Thursday briefing: The largest cluster of cases in a generation – what’s behind the meningitis B outbreak?

• Law enforcement warns of 'significant threat to public safety and national security' after swarms of high-tech drones entered airspace over a US base housing B-52 bombers and Air Force nuclear command. • The incident heightens tensions amid US military deployments to the Middle East and ongoing Iran conflict, raising fears of escalation or related threats. • This comes as Trump weighs de-escalation in Iran while oil prices surge, potentially linked to broader geopolitical risks affecting US homeland security.

• UK Cabinet ministers confirmed agreement allowing US use of British bases for defensive operations to degrade Iranian missile sites attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz. • The decision supports collective self-defense amid ongoing US-Israeli strikes against Iranian threats to regional shipping lanes critical for global oil supply. • This bolsters US efforts in the fourth-week war, where Trump claims near-victory but deploys more forces, impacting oil prices and international alliances.

• The US is deploying 2,200 Marines and thousands of sailors aboard three Navy warships, including the USS Boxer, from San Diego to the Middle East to support operations in the Iran conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. • President Trump announced the US is 'getting very close' to meeting objectives in Iran and considering 'winding down' military efforts, while claiming to have decimated Iran's navy, air force, and anti-aircraft capabilities. • Despite Trump's signals, Iran continues firing missiles at Israel and tightening control over the Strait of Hormuz, driving global oil prices higher and causing US stock market declines; death toll exceeds 1,300 in Iran and 1,000 in Lebanon.

Bypassing animal health certificate system by using cheaper pet passport issued abroad could backfire, experts sayBritish pet owners who want to take their furry friends elsewhere in Europe have been warned not to try to dodge expensive health certificates by using a pet passport issued abroad.Before Brexit, taking a cat, dog or ferret to the EU was relatively simple: the Pet Travel Scheme meant an animal needed a microchip, vaccination against rabies, a pet passport and, for dogs, there were also requirements concerning tapeworm treatment. Continue reading...

At least 400 killed in Pakistan’s strike on drug rehab centre, Taliban say, with families searching unmarked mass gravesSohrab Faqiri spent Eid, the Muslim festival to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, looking for the grave of his brother, killed in a massive Pakistan airstrike on Kabul this week.Pakistan’s bombardment campaign, on what it says is terrorist and military infrastructure in neighbouring Afghanistan, appeared to have gone catastrophically wrong. A rehabilitation centre for drug addicts was hit on Monday night, according to the United Nations and the Afghan authorities. The UN’s preliminary death toll is 143 people, while the Taliban administration puts the figure at more than 400 dead. Continue reading...

Premier Peter Malinauskas appears on track for a landslide win as Liberal party’s lower-house seats tipped to be reduced to single digitsGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastPeter Malinauskas appears on track for a landslide re-election victory in South Australia’s state election as polls closed at 6pm, local time (6.30pm AEDT), on Saturday.The race is a key test of the surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, with the Liberal opposition’s lower-house seats tipped to be reduced to single digits. Continue reading...

Cases emerge after other people tell of change in Home Office policy on passports that has left people scramblingTwo more British teenagers have found themselves unable to return to the UK because of new Home Office border rules on British dual nationals.Their cases emerged just hours after reports a 16-year-old British schoolgirl was blocked from boarding a flight in Denmark home to the UK because she was a dual national and did not have a British passport. She has missed two weeks of school so far. Continue reading...

DHSC corrects statements after regulator intervenes as experts say smoking causes far more cancer casesThe Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has had to retract a misleading claim that sunbeds are as dangerous a cancer risk as smoking.In January, health officials announced stricter rules for sunbeds, incorrectly claiming they were “as dangerous as smoking”. The comparison was repeated in social media posts shared by the health secretary and NHS England and was reported by a number of media outlets. Continue reading...

Roberts, who was the first Aboriginal person to host a prime-time current affairs program, was diagnosed with a rare type of ovarian cancer seven months agoRhoda Roberts, the Bundjalung Widjabul Wiyebal cultural leader and arts devotee, has died at the age of 66.In a statement made via Instagram, Roberts’s family announced she had died peacefully in hospital on Saturday afternoon, having been diagnosed with a rare type of ovarian cancer seven months ago. Continue reading...

Medics and officials say there is systematic use of double-tap strikes in campaign to make the south uninhabitableLebanese healthcare workers and officials say Israeli bombings have deliberately targeted medical workers and facilities in south Lebanon, including through the use of double-tap strikes, in what they describe as a systematic effort to make the area unlivable.Since the war began on 2 March, Israel has struck at least 128 medical facilities and ambulances across south Lebanon, killing 40 healthcare workers and wounding 107, according to the Lebanese ministry of health. The war started when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel, triggering an Israeli military campaign. Continue reading...

How infections linked to a nightclub escalated into a public health incident requiring a national response is a puzzle experts are still grappling withTyra Skinner had already been violently sick three times when doctors at Kent’s William Harvey hospital realised something was badly wrong. The 20-year-old was rushed into critical care, racked with a pounding headache, a stiff neck and excruciating pain – the hallmark symptoms of meningitis, the disease that had already claimed two young lives in Kent.“She could hardly move, she was in a foetal position. She was so cramped up and sore,” her father, Dale Skinner, 42, told the Guardian. “It was horrendous, to be honest, to see her so helpless and in so much pain.” Continue reading...

Mors Imperator caused a scandal in 1887 amid fears it mocked the German kaiser – more than 100 years later it is being displayed in a state museumWrapped in a cloak with ermine fur and wearing a jagged iron crown, a hulking skeleton rests one foot on a globe and knocks over a royal throne with a dramatic flick of its ivory wrist.Entitled Mors Imperator (“Death is the Ruler”), the German artist Hermione von Preuschen’s 1887 symbolical painting was meant to express the transience of fame and power. But authorities feared the picture could be seen as mocking the ageing German Emperor Wilhelm I, who then had recently turned 90, and refused to accept its submission to the Berlin Academy of the Arts’ annual exhibition that year. Continue reading...