Morning Report
Beirut bombed again, UK cedes sovereignty, and the fallout from Hurricane Helene

 
today's INTERNATIONAL story

Renewed Israeli air strikes rock Beirut

What happened
Israel launched bombs at Beirut last night in a further onslaught of air strikes, with massive explosions reported near the Labanese capital's airport. A Hezbollah source told AFP that Israel had launched 11 consecutive strikes on the city's southern suburbs.
 
The latest attacks have been compared to those that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah almost a week ago, when Israel used dozens of 2,000lb bunker buster bombs that left craters "dozens of metres deep", said The Guardian.
 
Who said what
Israeli commentators said the man expected to become the next leader of Hezbollah, Hachem Safiedinne, was the presumed target of Israel's latest strikes.
 
Whether Safiedinne, the head of Hezbollah's executive council, was killed in the strikes was "unclear", said CNN, but an expert told the broadcaster that Israel's current aerial campaign in Lebanon was "comparable only to the first weeks of its bombardment in Gaza last year".
 
What next?
As the region braces for Israel's response to Iran's missile barrage, Joe Biden said the US was in discussions with Israel about the prospect of Israeli strikes on Iran's oil infrastructure.
 
Oil prices surged after the US president's comments, which could result in petrol price increases for UK customers.

 
 
today's UK story

Britain to return Chagos Islands to Mauritius

What happened
The British government has said it will renounce its sovereignty over the remote Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Mauritius has long argued that it was forced to give up the islands when granted independence from the UK in 1965.

Who said what
"This is a seminal moment in our relationship," said the prime ministers of both countries in a joint statement, "and a demonstration of our commitment to the rule of law."

Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the deal would secure the future of the UK's strategic air base, which it shares with the US, on the island of Diego Garcia. His predecessor James Cleverly tweeted: "weak, weak, weak" in response to the agreement – despite, said The Independent, "having kicked off negotiations over the deal when he was foreign secretary".

What next?
Chagossians will be able to return to all islands except Diego Garcia and the UK will provide financial support to Mauritius, including an annual payment.

 
 
Today's US story

Devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene

What happened
The US is reeling from the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene, which has led to the deaths of nearly 200 people across six states. The storm was one of the "worst" in the country's history, said CNN, leaving millions without power. Search and rescue teams continue to look for missing people.

Who said what
Small communities are completely isolated and supplies have to be dropped by helicopter or taken in by raft. "Storm-battered" residents "have been cut off from the world for days", said The Washington Post.

Some are "relying on old-fashioned ways of communicating and coping", said AP. In the mountain communities of western North Carolina, local leaders shout updates from picnic tables and "makeshift" message boards list the names of people still missing.

What next?
Hurricane Helene has shaken "people's faith in the safety of living in the South", said Abrahm Lustgarten in The New York Times. "The tolls of extreme heat, storms and sea level rise are quickly adding up."

 
 

It's not all bad

A capybara's daring escape from a Shropshire zoo has become an online sensation, inspiring memes, merchandise and even a song. Cinnamon fled her enclosure this month after being "startled by a tractor mower", said the BBC. Her escape sparked a week-long hunt and attracted global attention after Hoo Zoo and Dinosaur World owner Will Dorrell quipped that she was "probably living her best life" in the nearby Humber Brook river. After being spotted 200 metres from the zoo by a thermal drone, Cinnamon is now safely back in her enclosure, where she is "expected to pull in the crowds" when she returns to public view this weekend following a bit of a rest.

 
 
UNDER THE RADAR

Is death a thing of the past?

What is death? It might seem like one of life's more straightforward questions, but experts' understanding of the subject continues to evolve and deepen.

The process of "declaring death" has become "progressively messier", said Popular Mechanics. Advances like ventilators and life support have "made it harder and harder to find the line between being a person and being a body". And now "mind-blowing experiments in pigs" and a "souped-up life-support system" are reviving the debate about how life ends.

Yale neurobiologist Nenad Sestan and his co-workers were able to revitalise parts of pigs' brains four hours after they had died by using pumps, heaters and filters to create a now-patented perfusion system. "Neurons were firing, blood vessels were functioning" and the brain's immune cells were "chugging along".

Then the team decided to scale things up. When the animals were hooked up to a new life-support system called OrganEx after being dead for an hour they "looked lifelike, their hearts restarted, and they even moved".

In another study, researchers found that "skin cells extracted from deceased frog embryos were able to adapt to the new conditions of a petri dish in a lab", said biologists Peter A. Noble and Alex Pozhitkov on The Conversation. They spontaneously reorganised into multicellular organisms that exhibited behaviours extending "far beyond their original biological roles".

This not only "challenges how scientists typically understand cell behaviour", but introduces "a 'third state' that lies beyond the traditional boundaries of life and death".

 
 
on this day

4 October 2006

Julian Assange launched WikiLeaks. The whistleblowing platform would go on to publish hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including US military documents and videos from the Afghan and Iraq wars, the release of which US officials said put lives in danger. In June, Assange pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information in a US court under a deal that allowed him to walk free following a 14-year legal battle.

 
 
Today's newspapers

"Starmer's surrender", says the Daily Mail, accusing the PM of a "shameful retreat" by handing over sovereignty of Diego Garcia to Mauritius. The Times says Starmer did not heed private warnings from the US on the issue. "Oil surges" to its highest price in more than a month, says the Financial Times, following comments by Joe Biden about a possible Israeli attack on Iran's oil facilities – a hike that could have a "knock-on effect" on petrol prices in the UK, the paper warns. The Guardian says MPs are to be given a "historic vote" on whether to legalise assisted dying, and Dame Esther Rantzen tells the Daily Express that she hopes the reform will happen in her lifetime.

See the newspaper front pages

 
 
tall tale

Frankensheep Rising

An 81-year-old Montana rancher has been sentenced to six months in prison for using tissue and testicles from wild sheep to breed "gigantic Frankensheep clones", said Popular Science. In a decade-long scheme, Arthur Schubarth illegally harvested tissue from Marco Polo argali sheep from Central Asia and the testicles of bighorn sheep from the Rocky Mountains to create massive hybrids to sell for captive trophy hunting. After his scheme was rumbled Schubarth said he had got carried away in his "enthusiasm" to "make the best sheep I could".

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Chas Newkey-Burden, Kari Wilkin, Jamie Timson, Hollie Clemence, Sarah Collins and Sorcha Bradley, with illustrations by Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Ramiz Dallah / Anadolu / Getty Images; Melissa Sue Gerrits / Stringer / Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images.