Fake photos and videos shared on social media are amplifying unproven claims of a deadly plague following the death of a lab worker in Russia.
Deleted warnings, claims of children’s hospitals on lockdown and people in hazmat suits on the streets have fuelled rumours that Russia is attempting to cover up an outbreak of a fast-spreading disease in Siberia.
Frightening screenshots and videos are sweeping across X and Telegram, platforms many now use to get their news from, but a closer look reveals many of these posts are, at best, unconfirmed or unclear, and at worst, fake.
The types of cancer with ‘concerning’ rise among under 50s
The number of people getting cancer before the age of 50 has risen, according to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF).
While most cancers are still diagnosed in older adults, the charity said that the trajectory is “concerning”.
Increase in cancer rates
There have been increases in rates of , , , , , and cancers among adults under 50, the WCRF said.
It comes as figures from Cancer Research UK show that between the , in 25 to 49-year-olds in the UK .
Cancer trends
The WCRF analysis of NHS data in England compared the rates of diagnoses among people in 2001 and 2023, finding:
- Rise in number of prostate cancer diagnoses in men under 50, from 158 to 640 between 2001 and 2023.
- Bowel cancer cases among younger adults increased from 1,289 in 2001 to 2,989 in 2023.
- In 2023, 1,065 adults under 50 were diagnosed with kidney cancer, compared to 510 adults in 2001.
- Women aged under 50 diagnosed with womb cancer rose from 1.8 per 100,000 in 2001 to 3.9 per 100,000 in 2023.
- Meanwhile, women diagnosed with breast cancer in this age bracket rose from 6,886 in 2001 to 8,507 in 2023.
Expert opinion
“While is much more common in older people, it can strike at any age.”
NHS England national medical director Professor Frankie Swords urged people to see a GP for possible symptoms like a lump, unusual bleeding or unexplained weight loss. “Don’t put off a simple check-up because you think you’re too young, it could save your life,” she said.
Five theories about staggering rise of cancer in under-50s
By and large, the rising trend of young-onset cancers is a mystery, one which oncologists around the world are scrambling to try and understand. But when it comes to bowel cancer, at least, a handful of clues are starting to emerge.
Labour polling at 21-month high as Tories gain on Reform
Labour is polling at their highest rate since January 2025, according to a YouGov poll.
5 min read
New voting intention poll
The latest YouGov voting intention poll for and found Labour is taking a strong lead with voters, followed by Reform UK and the Conservatives.
What does the poll show
- 1Labour is experiencing a 21-month high at 27 per cent (+3)
- 2 is still second, but saw some losses at 22 per cent (-3)
- 3 gained on Reform, with 20 per cent (+1)
- 4 have seen small losses at 11 per cent (-1)
- 5 remain fifth, sitting at 11 per cent (no change)
Changes from the last poll
Another YouGov poll surveying 17,000 voters between 23 August and 18 September indicated a similar trend to this latest one.
4 min read
3 min read
Asos hack fears after ‘compromised’ alert – what we know
Thousands of Asos customers have been sent a phone alert saying the retailer has been hacked.
Here’s everything we know so far…
What happened?
Phone alert
Thousands of customers received a mobile app notification on Tuesday.
The notification, titled “Asos hacked”, directed users to a Telegram account.
Shares drop
Asos shares plummeted by more than 10 per cent on Tuesday as a result.
What did the message say?
The message read: “Dear Asos DPO and IT, we have fully compromised the Snowflake instance. Engage with us, or we will leak it.”
DPO refers to the data protection officer, the role in a company responsible for customer information safeguarding.
Snowflake is an online data platform used by a wide array of companies, but it is not yet known whether Asos – which is yet to comment on the incident – is one of those.
3 min read
The notification
Latest hacking incident
Asos, which owns brands including Topshop and Miss Selfridge, has 17 million customers globally. The UK is its largest market, making up 49 per cent of revenues in the first half of the latest financial year.
Snowflake has been the reported subject of a number of data breaches in recent years, including an attack on Ticketmaster which saw customer details stolen. It comes after a raft of UK retailers were targeted by cyber attackers over the past two years, including Marks & Spencer and Harrods.
Brits pick greatest ‘driving anthems’ of all time
British motorists have voted to decide on the best driving anthem of all time.
Here are the results…
New research
Drivers vote
A new poll of 2,000 UK drivers, commissioned by Isuzu UK, has unveiled British motorists’ favourite driving anthem.
The tunes
Bruce Springsteen, Miley Cyrus and Bon Jovi were among the artists attributed with providing the best highway tracks. But did they come out on top?
Top five driving anthems
- 1Hotel California – The Eagles. The 70s hit saw 27 per cent of those surveyed name the 1977 classic rock song as the ultimate driving anthem.
- 2Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen. The 1984 hit just missed top spot, with 24 per cent.
- 3. The 2023 hit from the American pop star came in third with 22 per cent.
- 4Boys of Summer – Don Henley. Another from 1984, the song placed fourth with 21 per cent.
- 5Livin’ on a Prayer – Bon Jovi. The 1986 power ballad took 18 per cent of the votes.
What else are drivers saying?
Meanwhile, 40 per cent of drivers polled admitted to singing along to tunes in the car around seven times a week, despite a third (33 per cent) admitting they have startled passengers with their “enthusiastic” vocals.
Three in 10 (31 per cent) agreed that certain songs bring back fond childhood memories of family holidays and day trips.
5 min read
4 min read
Who was ex-MP and ‘master storyteller’ Jeffrey Archer?
The bestselling author and former politician has died at the age of 86.
But who was Jeffrey Archer?
Archer passes away ‘suddenly’
Jeffrey Archer, renowned novelist and former Conservative MP, died “suddenly and peacefully at home between writing sessions” on Monday, his publisher HarperCollins said in a statement.
Alongside his political career, Archer was a wildly successful novelist, during his five-decade career and being made a in 1992.
Early life
Archer was born an only child in Weston-super-Mare on 15 April, 1940. After completing his education at Wellington School in Somerset, Archer attended the University of Oxford in October 1963.
He went for a one-year course, a diploma in education, but ended up staying for three years, just as though he were a typical undergraduate.
3 min read
3 min read
Political career
- Archer was first elected MP for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth in 1969.
- In 1985, Margaret Thatcher appointed him deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
- The same year, Archer also set up his own PR firm, Archer Enterprises, and in 1992 was created a life peer.
- At the turn of the century, he was the Tory candidate to be mayor of London; then scandal struck.
4 min read
Time in jail
- Archer’s political career was paused in 2001 when he was jailed for four years for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
- A jury found he lied in a libel action he had brought against newspaper, in which he was awarded £500,000 in damages.
- Archer was released early in 2003 and returned to the House of Lords until he retired in 2024.
Archer the novelist
- Archer wrote his first novel, Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less, in 1974, after almost going bankrupt.
- An instant bestseller, it sparked a prolific career as an author which ultimately made him a millionaire.
3 min read
It has been one of the great privileges of my publishing life to have been Jeffrey Archer’s editor. He was the master storyteller and an editor’s dream – phenomenally hard-working, utterly committed to completing draft after draft to get every word as perfect as possible, and a true champion of the ‘team’ nature of great publishing
kate elton, harpercollins uk chief executive
Final act
Everybody would like to run their last 100 metres at the Olympics and win the gold medal, but there’s always a time. I think the clever thing in life is when to get out
Archer declared in an interview just last week that he “shall not be retiring”. His final novel, a Second World War-era historical fiction was published Tuesday, hours after his death was announced.
‘Irrepressible life force’ – Camilla
The Queen has joined those paying tribute to Lord Archer, from her position as founder of the Queen’s Reading Room charity which was supported by the author. “While he was not without flaw, his friends will recall him as an irrepressible life force through all the many differing chapters of his life,” Camilla said. “My sympathies go to [Archer’s wife] Mary and the family at this time of sorrow.”
3 min read
Badenoch pays tribute
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said she was “incredibly saddened” to hear of Archer’s passing. “He had sent me a lovely message just this morning and was always a great source of encouragement to me personally,” she added on Monday.
3 min read
UK POLITICS
Tories pledge ‘Britannia Shield’ – how would it work?
The Conservatives have pledged to invest £10bn in a British missile defence system which has drawn comparisons to Israel’s elaborate “Iron Dome”.
Here’s how it could work, and how much the experts think it might really cost.
What is the ‘Britannia Shield’?
Air defence system
The Tories have promised to build a new UK air defence system if voted into power.
How will it work?
The “Britannia Shield” would provide systems to detect and stop incoming threats using interceptor missiles.
British ‘Iron Dome’?
But Kemi Badenoch has pushed back on comparisons to Israel’s Iron Dome system.
We are not building the Iron Dome. We are doing what other European countries are doing: Greece, Benelux countries, Belgium, and the Netherlands and Germany. We are designing something specific for the kind of threat that we face here
conservative party leader kemi badenoch
How much will it cost?
The Conservatives have estimated the system will cost £10bn to set up, but previous estimates place the cost at £80bn.
The programme, the Tories say, would be funded through the party’s plans to increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 by slashing Britain’s welfare bill.
4 min read
Current levels of protection
- The UK has some existing protection in the form of RAF Typhoons which could shoot down hostile drones, but the jets cannot track or intercept ballistic missiles.
- The Royal Navy’s Type 45 Destroyers, equipped with Sea Viper air defence systems, can intercept missiles, but must be in UK waters to be fully effective.
- Britain could rely on its Nato allies, to some extent, in the event of a strike by Russia, but military experts have long warned the country needs a full Iron Dome-style missile defence shield.
Expert opinion
“This is a well overdue commitment to fill the void in defending Britain as global security deteriorates”
Former Tory defence minister Tobias Ellwood said: “It’s only a matter of time before a military base or a corner of our critical national infrastructure is targeted and currently, we have no air defence.”
Fears that the world may be on the edge of another global pandemic surged after Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old researcher at an anti-plague research institute in Siberia, died on Friday after reportedly telling doctors she had broken a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Russia to release more information about the death, which officials have said they are still investigating.
“I think it’s incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world,” Rubio told reporters. “We’re watching it very closely, hour by hour.”
Rubio’s comments were echoed by US President Donald Trump, who said he was looking “very strongly” at the case.
In the UK, experts have said there is no reason to expect global spread, but the UK Health Security Agency has said it is seeking information “to further understand the circumstances and verify the accuracy” of the reports.
In the meantime, evasive statements from Russian officials risk leaving gaps for social media sleuths to fill with misinformation.
Alexey Tsydenov, head of the Republic of Buryatia, a neighbouring district in Siberia, appeared to post confirmation that the scientist had died from the plague in a message posted on Max, a messaging service only accessible to those living in Russia, China and a handful of other countries.
He stated that the researcher had “died of the plague” and that there are “no outbreaks of the plague” in his district, in comments captured in a screenshot published by People of Baikal, an exiled opposition website covering part of Siberia.
The site stated Tsydenov’s message was later edited to read the woman “possibly” died from the plague.
Later, after his post was edited, he repeated his message on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app popular in Russia. This time, the post, seen directly by The i Paper, stated she “may have died from plague”.
A second message that raised eyebrows came from the Telegram channel run by the “administration of the Baikal urban settlement”, with Lake Baikal around 60 miles from Shelekhov, where the death occurred.
It said there were “unofficial reports of a human case of plague in the city of Shelekhov” and asked locals to “limit your visits” to the area “until the circumstances surrounding this threat are clarified”.
Within two hours of this message being posted, it was deleted, with a record of it visible on Telegram monitoring site .
Officials have acknowledged the death, but have stopped short of confirming what caused the scientist’s illness. Irkutsk Region Governor Igor Kobzev called it “pneumonia of unknown etiology” on 2 October and denied any link to the plague, adding “no microorganisms related to her professional activities were detected in the patient’s samples”.
He said in a statement on Telegram: “No cases of infectious diseases have been reported among the institute’s employees in the past 10 days. All individuals who had contact with the patient have been identified, examined, and are under medical observation with daily laboratory tests.”
The governor and other officials appear to have been inundated, as he commented again on 5 October: “I see all your questions and comments regarding the current sanitary and epidemiological situation in the region” before repeating there was no evidence of plague in the woman’s tests and no one else had fallen ill.
“The situation remains under our control and under the control of the experts,” he said.
Meanwhile, the mayor of the Shelekhov municipal district said on his social media: “I urge you not to spread rumors and unreliable information – please only use official sources.”
Russia has a reputation for covering up bad news with tightly controlled state media, with news sites run by opposition or exiled Russians such as People of Baikal sometimes proving more reliable than those from official sources.
However, sites like these can also be fallible. Some of the reports of hospitals being closed or quarantined do not appear to be true, with one children’s hospital named by the local press as having shut later clarifying it is “operating normally without any changes”.
The hospital warned people “to disregard fake news from various sources” and stated that “the only reliable source of information about our hospital’s activities is our official pages”.
Hazmat suits on the streets
A three-second, blurry clip of a man wearing a hazmat suit while walking in an urban area is among the videos being presented as “leaking” from Russia, suggesting the situation on the ground is much worse than the authorities would have people believe.
One version of this clip racked up a million views after it was shared by , a notorious X account with a history of posting misinformation and inflammatory posts.
While it has not been possible to confirm when or where the video was filmed, the man is dressed in a way which is consistent with the protective suits worn by workers in Russia who carry out treatments to reduce ticks in public areas.
These workers sprayed the tick-repellent solution in Irkutsk, where the research centre is located, in April this year, according to a local news site covering the public maintenance at the time.
The lines on the back of the man’s suit in the viral video are identical to the protective suits worn by these types of workers, as is the fact that the man appears to be wearing casual shoes rather than protective footwear or covers.
Three clips claiming to be from people within Siberia have also gained traction online.
One appears to suggest a local hospital is taking precautions in light of the reports.
The mother of a pregnant woman filmed herself outside of Irkutsk City Perinatal Centre, which is clearly visible in her video.
She said she was barred from entering with her daughter, while her daughter was reportedly asked to put on a mask, wash her hands and have her temperature taken. Her daughter was asked to fill in a form entitled “checklist for suspected plague”, she claimed. A photo of the form on a clipboard was published by People of Baikal, while the daughter posted a second video also recounting her experience on Instagram.
The i Paper attempted to speak to the hospital but was unable to reach anyone on the phone.
The hospital’s VK page, Russia’s version of Facebook, showed a planned “open day” event for expectant families due to be held on 7 October was cancelled on 4 October.
Two more dubious clips are being widely shared on Russian Telegram channels, with locals claiming hospitals are “closed off for quarantine” and reporting that some people are wearing masks and gloves to protect themselves. “I sneeze, and you’re done for,” one man says in the video, “you’ve caught it. F****** pneumonic plague. [In] The 21st century.”
Neither of these two clips presents any evidence to back up the anecdotes shared in them.
Officials boarding planes
Footage appearing to show passengers on a Russian Aeroflot flight being stopped from leaving the plane in the wake of the suspected plague case is being shared with claims that “a possible plague outbreak in Russia has caused alarm worldwide”.
The man filming can be heard saying in Russian: “They won’t let us off the plane to go into quarantine; they’re probably taking our temperatures now [on board]…” and claims “the health service” had boarded the plane to check passengers and were “filming us”.
The i Paper was able to confirm that the original footage was taken on 4 October, but it was filmed on a flight landing in Moscow from Bangkok, Thailand, which is experiencing a surge in coronavirus levels.
Staff on board were not filming passengers, but were using thermal cameras to check people’s temperatures – something that happened on flights in Russia during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is unconnected to the death in Siberia.