More than 6,000 cases of monkeypox have now been reported from 58 countries in the current outbreak, the World Health Organization said.
The U.N. agency will reconvene a meeting of the committee that will advise on declaring the outbreak a global health emergency, the WHO's highest level of alert, in the week beginning July 18 or sooner, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual news conference from Geneva.
At its previous meeting on June 27, the committee decided that the outbreak, which has seen cases rising both in the African countries where it usually spreads and globally, was not yet a health emergency.
"I continue to be concerned by the scale and spread of the virus across the world," Tedros said, adding that a lack of testing meant that there were likely many more cases going unreported. Around 80% of cases are in Europe, he said.
Monkeypox, a usually mild viral infection that causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions, has been spreading worldwide since early May. The fatality rate in previous outbreaks in Africa of the strain currently spreading has been around 1%, but so far this outbreak seems to be less lethal in the non-endemic countries.
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack, Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday, as Israeli airstrikes killed 55 people, according to local medics.
Russia attacked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at night with drones, missiles and guided bombs, killing at least three people and injuring 22, including a one-and-a-half-month-old baby, the city mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said on Saturday.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was flown back to the United States to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants within the US, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday.
Bangladesh will hold a national election in the first half of April 2026, its de facto premier said on Friday, after a period of interim unelected government since student-led unrest in 2024 toppled then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
US President Donald Trump threatened to cut off government contracts with billionaire Elon Musk's companies, while Musk suggested Trump should be impeached, beginning an all-out brawl on social media.