Russia is reportedly trying to censor media coverage of a rumoured second mass mobilisation of reserve troops to stamp out discontent in the leadup to next year’s presidential elections.

Pro-Kremlin media have allegedly received a memo issuing guidelines and including an ‘urgent request’ to downplay speculation that Russia might be getting ready to call up more reservists to funnel into its brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Opposition outlet Meduza yesterday claimed to have seen the guidelines, shared by employees working for state-controlled media. One reportedly told the publication: ‘Everybody knows, if the government is denying something’s going to happen, it’s definitely happening.’

The memo allegedly told pro-Kremlin outlets to instead focus on coverage of contract recruitment for the military.

Russia has upped efforts to censor dissident voices this year. Only on Thursday, State Duma Deputy Anton Gorelkin said that Russia should consider blocking WhatsApp in Russia if the app launches Russian language channels.

State censor Roskomnadzor added that Russia could block WhatsApp if it disseminates prohibited information as the application prepares to launch a channel feature to feature over 150 countries, likely including Russia.

Rumours of a second call-up of reserves have mounted in the lead-up to the start of the six-monthly conscription cycle on October 1.

Earlier this month, a fake photograph of a signed mobilisation order caused a stir on Russian social media.

Media insiders reportedly told Meduza that they had been instructed to abstain from all discussion of the incident – and even to avoid refuting fake news.

But anxious rumours of another looming mass mobilisation order continue to circle online.

A Russian Telegram channel claiming ties to Russian security sources stated earlier this week that officials want to recruit some 170,000 – 175,000 troops in the next cycle.

Officials also allegedly hope to move the start of conscription to November 1 to accommodate new mobilisation processes, while recruiting 130,000 soldiers through coercive ‘contract mobilisation’. 

The Institute for the Study of War assessed on Tuesday that top officials are ‘actively disagreeing about the necessity of and preparations for a second wave of reserve mobilisation’, however.

But speculation is not likely to help Putin’s popularity ahead of the upcoming 2024 elections, Meduza observed. 

It judged: ‘The Kremlin’s intent… is to re-elect the incumbent president with record unanimity: the goal is to garner at least 80 percent of the vote with a turnout of 70 percent or more.’

State Duma and Federation Council members went so far as to propose blocking WhatsApp in a bid to control online content and limit access to prohibited information. 

Following Meta’s decision to launch a channel feature to over 150 countries, likely including Russia, Russian officials proposed an outright ban on the application.

Politician and journalist Alexander Khinshtein wrote on Telegram on Thursday: ‘I share the position of my colleague [State Duma Deputy Anton] Gorelkin: if What’s App [sic] really launches Russian-language information channels, it would be right to reconsider the attitude towards this messenger, even to the point of blocking it.

‘There is no doubt about the anti-Russian nature of these channels, since [WhatsApp] belongs to the extremist company Meta with all the ensuing consequences.’

Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, was designated an extremist organisation in March 2022. 

Its products have since been banned in Russia.

Russia’s presidential elections are scheduled to be held in March 2024, with the winner inaugurated next May.

Putin has not yet confirmed whether or not he will run again.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday: ‘The president has not yet announced that he will nominate his candidacy.

‘But if we assume that the president stands as a candidate, then it is obvious that there can be no real competition for the president at this current stage,’ Peskov was quoted as saying by RBC.

I love self-testing: I regularly test my blood pressure and cholesterol. And, as many of you will know by now, I was once diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and while I reversed it, I also still check my blood sugar levels.

It’s something more of us should do — millions of Brits have an abnormally high blood sugar level but many are blissfully unaware of the damage this is doing to their arteries and nerves.

An estimated seven million people in the UK have prediabetes (i.e. raised blood sugar levels that can be a precursor to full-blown type 2 diabetes) — but a good proportion won’t know it.

And even if you don’t go on to develop type 2 diabetes, simply having prediabetes increases your risk of premature death by more than 60 per cent.

You can check your blood sugar levels using a standard DIY fingerprick test (for around £20) from the High Street or online. These kits are reliable; if the result suggests you have a problem then do talk to your GP.

Many people with diabetes now use a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) — the coin-sized device, which sticks to your arm and has a tiny needle that measures your blood sugar levels: you then link it to your smartphone, and within an hour it will start giving readings, updated every 15 minutes. Theresa May, who has type 1 diabetes, wears one.

But while these devices are intended for people with diabetes, anyone can buy one (they cost around £60 and last for two weeks), and they’re increasingly being used by people — including TV presenter Davina McCall — who want to see what foods (and activities) push their blood sugar levels up.

The idea being the fewer the big glucose spikes, the better.

I decided to try this out myself, not least to put some popular social media ‘hacks’ to the test.

So two weeks ago I bought myself a type of CGM called Freestyle Libre. So what did I learn?

Well, first, that the device takes a while to settle down — for the initial couple of days it suggested my blood sugar levels were far higher than the readings from my fingerprick monitor (which is more reliable). If I hadn’t known this, I might have been very worried.

After that — and not surprisingly — I found that anything sweet or carb-heavy (such as cake or breakfast cereal) soon pumped my blood sugar very high, followed by a crash which left me hungry — and irritable. Sadly this was also true of one of my favourite treats, dark chocolate, which contains a fair amount of sugar, around 4g (one teaspoon) per square.

More tragically, I discovered that coffee — even black and without sugar — led to big blood sugar spikes, particularly consumed first thing in the morning.

This is because a couple of hours before you wake up, your body releases a big shot of the stress hormone cortisol to get you ready for the day ahead.

If you introduce caffeine while your cortisol is high, you get a big blood sugar spike.

The advice I got from James Betts, a professor of metabolic physiology at the University of Bath, is to delay having coffee until at least an hour after waking, when your cortisol levels are falling. And that trick certainly seems to help control my blood sugar response. I also found that a brisk walk soon after eating was a good way to bring my blood sugar levels down — this is because my muscles were using up some of the surplus sugar.

Recent research by the University of Limerick showed that a brisk walk 60 to 90 minutes after eating is best, as that’s when your blood sugar levels will be peaking.

Ideally you should walk for at least 15 minutes, but even something is better than nothing.

Oddly, more vigorous exercise had the opposite effect: after a lengthy bike ride I was horrified to see my blood sugars go up.

This was probably because more vigorous cycling led to the release of adrenaline, which made my body release sugar into my blood to cope with the extra workout.

Of course, this doesn’t mean vigorous exercise is bad, but it can be disconcerting if you are looking at your monitor and see blood sugar going up, rather than down.

So what about those internet hacks for avoiding blood sugar spikes?

One of the most popular is to drink a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in water before having a sugary snack or carb-heavy meal.

This is based on the idea that the acetic acid in the vinegar slows down the breakdown of the carbs into sugar. It seemed to work for me, but it didn’t taste great.

Another hack I tested was the claim that cooking, cooling and reheating carb-heavy foods such as rice, pasta or potatoes changes their structure, so they become ‘resistant’ to gut enzymes that break them down, causing a smaller blood sugar surge.

On two consecutive days I ate pasta for lunch, but on the second day, I used leftover pasta that had been in the fridge, and then reheated. This time my blood sugar spike was half what it had been.

This, too, has been confirmed in studies, including one in 2021 by the University of Surrey which found that cooking, cooling and reheating pasta made a significant difference to the blood sugar spike.

Despite these positives, there are serious limitations to bear in mind if you’re using a CGM and don’t have diabetes.

Looking at what foods cause my blood sugar to spike was interesting, but I became a bit obsessed, even checking my readings in the middle of the night, which is clearly not healthy.

And it’s important to note that blood sugar levels don’t tell the full story.

Lentils and a bar of chocolate both made mine soar, but that doesn’t make them equivalent nutritionally — lentils have significant benefits, including the fact that they’re prebiotics, so nourish the ‘good’ bacteria in your gut.

A recent study by the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. also showed that you can get very different results to eating the same meal on two consecutive days, for all sorts of reasons, including how stressed you are and how well you slept.

So don’t rely on a CGM as a way of shaping your future diet.

And if all you really want to know is whether you have prediabetes or not, then a trip to your GP, or a fingerprick test, is a cheaper and simpler way to find out.

At last, a clampdown on the lip filler cowboys 

An awful lot of young — and not so young — people these days seem to have large, pouty lips, thanks to fillers.

While many people are delighted with the results, thousands are left every year traumatised by botched procedures.

If you are having injections into your face, it is clearly a good idea to have it done by someone who knows something about the underlying anatomy.

That’s because underneath the skin there’s a complex network of arteries and veins, and if you inject filler into one of these, it could obstruct blood flow and cause permanent tissue damage.

Amazingly, this industry is almost entirely unregulated, so pretty much anyone can pick up a needle and start advertising — there’s no guarantee that the person at the other end of the needle knows what they are doing. A couple of years ago I made a TV series about tweakments and was horrified by some of the stories I heard, including people who’d been blinded by fillers inserted too close to arteries that feed the eye.

In light of these disasters, the Department of Health and Social Care has recently announced a consultation on tweakments, to make them safer and curb the cowboys (and cowgirls). About time.

Autumn is on the horizon but pesky mosquitoes and other flying insects are still out looking for me — I seem to be a magnet for them.

But the good news is that scientists at the University of California may have found a solution. They’ve isolated a species of bacteria, found on some people’s skin, that is good at keeping mosquitoes at bay. These bacteria produce a range of chemicals, including butyric acid, which mosquitoes find repulsive.

The researchers hope to test this effect by spraying animals with the bacteria, before moving on to human trials.

We know that people in their 60s or 70s who develop new skills (such as painting) experience big improvements in memory and other cognitive abilities.

Now a major study of ageing Brits has found that adult education classes can significantly lower your risk of dementia. One theory is that being mentally active boosts your brain’s ability to cope with damage or decline in later life — or it may be that learning something forges new neural pathways. The bottom line is that the benefits of learning continue well into old age.

White House goes to war with Marjorie Taylor Greene for warning she won’t vote to avoid a government shutdown until Joe is impeached over any links to son Hunter’s business deals

• MTG on Thursday listed her demands for helping avoid a government shutdown
• They included an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden
• The White House hit back at ‘extreme House members’ and a ‘hardcore fringe’

By Rob Crilly, Senior U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Updated: 09:49 EDT, 1 September 2023

Biden urges Congress to avoid a government shutdown with a short-team deal that includes $1.4 BILLION in food aid for low-income families

• Government will shutdown at end of September without a funding resolution
• Short-term funding measure would give the two parties more time to negotiate
• New poll shows 90% of Americans do not want a shutdown 

By Emily Goodin, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Updated: 12:50 EDT, 31 August 2023

From false teeth and a quicker walk to rumours of plastic surgery – could Vladimir Putin really be using a body double to avoid assassins… and Covid-19?

Observers have pointed to the Kremlin strongman’s changing appearance over the years as possible evidence that he uses someone else to stand in for him on engagements he either does not want to make or considers too dangerous.

The speculation ran rife again overnight when Putin made a surprise visit to the city of Derbent in southern Russia’s Dagestan region, with footage showing how the despot dived into a nighttime crowd like a Hollywood actor on a red carpet.

This is despite the Russian leader showing signs of paranoia around catching Covid-19, and amid reports that he fears being assassinated to the point that he only has direct contact with those inside his shrinking inner circle. 

The rumour was also fuelled by a recent picture of Putin with Chechen republic head Ramzan Kadyrov, showing the president with bloated and mottled skin.

And in March, a video claiming the 70-year-old is using body doubles went viral.

Here, MailOnline takes a look back at appearances that have raised  suspicions the despot uses doppelgängers…

The most recent speculation came this week after Putin survived the biggest challenge to his 23-year reign as Russia’s president.

Under orders from mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, fighters from his Wagner private military company seized Roztov-on-don and marched on Moscow.

A crisis was only narrowly averted with Prigozhin striking an amnesty deal with the Kremlin. The deal stipulates that the Wagner troops will not face charges, and in exchange they must disband or join the Russian army.

Prigozhin himself will be allowed to live in exile across the border in Belarus.

While Putin has worked to assert the dominance of the Russian state in the days since the mutiny, analysts have said the president’s position in the Kremlin has never looked weaker, with Kyiv saying the countdown has begun to the end of his rule.

The despot has used his typical televised speeches to assure Russians that he is the one in control, but last night he made an uncharacteristic visit to a meet-and-greet that saw him greeted by a crowd as he posed for selfies with young girls. 

Seemingly imbued with fresh energy after averting a small scale civil war last week, the normally stoic and isolated Putin was uncharacteristically personable, shaking hands and planting kisses on the head of a young teenage girl who gushed over him and pleaded with her mother to snap a photo of her with the president.

In another bizarre moment he shakes hands with – and appears to adjust something on the uniform of – an officer carrying what may be his nuclear briefcase. He has not greeted his security apparatchiks in such a way previously.

The scene was markedly different to the extreme, seemingly paranoid measures taken by Putin in the last few years to avoid close contact with the public, other world leaders and even members of his own government.

The strongman has enforced strict quarantines for anyone outside of his own close circle before meetings, likely out of fear of catching Covid-19.

But his transformative behaviour overnight has led many, including senior Russian figures, to speculate that the Putin seen in shaky camera footage greeting adoring fans in Dagestan was in fact a body double.

A longtime Moscow diplomat said on Thursday: ‘It is getting impossible to believe that there is only one Putin.

‘There are several – very good lookalikes, yet they behave somewhat differently. This one diving into the crowd in Dagestan behaves differently to the traditional Putin.’

Commentator Viktor Alksnis, a Soviet military tactician and politician who is now a Western-based analyst known as the Black Colonel, said: ‘Why is Putin meeting with visitors in the Kremlin after their two-week quarantine and at a great distance, while in Derbent is calmly into the crowd and even hugs and kisses some citizens?

‘How can the physical security of the president be ensured under such conditions? Something is not right here.

‘It looks like a theatrical production in which Putin is not really Putin.’

And pro-war Russian nationalist and former FSB colonel Igor ‘Strelkov’ Girkin declared for certain that it was a Putin double in Dagestan.

‘A person vaguely resembling the president – and not at all requiring compliance with the two-week quarantine necessary to get an appointment with [Putin] – was walking around Derbent,’ he said.

His appearance in Derbent came a day after a picture of Putin with Chechen republic head Ramzan Kadyrov showed the president appearing bloated with mottled skin – also prompting people to question if it was actually Putin visiting the region.

Some likened his appearance to that of a waxwork model. 

The speculation in recent days is by no means the first time it has been suggested Putin has been deploying a body double to public events amid claims he is suffering from poor health, is afraid of assassination, or is terrified of catching Covid.

Infact, the chatter around the theory grew so loud that the Kremlin was forced to deny the rumours in April, with Putin’s official spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying: ‘You have probably heard that he has very many doubles who work instead of him while he sits in a bunker… [This is] yet another lie.’

‘You see yourselves what our president is like: He always was, and is now, mega-active — those who work next to him can hardly keep up with him. His energy can only be envied,’ Peskov added.

Many Russia experts have sided with Peskov on this issue, saying that it is perhaps wishful thinking from the West that Putin is showing signs of illness, and is therefore in need of a body double.

However, others have said that nothing coming out of the Kremlin can be trusted, and that Moscow has told so many lies it is impossible to know when officials there are telling the truth.

Peskov’s rebuke of the rumours followed a viral video in March that seized on speculation that Putin’s only trip so far to newly-invaded territory in Mariupol on March 19 was performed by a doppelgänger.

The video asked: ‘Who is ruling Russia?’

It is unclear who made the footage but it appears to be aimed at reaching Russians who rely on uber-loyalist state media for their news. 

The producers of the video said that a specialist has noticed differences in the Russian president’s appearance, like the ledge on his earlobe, a mole or his wrinkles which ‘constantly change’. 

Putin is widely believed to have had regular plastic surgery as he has aged since first becoming acting president on the last day of 1999.

Rumours are rife that Putin ‘understudies’ – who have undergone plastic surgery to resemble him – are deployed increasingly as his health worsens amid rumours of cancer and early stage Parkinson’s.

For Putin’s Mariupol visit, the video claims ‘they forgot to put in his jaw’ as it looks different to Putin’s and also questions if the ‘double’ has false teeth.

On Monday, March 20, Kyiv official Anton Gerashchenko posted three images of Putin’s chin and questioned whether they belonged to the same man.

The Interior Minister advisor wrote: ‘What’s up with your chin, Putin?

‘Looks like lately his make-up artists (i.e. for the recent trips of the bunker man to the occupied Crimea and Mariupol) had to work with quite a low-quality copy, not even a double but its copy. I wonder which one of them was real?’

One picture showed Putin, 70, one month ago in an address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow.

Another was Putin’s reported visit to naval port Sevastopol in Crimea on March 18.

And the third was from footage released the following day evidently showing the dictator in war-blitzed Mariupol.

The first image showed his chin tight and precise.

But the image in Sevastopol – grabbed from Ukraine in 2014 – incited a sagging chin, while the Mariupol chin appears firmer but less so than in the Moscow picture.

The Telegram channel General SVR insisted Putin had not been to Sevastopol or Mariupol, a city invaded after a bloody battle last year.

‘The information from the Kremlin’s resources that Vladimir Putin visited Crimea and Mariupol is NOT true,’ claimed the channel which says it has insider sources.

In Crimea, a double of the president was noted with a short visit and solely for the sake of a video photo shoot.’

There have been repeated claims that Putin uses body doubles on some trips outside Moscow, or when there are many people around.

In January, General SVR also claimed that Putin’s visit to UFA involved a ‘body double’ and not the real president. It predicted: ‘Soon, the understudy will appear more and more often as president,’ said the channel. ‘The President’s health tends to worsen.’

In Ufa, the ‘president’ was seen paying his respects at the open coffin of iron-fisted Murtaza Rakhimov, ex-leader of oil-rich Russian republic Bashkortostan, who died aged 88. He also met the region’s head, Radiy Habirov. 

Previously, in October, 2022, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, head of military intelligence, questioned whether the real Putin still existed. 

Budanov said the military intelligence service had detected Putin doubles in the past standing in for him on ‘special occasions’ – but added that now, it is ‘usual practice’ for the Russian president. 

Budanov said: ‘We know specifically about three people that keep appearing, but how many there are, we don’t know. They all had plastic surgery to look alike.

‘The one thing that gives them away is their height. It’s visible in videos and pictures. Also gesturing, body language and earlobes, since they are unique for every person.’ 

A month prior, footage of Putin apparently showed him falling asleep during a meeting, coupled with claims he has complained about fatigue and shortness of breath to doctors, which raised fresh doubts over his health.

A body double was even on standby in case Putin was unable to attend the meeting, claimed Telegram channel General SVR, which has long claimed Putin is suffering serious health issues.

In August, Budanov had previously claimed that Putin was using body doubles, pointing to the president’s changing ears over the years as proof of his theory.

The 69-year-old Russian president’s health has been the topic of fierce discussion among commentators.

His close ally Nikolai Patrushev is said to have stood in for the president during his medical appointments.

He said in a TV appearance: ‘The picture, let’s say, of the ears, is different… And it’s like a fingerprint, each person’s ear picture is unique. It cannot be repeated.’

Budanov further alleged that Putin body doubles ‘have different habits, different mannerisms, different gaits, sometimes even different heights if you looked closely’.

The Major General had previously claimed a Vladimir Putin body ‘double’ may have been used for his arrival at a summit in Iran to meet Turkey’s president Erdogan in July 2022.

While the Russian leader looked awkward as he came down the steps of his presidential plane in Tehran, Ukrainian sources noted that he moved unusually quickly and was more alert than in prior public appearances.

The Russian premier looked animated when greeting the waiting party, before removing his jacket and clambering into a heavily armoured limousine.

Budanov said he was suspicious of Putin’s appearance in a live interview on Ukraine’s 1+1 news channel.

Ukrainian reports said Budanov suggested that a Putin lookalike could have flown to Tehran to meet with the presidents of Iran and Turkey.

‘I will only hint,’ he said. ‘Please look at the moment of Putin’s exit from the plane. Is it Putin at all?’

Putin addressed the idea of using body doubles himself in February 2020, when he admitted that officials had considered using doubles, but he claimed the idea was rejected.

‘I discarded the idea of any doubles,’ he said.

He was advised in the early 2000s when Russia was hit by terrorist attacks that a lookalike should take his place at events where the head of state might be at risk, he said.

‘This was during the toughest time of our war against terrorism,’ he said.

As Prime Minister and then as President, Putin oversaw the war against Islamist separatists from Chechnya between 1999 and 2000. 

After Russia claimed victory, terror attacks increased in the Caucasus while bombers also targeted the country’s main cities.

‘The double would go where things were dodgy?’ asked Vandenko.

‘Well yes, go, put in appearances,’ Putin confirmed.

Body doubles were reportedly used by former Kremlin leaders, for example longtime Soviet supremos Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev.

In 2009, people in Sochi did not believe that a walkabout by then President Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Putin involved the real leaders. Medvedev said at the time: ‘We are not doubles, we are real.’

SOCIETY

How to Survive a Crisis: Lessons in Resilience and Avoiding Disaster 

by David Omand (Viking £20, 368pp) 

On Friday May 12, 2017, a young anaesthetist at the Royal London Hospital finished his lunch of curry and chips in the cafeteria and tried to log on to his emails. He found he could not do so.

Soon computers all over the hospital showed only a red screen with an image of a padlock and a message beginning: ‘Oops, your files have been encrypted.’ 

This was the start of the devastating cyberattack on the NHS known as WannaCry. By late afternoon, more than 80 hospital trusts and 600 GP practices and clinics had been affected.

This was a disaster that hit out of the blue, but it was also the result of what David Omand, in this revelatory book, calls a ‘slow-burn’ crisis. The NHS had long been vulnerable to this type of cyberattack.

As Omand remarks in his introduction, with something close to understatement: ‘There is no shortage of material for writing about modern crises.’

In addition to cyberattacks, we also have an ongoing war in Europe, escalating environmental problems caused by climate change, not to mention the ever-present possibility of terrorist atrocities.

Crisis is a word that may be overused in the headlines, but the potential for disaster is always there. 

And, in our increasingly connected world, ‘disruptions can quickly arrive from anywhere on the globe’. The swiftness of the worldwide spread of coronavirus is proof of that.

Few people are better qualified to examine the nature of modern crises and the ways to respond to them than Omand.

In a distinguished career in public service, he has been director of GCHQ and was the first UK Security And Intelligence Coordinator.

His book is full of insights into the reasons why emergencies so often escalate into crises.

He says people cling to the rule book when they should be prepared to tear it up if necessary. 

‘Surviving a crisis,’ Omand writes in a surprising analogy, ‘is a form of spontaneous performance art in which the cast follow an outline script . . . but then improvise the details.’

The book covers a remarkable range of material from the failures of first France and then the U.S. in Vietnam, to the Manchester Arena bombing and the Grenfell Tower disaster in West London.

One of the most terrifying possibilities he highlights is nuclear meltdown. As he points out, there have been dangerous incidents since the nuclear industry’s earliest days.

In 1952, a supervisor at the Chalk River reactor in Ottawa, Canada nearly caused a serious problem, as red warning lights flashed, when he asked his assistant to press buttons four and three instead of buttons four and one.

Five years later, Windscale in Cumbria was the scene of the worst nuclear accident in the UK’s history.

Such accidents are measured on a scale of one to seven. Windscale was a five. There have only ever been two Level 7 incidents — the disasters at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima in Janpan in 2011.

At Chernobyl, the Soviet government’s secrecy and refusal to admit the magnitude of the problem resulted in unnecessary deaths.

The Japanese were more open about the catastrophe at Fukushima — but they were still criticised for the lack of preparedness.

As Omand makes clear, in facing any kind of potential crisis, being prepared is all.

The security operation surrounding the London Olympics in 2012, for example, was an undoubted success. 

When it was initially announced that the capital city would be bidding to hold the Games, many senior civil servants were alarmed at the prospect. 

‘Bid if you must,’ one is rumoured to have said, ‘but for God’s sake don’t win.’

The thought of protecting 15,000 athletes, more than 100 visiting heads of state and ten million-plus spectators, all in front of a TV audience of nearly half the world’s population, was just too scary.

In the event, years of the most careful preparation resulted in a triumph. MI5 reported the gist of overheard conversations in jihadist circles: 

‘The Brits have gone crazy, over the top. We are all being watched. Brothers, keep your heads down.’ There were no terrorist incidents that summer.

In its clear-sighted analysis of problems, How To Survive A Crisis can be an alarming read.

On his first page, Omand states that ‘we must expect a greater potential for disaster in the future’.

And it is hard to argue with his later comment that ‘UK governments find it hard to plan, think and act beyond the immediate needs of the moment’.

However, as his title suggests, he remains an optimist. It is possible to build up a nation’s resilience in the face of crises, whether they are sudden in their impact or ‘slow-burn’.

There is always a route to survival. WannaCry, which might have irretrievably damaged the NHS, was eventually defeated by a 22-year-old named Marcus Hutchins, a former hacker turned cybersecurity expert.

He found a ‘kill switch’ in the WannaCry code which stopped it from spreading.

Real-life Back to the Future? $300,000 flying car that drives on roads and takes off to avoid traffic jams like the 1980s film’s DeLorean gets FAA approval

By Matthew Phelan For Dailymail.Com

Updated: 16:27 EDT, 28 June 2023

The chat-up lines to AVOID if you want to bag a date, according to scientists

By Matthew Phelan For Dailymail.Com

Updated: 13:03 EDT, 9 June 2023

Dog owners should avoid using ball-throwers, taking their pets on bike rides or to the beach on hot summer days, the RSPCA has warned.

Summer holidays often include bike rides, with a dog running alongside a cycling family.

But on warm days, this may dangerously raise dogs’ risk of heatstroke, according to the RSPCA, as might using a trendy ball-thrower device, which propels a ball further so makes a dog run greater distances in hot temperatures.

It comes as evidence from vets suggests dogs are now more likely to die on hot walks than in hot cars.

Esme Wheeler, dog welfare specialist at the RSPCA, said: ‘Often we see well-meaning people out running with their dogs, cycling with their dogs running alongside, or using a ball-thrower to launch balls for their dogs during hot weather, but this can leave beloved pets panting heavily and at serious risk of overheating.’

Fashionable ball-launchers allow dog owners to throw balls three times further than they could by hand.

Particularly sophisticated machines can send a ball up to 30 feet away, forcing a dog to run a long distance.

But any strenuous exercise on hot weather can pose a risk.

The RSPCA says older, overweight and flat-faced dogs, as well as those with thick fur or in ‘doggy clothing’, are at particular risk of overheating if they run or walk for too long in hot summer weather.

Dogs are often ‘ball-obsessed’ so tend to run through any physical discomfort, rather than stopping to recover.

There is also concern chasing far-away balls for too long could put strain on their joints.

The RSPCA says running and cycling with dogs, which have to push themselves to keep up, also raises the risk of overheating, which can lead dogs to pant, stumble, vomit or collapse.

In the UK, around one in seven dogs affected by heat-related illness die as a result.

Days out at the beach or park may keep dogs out in the heat for too long, according to the charity, which is trying to encourage dog owners to take their dogs out at dawn and dusk, when it is cooler.

There is no specific temperature at which dogs should not be exercised, as dogs’ vulnerability to warm weather can vary based on their breed, size, age and health.

But charities advise owners ‘if in doubt, don’t go out’.

It is not just running, but also walking or simply being out in warm weather for too long, which can be harmful for dogs.

While the message ‘dogs die in hot cars’ seems to have got through to the public, after decades of repetition, the slogan ‘dogs die on hot walks’ only became well known last year.

The British Veterinary Association (BVA) surveyed 481 vets after last year’s hot summer, finding more than four times the number had seen dogs left ill from hot walks compared to hot cars.

The results, revealed for the first time, show nine per cent of vets had seen at least one dog affected by the heat after being left in a hot car, but 38 per cent had seen at least one dog affected by the heat after being walked or exercised in hot weather.

The RSPCA advice to avoid hot walks, which can be a ‘silent killer’, is being backed by a coalition of animal charities including the BVA, Royal Veterinary College, PDSA and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

Miss Wheeler said: ‘Exercising dogs in hot weather can present a huge risk to our beloved animals and can be just as deadly as leaving them in a hot car.’

If a dog shows signs of heat stroke, the owner should stop the pet from exercising, move them into the shade and lay them in room-temperature water, or pour it over them, while giving them small amounts of cold water to drink.

Ice-cold water should not be used, and a vet should be called immediately.

F1 suffers ANOTHER near-miss in the pit-lane, with McLaren star Lando Norris narrowly missing a pedestrian in Miami… just a week after Esteban Ocon had people blocking the track in Baku before the race was over

• An investigation is ongoing after Lando Norris had to swerve from a pedestrian
• It is the second time in as many weeks F1 has had people out during the race 
• Norris was entering the pits on lap five and was quick to avoid the individual 

By Jonathan McEvoy For Mailonine

Published: 05:28 EDT, 9 May 2023 | Updated: 07:10 EDT, 9 May 2023