James' World 2

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Thousands of cases of the chikungunya virus, which sickens people bitten by an infected mosquito, have broken out in China during the past week. The virus causes extremely severe joint pain and fever, both of which can be short-lived—but can sometimes continue for years. Chikungunya can sometimes cause heart damage. Three days ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel warning for the area of the outbreak (the province of Guangdong in southern China), advising people to take precautions. And experts warn that chikungunya could further spread in the Americas and parts of Europe, though cases there have been relatively rare compared with those in tropical regions. Here is what you need to know about the disease and the risk.

What is the chikungunya virus, and how do people get infected?

The virus was first identified in Africa in 1952. It is spread most often by two mosquito species: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. People can get sick within three to seven days of a bite. In 2025, about 240,000 cases and 90 deaths have been reported in 16 countries and territories through July. Cases have been reported in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Infection usually produces symptoms including deeply painful joints, fevers, nausea, fatigue, and a rash. Most of the time, these problems resolve in a week or two. “But sometimes they can continue for months and years, and the virus can also cause serious heart damage,” says Jean Lim, a microbiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a member of the Global Virus Network’s chikungunya task force. “In rare cases, it can be fatal, and those most vulnerable are people who are immunocompromised, the elderly, and babies.”

What has happened in China?

China has reported an outbreak with about 7,000 cases, mostly in Guangdong and its city of Foshan. The Chinese government has distributed mosquito nets and sprayed insecticide through residential areas, streets, and places where people work outside. There have been reports that authorities have forced infected people into hospitals, reminding some of the strict measures China took during the COVID pandemic.

It remains unclear what triggered the outbreak, says Robert Jones, an insect biologist at the London School of Hygiene &Tropical Medicine and another member of the Global Virus Network’s task force. But several weeks of rain and high humidity in the area have created good conditions for A. aegypti and A. albopictus to breed and bite more people, he notes.

Can the virus get from China to the U.S.?

Chikungunya moves easily in this age of fast global travel. There are current outbreaks in France and a case reported in Italy, Jones says. The most likely scenario, according to Lim, is that “a mosquito in China bites and infects someone. That person hops on a plane and flies to the U.S. There a U.S. mosquito bites that person and picks up the virus, and then begins to spread it through the local insect population.”

For this to happen, the new country needs to already have mosquitoes that can host the virus. “Neither of these species is established in the UK, so there is no risk of onward transmission,” Jones says. But “in the United States, both Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus can be found, particularly in the south and east. To date, there have been 47 cases of chikungunya confirmed in the U.S. this year.”

Still, there are limiting factors that should minimize worry, says William Klimstra, an immunologist at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Vaccine Research. Spraying insecticide and eliminating mosquito breeding areas are effective ways to curb outbreaks. And in a temperate area, the first killing frost will get rid of the insects, stopping viral transmission.

Are there treatments or vaccines for the virus?

Unfortunately, there are no good antiviral therapies, Lim says. Treatment usually consists of supportive care, such as keeping a patient hydrated and managing their pain.

There are, however, two effective and Food and Drug Administration–approved vaccines that get the body to produce antibodies against chikungunya, Jones says, and these lower the risk of infection. One, called IXCHIQ, uses a weakened, noninfective form of the virus. The other vaccine, VIMKUNYA, is based on viruslike particles.

And fortunately, insect repellents and protective clothing work quite well to keep the biting mosquitoes away in outbreak-prone regions of the world.

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Engelmayer also called into question the “entire premise” of the Trump Administration’s request. 

“Contrary to the Government’s depiction, the Maxwell grand jury testimony is not a matter of significant historical or public interest,” the judge said, adding that much of the information in the materials was revealed at Maxwell’s trial.

“Its entire premise—that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them—is demonstrably false,” he wrote.

Releasing the documents “would expose as disingenuous the Government’s public explanations for moving to unseal,” he went on to say. “A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion—aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such,” he wrote.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked judges to release grand jury transcripts and other materials in both Epstein’s and Maxwell’s cases amid growing backlash over how the Trump Administration has handled the Epstein matter.

Public interest in the late sex offender, who has long been the subject of conspiracy theories on the far right in particular, amplified after the DOJ and FBI released a memo in July that stated that Epstein didn’t have a “client list” of co-conspirators and that his 2019 death in jail was a suicide. While the Trump Administration has tried to brush off questions and concerns over the case, many of the President’s own supporters have expressed frustration over how he has handled the matter.

President Donald Trump’s own years-long relationship with Epstein has also drawn heightened scrutiny amid the renewed attention to the case. The Wall Street Journal published an article last month alleging that Trump sent a “bawdy” letter to Epstein in 2003. The President has denied doing so and has since filed a lawsuit against the Journal’s parent firms, its owner, and the two reporters behind the story. Trump has tried to distance himself from Epstein over the years, recently saying that he broke off his friendship with the disgraced financier after Epstein “stole people that worked for me.”

The controversy has led to increased attention on Maxwell as well, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in recruiting underage girls to engage in illegal sex acts with Epstein and is currently serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison. Late last month, the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena her for a deposition. DOJ Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche also interviewed Maxwell over the span of two days late last month.

About a week after meeting with Blanche, Maxwell, who is appealing her conviction, was transferred from a federal facility in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas. The move sparked outrage from the family of Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Epstein. Her family accused the Trump Administration of giving Maxwell “preferential treatment.”

A separate federal judge in Florida previously rejected one of the DOJ’s requests to release grand jury transcripts from an investigation into Epstein in 2005 and 2007, but another judge is still weighing another request.

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Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend an event in New York City on March 15, 2005.Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan— Getty Images

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An expert warned that U.S. President’s Donald Trump “astonishing U-turn” after agreeing to meet with Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine is an “alarming development”.

Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The Associated Press the “symbology” of holding the summit in Alaska was clear, and that the location “naturally favors Russia.”

“It’s easy to imagine Putin making the point. … We once had this territory and we gave it to you, therefore Ukraine had this territory and now should give it to us,” he said, referring to the 1867 transaction known as the Alaska Purchase when Russia sold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million.

Gould-Davies likened attempts to understand what seems to be Trump’s latest pivot toward Moscow to “Kremlinology” — the Cold War-era practice of deciphering opaque signals from Soviet leadership. “We’re … looking for clues and for hints … about what the hell is going on; what the mix of influences around Trump and indeed in Trump’s head is propelling his latest statement,” he said. “It’s as if his disillusionment with Putin … never happened,” Gould-Davies noted, pointing to a sudden return to the more conciliatory Russia policy Trump embraced at the start of his presidency.

A U-turn to finally make progress?

Prior to Trump announcing the meeting with Putin, his efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the fighting had delivered no progress. The Kremlin’s bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armor while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin on Saturday confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet U.S. President Donald Trump next Friday in Alaska to discuss ending the conflict in Ukraine.

“It seems entirely logical for our delegation to simply fly across the Bering Strait, and for such an important and anticipated summit of the leaders of the two countries to be held in Alaska,” Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said.

The meeting would be the first US-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva and could mean a breakthrough in Trump’s effort to end the fighting, although there’s no guarantee it would stop the conflict since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace. Ushakov added the next meeting between the two leaders could be held in Russia and an invitation had already been sent to the US President.

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Five years ago, electrical engineer Sun Hongbin was given what many would consider an impossible task: build a full-fledged clean-energy system amid some of the coldest temperatures on Earth, screaming winds, and half-year darkness.

China was then building its fifth Antarctic research station, called Qinling, on Inexpressible Island in Terra Nova Bay. And the nation’s government was pushing the concept of “green expeditions” to protect Antarctica’s uniquely fragile environment while studying and surveying the continent. “So having a system that would provide the bulk of Qinling’s energy with renewable power fit that goal,” Sun says.

But conventional solar and wind installations are no match for temperatures that plummet below –40 degrees Celsius, winds of up to 300 kilometers per hour (kmh), and ferocious blizzards. Such conditions can snap wind turbine blades, sharply reduce the performance of solar panels, and prevent batteries from charging and discharging properly. And of course, there are the six months of polar night, when the sun never rises above the horizon.“It was a huge challenge” to build a system for the Earth’s coldest, darkest and most remote continent, says Sun, now president of Taiyuan University of Technology in China and chief scientist for polar clean energy at the Polar Research Institute of China.

But in late 2024, his team traveled to the station to install a system that took $14 million to develop. It consists of 10 wind turbines, 26 solar modules, a hydrogen energy system, a container full of frost-resistant lithium-ion batteries, and a smart grid that can predict and balance supply and demand. The entire renewable system is now running and, according to Sun, should provide half of the base’s average annual energy needs.

“The use of clean energy is a huge advancement to keep the continent clean,” says Kim Yeadong, chair of the Korean National Committee on Polar Research in South Korea, who was not involved with the project. “Other stations will probably have to learn how they achieve that much clean energy. I think it’s remarkable.”

Where Diesel Power Is King

A 2024 preprint analysis of 81 Antarctic research bases found that 37 had installed renewable-energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines. But the proportion of renewable energy these bases used was “often low,” the researchers wrote. An exception so far has been Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Station, which is only staffed during the Antarctic summer. It runs completely on wind and solar power, taking advantage of the almost 24-hour daylight. Even so, the vast majority of stations still depend on diesel-powered generators to keep their crews warm, fed, and safe. The main reason this is the case is simply that “they are used to using diesel,” says Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Tens of millions of Americans voted for President Donald Trump in the belief that he would be competent. They might not have been thrilled that Trump is a convicted felon, or pleased with his role in the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Many worried that he posed a threat to democracy. But enough were willing to overlook all that, because they convinced themselves that Trump would be an effective chief executive, that under his stewardship their lives would get better, and the country would prosper.

A survey from the Democratic pollsters Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman, conducted shortly after the election, helps illustrate the point. By an 11-point margin, independents said they would be less confident that the Trump administration would share accurate information compared with the Biden administration. Yet, by a 10-point margin, those same voters said that they thought the Trump administration would be more effective at getting things done.

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Al Drago / Bloomberg / Getty

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Russia is running out of precision-guided missiles. But here’s the thing: while many view this as a good thing, in reality, this could be really bad news for Ukraine. But the reason, is #NotWhatYouThink

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