No new meningitis cases linked to Kent outbreak found, health agency says
No new cases of meningitis linked to the outbreak in Kent have been detected, raising hopes that it has been well contained and has not led to people elsewhere catching the disease.The number of people affected remains at 29, of which 20 are are confirmed and nine probable cases in what health officials say is an “explosive” outbreak – the biggest to occur in the UK in a generation.Two of the 20 people confirmed with the disease have died: Juliette Kenny, 18, a secondary school student, and an unnamed University of Kent student.The other 18 are thought still to be in hospital.Nineteen of the 20 confirmed cases were of meningitis B.
The outbreak involves people who attended the Chemistry nightclub in Canterbury on 5, 6 and 7 March, including students from the city’s two universities.The total number of cases has fallen from 34 on Friday to the 29 the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) reported on Sunday and Monday.Five cases were reclassified as a result of laboratory testing.That number may fall further because more cases included in the 29 also look likely to be ”downgraded” and removed from the headline total.“Whilst we expect some further probable cases to be downgraded in the coming days, this outbreak is not yet over,” a UKHSA spokesperson said.
The fact that the number of cases has not continued to rise since the outbreak first came to the UKHSA’s attention over the weekend of 13/14/15 March is grounds for optimism, health officials and experts believe.Staff from Kent county council, NHS England and the UKHSA quickly began providing antibiotics and vaccines and tracing contacts of those known to have been infected.“The lack of new cases is a good sign and may signal that the Kent outbreak has been contained,” said Simon Williams, a public health expert at Swansea University.“However, we can’t rule out [that] there are no further cases linked to this outbreak because the latency period, the time between exposure and symptom or disease alert, for MenB can sometimes be longer than a few days.”The lack of new cases was largely the result of prompt antibiotics and vaccine provision and contact tracing, he said.
But “this is also partly due to the nature of MenB, because it is not as contagious and easily spread as, say, flu or Covid,It does not infect as many people as this and so the precautions taken in Kent, including voluntary reduction of socialising, will also have played a part,”As of lunchtime on Monday, 13,088 doses of antibiotics had been given out and 10,081 people had been vaccinated against meningitis B,One health official said: “It looks promising and reassuring that cases have not increased,that suggests that there’s not a secondary chain of transmission beyond the already-known chain of transmission in Canterbury.
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Estate of Mike Lynch ordered to pay £920m to Hewlett-Packard
The estate of late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been ordered to pay £920m to the technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) two years after he died in a superyacht disaster.The ruling by London’s high court said the estate was liable to pay the sum as compensation, costs and interest for HP’s acquisition of Lynch’s firm Autonomy, after a UK legal ruling in 2022 that he duped the US firm into paying £8.2bn for his software firm Autonomy.The deceased entrepreneur’s estate has been estimated to be worth about £500m, so the damages could leave it bankrupt.Lynch and six others, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died in August 2024 on a trip with friends and family celebrating his acquittal on US fraud charges relating to HP’s $11bn takeover of Autonomy in 2011
Energy price shock and interest rate rises could cause ‘pronounced’ UK recession, economist warns – as it happened
Britain’s economy could be dragged into recession by the end of this year by high energy prices and interest rate hikes, economists at Morgan Stanley have warned.Following this morning’s data showing a slowdown in private sector growth this month and a surge in input costs (see 9.41am), Morgan Stanley economist Bruna Skarica has warned that the energy price shock is likely to prompt the Bank of England to raise interest rates, which would hurt growth.Skarica points out that oil prices have risen by around 40% since January, with natural gas contracts up by around 80%, prompted the financial markets to predict the BoE will raise rates this year.Skarica told clients:double quotation markShould these financial conditions and commodity prices be sustained in the coming months, we would be calling for a pronounced UK recession at the turn of the year
Divide between Silicon Valley and ordinary people grows ever larger
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. This week in tech, we discuss a moment of divergence between Silicon Valley and everyday people; deep cuts at Meta to maximize spending on AI; writers caught using AI; and the frightening, fiery crashes of the Tesla Cybertruck.Nvidia hosted a conference last week where it emphasized AI agents – semi-autonomous chatbots that can perform digital tasks for you – as the next frontier in tech. The company announced a toolkit for agents, including NemoClaw, an AI agent software suite for businesses
Amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online surged in 2025
The amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online rose by 14% last year, with the majority of videos showing the most extreme type of content, according to a safety watchdog.The Internet Watch Foundation said it identified 8,029 AI-made images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in 2025. It added that there had been a more than 260-fold increase in videos.The IWF said 65% of the 3,443 videos were classified as category A, the term for the most severe material under UK law. The corresponding figure for non-AI videos was 43%, said the watchdog, showing that the technology was being used to create more violent content
World Snooker Championship to remain at Crucible until at least 2045 with revamp
Barry Hearn concedes he has let his heart rule his head for the first time in his career after striking a remarkable new long-term deal to keep snooker’s world championship at the Crucible Theatre – before hinting that his son Eddie was among those who were against the decision.The tournament has been played at the 980-seat venue in Sheffield since 1977, and it will remain there until at least 2045 with an option to extend to 2050 after World Snooker Tour and Sheffield city council agreed a contract to ensure snooker’s most prestigious event will stay at its spiritual home.As part of the agreement, the Crucible will undergo a renovation after the 2028 tournament, with the venue securing £45m of government investment that Hearn admitted was decisive in keeping snooker in Sheffield. An extra 500 seats will be installed at the theatre, taking capacity to 1500.It is a striking and notable agreement for the sport, not least because Hearn himself had made loud noises in recent years about the need for a completely rebuilt Crucible with at least 3,000 seats if the world championship was to remain in Sheffield amid interest from places such as Saudi Arabia and China
West Ham stadium stance could block London’s World Athletics Championships bid, warns Coe
Sebastian Coe has warned that London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships could be scuppered by West Ham’s refusal to allow their stadium to be used in September.World Athletics has made it clear to bidding cities, which the Guardian understands also includes Rome, Munich and Nairobi as well as a mooted Indian city, that the world championships should be the grand finale to the athletics season.However West Ham are so far refusing to vacate their stadium for around three weeks in September, despite the London bid having the strong backing of the government and the mayor’s office.“It’s really difficult for me because I have a view, but I have to be scrupulously neutral, because London is clearly not the only bid out there,” said Lord Coe. “All I would say is that I would hope that there is a recognition that outside the Olympic Games and the World Cup, this is the third-largest sporting gathering in a four-year cycle
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