Sacked minister’s wife attacks ‘imbecile’ Truss

The wife of a minister sacked by Liz Truss has branded the new PM an “imbecile” and compared her to a character from The Muppets, reported The Times. Taking to Twitter, Felicity Cornelius-Mercer launched her outburst minutes after Johnny Mercer, the veterans’ affairs minister, was shown the door. She wrote that “this system stinks & treats people appallingly” and said the “best person” she knows was “sacked by an imbecile”.

Oldest mammal identified

The world’s oldest mammal has been identified using fossil dental records, reported CNN. Brasilodon quadrangularis was a small shrew-like creature, around eight inches long, that walked the earth 225m years ago at the same time as some of the oldest dinosaurs. The ancient creature predates the previously confirmed earliest mammal by about 20m years. It was discovered by researchers from the Natural History Museum in London, King’s College London and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Woman detects Parkinson’s through smell

A woman who found she could detect Parkinson’s disease through smell has inspired scientists to develop a swab test that could be used to diagnose it. Joy Milne, 72, told the BBC she knew her husband Les had Parkinson’s more than 12 years before he was formally diagnosed when she noticed he had a “musty, rather unpleasant smell”. Inspired by the Milne, researchers in Manchester have created a new method that they say can detect the disease in three minutes.

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