Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Washington on Tuesday for Senator Lindsey Graham’s memorial service and for a meeting with President Trump at the White House ahead of it.
Graham died July 11 at 71, of an aortic dissection. His final weeks in public life were spent pushing for tighter economic pressure on countries that continue buying Russian energy exports. His last foreign trip was to Kyiv, where he secured agreement on a package of sanctions targeting Russian oil and gas customers. He served 33 years in the Air Force Reserve, retiring as a colonel. Tuesday’s memorial began at the Capitol, where the Armed Forces Body Bearer Team carried his remains into the Rotunda. A service at Washington National Cathedral followed. The president is expected to speak. Newsweek has the full schedule.
Zelenskyy traveled to Washington from London, where on Sunday he met with Andy Burnham, who has been Britain’s prime minister for eight days. Zelenskyy was the first foreign leader Burnham received. The two visited a naval base in Portsmouth, where British personnel are training Ukrainian service members in mine-countermeasure operations in the Black Sea. They discussed joint drone manufacturing and Ukraine’s persistent request for ballistic missile interceptors. Britain agreed to transfer the intellectual property behind its “Stone Cloak” electronic warfare system, a jamming platform designed to prevent drones from being detected by Russian air defenses. France 24 reported from Portsmouth.
Burnham is the fifth British prime minister to deal with Zelenskyy since February 2022. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and Keir Starmer preceded him. The relationship has remained consistent across five governments and two parties. The face across the table has changed about every eighteen months. The commitment has not.
The White House meeting will focus on peace negotiations and the level of continued US military support. The Trump administration announced last week a plan to stretch $400 million in existing Ukraine aid through 2029. Zelenskyy also has meetings scheduled with members of the Senate on Tuesday evening. Kyiv Post is tracking the diplomatic calendar.
Wildfire evacuations across Spain and France passed 300,000 over the weekend. Friday’s column put the number at roughly 200,000.
French authorities have cleared 198,000 people from the Gironde, Landes, Var, and Tarn regions. Spanish authorities report more than 63,000 evacuations near Madrid. A 78-year-old man died in Manises, northwest of Valencia, in an area directly affected by fire. ABC News and NPR have tracked the cumulative counts. No rain is forecast this week in the hardest-hit areas. Temperatures are expected to reach or exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Spain. Firefighting crews who worked through the weekend are entering their second week of operations with the heat returning rather than relenting. CNN’s July 27 live coverage has the current fire-line positions.
Thirty people, including eight children, were killed late Sunday when armed men attacked Naridon village in Kauru Local Government Area of Kaduna State in northern Nigeria. The attackers arrived around 11 p.m. They shot residents and set houses ablaze. Six children from a single family were killed in their home. No group has claimed responsibility. PM News Nigeria reported from Kaduna on Monday.
Kaduna State has faced recurring attacks on farming communities over the past several years, carried out by various armed groups amid disputes over land and resources. This attack is among the deadliest this year.
Four days ago, the confirmed Ebola death toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo stood at 1,033. As of Sunday, it was 1,405. The case count is now 3,200, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The ECDC’s outbreak assessment carries the current figures.
WHO officials have described this as the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record. Part of what is driving that is the strain: this outbreak involves the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, not the Zaire strain, and the therapeutic drugs developed and approved for Ebola treatment were certified against Zaire. Physicians treating patients are working with protocols designed for a related but different version of the disease. The WHO’s original disease outbreak notice has the technical background.
Uganda is on a different track. The country recorded 20 confirmed cases before containing spread. Its last patient was discharged July 16, and the 42-day surveillance countdown toward an official end-of-outbreak declaration began that morning. No new cases have appeared. Today is Day 12.
A Washington Post analysis published Sunday found that at least 70 people died in the United States during July’s heat dome events. The epidemiologists interviewed for the piece said the actual number is higher, and that the full toll may not be known for months. The Post’s analysis is here.
The problem is a structural one. Heat death certification has no uniform national standard. Some medical examiners list heat as a direct cause of death. Others note it as a contributing factor. Smaller counties often don’t have the staff or the systems to make the determination at all, especially in real time, during an ongoing emergency. The result is an undercount that is not a reporting failure but a methodology failure built into how American public health tracks this particular cause.
This is July’s third heat dome. The first, around the July 4 holiday, killed at least 44 people, including 29 in New Jersey, a 15-year state record. The second arrived before the first count was complete. The third is now tracking across the central and western United States, affecting roughly 80 million people. TechTimes has tracked the three-dome sequence.
Thirty-one years ago this month, a heat emergency in Chicago ran for five days in July 1995 and killed more than 700 people, most of them elderly residents living alone, many without air conditioning. The city’s emergency systems didn’t grasp the scale of the crisis until the medical examiner’s office ran out of refrigeration space. Chicago revised its heat response protocols after that summer. Those protocols are now considered a national model. Most American counties still don’t have equivalent systems. The counting gap the Washington Post described this week is the same gap that existed in 1995.
The United States halted new airstrikes against Iran over the weekend to give diplomatic talks room to proceed, according to CNBC. CNBC confirmed the military pause Sunday. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the same day there are no current negotiations underway with Washington, and that Tehran “will never allow the United States to determine the timing of war and peace,” according to CNN’s July 27 live coverage. CNN’s log is here.
Brent crude held above $100 a barrel Monday. The dual disruption in the Red Sea, where Houthi forces have attacked Saudi tankers and declared a naval blockade, and near the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping volumes remain well below pre-conflict levels, continues to keep prices elevated. Both chokepoints are contested. Neither is resolved.
Sir Adrian Hill, an Irish scientist who spent decades working on a malaria vaccine at the University of Oxford, received the European Patent Office’s 2026 Inventor Award in the research category, at a ceremony in Berlin earlier this month.
The vaccine is called R21/Matrix-M. It cleared the World Health Organization’s protection targets of 75 to 80 percent in clinical trials. It costs less than three euros per dose to produce. It can remain stable under standard refrigeration for up to two years, which means it doesn’t require the specialized cold-chain infrastructure that has historically made vaccine distribution difficult across rural African health systems. Silicon Republic reported on the award.
Malaria vaccination using R21/Matrix-M is now part of routine immunization programs in more than 20 African countries.
Malaria kills roughly 600,000 people a year. Most of them are children under five. It isn’t a disease that generates week-to-week coverage, because it isn’t an outbreak. It’s a standing condition, reliable and predictable, which is also why it’s possible to develop a vaccine against it if someone works on the problem long enough. Hill started in the 1990s. The vaccine existed, in working form, before most of the children who will now receive it were born.
Howard Fenn writes The Day, Monday through Friday.
