Investigations under way to determine whether virus normally found in livestock contributed to man’s death

A man in France has become the first human known to have contracted Shamonda virus, with investigations under way to explore whether it contributed to his death.

Shamonda virus is a type of bunyavirus and is spread by bites from infected midges. According to the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, in animals such as cattle, sheep and goats it can cause diarrhoea, lack of appetite and a decline in milk yield, “as well as abortions and congenital abnormalities in newborn calves, lambs and kids”.

You Can See Everything, a documentary about the disgraced biotech company founder Elizabeth Holmes, has enjoyed a record-breaking opening in the US. It is a testament to how fascinated we remain by the convicted fraudster, but what is behind the enduring appeal? US technology editor Blake Montgomery tells Madeleine Finlay why Holmes continues to fascinate us, and reflects on whether the Theranos scandal has had a permanent impact on Silicon Valley

The Cali Fund, set up to raise $1bn a year for biodiversity from drug companies, remains near empty

Big pharmaceutical companies have been accused of “free-riding on nature”, after a landmark biodiversity fund that invites businesses to put some of their profits back into conservation was left virtually empty.

The Cali Fund set out to raise $1bn (£750m) annually, by asking companies that profit from nature’s genetics to contribute towards conservation in low-income countries. But more than 18 months after the fund was launched, it remains far below this target.

You Can See Everything, a documentary about the disgraced biotech company founder Elizabeth Holmes, has enjoyed a record-breaking opening in the US. It is a testament to how fascinated we remain by the convicted fraudster, but what is behind the enduring appeal? US technology editor Blake Montgomery tells Madeleine Finlay why Holmes continues to fascinate us, and reflects on whether the Theranos scandal has had a permanent impact on Silicon Valley

Clip: You Can See Everything, A24

‘You can’t make this stuff up’: why we remain fascinated by Elizabeth Holmes

Medics indicate pontiff’s tumour had not spread, but doubts remain about planned trip to South America next month

Pope Leo will not need any further ⁠treatment after undergoing lung cancer surgery last week, his doctors said, indicating ⁠that his tumour had ⁠not ​spread.

The ⁠71-year-old pontiff had the lower lobe of his ​right lung removed on 13 October and was diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma, the most ‌common form of lung cancer.

Hepatitis B study in Guinea-Bissau that was to be funded by CDC and that drew global backlash ‘will not move forward’

The US-backed hepatitis B vaccine trial in African newborns that drew global backlash was halted, the lead researcher said on Wednesday.

It was “now clear” that the study “will not move forward in Guinea-Bissau”, Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, a Danish researcher, wrote on LinkedIn, adding, “we were not given the necessary governmental approval.”

Measures would remove some penalties for those helping women access abortion but are ‘small-scale step’, say campaigners

Poland’s lower house of parliament has approved two bills aimed at loosening a near-total ban on abortions, in what campaigners have described as a “small-scale step” ahead of protests calling on the government to fulfil its promises to overhaul the country’s laws.

The new measures, which are likely to be vetoed by Poland’s nationalist president, would remove some of the criminal penalties for those who help women to access abortion care and allow terminations in cases of foetal abnormalities.

Pippa Boardman said she lost her dignity through data breach at Royal Cornwall hospital by man she barely knew

A woman was told she had cancer by a hospital employee she barely knew who had accessed her medical records days before she was due to receive test results from her consultant.

Pippa Boardman said she lost her dignity and privacy through the data breach at the Royal Cornwall hospital in Truro.

Case in Africa’s most populous country was detected in a woman who had travelled from Uganda

Nigeria has confirmed an Ebola case in its capital, Abuja, after a woman who arrived from Uganda tested positive for the virus, the health ministry said.

The woman began showing symptoms on 7 October and was admitted to a hospital in Abuja four days later, where she was later diagnosed with Ebola. It is unclear when she arrived in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.

The government did not throw a ‘protective ring’ around social care, and vulnerable people were left exposed

The families of the 43,000 care home residents in the UK whose deaths between March 2020 and July 2022 were either caused by, or contributed to, by the Covid pandemic, have waited a long time for the official verdict on the way they were treated. The report published on Tuesday confirmed what many have been saying for a long time. In the first, panicked stages of lockdown, residents and their care workers were “something of an afterthought”. The “protective ring” around care homes referred to by Matt Hancock, the former health and care secretary, was a fiction.

These are scathing judgments. What actually happened, starting in March 2020, was that about 30,000 people were discharged from hospital to care homes in order to free up beds for Covid-19 patients. Since there were not enough tests for all of them, those without symptoms were moved without being tested. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, there was no instruction to isolate newly arrived residents until the second half of April (in Scotland, this happened earlier).

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Inquiry chair says failure to advise care homes to isolate people discharged from hospital was ‘significant oversight’

Government failures caused Covid-19 to spread “like wildfire” among vulnerable and elderly people, and Matt Hancock’s “protective ring” around care homes did not exist, a public inquiry has found.

Heather Hallett, who is leading the Covid-19 inquiry, said the care sector was an “afterthought” and rejected the former health secretary’s long-held claim that he threw a “protective ring” around care homes from the start of the pandemic, saying it was “unfounded” and the “opposite was true”.

Rise in economic hardship and changes in attitudes towards migration could explain drop in support, experts say

Public support for the NHS’s founding principles – that it is free to use, available to everyone and tax-funded – has fallen over the last five years, research has shown.

Backing for all three pillars dropped between 2021 and 2025 across the UK population, except for a small rise in millennials’ support for the NHS being funded from taxation.

System can estimate a person’s biological age and predict chances of cancer survival from a single photograph

Doctors have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can predict a cancer patient’s chances of survival from a single photograph of their face.

The AI system was custom-built by experts at Mass General Brigham, a nonprofit, integrated academic healthcare system in Massachusetts, to estimate biological age and directly predict survival outcomes in patients diagnosed with cancer.

Warning for other Arctic communities as residents told not to use water in Longyearbyen in Svalbard, one of the world’s fastest-warming places

Residents of a remote village in Norway that is in one of the fastest-warming places in the world have been told they must no longer drink tap water due to heavy metal contamination that scientists have linked to the thawing permafrost.

Longyearbyen, in the archipelago of Svalbard, gets its main drinking water supply from a 1.5 mile-long (2.5km) dammed lake called Isdammen, or “ice pond”. Higher temperatures as a result of the climate crisis have thawed permafrost, leading to newly exposed bedrock leaching metals into the pond.

Letter from 150 scientists, MPs and activists calls for action to protect lower-income and minority-ethnic communities

The government must hold an inquiry into the unequal impacts of air pollution, 150 scientists, MPs and activists have urged.

Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that across England, lower-income areas have persistently higher levels of air pollution than wealthier areas.

Exclusive: NHS Alliance’s acute care director says centralisation of services ‘inevitable’ to ensure safe care

• Why are some NHS maternity units facing closure?

Up to 20 maternity units in England will have to shut to ensure mothers and babies receive safe care amid shortages of doctors and rising caesarean section rates, an NHS leader has warned.

Matthew Hopkins, the NHS Alliance’s director for acute care, said centralising childbirth services into fewer hospitals was “inevitable” and the “right thing”, but would lead to a political backlash against unpopular changes.