TV News LIES

By the time the American surgeon who contracted Ebola in Congo was flown to Germany for treatment Tuesday, he was barely able to stand on his own, according to two leaders of the Christian missionary group where he worked.

Dr. Scott Myhre, the East and Central Africa area director for the group, called Serge, described the scene as Dr. Peter Stafford departed.

“There were people in full — we call it PPE — the personal protective equipment, and they’re completely covered, and he’s hanging on them barely strong enough to walk,” Myhre said. “He looked really tired and really sick.”

Stafford worked at Nyankunde Hospital, which is in Congo’s Ituri province, where the Ebola outbreak is centered. Days before the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the outbreak, Stafford operated on a 33-year-old patient with severe abdominal pain, Myhre said. At the time, doctors thought the patient had a gallbladder infection.

Stafford “did an abdominal procedure and found that the gallbladder was normal and closed him up, but this patient subsequently died the next day,” Myhre said.

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Yet another item that may be in your pantry has been recalled over possible salmonella contamination.

A recall notice shared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows select croutons sold at Kroger stores in 17 states are being pulled from the shelves because an ingredient, a dry milk powder, may have been contaminated with salmonella.

The latest item is Kroger Homestyle Cheese Garlic Croutons, which are sold in 5-ounce pouches with a UPC of 0 11110 81353 4. The recall only impacts pouches with any of the below use-by dates:

FEB 17 27   FEB 18 27   FEB 27 27   FEB 28 27
MAR 6 27   MAR 9 27   MAR 21 27
APR 1 27    APR 7 27

According to the notice, affected crouton pouches were sold at Kroger stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin between March 7 and April 7 of this year.

No illnesses have been reported in connection with the croutons, officials said.

Salmonella are bacteria that cause the illness salmonellosis. You can become infected by drinking or interacting with contaminated water; touching animals, their feces, or their spaces (a recent outbreak was linked to backyard poultry); or by eating contaminated food.

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The Trump administration has announced a plan to kill Biden-era drinking water limits on four Pfas “forever chemicals”, and to delay the implementation of standards for two other compounds.

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two separate rules to delay and rescind the limits. The rules must go through an approval process that can take several years, and almost certainly will be challenged in court.

The Trump administration’s plan comes just two years after the US Environmental Protection Agency set legally enforceable drinking water limits for six of the most dangerous Pfas compounds that have been studied. The chemicals include some of the most toxic substances, and are linked to a range of cancers and other serious health problems.

The new Trump plan aims to undo or delay those limits, which public health advocates say would put the nation’s health at risk. Pfas are ubiquitous in the environment and estimated to be contaminating drinking water for more than 200 million people across the US.

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The federal hantavirus response has laid bare the impact of the Trump administration’s cuts to U.S. and global health, renewing concerns among public health experts that the U.S. is not prepared for a bigger health crisis.

Career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been fired or left the agency, and there are far fewer people available to respond to outbreaks and to communicate with the public.

That has largely left political appointees in charge of updating the public.

As the administration scales its response, several top health officials who were previously some of the most publicly critical of the COVID-19 response must now communicate the accurate level of risk posed by the hantavirus.

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The US supreme court upheld nationwide access to mail-order mifepristone, an abortion medication, in a shadow-docket decision on Thursday.

Louisiana sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October in a bid to curtail the regulatory agency’s rules on prescribing mifepristone remotely, arguing that it interfered with the state’s ban on abortion.

The fifth circuit ruled in Louisiana’s favor on 1 May, effectively banning mail-order mifepristone for the entire country. Two mifepristone manufacturers, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, filed an emergency request with the supreme court, which granted a temporary stay until at least Thursday.

In a 7-2 decision with dissents from justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court sided against the fifth circuit, ending the ban – for now.

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Robert was at work when the call came.

It was his wife, and she was frantic. She said she'd just hung up with their daughter's therapist at Asheville Academy, the residential treatment center where they had sent their 14-year-old to live four months earlier. 

The program was shutting down, she told him. They had 24 hours to pick her up.

The family, based in Texas, dropped everything. Within hours, Robert’s wife purchased a plane ticket to North Carolina, then drove from Charlotte through a storm to reach the campus in Weaverville.

“We just packed her up and headed home, not knowing why we had to come get her,” says Robert, who stayed in Texas to prepare the house for his daughter's return. “All of a sudden, she's home, and it's like radio silence. We're not hearing anything from Asheville.”

It was May 31, 2025, and everything was unraveling. 

Two days earlier, a 12-year-old girl at Asheville Academy had died by suicide. It was the second such death that month; a 13-year-old died on May 3. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services had suspended further admissions on May 27 as it began investigating. Then, the program shuttered.

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