Tests will investigate whether virus evades antibodies from recovered patients and those in vaccine trials

Would you harm yourself just to get at someone else? Spite is in us all, but there are unexpected benefits to itOn a memorable episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the curmudgeonly protagonist Larry David is angered by the lukewarm lattes at his local café so he opens a “spite” café. It is an identical coffee shop and right next door, but everything is cheaper. He runs it at a personal financial loss, but is driven by the thought of putting his neighbour out of business. It is magnificently mean-spirited, petty, spiteful – and humorous.A murkier question is can spite be good? It seems counterintuitive to put an optimistic spin on behaviour that, by definition, involves hurting others while incurring harm to yourself. But a new book by Simon McCarthy-Jones explores its benefits. “Spite came from the darkness… It seeks to harm the other and to bring about changes in dominance. Yet it can help us into the light,” writes McCarthy-Jones, an associate professor in clinical psychology and neuropsychology at Trinity College in Dublin. “Spite is a sword of Damocles dangling over our interactions. It has made society fairer and more co-operative.” Continue reading...

No 10 will lose support of the party and the country if restrictions are extended, say senior MPs

Report claims Kate Bingham’s venture capital firm has invested in companies developing Covid-19 antibody cocktails

The animals were carrying a new strain of the virus, possibly vaccine-resistant, and infected several hundred people

Experts warn ensuring people isolate properly if they test positive is crucial to preventing spread of Covid in time for festivities

Millions of missed diagnoses will add to global pandemic toll, warns WHO study

Latest UK figures show 24,957 new cases in 24 hours; Trump aide Mark Meadows has Covid-19; Poland registers record 27,875 new cases

If the prime minister were not in his job, he would be railing against the ‘repressive’ regimeAnyone who understands extremism knows populist movements spread like a virus. You stop them early or not at all. Yet at every stage of the growth of the backlash against public health, the bad faith of our compromised prime minister has prevented effective treatment.To stick with the medical analogy, the World Health Organization says humans barely notice a virus when it’s confined to animals in the initial phase. New extremist movements also grow in the dark. Half-mad men and women scuttle around the web, bawling out ideas so ludicrous serious people turn away. Covid had barely begun before David Icke and Piers Corbyn were simultaneously claiming it had been caused by 5G masts and was also a “hoax” – without a thought for the contradiction. Continue reading...

Recovery trial researchers look at whether drug can reduce risk of dangerous blood clots

All non-British national or resident travellers who have been in Denmark in past 14 days will be denied entry into UK

Southern highlands cluster grows in NSW as ‘ring of steel’ around Melbourne expected to be lifted

France’s new infections more than 2,000 higher than previous record; Italy registers 37,809 new cases; Russia says Covid was main cause in 5,199 cases. This blog is now closed

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Health experts raise concerns as large queues form on first day of pilot scheme

Official ONS figures show 618,700 people had the virus in the week ending 31 October

Unicef and WHO say Covid disruption has left 94 million without measles immunisation

With it spectacular footage of growth and decay and impassioned speeches about the magic of mushrooms, this documentary is a treat for the eye and earHere is a rather oddly-structured documentary-cum-mission-statement that changes its horse midstream. It starts out as a slickly shot nature film and then morphs into an impassioned screed on how mushrooms can – essentially – save the world. The central figure is Paul Stamets, a Denzil Dexterish figure who studies fungi in Washington state and is an advocate for the life form’s centrality to harmonious natural systems. (Though quite how that squares with developing lethal types of mould to exterminate termites is never explained.)If this film resembles a souped-up TED talk that’s because it presumably took wing from Stamets’ own 2009 TED talk, Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World, and the film contains copious excerpts from his various on-stage lectures: there’s no denying he is a charismatic and persuasive speaker, both to camera and to live audiences. This film, likewise, is a treat for the eye and ear: the liberal use of speeded-up footage of growth and decay is unfailingly spectacular, while Stamets and fellow interviewees have a gift for a memorable turn of phrase. “We will forever exist together within the micro-molecular matrix,” Stamets says at one point. “Mushrooms don’t give a shit,” says academic/author Michael Pollan, at another. Though the fungus-eye-view voiceover, by Brie Larson, with its breathy, quasi-visionary utterances, is less impressive. Continue reading...

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Albanerpetontids, originating possibly 250m years ago, snatched prey with ballistic tongue, say scientistsScientists have uncovered the oldest evidence of a “slingshot” tongue, in fossils of 99m-year-old amphibians.The prehistoric armoured creatures, known as albanerpetontids, were sit-and-wait predators who snatched prey with a projectile firing of their “ballistic tongues”. Continue reading...

With low take-up likely and accuracy an issue, mass testing is not going to be the easy fix everyone is hoping for

Strongest evidence yet found of sustained defence in people who recover from coronavirus

Mutations in mink herds and wildlife such as weasels, badgers, ferrets may pose risk to human health and vaccine development

You put your coronavirus health and policy questions to us. Here are the answersWe asked readers what they wanted to know about coronavirus and health. Haroon Siddique, a reporter on our health team, has the answers. Continue reading...

What makes an elite sports star suddenly unable to do the very thing they have been practising for years? And is there anything they can do about it?Scott Boswell stood at the start of his bowling run-up, immersed in his own very public hell. It was the final of the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy in 2001, which should have been the highlight of his cricket career. Instead, he found himself unable to do what he had been doing his entire life.“I became so anxious I froze. I couldn’t let go. It was a nightmare,” Boswell recalled. “How can I not be able to run up and bowl – something that I’ve done for so many years without even thinking about it? How can that happen? What’s going on in my brain to stop me doing that, and to make me feel physically sick and anxious and that I can’t do something that I’ve just done so naturally?” Continue reading...

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, the damage wreaked was catastrophic. Ash and pumice darkened the skies, and hot gas flowed from the volcano. Uncovering the victims, fated to lie frozen in time for 2,000 years, has shown they died in a range of gruesome ways. Nicola Davis speaks to Pier Paolo Patrone about his work analysing ancient inhabitants of Pompeii and nearby towns, and what it tells us about the risk people face today Continue reading...

Pfizer has already agreed to supply the US, EU and Japan with hundreds of millions of dosesAustralia’s efforts to secure the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine candidate may be compromised by huge global demand and a lack of local manufacturing capability, experts say, as Labor warns that Australia may struggle to distribute it at the required temperatures.On Thursday, Scott Morrison announced Australia had reached two new deals for Covid-19 vaccines, one for 10m doses with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and another with the US corporate Novavax, which would supply 40m vaccines. Continue reading...

Concern for NHS cancer patients after record numbers miss treatment due to pandemic

It is right that MPs represent a spectrum of opinion, but there is precedent for Conservative governments being hijacked by a factional minorityIt is unusual for prime ministers to apologise for their policies the way Boris Johnson seeds his lockdown announcements with regret and reluctance. Some of that tone is understandable, but it too often shades into evasion of responsibility. He sounds unwilling to own the choices he has made.The squeamishness is not surprising. Many of Mr Johnson’s instincts are libertarian. If he were not sponsoring the new English lockdown from Downing Street, he might have been among the 32 Tory backbench MPs who voted against it on Wednesday. Many more sympathise with the rebels. Continue reading...

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Evidence is now strong enough that preventive action should be taken, scientists say

Oregon to decriminalize all illegal drugs in historic first, while voters in many states vote to abolish penalties for possessionOn Tuesday night, a number of US states voted in favor of decriminalizing drugs in an unprecedented drug law overhaul. Thanks to a push by drug reform advocates, in every state where the ballot was proposed, people voted to abolish criminal penalties for possession.Related: US election 2020 Trump v Biden: Democrats say 'results indicate we're on clear path to victory today' – live Continue reading...

The system is inefficient and wasteful, writes a contact worker. Local authority initiatives are doing better, says Austen LynchI am a clinical contact worker for test and trace. Dr David Maisey (Letters, 1 November) should realise that the clinical level (tier 2) of contact tracers – those who call the cases themselves – has been made up of clinical staff at a band 6 level or higher since the beginning, with GPs welcome to join. We have a wealth of clinical experience. The strict instructions to adhere to scripts and policies mean we are not allowed to use it. It’s only recently that the call handler level employees were moved up. This is exploitative and stressful for them and dismissive of those of us with clinical training.Clinical staff have been highlighting from the beginning that there is a problem with families getting too many phone calls. Last week, we received another email from above reminding us that we must follow the policy and get names and numbers for every member of a household until such time as Public Health England/the government change the policy. This is due to limitations in the computer program and, no doubt, to do with the initial privacy concerns, so that no record is matched up with another record. Continue reading...

First fast radio burst found in our galaxy is traced to magnetar 30,000 light years awayFor more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the origins of mysterious and fleeting bursts of radio waves that arrive from faraway galaxies.Now, scientists have discovered the first such blast in the Milky Way and traced it back to its probable source: a small, spinning remnant from a collapsed star about 30,000 light years from Earth. Continue reading...

Tantra, spirit mediums, Obeah – why have things become ‘a bit witchy’ in the art world of late? Our writer takes a trip into deep space to find outLast night, Suzanne Treister took me on a 400bn light-year journey into space. The purpose was to visit her Museum of Black Hole Spacetime, and so, along with a couple of dozen fellow travellers, we jetted off – via a seance led by Treister. Describing the shared journey as we rose up from our chairs, through space, to reach her fantastical museum, Treister hoped that we would “reach an altered state of consciousness, ready to experience visions” that we might “otherwise be unable to experience in our everyday lives”.We drew and described whatever we felt we encountered during 20 minutes in the museum (in my case a monster tree and ersatz Hilma af Klint paintings), before Treister talked us slowly back down to earth. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Hancock has backed transfer of nearly £500m to Randox during pandemic

An asteroid hidden behind Mars has been found to closely resemble our moon. Is it a fragment that broke off billions of years ago?

Study of Mount Pleasant site suggests it was constructed over decades, not centuriesAn intense burst of building work took place in Britain at the end of the neolithic period, possibly as a “final hurrah” by stone-age man and woman as they sensed the approach of fundamental change, research on a prehistoric monument in Dorset has suggested.A study of the Mount Pleasant “mega henge”, a sprawling site near Dorchester, has found it was not constructed over centuries as had previously been thought but in as little as 35 years. Continue reading...

Prof Andrew Pollard tells MPs of need for careful scrutiny of clinical trial results

The team behind a new documentary full of incredible footage of the secret life of mushrooms explain how fungi could help us stave off future pandemicsWatching the anemone stinkhorn sprout from the soil is a wondrous – and terrifying – thing. Emerging from a pod that looks like a truffle, the mushroom unfurls half a dozen arms, all a throbbing scarlet, like a collection of tongues. Each of these is forked and, across their stems, a series of black sticky lumps pop up like rotting barbecue. It’s supposed to smell something awful too.The uncanny blooming of the Aseroe rubra is one of many transfixing moments in Fantastic Fungi, a crowdfunded US documentary made by Louie Schwartzberg, an affable old hippie and pioneer of time-lapse photography. It stars Paul Stamets, a trailblazer in the popularisation of mycology, the study of fungi, and bursts with footage revealing the secret life of mushrooms. It also seeks to usher the viewer into a seductive world where fungi are the answer to some of mankind’s biggest questions. Continue reading...

Research offers insights into marsupial’s rearguard defences and ‘brutal’ mating ritualsAustralia is known for its strange and deadly wildlife, with plenty of attention given to venomous snakes and bird-eating spiders. But it seems one terrifying aspect of outback fauna has been thoroughly ignored: the wombat’s deadly bum.The rump of the wombat is hard as rock, used for defence, burrowing, bonding, mating and possibly violently crushing the skulls of its enemies against the roof of its burrow. Although the jury is still out on that one. Continue reading...

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Human activities are increasing wind-blown dust, depleting crucial freshwater supplyHimalayan snow and ice is diminishing fast. Global heating is certainly playing a significant role, but now a recent study in Nature Climate Change reveals that wind-blown dust is worsening the melting effect.Winter snowfall and spring snowmelt provide more than half of the annual freshwater needs of around 700 million people in south Asia, but over the last 30 years the overall snow mass on the high mountains of Asia, which include the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram, has decreased. Continue reading...

Researchers say cortisol sampling technique could transform diagnostics for people with depression

England’s chief medical officer says proposal is dangerously flawed and impractical

Wealthy countries already have agreements for 3.73bn doses, with another 5bn under negotiation, study finds

Chris Whitty says he expects lockdown will bring R below 1 and measures could be eased after 2 December. This liveblog is closed - for updates, follow the global liveblog

Deborah Birx says ‘we are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase’ as Trump claims US is ‘rounding the corner’White House scientific adviser Dr Deborah Birx warned the United States is entering a new “deadly phase” of the coronavirus pandemic, and urged an “aggressive” approach to containing its spread.Birx gave the warning in a written memo delivered to top administration officials Monday. It is a direct contradiction of one of Donald Trump’s central, and false, closing campaign messages – that the US is “rounding the corner” on the pandemic. Continue reading...

Content added to classes will say the state ‘always put the life and safety of its people first’

With any future Covid-19 vaccine requiring its manufacturing process to be signed off as part of its regulatory approval for use on the general population, Madeleine Finlay talks to Dr Stephen Morris from the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Research Hub about how vaccines are made at the volume and speed required for a mass vaccination programme Continue reading...