Health Secretary Wes Streeting says the meningitis outbreak in Kent is being managed on a national level as cases rose to 20 yesterday, up from 15. A targeted vaccine programme is being set up at the University of Kent, and cases are now being treated in hospitals in London and France. MSPs have rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying in Scotland. The proposal, which was tabled by Liberal Democrat Liam McArthur and would have allowed terminally ill, mentally competent patients to end their lives, was defeated by 69 votes to 57 following an emotionally charged final debate yesterday. Think twice before purging your wardrobe, because your clothes will be back in fashion by 2046. A new study drawing on one of the biggest databases of women’s fashion – including tens of thousands of garments, sewing patterns and archive images from 1869 to today – found that trends, in particular the rise and fall of hemlines, move in a predictable two-decade cycle.

The Bank of England’s decision to swap the historical figures on our banknotes for British wildlife after a public vote has been met with “scoffs and cries of wokery”, says Emily Watkins in The i Paper. But I think it’s a “stroke of genius”. The current line-up – Jane Austen, Winston Churchill, JMW Turner, Alan Turing – are all white and “varying degrees of posh”, so if we want the currency to reflect the country, we’ve “failed at the first hurdle”. But of course, as a nation, we are too various to be represented by any handful of dead people – “and that’s something to be celebrated rather than bemoaned”. Plus, if what’s printed on the money is what we “hold in reverence”, we could do a lot worse than putting the natural world on that pedestal. “I’ll take a badger over Winston Churchill any day.”

If you’re looking for a metaphor for the decline of Western civilisation, says Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal, look no further. Like the diversity-vigilant types who run most British public institutions, the bureaucrats at the BoE were presumably terrified they’d be shouted at by “cultural vigilantes” if they suggested a new crop of dead white folk, but “couldn’t come up with a sufficiently recognisable black or brown-skinned lesbian or Muslim”. No matter that Jane Austen is one of the world’s greatest novelists or that Alan Turing – one of the only gay men to have been honoured on national currency – paved the way for modern computing. Better the “inclusive safety” of tawny owls and voles than a defence of British titans. Evidently the elites that still have the country in their grip remain committed to the “slow eradication of the nation’s traditional values”.

Geopolitics analysts who believed the BRICS group of countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and chums – could form a “credible counterweight to US power” are currently looking at their shoes, says C Raja Mohan in Foreign Policy. Two weeks after one of their members, Iran, was invaded, not a peep. This should be no surprise. Over the past century, grand movements promising transnational solidarity on the basis of shared grievances – pan-Asianism, pan-Islamism, pan-Arabism, communist internationalism, and even the Non-Aligned Movement – have repeatedly hit the same wall. “When solidarity collides with national interest, the latter prevails.”

Josh Wardle, who came up with Wordle, has a new game, says Amelia Hill in The Guardian. Parseword is a “digital take” on the cryptic crossword, designed to make the famously head-scratching format – beloved by aficionados and “baffling to almost everyone else” – more accessible. There’s an (extensive) tutorial and lots of hand-holding for each clue. Give it a go here.

Donald Trump was betting on a swift victory in Iran, says Ashkan Hashemipour in Engelsberg Ideas. When the Supreme Leader and many in Tehran’s top brass were taken out within the first few hours, the US president no doubt felt regime change was on the horizon. With the war now in its third week, that feels like a distant goal. Trump mistakenly assumed that Iran could be treated in a similar way to other regional cases such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya and Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. But these regimes were all “deeply personalistic” – the removal of the figureheads swiftly brought about the collapse of the system beneath them. The Islamic Republic is “fundamentally different”.

Unlike those highly personalised autocracies, Iran is not organised around the fate of any particular leader. Instead, its institutional design prioritises the preservation of the system itself. The Supreme National Council brings together different regime elites – military officials, key ministers, the president – to formulate core national security policies, from the nuclear issue to the defence of the country’s borders, meaning decision-making occurs through an institutionalised process rather than “unilateral directives” from the top. The armed forces are similarly “de-personalised and horizontal”, with provincial units allowed to act independently of central command – especially when senior leaders are killed or communications are cut. And the IRGC, which emerged as an amalgamation of revolutionary militias, has a “flexible command structure” more or less designed for fighting “unconventional wars against superior forces”. This is not to suggest that Iran cannot be beaten. But it’s far too resilient to be taken down by a “quick triumph”.

When George HW Bush hosted Bolivian president Jaime Paz and his two young sons at the White House in 1990, says Jeremy Dicker in International Intrigue, his guest wanted to give him a golden crucifix that had been a family heirloom for generations. Bush was reluctant to accept the gift on account of its sentimental value, but agreed on one condition: if either of Jaime’s boys ever ended up president of Bolivia, he would return it. Sure enough, one of the sons, Rodrigo, won the country’s general election in November, and Bush’s presidential library organised for the family crucifix to be returned earlier this month.

Labour is becoming “the party of the rich”, says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. A new Ipsos poll split respondents into four groups: “comfortably off”, “financially stable”, “just about coping”, and “financially precarious/extremely vulnerable”. Labour is way behind Reform UK in the three poorest groups, but “miles ahead” in the richest, with 33% support compared to 18% for Reform. A poll last September found that Labour is also by far the most popular party among the privately educated, on 38% compared to 25% for Reform and 17% for the Tories.

It’s the canine fashion magazine Dogue, says Callie Holtermann in The New York Times, which has been accused by Condé Nast of infringing on its trademark for its human fashion magazine, Vogue. Lawyers argued that the pooch publication, which sells fewer than 100 copies per issue and has featured an Italian greyhound in an evening gown and a labradoodle in a collection of trench coats, is “obviously intended” to confuse customers and demanded that all copies of Dogue were destroyed. As editor-in-chief Olga Portnaya’s lawyer pointed out in response: “I don’t think anyone would have difficulty recognising the difference.”