The B.1.1.529 variant was first spotted in Botswana and six cases have been found in South Africa

At least 241 people linked to religious community test positive for virus

Trials show the protein-based jab causes fewer side-effects – and hundreds of British jobs depend on it

I’m doing my best to act normal, but I’ve become incredibly aware of other people’s snuffling, coughing and wheezing. Am I vigilant – or paranoid?Like the unnamed woman Drake sings about in his 2015 hit Hotline Bling, I’ve been wearing less – at least metaphorically – and going out more. Apparently she started to behave that way ever since Drake left the city. Before that, he laments, she “used to always stay at home, be a good girl”. I started to behave that way ever since Covid-19 left the city – except, of course, it didn’t.The pandemic is very much with us, and on top of that, it’s cold and flu season. Of course, most New Yorkers are vaccinated and masked, and restrictions on our work and social lives have eased massively. I need to go to work, and I need to live my life. So I’m trying to take the train, meet friends, eat in restaurants and see shows. I should enjoy this moment while I can – but I can’t. Continue reading...

Charities say Nice’s decision to endorse progesterone for some cases in England will help save babies’ livesWomen at a higher risk of miscarriage in England are to be offered a hormone drug under new NHS guidelines.The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has published updated guidance on miscarriage that says certain women can be offered progesterone to help prevent pregnancy loss. Continue reading...

Spacecraft heads off on 6.8m-mile journey to crash into moonlet Dimorphos in test to see if asteroids can be diverted from collision with EarthA spacecraft that must ultimately crash in order to succeed lifted off late on Tuesday from California on a Nasa mission to demonstrate the world’s first planetary defence system.Carried aboard a SpaceX-owned Falcon 9 rocket, the Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft soared into the sky at 10.21pm Pacific time from the Vandenberg US Space Force Base, about 150 miles (240km) north-west of Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Nasa is preparing to launch a mission that could show us how to save the planet from an asteroid strike, similar to that seen in films such as Armageddon and Deep Impact. The Dart mission is the first dedicated to investigating and demonstrating a method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact. Nasa has released an animation showing what the process may look like

Experts say shifting data collection to the home may break down barriers to participation in researchAstraZeneca is to let more people take part in clinical trials from the comfort of their own homes in an attempt to increase the diversity of participants.Recruiting volunteers to clinical trials can be difficult, but they are a crucial step in the development of new drugs, tests, devices and other interventions. Continue reading...

Border will first open to New Zealand citizens coming from Australia, then from the rest of the world, and finally to all other vaccinated visitors from April

The spacecraft will travel 6.8 million miles through the solar system in an attempt to nudge moonlet Dimorphos a fraction off courseNasa is preparing to launch its $330m Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) probe, testing the space agency’s ability to alter an asteroid’s trajectory with kinetic force.The plan is to crash a robot spacecraft into the moonlet Dimorphos at 15,000 mph and change its path just a fraction. If the mission is successful, it will mean that Nasa and other space agencies could deflect an asteroid heading towards Earth and avert an Armageddon-style impact. Continue reading...

Manuscript handwritten by physicist and a colleague in 1913-14 fetched nearly four times estimateAlbert Einstein’s handwritten notes on the theory of relativity fetched a record €11.6m (£9.7m) at an auction in Paris on Tuesday.The manuscript had been valued at about a quarter of the final sum, which is by far the highest ever paid for anything written by the genius scientist. Continue reading...

The safe, repetitive domesticity of lockdown made me face my demons and seek therapy, while also making me hungry for sensation and risk. So I set off for a retreat in AmsterdamIf you had asked me pre-pandemic if I would ever touch psychedelics, I would have said absolutely not. The speed of my brain is literally my only skill. As a standup comedian and podcaster, I can walk out on stage with absolutely nothing in my head and riff with an audience for an hour if I need to – which I know seems like a superpower to others – while ordinary powers, such as the ability to do my laundry every week, elude me.I was recently diagnosed with ADHD – first in the green room by other comedians, then by a doctor. It seems that a lot of us comics have it. I guess it’s a job you can do if you are not neurotypical, because you see the world from an unusual angle and there is very little admin. I often see comics on Facebook posting: “I’ve just got Peckham in my diary for tonight; am I meant to be doing a gig for anyone there?” Continue reading...

Matthew Heineman’s powerful documentary captures the most acute weeks of the crisis as a Long Island hospital struggles to copeShot inside a New York hospital at the start of the pandemic, this documentary is an overwhelming emotional watch. In March last year, City of Ghosts director Matthew Heineman started filming on the wards of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center; he stayed for four months, through the worst of it.It looks like a war zone: death everywhere, pagers buzzing, constant tannoy announcements of “code blue” critical emergencies, medics sprinting to the next crisis. Anyone watching who had to say goodbye over FaceTime (a nurse holding up a phone in a clear plastic bag for their dying loved one) will find this traumatising. What is comforting is how the hospital’s overworked exhausted staff pay attention to the human life in front of them – holding hands with the dying, tenderly stroking their faces. Continue reading...

Ring of hollows has been called the largest prehistoric structure found in Britain, but some were scepticalWhen a series of deep pits were discovered near the world heritage site of Stonehenge last year, archaeologists excitedly described it as the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain – only for some colleagues to dismiss the pits as mere natural features.Now scientific tests have proved that those gaping pits, each aligned to form a circle spanning 1.2 miles (2km) in diameter, were definitely human-made, dug into the sacred landscape almost 4,500 years ago. Continue reading...

Programme to allow those with prestigious global prizes to get fast-track visas dismissed as ‘elitist’ and a ‘joke’A post-Brexit scheme to draw the world’s most celebrated academics and other leading figures to the UK has failed to attract a single applicant in the six months since it opened, it has been reported.The visa route open to Nobel laureates and other prestigious global prize winners in the fields of science, engineering, humanities and medicine – among others – was described as a joke by experts after ministers admitted its failure to garner any interest. Continue reading...

Threading together sequences showing the lunar face of subjects from love to madness, this is a gorgeous journey into outer and inner spaceIt only takes eight minutes of To the Moon before we hear the ripples of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, over a gorgeous vintage montage of embracing lovers. It’s the equivalent of Pomp and Circumstance at the Proms for Tadhg O’Sullivan’s beautifully succinct visual essay on the little guy in the sky; the moon’s beguiling apartness exerting a constant pull on our emotional and imaginative lives, paradoxically making it an inseparable part of us. As the opening quotation, from a Jennifer Elise Foerster poem, puts it: “Moon / Earth fragment / Remember us.”Appropriately, given the presiding deity here and its remit of the unconscious, O’Sullivan’s film is an estuarial wash of lunar-related images, sound and text – all the better to percolate straight into us. Beginning with limpid shots of the rising and setting moon, its impressively broad set of purpose-shot and archive footage – including films from 25 countries, including ones by Satyajit Ray, FW Murnau and Carl Theodor Dreyer – confirms the moon’s universal allure. Continue reading...

Scientists sceptical about Pascal Soriot’s suggestion Oxford jab may give longer-lasting protection

Exclusive: Prof Sir Andrew Pollard says most of those infected who are fully vaccinated will experience only mild symptoms

Chris Hadfield was the first Canadian to walk in space, became commander of the International Space Station, and became a viral sensation after covering Bowie like no one else. He speaks to the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample, about life as an astronaut, the new race to the moon and his new novel, The Apollo Murders.Archive: Canadian Space Agency, Nasa, EMI, DW News, ITV News, CNBC TV, BBC, NBC Continue reading...

The separate, previously unknown, missile release reportedly took place while the vehicle was soaring at hypersonic speedsChina’s launch of a nuclear-capable missile carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle also included the unprecedented launch of a separate missile from that vehicle, according to multiple reports.The test showed China’s development of its strategic, nuclear-capable weapons as more advanced than any had thought, surprising Pentagon officials, the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal reported. Continue reading...

Researchers found chores could help prevent disease and falls, though other experts have urged cautionHousehold chores might seem a drag, but researchers have suggested tasks like dusting, scrubbing floors and washing the windows might help adults to stay healthy into old age.Writing in the journal BMJ Open, a Singapore-based team of researchers said regular physical activity “improves physical and mental health, mitigates the risks and effects of chronic diseases, and reduces falls, immobility, dependency and mortality among older adults”. Continue reading...

Test drive of planetary defence system aims to provide data on how to deflect asteroids away from EarthThat’s one large rock, one momentous shift in our relationship with space. On Wednesday, Nasa will launch a mission to deliberately slam a spacecraft into an asteroid to try to alter its orbit – the first time humanity has tried to interfere in the gravitational dance of the solar system. The aim is to test drive a planetary defence system that could prevent us from going the same way as the dinosaurs, providing the first real data about what it would take to deflect an Armageddon-inducing asteroid away from Earth.Our planet is constantly being bombarded with small pieces of debris, but these are usually burned or broken up long before they hit the ground. Once in a while, however, something large enough to do significant damage hits the ground. About 66m years ago, one such collision is thought to have ended the reign of the dinosaurs, ejecting vast amounts of dust and debris into the upper atmosphere, which obscured the sun and caused food chains to collapse. Someday, something similar could call time on humanity’s reign – unless we can find a way to deflect it. Continue reading...

Kim Gillingham explains how her work on The Power of the Dog enabled the ‘lioness of an artist’ and her ‘translucent’ star to access their inmost drivesTo access his dreams the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí napped while sitting on a chair, holding keys over an upturned metal plate. After he lost consciousness, the keys dropped onto the plate, jangling him awake so he could paint fresh from his unconscious. Kim Gillingham tells this story to connect her practice to the history of artistic endeavour. She is a Jungian dream coach, based in LA, who combines ideas from psychoanalysis and the method acting of the Actors Studio to, in her words: “access the incredible resource of the unconscious through dreams and through work with the body and to use that material to bring authenticity, truth and aliveness up through whatever discipline the artist is working in”.Jane Campion sought Gillingham’s services to help conjure the forces at play in her first film in 12 years, The Power of the Dog. It’s a western adapted from Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel that riffs on themes of masculinity and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank, a toxic alpha cowboy whose personality is designed to hide a secret that would have made him vulnerable in the story’s setting of 1920s Montana.The Power of the Dog is in UK cinemas now and on Netflix from 1 December. Continue reading...

The brightest star in the constellation Gemini, the twins, is named after the son of Leda and ZeusOn the evening of 23 November, the moon will have a close encounter with the star Pollux, the brightest star in the constellation Gemini, the twins.Pollux marks the head of one twin. The other twin is marked by the star Castor. Although Pollux is the brighter star, it was Castor that was given the designation alpha Geminorum by German astronomer Johann Bayer in his 1603 star atlas Uranometria, which was the first to chart the entire celestial globe. Although Bayer mostly designated stars in brightness order, by giving Pollux the beta Geminorum designation we can see that this was not a hard and fast rule. Continue reading...

Analysis: issues with some gadgets could contribute to poorer outcomes for women and people of colourThe UK health secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced a review into systemic racism and gender bias in medical devices in response to concerns it could contribute to poorer outcomes for women and people of colour.Writing in the Sunday Times, Javid said: “It is easy to look at a machine and assume that everyone’s getting the same experience. But technologies are created and developed by people, and so bias, however inadvertent, can be an issue here too.” Continue reading...

Glennon Doyle’s memoir inspired Adele – but do we all need to be ‘untamed’?The marriage wasn’t unbearable, but it didn’t feel right any more. The lightbulb moment came when she realised she needed to think about what she truly wanted, rather than about what society had trained her to think she wanted. Also, she became aware that remaining in an unhappy marriage meant she wasn’t being the parent she wanted to be: following her heart would cause heartbreak to her family now, but it had a noble purpose. Today, her ex lives within walking distance and they share parenting. She got out, and she wants to tell the world how it’s changed her life.Who is this woman? Well, it could be Adele, whose new album reveals why she decided to leave her husband Simon Konecki, and what it means for their son Angelo, nine. “It just wasn’t right for me any more… I didn’t want to end up like a lot of other people I knew. I wasn’t miserable-miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first,” she said in a recent interview. Continue reading...

Predictions from Lowy Institute indicate Papua New Guinea will take five years to vaccinate just a third of its population

Why does the sternest of British matriarchs turn to puree when confronted with her children’s young, wonders a rookie parentOn Thursday morning I sent my mother a WhatsApp message. “Entertaining discussion on Radio 4 about how it’s better being a grandmother than a mother,” I wrote. She didn’t reply. It is not easy being a son.On the Today programme, Amol Rajan and Sheila Hancock had been discussing a study by anthropologists in Atlanta, Georgia, which found that grandmothers may be more emotionally connected to their grandchildren than their children. The researchers showed 50 women pictures of their biological grandchildren, the child’s parents and random children and adults, and watched the effect it had on their brains. When the grandmothers looked at the grandchildren, the part of their brain associated with “cognitive empathy” lit up. We don’t know which part of the brain lit up when they saw their children. Have scientists even identified the part associated with contempt and regret? Continue reading...

A new book tells the story of the painstaking process to preserve the 1,200-year-old Faddan More PsalterOne summer’s day in Tipperary as peat was being dug from a bog, a button peered out from the freshly cut earth. The find set off a five-year journey of conservation to retrieve and preserve what lay beyond: a 1,200-year-old psalm book in its original cover.Bogs across Europe have thrown up all sorts of relics of the ancient past, from naturally preserved bodies to vessels containing butter more than a millennium old, but the 2006 discovery of an entire early medieval manuscript, entombed in a wet time capsule for so long, was unprecedented, said the National Museum of Ireland. Continue reading...

Like seatbelts, vaccines lower risk and two studies reveal the protection that a third jab offersLast week, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) reported encouraging research on booster doses. That analysis estimated that, compared with the preceding waned protection, the booster reduced the risks of symptomatic Covid-19 disease in people over 50 by around 85%.Compared with not being vaccinated at all, a booster gave similar protection to that obtained soon after two Pfizer/BioNTech doses. Encouragingly, this reduction occurred regardless of the initial vaccine, implying Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccinees have more protection after the booster dose than ever. Continue reading...

The Delta variant was first detected a year ago and is now dominant across the globe. Scientists are concerned that a new strain could supersede it

Experts’ warning as Covid crackdowns across Europe result in widespread protests

Demonstrations come after announcement of new lockdown and plan for compulsory vaccines

Benefits of approving age extension outweigh the risks, says secretary for food and health

Victoria’s health department says child who died had ‘other serious comorbidities’A Victorian child under 10 has become Australia’s youngest person to die with Covid-19.Victoria reported 1,166 new coronavirus infections on Saturday and five new deaths, including the child. Victoria’s health department said the child had “other serious comorbidities”. Continue reading...

Australian company joins global effort to recycle dangerous space debris

Claim will reignite debate about origins of pandemic, a continuing source of tension between US and ChinaThe first known Covid-19 case was a vendor at the live-animal market in Wuhan, according to a scientist who has scrutinised public accounts of the earliest cases in China.The chronology is at odds with a timeline laid out in an influential World Health Organization (WHO) report, which suggested an accountant with no apparent link to the Hunan market was the first known case. Continue reading...

A partial lunar eclipse was visible for several hours – the longest one in 580 years, giving November’s Beaver Moon reddish hues and appearing across North America, parts of South America, Asia and Australia Continue reading...

Kew Gardens and RHS reporting glut of fungi as public sends in ‘weird and wonderful’ samplesThe UK is having a bumper year for mushrooms due to the warm, damp weather, says scientists, with an increase in the number of rare and unusual species identified.Members of the public have been sending in unusual samples from their gardens to experts at Kew Gardens and the Royal Horticultural Society after a glut of fungi this year, and scientists say such booms will become more common as Britain’s climate changes to become warmer and wetter. Continue reading...

Report says detailed plans on shielding, job support schemes and school disruption were lacking

As the days get shorter and we huddle indoors, memories of 2020’s catastrophic winter are close at hand. Now a new surge of coronavirus cases is spreading across Europe. But as well as notes of caution, there are good reasons to hope that the UK will avoid the lows of last year – from lower hospitalisation rates to exciting treatments on the verge of approval. How optimistic should we be – and can we still go to Christmas parties?“I am seeing the storm clouds gathering over parts of the European continent,” Boris Johnson said last week. “We have been here before and we remember what happens when a wave starts rolling in.”The prime minister’s warning was full of foreboding for anybody who lived through last year’s winter – when a doggedly optimistic government refused to countenance imposing coronavirus restrictions over Christmas, only to be forced to reverse its position at the last minute. The move confirmed the seriousness of a long, grim second wave that proved even deadlier than the first – and fundamentally changed the way many of us thought about coronavirus, dispelling all hopes that we would soon be able to turn the page and go back to life as it was before. Continue reading...

This will be the longest partial eclipse of the 21st century, lasting three hours and 28 minutes

Migraines disappeared after man started diet that included lots of dark-green leafy vegetables, study showsHealth experts are calling for more research into diet and migraines after doctors revealed a patient who had suffered severe and debilitating headaches for more than a decade completely eliminated them after adopting a plant-based diet.He had tried prescribed medication, yoga and meditation, and cut out potential trigger foods in an effort to reduce the severity and frequency of his severe headaches – but nothing worked. The migraines made it almost impossible to perform his job, he said. Continue reading...

Stargazers across all of North America can witness the phenomenon from Thursday night into Friday morningStargazers across North America can expect to be dazzled by a red-hued “beaver” full moon on Thursday night and into Friday morning, during the longest partial lunar eclipse in almost six centuries.Lunar eclipses happen when Earth blocks the sun’s light, which usually illuminates the moon. Early on Friday, more than 97% of the full moon’s diameter will be covered by Earth’s shadow, according to Space.com. Continue reading...

Agency says human landing will not be possible until 2025 at the earliest after lawsuit delays projectNasa has resumed work on the lunar lander needed to return humans to the moon. The space agency voluntarily paused work on the Human Landing System (HLS) for several months after a lawsuit over the spacecraft’s development and manufacture.In April, Nasa awarded the $2.9bn HLS contract solely to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin company also bid for the work, sued Nasa in August because the space agency had originally stated it would award two lander contracts. Budget shortfall, however, forced it to renege on this. Continue reading...

Over the past few weeks, a thick brown smog has enveloped Delhi. The pollution is so bad that the capital and surrounding states have shut schools and imposed work-from-home orders. Toxic air at levels 20 times higher than those deemed healthy by the World Health Organization has become a seasonal occurrence in India, causing about 1.6 million premature deaths every year. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Guardian South Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Peterson and environmental researcher Karthik Ganesan about what it is like to live with poisonous air – and what needs to be done Continue reading...

Researchers said results highlight the need to continue with face coverings, social distancing and handwashing alongside vaccine programmes

Only 54 of 166 assessed treatments have policies aiding use by low-income countries, says non-profit groupThe world’s biggest drugs makers have pressed on in the fight against superbugs despite the pandemic, but millions of people in poorer countries, where the risk of drug-resistant infections is highest, are still missing out on key antibiotics.A report from the Access to Medicine Foundation, an Amsterdam-based non-profit group, shows that only 54 of 166 medicines and vaccines assessed are covered by an access strategy to make them available to low- and middle-income countries. Continue reading...

Safe injectable antiretroviral drugs, approved by health bodies, ‘could lift burden of daily oral therapy’Thousands of people living with HIV in Britain are to be freed from the burden of taking daily pills, after health chiefs gave the green light for a revolutionary treatment by injection every two months.Draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) recommends offering the antiretroviral drugs cabotegravir and rilpivirine in England and Wales after trials proved they work as effectively as daily tablets. Continue reading...