Russia’s Foreign Ministry warned foreign citizens, diplomats, and international organization staff on Monday to leave Kyiv as soon as possible, saying Moscow was preparing a “systematic” series of strikes against sites where Ukrainian attack drones are designed, manufactured, and readied for use. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to advise him of the planned operations and urged the evacuation of American embassy personnel, Al Jazeera reported. Western allies have so far declined to comply. The head of the European Union mission in Kyiv said all 27 member nations would keep their diplomatic staff in the city. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the warning “Russian blackmail.”
The advisory followed one of the heaviest assaults on Kyiv since the war began. NPR reported that Russia launched 600 strike drones and 90 missiles Saturday night, including the Oreshnik, a hypersonic ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Four people were killed and more than 80 were wounded. Residential buildings, schools, a marketplace, and a water supply facility were among the structures damaged. Putin said the attack was retaliation for a Ukrainian drone strike on a college in Starobilsk, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.
It was the Oreshnik’s third combat deployment. The missile first struck Dnipro on November 21, 2024, seventeen days after the Biden administration authorized Ukraine to use American long-range weapons against targets inside Russia. It was used again on January 8, 2026, against Lviv. Each deployment has come with a public statement from Russian leadership framing the weapon as a response to Western military support for Ukraine. The missile travels at speeds exceeding Mach 10 and entered production in 2025, in part as Russia’s answer to the prospect of NATO missile systems in Europe.
Diplomatic warnings telling foreigners to leave a capital before a military operation are uncommon, and they carry more than a single meaning. They can reflect genuine intent. They can also be instruments of pressure aimed at the watching governments as much as at the local population. The Western decision to keep embassies open matters, and so does what comes after it.
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has spread to Uganda, with cases now confirmed in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. As of May 25, the World Health Organization counted 1,018 suspected and confirmed cases and at least 234 deaths, France 24 reported. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the situation a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 16, the highest level of international health alert. The outbreak is centered in DRC’s Ituri Province and is the country’s 17th recorded Ebola epidemic.
The response is complicated by the strain involved. The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which is distinct from the Zaire strain that existing vaccines and treatments were designed to combat. The U.S. government has responded with travel screening. The Department of Homeland Security is redirecting travelers arriving from DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan to three designated airports, Dulles, Atlanta, and Houston, for enhanced health checks. ABC News reported that the CDC is also soliciting volunteers from its own workforce to assist with those screening operations.
The last Ebola outbreak to reach Public Health Emergency status was the 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic, which was caused by the Zaire strain and ultimately infected more than 28,000 people across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,000. The United States saw four cases during that outbreak, with one death. Public health officials have consistently noted that Ebola doesn’t spread easily; it requires close contact with the bodily fluids of someone already showing symptoms. The airport screening is designed to catch travelers who may have been exposed before symptoms appear.
The federal government opened its tariff refund portal on Monday, giving importers a formal process to recover duties paid on goods after the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s use of emergency economic authority to impose broad import tariffs. More than 25,000 companies have filed refund requests, according to Yahoo Finance, including major retailers and logistics firms. Refund checks are expected to begin arriving this summer.
The legal fight over presidential trade authority hasn’t resolved. The Court of International Trade ruled earlier this month that a second round of 10 percent tariffs, reimposed by executive order under a separate statute after the Supreme Court’s decision, also exceeded presidential power. That ruling is stayed on appeal and the tariffs remain in effect for now. The Trade Act of 1974, the statute at the center of the current dispute, was written to give presidents short-term flexibility in trade emergencies. Fifty-two years later, what qualifies as an emergency under that standard is still being litigated.
Evacuation orders were lifted Monday evening for the last 16,000 residents displaced by a chemical tank emergency in Garden Grove, California, allowing the roughly 50,000 people who had been ordered out at the crisis’s peak to return home. The incident began May 21 when a storage tank containing methyl methacrylate at a GKN Aerospace manufacturing facility started overheating and releasing vapor. Emergency officials feared what hazmat specialists call a BLEVE, a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion, which could have turned the tank into an explosive and released toxic fumes across the surrounding community.
An overnight inspection found that a crack in the tank had relieved the pressure and cooled the chemical naturally. “We are happy to report that the threat of a BLEVE is now off the table,” Orange County Fire Authority interim Chief TJ McGovern said, as PBS NewsHour reported. No injuries were reported during the five days of the emergency. Fifty thousand people went home last night, which counts as the day working out the way it should.
The Supreme Court agreed this week to bypass its standard 32-day waiting period and give immediate effect to its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, SCOTUSblog reported. The April 29 decision, written by the court’s conservative majority, effectively nullified the application of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the provision that had required states to draw electoral maps giving racial minority voters a meaningful chance to elect their preferred candidates. The court’s order bypassing the waiting period was requested by parties to the Louisiana redistricting case, who argued the state legislature was already moving to push back primary deadlines.
The Congressional Black Caucus has estimated that the ruling puts 19 of its members’ seats at risk in future redistricting cycles. Across 10 Southern states, Stateline reported, Republicans could gain more than 190 legislative seats now held by Black Democrats, as states redraw maps under reduced federal constraints.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was designed to make the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on race-based voting restrictions enforceable in practice. Congress reauthorized it in 2006 by votes of 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate. The court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder eliminated the preclearance requirement, which had required states with histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws. This week’s action, giving immediate force to the Section 2 ruling, is the next major step in that sequence. What remains of federal voting rights law after it, and what states will do now that they know it, will take years to become fully visible.
And one more thing worth reading.
Carol Gifford’s “Foot Pain Remedies” publishes tomorrow in the health section. Carol is a retired nurse practitioner, and she writes the way you wish your doctor would actually talk to you: what’s causing the problem, what the evidence says about it, and what you can do. If foot pain has been on your list, it’s worth finding in the morning.
It is Tuesday. Russia warned diplomats to leave Kyiv and is preparing new strikes on the city it hit with a hypersonic missile over the weekend. An Ebola epidemic has crossed into Uganda and U.S. airports are screening travelers. The tariff refund portal opened and the courts are still fighting over what trade authority the presidency actually holds. Fifty thousand people in Orange County went home last night. And the Supreme Court put its Voting Rights Act ruling into immediate effect. That’s the day.
