India has been added to the UK’s ‘red list’ for travel, with fears over a new variant influencing the decision

French president says US and UK should start exporting doses around the world instead

Could it be that I, a committed extrovert who talks to strangers, had become an introvert during the pandemic?To quote James Brown: I feel good, I knew that I would. Britain has opened up. Into a restaurant I leap, on to a beautician’s bed I spring, and into a shop I hop, to try on sunglasses and flirt with the salesperson, who is almost certainly reciprocating for money. Still, in-person interaction with strangers! These days I skip home.But recently one evening I found myself alone, properly alone, for the first time in a while. No one in the flat, and no obligation to join a Zoom, or go out to care for someone – everyone I love was busy and catered for in this new world. And it was lovely. Continue reading...

Defense secretary is hopeful rocket will crash in the ocean; Aerospace Corp said it expects debris to hit the Pacific near the equatorThe US military has no plan to shoot down the remnants of a large Chinese rocket expected to plunge back through the atmosphere this weekend, the defense secretary said on Thursday.Speaking with reporters, the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said the hope was the rocket would land in the ocean and that the latest estimate was that it would come down between Saturday and Sunday. Continue reading...

Government admits restrictions that had been due to end on 11 May have failed to stop rising infections

I found a ball of mud with something pointy sticking out the top. I ran into the kitchen screaming. I was so excitedI love digging in the back garden; I’ve been doing it for ages. When I was younger, I hoped to reach other countries, or at least get to my neighbour’s back garden. During lockdown me and my mummy started digging in the flowerbeds together.Sometimes, I’d dig for pottery and stuff, but I’ve always wanted to find a fossil. I like finding out about the past. At school, my favourite subject is history. I’ve been watching Andy’s Prehistoric Adventures on CBeebies since I was three (I’m now six) and I’ve seen lots of YouTube videos of a guy who searches for megalodon teeth. I knew I had a good chance of finding a fossil, because my house was built on a muddy, limestone substrate, in Walsall, which means millions of years ago, my garden wasn’t my garden at all – it was a coral reef. Continue reading...

Education secretary says lockdown easing measure will go ahead despite protests from unions and others

Expansion follows advice to allow more people to opt out of the AstraZeneca shot over clotting fears

Analysis of more than 95,000 women under 50 suggests link between heavy consumption and the diseaseHeavy consumption of sugary drinks may raise the risk of developing bowel cancer before the age of 50, according to a major study into diet and disease in US nurses.Researchers analysed dietary and medical records of more than 95,000 women tracked from 1991 to 2015 as part of the US Nurses’ Health II study and looked for evidence linking sugary drinks to early diagnosis of bowel cancer. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Leaked emails show Public Health England assessment of ongoing risk from B16172 variant is ‘high’

I was just starting my career in paediatrics at Southmead hospital in Bristol in 1963 when Peter Dunn was appointed. He quickly fired everyone’s enthusiasm for neonatology. At the time, junior staff were trying to persuade more senior staff that low-birthweight babies should be fed early, rather than the practice of not feeding for 48 hours or until they seemed hungry. He strongly supported us and we managed to establish early feeding. We founded the Bristol Perinatal Club together, which at the time was unique in allowing obstetricians and neonatologists to meet to discuss mutual problems. Continue reading...

When the Guardian began reporting on the climate crisis 70 years ago, people were worried that warmer temperatures would make it harder to complain about the weather. Today it is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.In the second special episode marking 200 years of the Guardian, Phoebe Weston is joined by Jonathan Watts, Prof Naomi Oreskes and Alice Bell to take a look at climate coverage over the years, how our understanding of the science has changed and how our attitudes and politics have shifted Continue reading...

Unless actions by governments and corporations cut emissions in the here and now, a dose of scepticism is in order

Health commissioner says plan is to reduce hospitalisation and tackle long-term impact of Covid

New variants are contributing factor behind country’s vicious second wave with likelihood of more emerging

New Shepard rocket-and-capsule combo aims to fly six passengers 62 miles above Earth into spaceBlue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s rocket company, aims to launch its first suborbital sightseeing trip on its New Shepard spacecraft on 20 July, a moment that could usher in an era of private commercial space travel.Blue Origin also said it would offer one seat on the first flight to the winning bidder of a five-week online auction, the proceeds of which will be donated to the space firm’s foundation. Continue reading...

Despite pandemic-enforced isolation, scientists from around the world have produced a vital climate change forecastSea levels are going to rise, no matter what. This is certain. But new

The best time to look skyward will be from 2.30am to 3am on Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning – and you won’t need a telescopeShooting stars will light up the early morning sky across Australia this coming weekend.Those willing to brave the cold over the next few days will be rewarded with a spectacular show of streaking lights. Continue reading...

SpaceX launches and successfully lands its futuristic Starship SN15 for the first time. The previous four test flights for the rocketship had ended in explosions for the vehicle that SpaceX founder Elon Musk hopes will eventually transport humans to Mars. This latest upgraded version of SpaceX’s full-scale, stainless steel, bullet-shaped rocketship reached a maximum altitude of over six miles (10km) before flipping and descending horizontally, and then going vertical again just in time for touchdown

Previous test flights of the rocketship, which Elon Musk plans to use for future missions to the moon and mars, ended in explosionsSpaceX launched and successfully landed its futuristic Starship on Wednesday, finally nailing a test flight of the rocketship that Elon Musk intends to use to land astronauts on the moon and send people to Mars.The previous four test flights ended in fiery explosions before, during or soon after touchdown at the south-eastern tip of Texas, near Brownsville. Continue reading...

Communist party newspaper claims Long March 5B should easily burn up in atmosphere but expert warns pieces will reach EarthThe White House has called for “responsible space behaviours” as a debris from a Chinese rocket, thought to be out of control, is expected to crash back to Earth on Saturday, US time.The US Space Command is tracking debris from the Long March 5B, which last week launched the main module of China’s first permanent space station into orbit. The roughly 30-metre (100ft) long stage would be among the biggest piece of space debris to fall to Earth. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. Keep up to date with all of our coronavirus coverage here.11.55pm BSTWe are closing this blog now. You can keep up to date with all our coronavirus coverage here.

Waiver yet to be approved by World Trade Organisation but Biden administration’s position will have strong influence on decision

Limited data from small test trial shows positive results against South Africa and Brazil strains

‘Quite spectacular’ discovery shows three-year-old child was carefully laid to rest nearly 80,000 years ago

Exclusive: playlist based on listeners’ backgrounds and tastes found to lower heart rate, agitation and distressBob Marley knew it when he sang on Trenchtown Rock: “One good thing about music when it hits you, you feel no pain.”Now trials are under way at an NHS trust to see if an algorithm can curate music playlists to reduce suffering in Alzheimer’s patients as well as in stressed medical staff. Continue reading...

Nasal swabs allegedly washed, repackaged and sold to passengers required to take test at Medan airport

Money for Porton Down laboratory will help to ‘future-proof’ country, says Matt Hancock

Australia needs to start flattening the mental health curve urgently. The coming budget is an opportunity for actionThe 2021 federal budget has been heralded as the point at which the Morrison government will respond, at scale, to the many failings of the mental health system. We spend only $10.6bn a year providing mental health services to over 4 million people. Importantly, there is an increasing divide between the federal government’s reporting and the independent accounting of what monies are spent on mental health. The responsible ministers claim that federal spending has already substantially increased, up from $3.5bn five years ago to $5.9bn in 2020-21. Continue reading...

On 22 June 1918, the Manchester Guardian reported that a flu epidemic was moving through the British Isles. It was noted to be ‘by any means a common form of influenza’. Eventually, it took the lives of more than 50 million people around the world. In a special episode to mark the Guardian’s 200th anniversary, Nicola Davis looks back on the 1918 flu pandemic and how it was reported at the time. Speaking to science journalist Laura Spinney, and ex-chief reporter at the Observer and science historian Dr Mark Honigsbaum, Nicola asks about the similarities and differences to our experiences with Covid-19, and what we can learn for future pandemics Continue reading...

Analysis of remains of crew on Henry VIII’s favourite warship sheds light on diversity in Tudor EnglandOne is thought to be an archer raised in the Atlas mountains in north Africa, and another may have been a carpenter who grew up in south-west Spain. Others hailed from closer to home, possibly the bustling ports of the English west country or the Thames estuary.The most in-depth study yet of a group of men who drowned when Henry VIII’s favourite warship, the Mary Rose, sank off Portsmouth has provided fresh insight into the makeup of the crew, and the diverse nature of society in Tudor England. Continue reading...

Archaeologists say findings at Old St Mary’s church in Stoke Mandeville will shed light on life dating back to Norman timesHS2 contractors are planning to disinter 3,000 bodies discovered in a churchyard in Buckinghamshire that lies in the path of the new high-speed rail link.Archaeologists excavating a site at Old St Mary’s church in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, which was built shortly after the Norman conquest in AD1080, discovered the ancient burial site in the churchyard. The burial ground at St Mary’s was in use for 900 years, with the last recorded interment in 1908. Around 3,000 burials are expected when the graveyard is fully excavated. Continue reading...

Following health secretary’s statement last month, Public Health England confirms it is carrying out ‘targeted testing’ instead

Analysis: the vaccine strategy and staggered easing of restrictions have worked well. The next step is crucial

Chemist who made a breakthrough in developing the anti-cancer drug cisplatin and brought about advances in spectroscopyAndrew Thomson, who has died aged 80 after a stroke, played a crucial role early in his career in the discovery of a widely used anti-cancer drug, cisplatin, before going on to do pioneering work in the field of spectroscopy, enhancing our understanding of the functioning of substances vital to life, such as haemoglobin.As an Oxford research chemist with a background in platinum chemistry, in 1967 Andrew was invited to Michigan State University by a group of biophysicists who had found that passing an electric current, using platinum electrodes, through a culture of the bacterium E coli had an inhibiting effect on the cell replication. They needed a chemist to determine the active substance. Andrew solved their problem by suggesting and synthesising two potential inhibitors and identifying the active one – now known as cisplatin. Continue reading...

In the runup to Cop26, public knowledge about the crisis is shallow, with few understanding the scale of the threatOne of the key lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic is that strong policies require strong public engagement: people needed to understand the nature of the virus before they would tolerate constraints on their lives or provide the government with a mandate for action.Yet the world faces another major problem that is already transforming economies, infrastructure and way of life: the climate crisis. And in this case, governments have miserably failed to inform or consult their citizens. Not one of the highest-polluting nations attending Joe Biden’s climate summit last week has a coherent strategy or dedicated national budget for public engagement. Continue reading...

Epidemiologist says he feels optimistic country will feel ‘a lot more normal by summer’

A study of fossilised insects suggests a correlation between their body size and the temperatureMost of us want to run a mile when the midges arrive, but not so for Viktor Baranov, who whips out his microscope to measure the insects. As well as measuring modern midges, Baranov has been looking at fossilised midges, and found that their size can be used to understand the climate going back hundreds of millions of years ago.Baranov, a palaeontologist at Lüdwig Maximilians University in Munich, chose to measure the non-biting Diptera midge. It is already well known that warm-blooded animals become larger as the climate becomes colder – for example, polar bears are much bigger than bears living in the tropics – so Baranov and his colleagues decided to see if the so called “Bergman rule” would hold for insects too. Continue reading...

Minna’s pancreatic surgery was cancelled as a result of the pandemic. By the time treatments resumed, her tumour was too big for doctors to operateWhen Minna Heeraman’s friends knew that she was dying, they made a video for her to watch from the hospital bed she had set up in her living room. It was a goodbye video. One after another, her friends spoke to the camera with tears in their eyes. They shared their memories of times spent together. Wine in the garden on sunny afternoons. Hen dos. Weddings. Christmas meet-ups. “I don’t know what more to say, Minna,” says one friend, choking back sobs. “I love you so much. And you’ll always be with us.”At this point, in September 2020, Minna had been stuck in bed for months. Her one shot at treatment would have been the Whipple procedure. A complex operation to remove the head of Minna’s pancreas – Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, also underwent the procedure – it can extend the life expectancy of pancreatic cancer patients in about one-fifth of cases. But Minna’s surgery had been cancelled in the first wave of the pandemic. By the time hospitals resumed elective surgeries, it was too late. The tumour had grown to the point where it was inoperable. Whether the Whipple procedure would have saved her life, prolonged it or done nothing at all, is impossible to know. Minna was one of the hidden victims of the Covid-19 pandemic. She didn’t die from the virus, but it affected how she died. Continue reading...

Long March 5B is doing 27,600km/h in failing orbit, with eventual crash site unknown, after launching space station hubPart of a huge rocket that launched China’s first module for its Tianhe space station is falling back to Earth and could make an uncontrolled re-entry at an unknown landing point.The 30-metre high core of the Long March 5B rocket launched the “Heavenly Harmony” unmanned core module into low Earth orbit on 29 April from Wenchang in China’s Hainan province. Continue reading...

US pharmacy chains responsible for vast majority of the recorded 182,874 wasted doses, according to Kaiser Health NewsUS pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens are responsible for the vast majority of wasted vaccine doses, which total more than 180,000 reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a story from Kaiser Health News.As of late March, the CDC recorded 182,874 tossed doses. CVS and Walgreens combined wasted 128,500 doses – CVS wasted about half and Walgreens 21%. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you four puzzles by Paulo Ferro, a Portuguese puzzle maker.1. Trapezium or trap-not-so-easy-um? Continue reading...

Even short, temporary increases in airborne particles can damage brain health, research suggestsTemporary rises in air pollution may impair memory and thinking in older men, according to research that indicates even short-term spikes in airborne particles can be harmful to brain health.Scientists found that the men’s cognitive performance fell following rises in air pollution during the month before testing, even when peak levels remained below safety thresholds for toxic air set by the World Health Organization and national regulators. Continue reading...

Indian government accused of complacency, with shortage of jabs likely to continue ‘for months’

Jeffrey Karp is at the forefront of a new generation of scientists using nature’s blueprints to create breakthrough medical technologies. Can bioinspiration help to solve some of humanity’s most urgent problems? By Laura Parker Continue reading...

Our South Asia correspondent reflects on a catastrophe that is now affecting the lives of almost everyone in the country

The crisis in India forced the west to respond. But without an ambitious global plan, other nations may suffer similar fatesAs the number of Covid-19 cases rose dramatically in Europe and the US during the early part of last year, something strange seemed to be happening in the global south. South Africa’s entire death toll was less than 100 at the same time that Britain was losing more than 1,000 lives a day. India’s death rate during this period was so low that it was termed a “mystery”. More confident conclusions were drawn about Africa’s fate; some thought it had been spared the worst of Covid-19 because it took decisive action early on in the pandemic, while others said the continent had been saved by its warm climate, its low elderly population and its “good community health systems”. There was even brief excitement about the curative potential of homegrown sweet wormwood, a plant that the president of Madagascar claimed was a treatment for Covid-19.Most of this reasoning was speculative. But by the late summer of 2020, two clear trends were emerging. While parts of western Europe were enduring a devastating first wave of Covid-19 cases, Africa and south Asia were experiencing a slow-moving, sometimes stalling rate of infection and a comparatively low death toll. Those trends are now being reversed. Continue reading...

The Eta Aquarids may not be the most spectacular meteors of the year but they are fun to seeThis week, keep an eye open for the Eta Aquarids meteor shower. Shooting stars from this annual display can usually be seen between 19 April and 28 May. This year they are expected to peak in the pre-dawn sky of 5 May, but the morning before and after are worth a try too. Continue reading...

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Custard tarts for the brainToday, four tasty treats from Paulo Ferro, a puzzlesmith from Porto.1. Trapezium or trap-not-so-easy-um? Continue reading...