A Dutch-flagged cruise ship that was hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak reached Spain’s Canary Islands early Sunday morning, where health officials will begin the complex process of evacuating the passengers and most of the crew, and repatriating them to their respective countries.

The MV Hondius, currently carrying nearly 150 people from more than 15 countries, including 17 Americans, had set sail earlier this week from Cape Verde to the port of Granadilla on Tenerife — the largest of the Canary Islands — after Spain agreed to take the ship.

Video from Reuters showed the ship near the port of Granadilla. Hondius was escorted by a Spanish Civil Guard vessel, Agence France-Press journalists reported.

The World Health Organization has said that, so far, none of those still aboard were showing symptoms.

There are at least nine confirmed or suspected cases of hantavirus linked to the outbreak, including three fatalities, a Dutch couple and a German woman.

Oceanwide Expeditions, the ship’s operator, says that all passengers and a portion of the approximately 60 crew members will begin evacuating the ship Sunday using launch boats that carry a maximum of five to 10 people. The evacuation is being coordinated by WHO and several other health organizations. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus traveled to Tenerife prior to the ship’s arrival. 

After those people have disembarked, a skeleton crew will take on supplies and then begin the journey to Rotterdam, Netherlands, which is expected to take about five days, Oceanwide Expeditions said.

Once removed from the Hondius, the Americans will be flown back to the U.S. in a plane that was sent by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The CDC said it was sending a team of epidemiologists and medical professionals to the Canary Islands to “conduct an exposure risk assessment for each American passenger and provide recommendations for the level of monitoring required.”

The medical repatriation flight will land at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Americans will be taken to a special biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Michael Wadman, medical director of the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said that each American will have their own room while they quarantine for an unspecified amount of time.

Hantaviruses are a family of diseases that are spread to people from rodents through urine, droppings or saliva, according to the CDC. It can take up to eight weeks after contact for symptoms to develop.

WHO says that the Andes strain, which is found in Latin America, is the only one that is known to be able to transmit the virus through human-to-human contact, with Ghebreyesus assessing the public risk as “low,” an assessment which was echoed by acting CDC director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

“Hantavirus is not spread by people without symptoms, transmission requires close contact, and the risk to the American public is very low,” Bhattacharya said in a statement Wednesday.

The source of the outbreak remains under investigation. However, prior to boarding the ship, the Dutch couple who died, a 70-year-old man and his 69-year-old wife, are believed to have spent weeks traveling through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip in areas where the species of rodent known to carry the Andes virus is present, Ghebreyesus said this week.

The man developed symptoms on April 6 and died on the ship on April 11, WHO said, but no samples were taken because his symptoms were similar to those of other respiratory viruses, and hantavirus was not suspected at the time.

His wife then went ashore when the ship docked on the British territorial island of St. Helena. She showed serious symptoms on a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 25, and died in South Africa the following day, WHO said. Testing confirmed she had contracted hantavirus.

The German woman showed symptoms on April 28 and died aboard the ship on May 2, according to WHO.

Three other patients were flown off the ship to the Netherlands for emergency medical care this week, and a Swiss man who began showing symptoms after disembarking the ship was receiving care in Zurich. A British man was medically evacuated to South Africa, while another British national who had disembarked the ship is hospitalized on the island of Tristan da Cunha, a British territory.

Oceanwide Expeditions said 32 passengers from about a dozen countries had disembarked the Hondius in St. Helena, including the Dutch woman who died days later. Those American passengers who returned to the U.S. prior to the discovery of the outbreak were being monitored by state health agencies in California, Georgia, Texas, Virginia and Arizona.

The Hondius set sail for its cruise April 1 from Ushuaia, Argentina, which took it to several islands in the south Atlantic, including the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island and then St. Helena from April 21 to April 24.

The vessel then anchored off the coast of Cape Verde, an archipelago located off West Africa, for several days before heading to the Canary Islands.  

According to data from a recent on-chain evaluation, the Bitcoin mining sector is once again flashing warning signals, as a key industry health metric now hovers above historically critical levels. In this scenario, the Bitcoin price stands a chance to regain past grounds, but only if a specific pattern plays out.

Bitcoin Miner Financial Stress Approaches Capitulation Levels Seen In Past Cycles 

On Saturday, April 18th, MorenoDV put out a Quicktake post on the CryptoQuant platform, revealing an ongoing dynamic shift among Bitcoin miners. The relevant indicator here is the Miner Financial Health Index 7D-SMA metric, which tracks the short-term trend of miners’ overall economic condition. 

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This metric combines four key factors – including hashprice (revenue per unit of computing power), block profitability, fee share, and total miner revenue. When these are measured together, it becomes apparent whether miners are operating in optimal conditions or are under severe stress.

According to the crypto expert, the index currently displays a still-growing value of 27.7%, which is actually quite close to a historically relevant level (20%). Usually, when this metric falls to this critical 20% threshold, it indicates that mining conditions are becoming more difficult; that there is insufficient fee support, or that even rewards are declining.

Interestingly, MorenoDV showed that historical data backs up this observation. Per the crypto pundit, sustained readings above this seen in the 2019, 2020, and  2022-2023 market cycles have aligned with the last stages of a capitulation phase — representing moments when weaker miners are forced out of the market. 

Market Bottoms May Follow Miner Capitulation, Not Peak Stress

Despite the apparent risks in the current cycle, the analyst explained that the situation appears to lean more towards a recovery scenario. As previously mentioned, the Financial Health Index now sits above the historically relevant 20% mark and continues to grow higher.

Typically, when this recovery above 20% occurs, it serves as a telltale sign that the “forced selling phase” is being swallowed up. MorenoDV pointed out that this is often because marginal players must have exited; network conditions have become stable — thus, the remaining miners are working in more optimal economic conditions. 

The crypto expert further noted that this transition often coincides with the exhaustion of bearish momentum in the Bitcoin price. Hence, if the Miner Financial Health Index is indeed transitioning, it might be important to keep an eye out for further recovery of the index. 

As of this writing, Bitcoin is valued at around $75,829, reflecting an almost 2% price decline since the past 24 hours. 

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Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView

The Carter Center’s decades-long fight against an ancient parasite affecting some of the world’s poorest may soon end in a victory.

After leaving the White House, former President Jimmy Carter made the eradication of Guinea worm a top mission of the Carter Center, the nonprofit he and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, founded. Even after entering home hospice care in 2023, aides said Carter kept asking for Guinea worm updates.

Rarely fatal but searingly painful and debilitating, Guinea worm disease infects people who drink water tainted with larvae that grow inside the body into worms as long as 3 feet. The noodle-thin parasites then burrow their way out, breaking through the skin in burning blisters. 

To get rid of the parasite, worms have to be gently wound around a stick as they’re slowly pulled through the skin. Removing an entire worm without breaking it can take weeks.

When the Carter Center started leading the global Guinea worm eradication campaign, an estimated 3.5 million people in 21 African and Asian countries were afflicted with the disease. On World NTD Day on Friday, the center announced that there were only 10 human cases reported across the world.

The center said two of the provisional cases were detected in South Sudan, four in Chad, and four in Ethiopia.

These numbers remain provisional until they are officially confirmed by each country during the campaign’s annual meeting, which is usually held in April.

“President Carter always said he wanted to outlast the last Guinea worm. While he didn’t quite get his wish, he and Mrs. Carter would be proud to know there were only 10 human cases reported in 2025. And they would remind us that the work continues until we reach zero,” said Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander.

Defeating a disease through persuasion

Guinea worm would be the second human disease to be eradicated in history, following smallpox. Remarkably, it’d be the first without a medicine or vaccine.

Instead of finding a cure, the campaign sought to break the worm’s life cycle in communities suffering from the parasite —persuading millions to change their behavior.

Workers from the center and host governments trained volunteers to teach neighbors to filter water through cloth screens, removing tiny fleas that carry the larvae. Villagers learned to watch for and report new cases — often for rewards of $100 or more. Infected people and dogs had to be prevented from tainting water sources.

Health workers investigate every report of the disease. The Carter Center says there were more than 1 million rumors investigated in 2025, most within 24 hours of notification.

“This campaign reflects the values that shaped my grandparents’ lives — the conviction that hope, hard work, and respect for everyone can change the world. Seeing Guinea worm cases reach historic lows is one of the clearest expressions of that legacy and our commitment to the communities where trust has been earned,” said Jason Carter, the Carter Center board chair and eldest grandchild of Jimmy and Rosalynn.

Jimmy Carter made eradication a personal mission

Mr. Carter’s fundraising enabled the center to pour $500 million into fighting Guinea worm. He persuaded manufacturers to donate larvicide as well as nylon cloth and specially made drinking straws to filter water. His visits to afflicted villages often attracted news coverage, raising awareness globally.

“He went to so many of the localities where people were afflicted,” said Dr. William Brieger, a professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University who spent 25 years in Africa. “The kind of attention that was drawn to him for getting on the ground and highlighting the plight of individual people who were suffering, I think that made an important difference.”

Carter first saw the disease up close in 1988 while visiting a village in Ghana where nearly 350 people had worms poking through their skin. He approached a young woman who appeared to be cradling a baby in her arm.

“But there was no baby,” Carter wrote in his 2014 book “A Call to Action.” “Instead, she was holding her right breast, which was almost a foot long and had a worm emerging from the nipple.”

Carter used his status to sway other leaders to play larger roles. Some heads of state got competitive, spurred by the center’s charts and newsletters that showed which countries were making progress and which lagged behind.

Visiting a hospital packed with suffering children and adults amid a 2007 resurgence in Ghana, Carter suggested publicly that the disease should perhaps be renamed “Ghana worm,” which pushed the country’s leaders to take action. Ghana ended transmission within three more years.

The World Health Organization’s target for eradication is 2030. Carter Center leaders hope to achieve it sooner.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Ethereum has reclaimed the $3,300 level after weeks of choppy and uncertain price action, offering bulls a brief sense of relief. However, upside momentum remains fragile, as buyers continue to struggle against the $3,400 zone, a level that has repeatedly capped recent advances. This area now stands as a clear short-term inflection point, separating a potential recovery phase from what some analysts still describe as a broader bearish structure.

Market participants remain divided. On one side, skeptics argue that the latest rebound resembles a classic relief rally, driven by short covering and temporary sentiment improvement rather than a genuine shift in trend.

From this perspective, Ethereum may still be vulnerable to renewed downside if macro conditions tighten or risk appetite fades. On the other side, more constructive analysts believe the stabilization above $3,300 could mark the early stages of a recovery, with higher levels coming into focus if resistance is convincingly reclaimed.

Adding complexity to the narrative, on-chain developments continue to draw attention. Just a few hours ago, Bitmine staked an additional 154,304 ETH, worth roughly $514 million, signaling sustained confidence from large players despite market uncertainty. As price compresses below resistance, Ethereum now sits at a critical juncture where conviction from both bulls and bears is being tested.

According to data reported by Lookonchain, Bitmine’s Ethereum exposure has reached a notable scale. In total, the firm has now staked approximately 1,685,088 ETH, valued at around $5.62 billion at current prices. This places Bitmine among the largest single staking participants in the Ethereum ecosystem, underscoring the growing role of institutional and quasi-institutional actors in securing the network.

What makes this positioning particularly relevant is Bitmine’s overall balance. The company reportedly holds about 2.133 million ETH in total, meaning that close to 80% of its Ether reserves are actively staked rather than sitting idle. This allocation suggests a long-term, yield-oriented strategy rather than a short-term trading approach. By committing such a large portion of its holdings to staking, Bitmine is effectively signaling confidence in Ethereum’s medium- to long-term outlook, despite ongoing price volatility and macro uncertainty.

From a market perspective, large-scale staking reduces the amount of ETH that is readily liquid and available for sale. While this does not eliminate selling pressure entirely, it can contribute to a tighter circulating supply during periods of demand recovery.

At the same time, concentrated staking activity highlights how network security and yield generation are increasingly influenced by large holders. As Ethereum trades near key resistance levels, Bitmine’s positioning reinforces the narrative that some major players remain structurally committed, even as short-term price direction remains contested.

Ethereum’s price action on the weekly chart shows a market attempting to stabilize after a volatile multi-year cycle. ETH has reclaimed the $3,300 area and is now trading just below a clearly defined resistance zone near $3,400. This level has repeatedly capped upside during prior rallies, making it a critical area for bulls to reclaim with conviction.

From a trend perspective, Ethereum remains above its long-term moving averages, including the 200-week line, which continues to slope upward. This suggests that despite recent drawdowns, the broader structural uptrend has not been invalidated. However, price is still trading below the previous cycle highs near $4,200–$4,400, highlighting that ETH is in a recovery phase rather than a confirmed breakout.

Momentum has improved compared to late 2025, with higher lows forming after the sharp sell-off toward the $1,600–$1,800 region. Volume during the rebound has been moderate, signaling participation without clear signs of speculative excess. This supports the idea of controlled accumulation rather than euphoric chasing.

Still, the inability to cleanly break above $3,400 keeps downside risk relevant. A rejection here could lead to renewed consolidation toward the $2,800–$3,000 zone. For bullish continuation, ETH needs a sustained weekly close above resistance, which would shift market structure and open the path toward higher liquidity zones above $3,800.

Featured image from ChatGPT, chart from TradingView.com 

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