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Wang Xining tells National Press Club that Australia was ‘supposed to be a good friend of China’

The legacy of a successful battle is now helping combat Covid, but we must stay vigilant, says WHO’s Africa regional directorAfrica has declared victory over a virus that once paralysed 75,000 children on the continent every year.Four years have now passed since wild polio was last detected in Africa. After a year of rigorously evaluating polio data from all 47 countries in the WHO’s African region, an independent body of experts announced during a virtual ceremony on Tuesdaythat the continent was free of wild polio. Continue reading...

Police minister Lisa Neville says officers gave 5,761 fines for ‘non-compliance of directions’ alone

Early enrolments rise 37% in New South Wales and ACT for 2021, compared with the same time last year

Turkey records highest number of new cases since mid-June; India worse than US and Brazil in number of daily new cases; European re-infections add to immunity concerns prompted by Hong Kong case

Scientific analysis suggests coronavirus was spreading in UK weeks earlier than thought

Case for and against pupils wearing a face covering as England prepares to reopen schools

Headteachers call for urgent rethink on facial coverings as part of coronavirus strategy

Director of group says Chris Whitty right to be cautious but hopes vaccine will be ready before winter 2021

Her 200 days in orbit turned the first female Italian astronaut into a celebrity – and the model for a Barbie doll. Back on Earth, she says, it was hard to find authentic relationshipsThere’s something surreal about talking to someone who’s been to space. Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti might be at home in Cologne while I’m Zooming her from London – but there’s still an awareness: those eyes have seen what only a handful of people will ever see. Those hands have been without gravity travelling at 28,000 kilometres an hour.Loved ones gave Cristoforetti trinkets to take to the space station, where she spent 200 days between November 2014 and June 2015. The way she sees it, the rationale is that not many things have ever been to space and “you’re going to see a picture of it floating in front of Earth – it’s a symbolic meaning, added value”. Continue reading...

While some scientists believe the virus has become less deadly, others look at the factors that suggest otherwiseAre Covid-19 death rates decreasing?

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progressResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

Alok Sharma says there are no plans to look again at guidance despite Scottish pupils being asked to wear coverings

Experts raise concern over compound that has not been proven safe but could reach public as dietary supplementAllies of Donald Trump have promoted a plant extract called oleandrin to people seeking to ward off Covid-19. The plant the extract is derived from, oleander, is poisonous and there is no proof the compound is either safe or effective to treat or prevent Covid-19, experts say.But unlike other unproven and potentially dangerous Covid-19 “cures” pitched by Trump and his supporters, including the prescription antimalarial hydroxychloroquine, experts fear this compound could easily reach the public as a dietary supplement. Continue reading...

There’s still a long way to go to prepare for a winter surge. But the country is no longer as vulnerable as it was in MarchNo one knows what the next months hold, but suggestions that Britain will be back to normal by Christmas seem unlikely. Already, Leicester, Greater Manchester and Preston have enforced local lockdowns after registering rises in Covid-19 cases, while increases in Spain and Germany are an alarming reminder of the difficulty of controlling this virus. Cold weather could potentially boost the spread of coronavirus and make social distancing outdoors more difficult. The dangers are clear – so is England ready?“We’ve got to up our game for the autumn,” says Ewan Birney, deputy director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. “We’ll be inside more. Universities and schools will be running. There will be a whole bunch of contacts we don’t have now.” England has made significant progress over the summer on some of the problems that made the first wave of coronavirus so disastrous. But this still may not be enough, and outcomes depend on factors that are hard to predict. Continue reading...

Star calls for live music to challenge social distancing rules, but faces fan backlashVan Morrison has denounced the supposed “pseudoscience” around coronavirus and is attempting to rally musicians in a campaign to restore live music concerts with full capacity audiences.The 74-year-old Northern Irish singer launched a campaign to “save live music” on his website, saying socially distanced gigs were not economically viable. “I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up,” he said. Continue reading...

Empingham, Rutland: The effects of mass-flowering crops are complex and there is often a twist in the tail for pollinatorsMost of our 24 British bumblebee species follow the familiar stripy, mousy or red-tailed formats, but a few beautiful and rare ones are more distinctive. Darting between the honeysuckle flowers in an Empingham garden is a big bumblebee, sooty black from frons to tail. Bombus ruderatus subsp. perniger is a special form of the large garden bumblebee, its blackness never seen outside Britain.When I first got to know this dark beauty, 25 years ago on south Cambridgeshire chalk, it was a rare beast heading towards extinction, but the species has since recovered a little, probably due to clover and vetch planted along arable field margins. Continue reading...

While the Science Weekly team take a summer break, we’re bringing you an episode from the archives – one that seems particularly pertinent as the pandemic continues and governments take a more prominent role in our day-to-day lives. Back in 2017, Ian Sample investigated how we’re constantly “nudged” to change how we act. Exploring the psychology, history and ethics of nudge theory, Ian spoke to the Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein and Dr David Halpern, one of the field’s founders, who is currently advising the UK government on nudging during the coronavirus outbreak Continue reading...

New border restrictions leave Americans waiting at Mexico border; France to impose reciprocal quarantine on travellers returning from UK; ‘very low evidence’ for plasma therapy authorised by Trump – WHO. This blog is closed

Researchers find that even exposure to levels below EU limits has an impactInfants exposed to even low levels of air pollution experience reduced lung function as children and teenagers, researchers have found.Their study found that exposure to air pollution in the first year of life reduced lung function development from the ages of six to 15, even at pollution levels below EU standards. Continue reading...

Cut out caffeine to help avoid miscarriage, low birth weight and stillbirth, paper advisesPregnant women should cut out coffee completely to help avoid miscarriage, low birth weight and stillbirth, according to a study of international evidence about caffeine and pregnancy.In contradiction to official guidance in the UK, US and Europe, there is no safe level for caffeine consumption during pregnancy, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine. Continue reading...

Hong Kong case leads scientists to doubt development of antibodies in previous patients, but other experts say it is no cause for alarm

Shares rise in Europe and Asia after Trump allows use of convalescent plasma

While a cure-all drug or therapy is a long way off, there have been some breakthroughs

Nicola Sturgeon consults councils and teaching bodies as fears grow over overcrowding

The solution to today’s problemEarlier today I set you the following problem, about a game show where objects are hidden behind three doors. Behind one door is a car. Behind a second door are the car keys. Behind the third door is a goat. The car, the keys and the goat were placed there randomly, meaning that each item has a 1/3 chance of being behind any particular door.Twins Timmy and Tammy, the contestants, are backstage on the game show. They are told the rules: Continue reading...

Radiation physicist at Aldermaston who went on to warn of the dangers posed by the civil and military uses of nuclear energyThe nuclear weapons scientist Frank Barnaby, who has died aged 92, became one of the most effective critics of the international arms race. As the cold war superpowers competed with ever more advanced weaponry to wage a war that could never be won, Barnaby helped amass an arsenal of reliable information and informed argument to keep an anxious public aware of the deadly devices being developed supposedly to keep the world safe.By the close of the cold war and the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 he and others had assembled an informal international bureaucracy of peace and provided the intellectual ammunition to persuade politicians, military and public to accept a dramatic reduction in the nuclear weaponry. Continue reading...

Teenage volunteers on archaeological dig unearth 425 coins dating back to 9th centuryIsraeli teenagers volunteering at an archaeological dig have unearthed hundreds of gold coins that were stashed away in a clay vessel for more than a millennium.The 425 24-carat pure gold coins date back to the 9th-century Abbasid caliphate period and would have been a significant amount of money at the time, said Robert Kool, a coin expert at the Israel Antiquities Authority. Continue reading...

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progressResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

A new take on a famous problemIf you are a reader of this column, you have probably heard of the Monty Hall problem. It’s a famous probability puzzle that involves a game show host, Monty Hall, who asks a contestant to open one of three doors. Behind one of the doors is a car, and behind the other two are goats.(If you haven’t heard of this puzzle, or want to read the problem in full, there’s lots about it on the web. It also features in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.) Continue reading...

Findings contradict earlier fears that pills for high blood pressure could worsen disease

The moon at first quarter will pass Antares, the heart of the scorpion, a red giant with an explosive futureThis week, the moon will coast past the blood-red northern summer star of Antares in the constellation of Scorpius, the scorpion. The chart shows the view looking south-south-west from London on 25 August at 21:00 BST. The moon and Antares will be low in the sky, but the white brilliance of the moon and the deep red of Antares will make a pleasing contrast to each other. The moon will be at its first quarter phase, with 51% of its surface illuminated. A week from now, it will be full moon. Continue reading...

The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent reflects on the humanitarian disaster that has gripped the region in recent monthsWhen I set off from Mexico City for Rio with my family in early March, for what was supposed to be a short holiday, Latin America had not recorded a single death from the coronavirus.Security staff at Mexico’s Benito Juárez airport wore face masks. A blue and red banner warned China-bound travellers to wash their hands, cover their mouths and, ominously, avoid contact with “live or death animals”. Continue reading...

The study of fungi has long been overshadowed by more glamorous scientific quests. But biologist Merlin Sheldrake is on a mission to change thatAs a boy, Merlin Sheldrake really loved the autumn. In the garden of his parents’ house – he grew up a few moments from Hampstead Heath, which is where he and I are walking right now, on an overcast summer morning – the leaves would fall from a big chestnut tree, forming gentle drifts into which he liked nothing more than to hurl himself. Wriggling around until he was fully submerged, Sheldrake would lie there, quite content, “buried in the rustle, lost in curious smells”. As he writes in his wondrous new book, Entangled Life, these autumnal piles were both places to hide and worlds to explore.But as the months passed, they shrank: reaching into them, trying to find out why, he would pull out matter that looked more like soil than leaves. What was going on? Turning to his father for an answer (he is the son of Rupert Sheldrake, the controversial science writer best known for proposing the concept of “morphic resonance”) was how he first came to learn about decomposition, and thus it is to these rotting leaves that we may trace his original interest in the “neglected megascience” of mycology – the study of fungi – even if neglect is a relative term. “In east Asia, fungi have been loved and revered for thousands of years,” he says. “In China, there are temples to the man who worked out how to cultivate shiitake mushrooms. But yes, in the west it has been neglected.” Continue reading...

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progressResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue reading...

Serious times call for serious measures – such as drawing smiley faces on fruit – and what’s more, the science proves itBy the fifth week of lockdown, I had mastered the art of silliness. My flatmates and I had drawn smiley faces on fruit, stuck googly eyes on vegetables and dressed up as our favourite pop stars. On social media I noticed similar responses to the “unprecedented” times we found ourselves in: parents jumping in on their children’s TikTok dance challenges, people dressing up in black tie or costumes to take out the bins. I’d chalked it up as cabin fever, but even in this more relaxed phase of lockdown, with some of our pre-pandemic pastimes back on the agenda (albeit in adapted form), the spirit of silliness endures in my flat. It turns out that playfulness is, in fact, a distinct personality trait, like extroversion or conscientiousness – and those who possess it in adulthood may be more resilient.In this strange in-between time, half in, half out of lockdown, I now realise that cultivating a sense of the absurd might be crucial to weathering the uncertainty of the weeks and months to come. Silliness does not have to deny the gravity of the situation – but it can help you get through it. Continue reading...

Don’t be misled. It is political judgments, not obscure equations, which are doing so much to damage our children’s futuresWhat children know and too many politicians seem not to: a few years ago, the psychologists Alex Shaw and Kristina Olson ran an experiment in which they told young children about two boys, Dan and Mark, who had cleaned up their room and were to be rewarded with rubbers (why rubbers should be seen as a reward I don’t know). However, there were five rubbers, so they could not be divided equally between the two boys. What should they do? The vast majority of children thought that one eraser should be thrown away, so there could be an even split between Dan and Mark. However, when the children heard that “Dan did more work than Mark”, they were quite comfortable giving three to Dan and two to Mark.The children, in other words, had a deep commitment to fairness – anyone who has children will know that their favourite cry is “but that’s not fair!” – but they also recognised that the meaning of fairness could change depending on context. If Dan worked harder than Mark, it was only fair that he received more of the goodies, rather than fairness always requiring an equal division of the rewards. Continue reading...

While some scientists believe the virus has become less deadly, others look at the factors that suggest otherwiseAre Covid-19 death rates decreasing?

India reports 1m daily tests; global death toll passes 800,000; new restrictions for UK travellers from Croatia. This blog is now closed. Follow latest updates below

Chief medical officer believes ‘reasonable chance’ of vaccines before winter of 2021-22

Thousands of clinical trials have closed permanently or been suspended – and may never have the cash to restart

Prof Mark Walport says regular vaccinations are likely to be required to control coronavirus

Professor urges organisations to help tackle racism, misogyny and transphobia

Experts to explain how pandemic offers chance to pull planet back from the brink

This blog is now closed. Remdesivir tests inconclusive; 41 Berlin schools report cases; Lebanon enters partial lockdown to counter infections

Reopening schools will be given ‘top priority’, says Welsh first minister; Greencore staff to self-isolate for 14 days; Croatia, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago off safe list from 4am Saturday

There is a lot we can learn from the algebraic symbols used to determine results in England

A Sage member and NHS England have pushed back against criticism of hospital admissions data

Independent Sage also advises socialising be restricted to students’ residential bubbles