Ebola Deaths Surpass 500 in DR Congo as Overworked Health Staff Threaten to Walk Out: The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has crossed another somber threshold, with 506 deaths now confirmed from the Bundibugyo strain, a variant with no approved vaccines or targeted treatments. The Ministry of Health has logged 1,561 total cases, concentrated in Ituri province with significant spread into North and South Kivu. Compounding the crisis, healthcare workers in Ituri issued a 24-hour strike notice, citing unpaid benefits, low wages, and chronic supply shortages since the outbreak began in May. A walkout could disrupt a newly launched clinical trial testing remdesivir and the experimental antibody treatment MBP134. Separately, the World Health Organization added the first diagnostic test for Bundibugyo to its emergency use listing, aiming to close gaps left by earlier tests that were only calibrated for the more common Zaire strain. (CIDRAP)

First-Ever Clinical Trial Launches to Fight Ebola Bundibugyo in DR Congo: The World Health Organization has enrolled the first patients in PARTNERS, the first-ever clinical trial targeting Ebola Bundibugyo virus, at a treatment unit near Bunia in Ituri province. Up to 1,200 patients could eventually join the study, which tests the antibody cocktail MBP-134 and the antiviral remdesivir, alone, combined, or against supportive care only. “It’s hope for the community,” said WHO’s Vasee Moorthy. The outbreak, only the third ever caused by Bundibugyo virus, has sickened over 1,400 people in the DRC and killed 438, with cases also confirmed in Uganda. A third drug, maftivimab, may be added later. Separately, WHO declared an end to the hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius, which sickened 13 people and killed three, after the final quarantined contact tested negative. (Science)

New Modeling Confirms the First Fleet Brought Smallpox to Australia — and the Death Toll Was Far Higher Than Thought: New computer modeling has settled a long-running historical debate: the devastating 1789 smallpox epidemic that swept Aboriginal Australia originated with the First Fleet, not through northern trade contact with Indonesian seafarers, as some historians had proposed. Researchers tested both hypotheses using mortality rates, travel pathways, and population data, finding a northern-origin outbreak would have died out long before reaching Sydney. “It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt,” said co-author Corey Bradshaw. A companion study, combining radiocarbon dating, genetic diversity, and carrying-capacity estimates, suggests precolonial Australia held far more people than assumed, likely around 2.3 million rather than a few hundred thousand. Together the findings imply the epidemic and colonization killed far more Aboriginal people than history books record, up to 220,000 in the outbreak alone. (Science)

Egypt Unveils a Planned Byzantine City and a Cluster of Greco-Roman Tombs: Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has announced two major finds illuminating life during Late Antiquity. At Ain el-Sabil in the Dakhla Oasis, archaeologists uncovered an entire mudbrick city built to a deliberate, planned layout rather than growing organically, centered on a mid-fourth-century basilica that anchored both religious and civic life. The settlement was fortified with massive walls and watchtowers, and excavators identified the homes of specific residents, including a church deacon named Tisus. Roughly 100 kilometers west, at Marina el-Alamein, researchers uncovered 18 new tombs belonging to the port city of Leukaspis, bringing the site’s total to 48. Among the finds is a 2.5-meter granite sarcophagus with skeletal remains and fragments of a plaster sphinx, along with evidence of the mysterious “golden tongue” burial ritual. (The Week)

Ancient DNA Shows Scythian Power Ran in the Family: A new ancient-DNA study suggests political authority among Iron Age Scythian elites was inherited through family lines rather than won solely through conquest or wealth. Researchers analyzed genome-wide data from 85 individuals across Central Eurasia, including 38 people buried in richly furnished kurgans and 47 from simpler graves, and found elite individuals were more closely related to each other across distant burial sites than to lower-status people buried nearby. The dataset also includes the first genome-wide data from Kazakhstan’s famous Saka “Golden Man.” Notably, nearly half the elite individuals studied were women, suggesting high status wasn’t reserved for men, and the team found no clear pattern of residence favoring either the husband’s or wife’s family line. (Phys.org)

Oldest Known Church in a Roman City Found Beneath an Italian Fish Market: Excavations beneath a former fish market in Oderzo, in Italy’s northeastern Veneto region, have revealed the remains of what’s believed to be the earliest Christian place of worship in the Roman city of Opitergium. Archaeologists uncovered roughly 30 square meters of remarkably intact mosaic flooring across the basilica’s three naves, decorated with interlocking octagons, ivy motifs, and diamond panels bearing crosses. The centerpiece is a large octagon featuring a Solomon’s knot design surrounded by a pattern resembling a ceremonial canopy. The church’s perimeter walls and buttresses were built on brick-and-mortar foundations supported by wooden piles driven into the region’s soft alluvial ground, an engineering response to the waterlogged terrain that ultimately helped preserve the mosaics for roughly 1,600 years. (Heritage Daily)

A Picene Prince’s Chariot and a Noblewoman’s Grave Emerge Near Italy’s Adriatic Coast: Archaeologists excavating near Sirolo, in Italy’s Le Marche region, have uncovered a sixth-century-BC funerary complex built around a princely burial that includes a ceremonial two-wheeled chariot, along with a separate, exceptionally preserved grave belonging to a noblewoman. The prince’s tomb held weapons, a folding stool signifying authority, and sealed bronze vessels still containing traces of what may have been a funeral banquet. The adjacent female burial preserved rare organic remains, including textiles, shoes, and multiple fibulae, one with an amber inlay that may have anchored an elaborate headdress. Excavation director Stefano Finocchi said the find finally lets researchers place a warrior’s tomb discovered nearby in 2020 within its full aristocratic family context. (Greek Reporter)

Medieval Novgorod’s Boar-Tusk Amulet Reveals a Never-Before-Seen Craft Technique: A wild boar tusk excavated in Veliky Novgorod back in 2020 has turned out to be an object without known parallel: a twelfth-century amulet fitted with a decorative metal mount, a feature never before documented among the city’s bone and tooth talismans. The tusk, from a large adult boar, was set in a tin-lead alloy shaped to imitate silver, and metallurgical testing showed the artisan combined metals of different melting points to assemble the delicate piece. Engraving on the soft tin surface is likewise unprecedented in Novgorod’s jewelry record. The amulet turned up alongside weapons and armor fragments in a wealthy household, hinting that its owners had ties to a military milieu, and that hunting prowess, craft, and older protective beliefs could all converge in a single personal object. (Arkeo News)

Bronze Age Ireland Hosted a Proto-Urban Hub Long Before Navan Fort’s Fame: New research combining lidar, geophysical survey, and targeted excavation suggests Haughey’s Fort in Northern Ireland functioned around 1200 BC as a densely organized center integrating housing, craft production, feasting, and ritual, centuries before nearby Navan Fort became legendary as Ulster’s royal seat. Researchers identified more than 200 possible circular wooden structures alongside a massive 109-hectare outer enclosure, one of the largest known Bronze Age complexes in Ireland or Britain. Imported artifacts point to trade contacts reaching as far as Iberia and central Europe. While the study’s authors stop short of calling it a true city, given the absence of paved streets or administrative buildings, the density of housing and specialized production suggests far greater social complexity than previously assumed for the period. (Phys.org)

Ancient DNA Ends a 400-Year Medici Poisoning Rumor: Genetic analysis of skeletal remains has settled a centuries-old suspicion surrounding two Medici family deaths. Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici died in 1562, and his older brother Grand Duke Francesco I followed in 1587, both after fevers that resembled malaria, yet historians long wondered whether Francesco had actually been poisoned by his own sibling. Yale researchers, working with paleopathologists from the University of Pisa, extracted DNA from the brothers’ bones and identified a previously unknown strain of Plasmodium falciparum in Giovanni’s remains, along with a second malaria species, P. malariae, in Francesco’s. “Now we can say with scientific certainty that malaria, not poisoning, killed Grand Duke Francesco de Medici,” said co-author Valentina Giuffra of the University of Pisa. The findings also offer a rare genetic window into how the deadly parasite has evolved. (Yale)

A Strange LIGO Signal Keeps Building the Case for Primordial Black Holes: A peculiar gravitational-wave signal detected by LIGO in November 2025, cataloged as S251112cm, is drawing fresh theoretical scrutiny as possible evidence for primordial black holes, objects theorized to have formed moments after the Big Bang and proposed as a candidate explanation for dark matter. The signal involved a merger between two unusually light objects, each between roughly 10 and 87 percent of the sun’s mass, far lighter than typical stellar black holes. Researchers Cappelluti and Magaraggia argue the “just noise” explanation is becoming harder to defend, though the signal hasn’t yet been formally entered into a peer-reviewed catalog. LIGO itself is currently offline for upgrades, with its next observing run not expected until late October or November 2026, meaning confirmation will have to wait. (Tech Times)

Magnetic Waves Called Magnons Could Shrink Quantum Computers to the Size of a Coin: Physicists have overcome a longstanding barrier to using magnons, tiny magnetic waves within solid materials, as carriers of quantum information. Previously limited to lifetimes of a few hundred nanoseconds, magnons in the new study reached up to 18 microseconds, nearly a hundredfold improvement, by exciting short-wavelength waves less sensitive to surface defects and cooling ultra-pure crystal spheres to just 30 millikelvin. Crucially, the team found the remaining limitation wasn’t a fundamental law of physics but simply the purity of the material, meaning further gains may come from better manufacturing rather than new discoveries. Because magnons can fit into nanometer-scale, chip-sized circuits and naturally interact with other quantum particles, researchers say they could eventually serve as a “quantum bus” linking hundreds of qubits together on a single chip. (Science Daily)

A Nearby Super-Earth Looks More Habitable Than First Thought: A fresh look at the exoplanet GJ 3378b has upgraded its odds of habitability. Originally measured in 2024 at over five times Earth’s mass, placing it in Neptune-like territory, new observations from two telescopes revised its mass down to about 2.3 times Earth’s, reclassifying it as a rocky super-Earth. The same data also shortened its estimated orbital period from 25 to 21 days, meaning the planet sits closer to its faint red dwarf star than previously thought, yet still within the star’s habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a suitable atmosphere. The world receives about 90 percent of the stellar radiation Earth gets from the sun. Astronomer Michael Endl called the update a step toward identifying nearby worlds worth searching for biosignatures. (space.com)