ask for $80 billion to $100 billion more in war funding.

At some point, enough has to be enough, even for the spineless MAGA gophers currently clogging up the Congress.

It appears at least a few Republicans are beginning to realize how economically (and politically) disastrous Trump’s war is shaping up to be. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) recently pushed for a War Powers Act vote in the Senate; her moment of courage was dampened by Republican leader John Thune flatly ignoring the request. That hasn’t stopped Murkowski from building support for the vote from Republicans including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Curtis (R-Utah) and Todd Young (R-Ind.).

If Murkowski and her colleagues are trying their best to steer their party away from an electoral disaster, they’ll still likely run headlong into House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) absolute resistance to anything that could be viewed as Trump criticism (But, wait❗ What happened to Johnson's pledge to govern according to the Bible❓) . Johnson has so far resisted calls to rein in Trump’s war powers, even as the most recent Ipsos poll found a growing majority of Americans souring on the war.

Republicans are currently caught in the trap of defending a war their own leader doesn’t seem to understand — and just like Hegseth this week, they increasingly finding themselves defending policies, only to discover that Trump has already abandoned them and reversed course.

Who is on first❓