What happened
Health authorities have now issued a rare nationwide alert over the fast-moving meningitis outbreak centred on Canterbury in Kent. Two young people have died and about 20 cases have been identified or are under investigation. A large-scale response is under way, including vaccinations for thousands of students at the University of Kent and widespread antibiotic distribution. The outbreak has also reached Canterbury Christ Church University and several local schools, while one related case has been reported in France.

Who said what
Health Secretary Wes Streeting described the rate of spread as “unprecedented”. UK Health Security Agency chief executive Susan Hopkins said officials were trying to gain an understanding of the speed of transmission.

When meningitis strikes, “a quick response is the difference between life and death”, said The Telegraph’s health editor Laura Donnelly, which is why “officials are facing questions over the hold-up in rolling out their full-scale response”.

What next?
Vaccination clinics are expanding, while antibiotics remain the primary treatment as authorities work to prevent additional cases.

What happened
Bolton is bidding to host the 2035 Ryder Cup – and be the first English course to welcome the competition since 2002. The plans for a golf resort development also include a new £70 million M61-M6 link road.

Who said what
There are “more than a few obstacles”, said The Guardian – namely that the “the £250 million course is not yet built”. The plans for Hulton Park were first raised in 2018, but they met with “fierce opposition” from residents and conservationists.

This bid is “not pie in the sky”, said Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, but it cannot happen without “without major investments in infrastructure in the area”.

Professional golfer Tommy Fleetwood, part of last year’s successful European team at Bethpage Black in the US, said hosting the “biggest sporting event in the world” in the “north-west of England, where I’m from, would be amazing”, adding: “We have so much to offer.”

What next?
The decision to award the 2035 event is “not expected until around 2029”, according to The Guardian. Council bosses stressed that the development would only go ahead if Hulton Park’s bid was successful.

When US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the case for Donald Trump’s war in Iran, there was one obvious problem: his shoes were “at least two sizes too big”, wrote Séamas O’Reilly in the New Statesman.

The shoes had been given to him by Trump. The US president has gifted pairs of the same shoes to several colleagues who are reportedly too scared to not wear them – even if they don’t fit.

Trump is handing out Florsheim Oxfords, which cost $145 (£109). This new “stylistic choice” has “caught the public’s eye”, said CNN, after Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance were pictured wearing “black dress shoes with visible gaps between the shoe’s collar and the wearer’s foot”, which leaves the ankle to “dangle loose in the opening like the clapper in a bell”.

Trump has “taken to guessing people’s shoe size in front of them”, asking an aide to “put in an order” and then, a week later, a brown Florsheim box “arrives at the White House”, according to The Wall Street Journal. The president “sometimes signs the box or attaches a note of gratitude”, sources told the broadsheet.

“You can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size,” said Trump, but the shoes he gave the men are “clearly too big”, menswear expert Josh Peskowitz told CNN. So perhaps Rubio and Vance “prefer the ideal of the feet they wish they had to the reality rattling around inside their new shoes”, said the broadcaster.