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Germany’s rail network brought to standstill by botched IT replacement

Germany’s rail network ground to a halt late on Tuesday as a result of maintenance work that went wrong, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers unable to get home as the national operator faced widespread criticism over the chaos. The Deutsche Bahn (DB) meltdown was initially thought to have been caused by a cyber-attack, but it later emerged that it was likely to have been triggered by a scheduled attempt to replace an ageing component in the railway’s internal communication network, without which the trains are unable to run. Trains were brought to an abrupt halt as a precaution, leaving many stuck on tracks far between stops or standing in stations. Passenger and freight trains were affected. A system reset was carried after two hours, in the early hours of Wednesday, but undoing the chaos took much longer. The railway operator delivered a grovelling apology on Wednesday. “We are analysing the exact cause of the disruption meticulously and with the highest priority, to ensure that the same problem can’t recur,” said Philipp Nagl, the chief executive of DB InfraGO, the state-owned company responsible for railway infrastructure. “Currently it appears the cause of yesterday’s disruption to the GSM-R digital radio system was the planned replacement of a technical component.” The nationwide chaos comes on the back of years of mounting problems with the railway, including frequent delays, cancellations and interruptions. Once the envy of the world, and a byword for efficiency and punctuality, DB has faced growing problems caused by underinvestment and overcapacity. Punctuality stood at just 59% in February, compared with 66% a year ago, with one in three long-distance trains arriving late. At its height in the early 1990s, punctuality was about 85%. As Germany goes through a period in the economic doldrums, the state of the railways is viewed as a bellwether of the country’s fiscal and structural standing, and is often listed alongside creaking bridges and dilapidated roads and school buildings as an example of the catchup it needs. A pessimistic mood among the population over whether it can succeed is very palpable. The rail network is undergoing a multi-billion-euro overhaul which is leading to further frequent disruption on major routes. DB’s chief executive, Evelyn Palla, has said any significant improvement was likely to take several years. The fact that the communications system that broke down is based on 1990s 2G technology used in the first mass mobile phones is reflective of the wider problems. A 5G network is not scheduled to be introduced until about 2035 – leaving the operator scrambling to find and buy up old components around the world, which it is stockpiling to ensure it can continue to fix the system when needed. DB has unsurprisingly become the focus of the nation’s ire and mirth, and the butt of many jokes. Even much of the widespread infrastructure around the rail network is viewed as fragile. Most of the 52 escalators at Berlin’s sprawling central station malfunctioned recently and engineers had to be flown in from Finland to fix them. Europe’s biggest economy has a 20,750-mile (33,400km) rail network that carries about 50,000 trains a day, making it Europe’s biggest and busiest. DB was converted from a state administrative organisation into a private joint-stock company in 1994. The German government has always kept its 100% equity stake in the company. There were angry reactions across the political divide to the latest chaos. “That all the rail traffic in Germany ground to a halt because of a technical defect is a new low in what are already poor operating standards,” Oliver Krischer, the regional transport minister for North-Rhine-Westphalia state, told local media.

Europe heatwave live: UK breaks temperature record for June as parts of France hit 40C – as it happened

UK broke the all-time June temperature weather, with today officially being the hottest June day since the 1967 heatwave. Surrey rang in the high first at 35.7C before Wiggonholt in West Sussex beat that 35.8C. The previous record high was 35.6C in Southampton. Scotland also recorded its hottest day of the year, with temperatures reaching a high of 29.4C at Dyce in Aberdeen on Tuesday. Temperatures at Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire hit a high of 29C on the same day and reached 28.7C at Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, Leuchars in Fife and Edinburgh. Mainland Spain also recorded its highest daily average temperatures in June since at least 1950, with temperatures surpassing 39C in Bilbao today. Temperatures are expected to drop in most of the country though, with only parts of the Basque country in the north still marked red. At least 94 million people in Europe were expected to experience temperatures above 35C today, most of them in France and Spain, AFP estimated. More than 350 million people were expected to experience temperatures above 30C. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that Europe’s heatwave is “putting people’s health are risk.” “The data are clear: temperatures across Europe are rising at roughly twice the global average rate, increasing the likelihood and severity of extreme heat in the future. We cannot afford further delay. Leaders must prioritise investment in climate-resilient health systems, while also accelerating #ClimateAction and mitigating the drivers of the climate crisis.”

Geoff Wadge obituary

My friend and former colleague Geoff Wadge, who has died aged 76, was a pioneer of the use of remote sensing to monitor and study active volcanoes. In particular he became renowned for applying radar to detect ground movements before an eruption begins. Radar can see topography through clouds and can detect surface changes caused by underground movements of magma that sometimes indicate an impending explosion, thereby reducing the need for visits by scientists to dangerous areas close to a volcano. Geoff was born in Burnley, Lancashire, to John Wadge and his wife, Doris (nee Owen), who ran a corner shop together. Educated at Burnley grammar school and motivated by teenage interests in pot-holing and the outdoors, he embarked on a geology degree at Imperial College London in 1968, followed by a PhD there, for which he studied Mount Etna in Sicily. His first job, in 1975, was as a lecturer in the geology department at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. After four years there he moved to the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, to research Caribbean tectonics and to begin his work on using remote sensing to monitor active volcanoes. In 1982 he joined the Seismic Research Unit of the University of the West Indies at its Trinidad campus, monitoring volcanoes of the eastern Caribbean, before returning to the UK to work as a senior research fellow in the department of meteorology at the University of Reading. In 1985 he was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council to undertake an assessment of the Soufrière Hills volcano in Monstserrat, in collaboration with the Seismic Research Unit in Trinidad. The resulting report, written with a colleague, Michael Isaacs, was delivered in 1987 to the government of Montserrat, and warned that the volcano could soon become active again; it did indeed begin to erupt in 1995 and continued to do so until 2010. Later he chaired the Scientific Advisory Committee for Montserrat, responsible for assessment of the hazard and risk relating to the Soufrière Hills volcano, from 2003 to 2014. Geoff worked at Reading University until his retirement in 2020, spending the last eight years there as director of its Environmental Systems Science Centre, focusing on environmental data, remote sensing and Earth observation. In 2015 he was awarded the Murchison Medal by the Geological Society of London. Among his other interests, Geoff had a passion for Morris dancing, which he taught to staff at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. He also loved Caribbean music, and once, at a conference, accompanied the Montserratian singer Arrow in a rendition of his global hit Hot, Hot, Hot. In 1982 Geoff married Linda Grace, a bookkeeper. She survives him, along with their children, Hester and Sam, and grandson Alfred.

Colombia’s leftwing candidate concedes election to Trump-endorsed millionaire

The defeated leftwing candidate in Colombia’s presidential runoff has conceded to the far-right, Trump-admiring millionaire lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella. Since Sunday night, the preliminary count had already pointed to a De la Espriella victory by a razor-thin margin of less than 1% of the vote. But his opponent, senator Iván Cepeda, and the current president Gustavo Petro had initially refused to recognise the result, saying they would instead wait for the official scrutiny process. After the official count showed a 99.997% match with the preliminary results, Cepeda called a press conference in the capital, Bogotá, and finally conceded. “At this stage of the count, I have decided to accept the result of the process, which indicates that Abelardo de la Espriella is the new president of the republic. I do so as an act of democratic responsibility. I do so to contribute to coexistence, peace and dialogue among Colombians,” he said. The leftwing candidate, who finished with 12.7m votes – just 250,000 fewer than De la Espriella’s 12.96m – said, however, that “accepting the electoral result does not mean renouncing the truth or remaining silent in the face of facts that we consider serious and that marked this presidential campaign”. In a reference to Donald Trump’s posts in which he endorsed De la Espriella while describing Cepeda as a “radical left marxist”, the senator said: “We denounced the open and improper foreign interference in Colombia’s internal affairs. In particular, the interventions carried out by the government of the United States and especially those of President Donald Trump in favour of Abelardo de la Espriella’s candidacy.” On Tuesday night, in a 4,500-word social media post, Petro announced that he would begin the transition process with the president-elect. Petro wrote that he felt as though he were handing Simón Bolívar’s sword – the relic that belonged to the military leader of South American independence from Spain and is kept at Colombia’s presidential palace – “to a viceroy”, a reference to Trump’s backing of De la Espriella. The president-elect has announced that Colombia would join the “Shield of the Americas”, the Trump-backed initiative bringing together far-right governments across the region, which now overwhelmingly dominate Latin America. Once De la Espriella takes office on 7 August, only four countries in the region will be governed by the left. “Colombia will NO longer be governed by an administration that is complacent towards narco-terrorism. We will combat it as it should be fought,” wrote De La Espriella, who has pledged to resume a full-scale military offensive to defeat the country’s decades-long armed conflict.

German swimming lake criticised for ban on non-German speakers

An open air swimming lake in the eastern German city of Halle which has refused entry to bathers who don’t speak German has been told it must lift the ban or face possible legal action. The Heidesee lake, a lake in a flooded former open-cast mine, recently introduced a check at the entrance to filter out visitors whose German was deemed not good enough to follow safety instructions. Mathias Nobel, the lido’s manager, said he had taken the controversial step after a spate of cases in which visitors had ignored safety rules and lifeguards’ loudspeaker announcements. “I’m responsible for the bathing here. If anything happened, everyone would point the finger at me. You can’t reverse death,” Nobel told local media. The decision has led to anger and condemnation from critics who accused the venue of dressing up “a blanket entry barrier for entire population groups” as a safety precaution. A spokesperson for the national anti-discrimination agency, which has been consulted on the row and could take legal action, said: “Imagine how much of a fuss there would be if German-speaking travellers in Mallorca had to prove their knowledge of Spanish or Catalan, or Arabic on the Red Sea, before they could go swimming?” Authorities in Halle have demanded that Nobel drops the ban, saying it lacks proportionality. “The operator has to take into account the necessity of guaranteeing public access to the lido,” a city spokesperson said in a statement. “The public character [of the lido] cannot be undermined by the implementation of house rules which amount to a blanket entry barrier for entire population groups.” The authorities added: “Any action that might be perceived as xenophobic could damage the city’s reputation.” Germany’s life-saving association, the DLRG, said in a statement it firmly distanced itself from the Heidebad ban. In Germany, as in the US and other western countries, swimming pools have become unlikely focal points for racial tensions and rows about immigration, stirred up by the far right. Halle is in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which has an election in September. The far-right anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which is leading the polls with about 42%, has seized on the row. “Our public swimming pools, once safe havens of recreation, are increasingly becoming genuine danger zones under the misguided policies of the established parties,” the party wrote in a Facebook post. “When private operators are forced to implement their own language controls to ensure the safety of swimmers, the state’s loss of control has definitively reached the heart of our society.” It uploaded a poster to social media with the slogan: “Those who don’t understand German, stay out.” The party has often used images of swimming pools in its posters and campaign literature, most famously in a colouring book for children that contained racist and xenophobic stereotypes. It included one image of women in full-body veils swimming in a pool while men with knives and pistols linger in the background. Nobel, a trained lifeguard, denied the measure being racist or xenophobic, saying it was particularly important that swimmers understood “the German bathing rules” at his pool because the lake was deeper than a conventional swimming pool and had a steeply sloping shoreline. The city authorities have called on him to find “milder ways” to deal with the communication issues, such as using pictograms that are universally understood or displaying safety messages in other languages.

A decade after the Brexit vote, Europe has moved on even if Britain hasn’t

The morning of 24 June 2016, the day after Britain voted to leave the EU, dawned grey and overcast in Brussels, after a stormy night. As the Guardian’s correspondent in the city, after a few hours’ sleep, I hurried to a breakfast briefing with Conservative MEPs at a smart hotel in the EU quarter. Large trays of eggs, sausages and beans were barely touched, as MEPs fielded questions they couldn’t answer: What happens now? When would the UK leave? Would David Cameron resign? A few hours later he did. In the EU institutions officials broke down in tears. A few top British EU civil servants prepared to resign. Anti-EU populists were jubilant. European leaders feared a domino effect of withdrawals. Sadness, shock and anger swirled on that humid day. The then-president of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, told me that EU lawyers were studying whether it was possible to speed up the triggering of article 50, the then-obscure and untested EU exit clause. Then European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker declared he would like to get Brexit negotiations started “immediately”. The idea of hurrying Britain out the door was soon dropped, but those statements reflected the febrile mood. After the initial shock, the EU rallied. Meeting without the UK for the first time on 29 June 2016, the 27 member states set out their red lines: no negotiations without notification of article 50, no cherrypicking and no splitting the four freedoms: free movement of goods, services, capital – and people. It was a playbook that stood the test of time. The dominos never fell. After three prime ministers, two elections and a long-running parliamentary crisis, the UK finalised its divorce and left. The EU carried on in the face of fundamental challenges: a global pandemic, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the return of Donald Trump, energy price shocks and fierce economic competition from China. Since the Brexit vote, the EU has embarked on common borrowing, along with joint purchases of weapons, gas and vaccines – decisions that would have been almost certainly more difficult with a British prime minister at the table. During its 47 years inside the European project, the UK was often a sceptical voice on deeper EU integration, negotiating opt outs or seeking to block decisions perceived as too federalist. A decade later Britain is heading for its seventh prime minister in 10 years, while its relationship with the EU remains contested. For the EU, by contrast, Brexit is a historical episode viewed with detachment. Jonathan Faull, the former head of the European Commission’s UK taskforce, said the EU has got used to Brexit. Faull, who resigned from the Commission after a 38-year career following the 2016 vote, said: “The final deal that was done is very much to the EU’s advantage. I think Frost and co negotiated badly,” he said referring to Lord Frost, the UK’s erstwhile chief negotiator on the post-Brexit agreement. “The trade and cooperation agreement leaves the EU pretty satisfied in economic terms. The status quo suits them. On the continent, there’s no great desire to reset relations with the UK. They seem to be broadly OK.” *** From Brexit to Breturn? In the UK, Britain’s relationship with the EU remains disputed. A poll published this week found that 60% of those aged 18-28 would support rejoining the EU. Britain’s most-likely next prime minister, Andy Burnham, has said he sees a “long-term case” for rejoining, but would not be advocating for it immediately. The former president of the European Council, Charles Michel, told the Guardian this month he expected the EU would react with “a positive spirit” if the UK ever requested to rejoin. Michel, Belgium’s prime minister at the time of the referendum, stressed this was solely a question for UK politics “if and when there is the readiness for a serious domestic debate”. Meanwhile, Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said he dreams of “Breturn”, while Spain’s leader Pedro Sánchez told the New Statesman earlier this year “we miss the UK within the EU”. Two-thirds of EU citizens would also support Britain rejoining the bloc: a poll for the European Council on Foreign Relations found 66% of respondents across 15 countries either “strongly supported” or “tended to support” UK membership. Support for rejoin ranged from lows of 56% in Bulgaria and 59% in France and Italy to highs in the Netherlands and Denmark. In reality, rejoin is not on the table. Georg Riekeles, who worked for the EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, thinks rejoining is a long-term prospect that ultimately depends on a British consensus. “The strategic, economic and geopolitical logic all point in one direction but rejoining is not a mood, it is a national choice requiring realism, discipline and trust. The EU would need to see a durable national consensus that the UK has really changed its mind.” Riekeles, now an associate director at the European Policy Centre, said Starmer’s departure “raises the question of stability” in the UK system. “What the EU will be looking for, I think, is a UK that has a stable and durable national consensus. Nobody wants to be on a rollercoaster ride.” To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.

‘It’s defiance’: why some Bosniaks are reviving historic flag as they cheer on World Cup squad

Before each game in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s World Cup adventure, Sarajevo has blossomed with primary colours – and two distinct flags. One is the national flag dating to 1998: blue and yellow diagonal halves emblazoned with a slanting line of white stars. The other has golden lilies on a blue shield set against a white background, and has a far deeper history, steeped in centuries of complexity. Its striking resurgence as a national symbol, showcased during Bosnia’s first World Cup for 12 years, comes with its own powerful message. “It’s basically a big FU,” said Reuf Bajrović, a former energy, mines and industry minister who is now vice-president of the US-Europe Alliance, an Atlanticist advocacy group. “It’s in great part the mass rejection of the international community and its policies.” The lilies’ vivid comeback comes at a time of deepening uncertainty about Bosnia’s future. The country’s historical protector and closest ally, the US, has grown unreliable under the Trump administration, which has essentially switched sides and now appears to be supporting Serb separatists dedicated to Bosnia’s dismemberment. At the same time, Trump associates are scouting the region for lucrative business projects. In such tense circumstances, national colours take on a special significance. The blue-yellow state flag, under which the national team has been playing in North America, was imposed by the international community in the aftermath of the Bosnian war, after the country’s three primary ethnic groups and former warring parties – Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks – failed to agree on mutually acceptable colours. It has the deliberate blandness of a design chosen by committee, evoking little emotional attachment, but for nearly three decades it has been accepted by the predominantly Muslim Bosniaks, the country’s majority. (The term also encompasses secular and mixed-ethnicity citizens who embrace Bosnia as their primary identity.) A foreign-imposed flag was accepted because it was foreign intervention, led by the US, that ended the three-year slaughter of the Bosnian conflict, which killed 100,000 people. More than 80% of them were Bosniaks, many of them murdered in mass atrocities including the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Also in the same spirit as the imposed flag, Bosniaks accepted the continued foreign stewardship of the country in the form of a high representative of the international community, sitting in Sarajevo with broad powers to intervene politically as he – and it has always been a he – saw fit. It was part of the price of peace, even though the 1995 Dayton peace deal enshrined the consequences of Serb ethnic cleansing by leaving half the country, the Republika Srpska, under Serb control. More than three decades have brought scant political progress. Republika Srpska still resists integration, and its extremist leader, Milorad Dodik, is an ally of Vladimir Putin who is blatantly unrepentant for the mass killings of the 90s. As a symbol of the attempt to forge Bosnia as an integrated state, the official flag represents both tenacious hope and deep disappointment. “People were prepared to put up with the new flag as a price of international acceptance, but nobody actually identified with it,” said Ivana Marić, a political analyst in Sarajevo. The lily flag resembles the fleur-de-lis of French Bourbon monarchy, but it has equally deep roots in Bosnia, based on an indigenous Bosnian flower and a medieval Bosnian kingdom. It was chosen as the flag of a reborn Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, as a shared historical, non-sectarian symbol, but in the conflict that followed independence it also became associated with the resistance effort of the mainly Muslim Bosnian army against the country’s predatory neighbours. Its growing popularity among Bosniaks, particularly the young, reflects growing impatience with the status quo, and a desire to express an ethnic identity unconstrained by external forces. “The Bosniaks have been willing to go along with whatever was done in the name of the international community and in the name of peace in the last 30 years, but that has oftentimes not worked,” Bajrović said. “The international community has instead favoured nationalist Serbs and Croats.” Before Bosnia’s match against Switzerland, a senior Bosnian army officer was drinking coffee near one of the communal screens set up in Sarajevo for the World Cup. He reflected on the evolution of national symbols. He is a Bosniak, and was wounded defending Sarajevo during the war with a Bosnian lily patch on his uniform, but rose through the ranks of a modern western-integrated national army under the blue and yellow flag. His teenage daughter, however, insists on going to games draped in the lily flag. “For her, it is about pride in who we are as Bosniaks,” he said. “It is also defiance. If Serbs and Croats can display their ethnic symbols, why not us? This younger generation believes in the nation even more than we did.” The Bosnian football team is itself an exercise in the frustrations of nation-building. There are seven Croats in the squad, but despite this, the main Bosnian Croat nationalist party has suppressed celebration, or even recognition, of the squad in areas it controls. In some places, big screens for communal watch parties have been banned. The national team manager, Sergej Barbarez, comes from a family of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. But he managed to persuade only one Bosnian Serb to join the team in the face of strong nationalist pressure on young players to stay away. Dodik was officially ousted from office last year, but he continues to hold sway in the Republika Srpska. Despite the fact that his own nephew runs the Bosnian football federation as a result of interethnic job sharing arrangements, he has quashed any official Serb support for the national team. Aleksandar Trifunović, an independent journalist in Banja Luka, the biggest Serb city, said: “Here unfortunately, the national team and the World Cup are officially ignored. People do watch and follow the games, but there is no organised support or public fan gathering.” Beneath the rigid cartoon-like versions of ethnic identity presented by the nationalist parties, popular attitudes are more nuanced. Big crowds in Sarajevo have come out to cheer for Croatia, many in their Bosnian kit, seeing no contradiction. A few miles away, in East Sarajevo inside Republika Srpska, the streets are festooned with Serbian tricolours with not a Bosnian flag in sight. Near a municipal playground, there are stencilled images of Ratko Mladić, the Serb wartime army commander now serving a life term for genocide in a Dutch prison. But the young men whiling away time on cafe terraces said they would be watching Bosnia play and hoped they won. After all, one said, they are “domaći” (domestic). Similarly in the mainly Croat town of Kiseljak, 40km west of Sarajevo, the flag of the wartime ethno-statelet, Herzeg-Bosnia, is still flying 33 years after it sparked a short, bloody war-within-a-war between Bosniaks and Croats. A local bar, the Movie Café, was screening Croatia but not Bosnia games for fear of “provocations”, according to the bartender. But Stipo, a 40-year-old customer, said most people would cheer for the Bosnian team in the privacy of their own homes. “We are Croats, first and foremost, but we are Croats from Bosnia,” Stipo said. In a nearby hookah cafe, Anes Hadžić, a 28-year-old from Kiseljak’s Bosniak minority, said the World Cup did sometimes bring up obnoxious behaviour in the town, like a local bar flying the Swiss flag before last week’s Bosnia match. “That is why the lily is coming back. It’s a reaction,” said Hadžić. But he added: “Eighty per cent of the people here are fine. We work together and they will support Croatia and us, when we play. “It is the politicians who are happiest when we are divided, so they can sell our land and our water from under us. After all, why preach about something good when you can start a fire?”

France confirms first Ebola case in doctor who had worked in DRC

The first case of Ebola has been confirmed in France, the country’s health ministry has said, in a doctor who had returned from a humanitarian mission to an area affected by the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The patient was transferred to a specialist facility and was in a stable condition, the ministry said in a statement. “All precautionary measures, including the patient’s isolation, were taken upon his arrival in the country, with transfer to the hospital under secure conditions to prevent any risk of contamination.” Authorities are tracing the patient’s contacts, who will have to isolate at home for 21 days. The ministry said the risk to the general European public was very low. The outbreak is centred on Ituri province in north-eastern DRC, where authorities are battling to contain the spread of the virus. There had been 1,048 confirmed cases and 267 deaths as of 21 June, according to the DRC health ministry’s latest data, while 112 people have recovered. Neighbouring Uganda has recorded 20 cases and two deaths. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak on 15 May, and two days later declared a public health emergency of international concern. Experts believe the virus was circulating in the DRC undetected for weeks before, however, and that the scale of the outbreak there is likely to be much larger than the confirmed cases suggest. The humanitarian response has been complicated by aid cuts and conflict in North and South Kivu provinces, to the south of Ituri, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group operates and Ebola cases have also been detected. The outbreak had the largest number of confirmed cases within the first month of any Ebola outbreak, the WHO official Abdirahman Mahamud said on Tuesday. Mahamud said local resistance to the response in DRC, which had included hospitals and treatment centres being burned down, was waning. “More and more communities are aware of the risk of Ebola and are asking for tools to support and protect themselves,” he said. The current strain of the disease is the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no vaccine or approved treatment. Modelling by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested the outbreak could be the biggest on record. The previous largest outbreak was in west Africa from 2014 to 2016, during which more than 28,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died. It is the DRC’s 17th outbreak of Ebola, which was first detected in the central African country in 1976. Scientists believe it spreads to humans from infected African fruit bats, and is then passed between humans through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of an infected person or someone who has died of the disease. Initial symptoms include fever, exhaustion, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. These may progress to vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, a rash, and impaired kidney and liver function. A ‌US citizen who was treated for Ebola in Germany recovered and was discharged earlier this month having tested negative for the virus after 30 May. The US government wants to build an Ebola quarantine facility for its citizens in Kenya, which has never recorded any Ebola cases. The country’s health minister said on Tuesday that construction of the highly controversial facility would stop, however, after a high court order that authorities had initially disregarded. Reuters contributed to this report