One of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide, sepsis is notoriously difficult to diagnose in the early stages and to treat once it becomes life-threatening.

Currently, broad-spectrum antibiotics are used to attack the pathogen causing the reaction. But there are an increasing number of antibiotic-resistant pathogens that can trigger sepsis. “This is the nightmare that keeps my colleagues working in public health awake at night,” one doctor told The Telegraph.

Now, scientists at Australia’s Griffith University are close to unlocking the first specific sepsis treatment. A recent Phase II human clinical trial in China showed “promising results in reducing sepsis”, said Science Daily. This is “a major step forward”.

What is sepsis?
The body’s extreme response to an infection. The immune system overreacts, triggering inflammation that can damage tissues and organs. Untreated, sepsis can quickly lead to septic shock and multiple organ failure. Anyone can develop sepsis, but it’s most prevalent among the young, elderly, diabetic and immunocompromised and women who have recently given birth.

If treated swiftly, the patient can make a full recovery. But the longer the wait for a diagnosis, the higher the risk. Sepsis causes more than 10 million deaths a year worldwide  – equivalent to one life lost every three seconds.

How is it diagnosed?
Sepsis is often called “the silent killer”, because it has widely varying symptoms. Warning signs in a child can mirror less serious conditions and include fever, chills, lethargy, fast heartbeat or breathing, blotchy skin and/or a rash that doesn’t fade. Adults may experience slurred speech or confusion, shivering, mottled skin, severe breathlessness and a feeling of doom.

There is no single diagnostic test; multiple tests (that typically take hours) are needed to confirm the presence, and possibly the type, of infection.

What is the new drug?
Known as STC3141, it works by “calming” and counteracting the “major biological molecule release” that occurs during the body’s immune overreaction. This helps with “reversing the damage to organs rather than only managing symptoms”, said Science Daily.

The research team behind the drug is now planning Phase III effectiveness trials. “It’s hoped we could see the treatment reach the market in a handful of years, potentially saving millions of lives,” said team leader Mark von Itzstein.

A Norwich market, a Manchester railway station and a London street have become battlefields in a new culture war. With flocks of pigeons swelling, concerns about hygiene and health are rising, but are humans to blame for this feathered friction?

Ruffled feathers 
“Pigeon wars” have erupted in Norwich, said The Guardian. The birds are appearing in higher numbers around the city’s open-air market, and critics claim they are are “creating a Hitchcockian nightmare” by “defecating, stealing and spreading disease”.

Norwich City Council hoped to introduce a hawk to “ruffle some feathers and deter” pigeons from the market, said the BBC. But the project was scrapped because local bird feeders ignored calls for them not to feed the birds, rendering the “scare method pointless”. 

Another feathery flashpoint came in Harrow, London, in January, when a woman feeding pigeons on a street was detained by a “group of at least six” police officers and council enforcement workers, said The Independent. A passer-by described the scene as “ridiculous”. 

At Manchester Victoria railway station, “bungled” raids by “pest control marksmen” have left nearly 100 birds “dead or maimed”, said The Telegraph. A spokesperson for Northern Trains said the cull was ordered because pigeons were “posing a risk to colleagues and customers”.

A former love 
“We loved them, once,” said Joseph Earp in The Guardian. “We might not remember that, but pigeons do.” They are the victims of “rampant animal welfare crimes”, being “killed and maimed en masse”.  But as with “so many problems we face, pigeons are a ‘problem’ that we have caused”. Feral pigeons are “descendants of homing pigeons that we kept and domesticated”. They’re “naturally predisposed to want to be close to us”, so “they gather where we gather” and then root through our rubbish. If they’re “dirty or disgusting”, it’s only because “we are dirty and disgusting”. 

Yes, feral pigeons can “carry disease”, Will Smith, an evolutionary biologist, told the BBC, but this is true of all wild animals, and pigeons are “very resistant” to avian influenza. They “get the quite nasty name of ‘rats with wings’”, but this is “not quite fair”.

Team USA’s Alysa Liu delivers a winning performance in the women’s figure skating final at Milano Cortina 2026. The 20-year-old is the first American to claim an Olympic gold in the event in 24 years. 

Antonin Thuillier / AFP / Getty Images

Norfolk: Poachers Cottage, Hempnall
A charming and sensitively renovated Grade II cottage set in mature gardens. 3 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/dining room, 2 receps, garden, garage. £625,000; Sowerbys.

Suffolk: Pound Farm Cottage, Milden
An attractive Grade II timber-frame cottage nestled in mature gardens of approx. 0.40 of an acre, with an ornamental pond. 3 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 4 receps, garden, workshop, parking. OIRO £425,000; Jackson-Stops.

Dorset: Fosters Farm, Boys Hill
A stone and thatch country house, set in 9 acres of gardens and land (with a private lake) in the heart of the Blackmore Vale. 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/ breakfast room, 2 receps, garden, stables, paddock, workshop, garage. £1.25 million; GTH.

Dorset: Littlebrook Farm, Belchalwell
This handsome Grade II 17th century farmhouse is situated in an idyllic rural location with far-reaching views to Blackmore Vale. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, gardens and land (approx. 7.65 acres), stables, paddocks, garage. £995,000; Savills.

Wiltshire: Totney House, Kingsdown
Exceptional Arts & Crafts house in a tranquil, elevated setting with views across the countryside towards Bath. 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/ breakfast room, 4 receps, garden, outbuildings, garage. £1.4 million; Knight Frank.

Vladimir Putin is caught in a vice of his own making
The Economist’s editorial board
“After four bloody years”, the war in Ukraine should “have burnt itself out”, says The Economist. That it hasn’t is down to Vladimir Putin. Peace talks “are unlikely to give” the Russian president the territory that “he wants in order to claim victory”, and “peace itself could trigger a crisis” at home, amid questions about “the squandering of lives”. Yet the “more pain” he inflicts by fighting on, the “clearer it will be to Russians that he is bringing ruin upon them”.

There is no way I am giving my life up to grandparent
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The i Paper
“I was lucky” that my mother loved looking after my child while I worked, writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. But I don’t have a duty “to sacrifice my career” to care for my grandchildren. “The word ‘duty’ chafes.” Older people, especially women, are guilt-tripped into feeling that “they owe this free service to their children”. But what about our “plans and dreams”? We “should be able to make key life decisions without being shamed”.

Here’s What I Just Figured Out About the Way Trump Talks
John McWhorter in The New York Times
Donald Trump’s “speaking style has never been conventional”, writes US linguist John McWhorter. “Sometimes it’s so improvisatory”, you can hardly “call his addresses ‘speeches’ at all”. Recently, he’s been using direct quotation more, almost “performing a little skit” of conversations he’s had. He’s “verbally letting it all hang out”, which “feels consistent with his determination to say whatever he wants”. It’s “the linguistic equivalent of wearing his Mar-a-Lago golf togs to deliver” a speech to the nation.