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Trump to halt immigration for 60 days initially; 256m people could starve, says UN; cases worldwide pass 2.5 million. This blog is now closed.

The Noor was launched by a three-stage rocket and, according to Iran officials, had reached a 425 km high orbitIran has claimed it has put its first military satellite into orbit, further raising tensions with the US at a time the two countries are already facing off in the Persian Gulf.Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said the satellite “Noor” (Light) was in a 425km (264 miles) high orbit, after a successful launch. Iran launched its first civilian satellite in 2009. Continue reading...

Fox News staffers also backed away from promoting drug after a recent US trial did not go well

Health secretary tells MPs social distancing is working but lockdown will remain

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Climate activist says Covid-19 outbreak shows change can happen when we listen to scientists

Richard Dreyfuss plays a retired engineer who wins a place on the first commercial space flight in an amiable, late-life adventureA likable performance by Richard Dreyfuss livens up this easygoing drama about second chances and late-life adventure from actor-turned-director Shelagh McLeod. Dreyfuss plays a retired civil engineer who, all his life, has dreamed of going to space and is now in with a chance of winning a golden ticket. The role is a nice mirror to Close Encounters, in which Dreyfuss ditched his wife and kids to fly off with the little green men.Here he is a family-oriented man who nursed his wife through dementia and is adored by his grownup daughter. He has lived a good life but perhaps stifles a pang of regret at the average-ness of it all. It’s a film of tender feelings, though perhaps a little predictable and bluntly sentimental. Continue reading...

Elena Manighetti, from Lombardy, and Ryan Osborne told families not to contact them with bad news during Atlantic crossing

Researchers - who stress serious health risks of smoking - plan to test nicotine patches on patients and health workers

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported near you

Helen Whately says shipment is being checked, but fails to explain why offers from British suppliers were ignored

Countries that are actively working to contain coronavirus are buying themselves time to deal with its uncertain outcomes

From the orangutans that lived undisturbed for 700,000 years to the frolicking rhesus macaques of Kathmandu, the BBC’s new nature blockbuster brings us closer than ever to the planet of the apesOne day 23 years ago, scientists were exploring a lost world called Batang Toru when they glimpsed something moving in the forest canopy. What they saw was a great ape that had lived in splendid isolation for 700,000 years. With its kindly black face, orange fur and vast proto-artisanal beard, it looked like the familiar Sumatran or Borneo orangutans, but was neither. In 2017, the Tapanuli orangutan was recognised as a new species. It is smaller, and has paler, thicker fur than its lowland cousins and lives in reproductive isolation on that remote plateau in the north Sumatran jungle 1,000m above sea level.The news about this addition to world species lists prompted producer Nikki Waldron to scramble to the Sumatran jungle, to film the Tapanuli orangutan for the first time. After a few weeks, she and her crew found a mother and daughter in their natural habitat. “When we first arrived, the cameraman sighed. The light levels were really low because of the density of the leaves, and the orangutans live 40m up in the trees.” Continue reading...

Sarah Boseley speaks to Dr Dipesh Patel about the effects of Covid-19 on people with diabetes, including the role that glucose levels and a high BMI might play Continue reading...

Labor and Jacqui Lambie ask for trials of anti-malarial drugs with known side-effects to be truly voluntary

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Other democracies have kept death tolls low by using a combination of social distancing, tight travel restrictions, mass testing and contact tracing. Why can’t the UK?

PM will have telephone audience with the Queen while he recovers from coronavirus

Leaders have failed to listen to clear warnings and predictions, but the response to Covid-19 is an inspiring indication of what we’re capable ofThe coronavirus pandemic should be seen as a dress rehearsal for what awaits us if we continue to ignore the laws of science, the physical world and the demands of several catastrophic threats such as climate change.Just as Australia was disturbingly unprepared for the recent bushfires and drought, even though they had recurred many times in our history, the globe was unprepared for the coronavirus, even though there had been many warnings of the risk over many years. Continue reading...

US president is accused of ‘xenophobic scapegoating’ with tweet announcing executive order

More than 1,000 die in week before Easter, with private homes deaths more than tripling

Court injunction aims to stop Florida group, but others are repackaging bleach and advertising ‘dangerous’ treatments on Facebook and elsewhere

Experts say a link is plausible as dirty air is known to harm lungs, but more research is needed

While some are doubling down on their rejection of vaccines, the scale of the Covid-19 crisis is eroding resistance in others

Medical researchers have been studying everything we know about Covid-19. What have they learned – and is it enough to halt the pandemic?

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported near you

People are searching for certainty about coronavirus, and that’s the opposite of what leads to scientific breakthroughs

Buxton, Derbyshire: A two-metre wall is the most obvious obstacle to mating. But at least we can do something about thatMuch as I love toad breeding season for the way it brings thousands to Lightwood’s ponds, it’s actually a dangerous time for them. For seven evenings a friend’s daily exercise involved patrolling a stretch of river with a bucket to retrieve trapped toads. This year we estimate that he, with minor contributions from others, including me, has saved 1,100.The problem is that toads arriving from the north and west are channelled, before they reach the spawning ground, into a stone-lined culvert that contains the flow of Hogshaw Brook. They are then blocked by a two-metre wall and are doomed, unless they can find a way over. One route for 30 of them was in the pockets of my smock, after which I released them on the lip of the water – a moment that felt wonderful for the old toad in my soul. Continue reading...

How long should you remain in isolation if you have symptoms of Covid-19? It depends on who you ask. The UK government guidelines recommend seven days from the onset of symptoms, whereas the World Health Organization advises 14. To get to the bottom of this apparent disparity, Nicola Davis discusses viral shedding with Dr Charlotte Houldcroft, and asks what the evidence currently tells us about how long we stay infectious for Continue reading...

Herd immunity hopes dealt blow by report suggesting only 2%-3% of people have been infected

For 65 years the drug hydroxychloroquine has been used to treat a number of diseases, including malaria. But after a French study claimed it was effective against coronavirus it has been hailed by the US president and other people around the world as a cure. But there is scant evidence it is effective – and it could actually be harmful when takenThis episode first aired on Today in Focus, the Guardian’s global daily news podcast made by the Guardian team in London.You can read Julia Carrie Wong’s article on how hydroxychloroquine became Trumps ‘miracle cure’ to coronavirus here. Continue reading...

A solution to one of Chris Maslanka’s Pyrgic conundrums has convinced Malcolm Fowles of the importance of wearing face masks in public places

The answers to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you two puzzles that the late John Horton Conway suggested for this column:1) The Miracle Builders Continue reading...

Two clinical trials aim to give transfusions to ailing patients to bolster immune systems

NHS promises unmet, local government ignored, care homes forgotten. Has any British politician got their hand on the tiller?

Pioneering immunologist who improved the lives of millions of hay fever sufferers by inventing the pollen countWhen Bill Frankland began practising in the 1940s, allergy medicine was barely a discipline. The allergist Adam Fox said: “To say Bill Frankland was the grandfather of allergy medicine doesn’t do it justice. He wasn’t the grandfather in the sense of being the oldest but in the sense of being the originator of the speciality. He did the original trials and founded the British society. He was still practising in his 90s and 100s, and remained the doctor people wanted to see.”On his release from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in 1945, Frankland, who has died aged 108, returned to St Mary’s hospital, Paddington, in London, where he had trained. He had suffered with hay fever since he was nine, and when he saw an advertisement for a part-time assistant in the allergy department, he applied. In February 1946 he became full-time and for the next 70 years was gripped by allergy medicine, which he said was like a fascinating detective story. Continue reading...

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported near you

I am fearful for the future, uncertain for how my skills will hold up when put to test

Two gems from the wizard of recreational mathsToday’s column is a celebration of John Horton Conway, the legendary British mathematician, who died of coronavirus earlier this month, aged 82.Conway was an inspirational, iconoclastic genius who invented and studied countless puzzles and games, in addition to his more highbrow work in group theory, number theory, geometry, topology and many other fields. Continue reading...

A host of factors determines whether a virus survives and thrives in humans. Sars-Cov-2 struck it lucky

Saudia Arabia religious body urges all Muslims to pray at home during Ramadan; Spanish PM seeks lockdown extension. This blog is now closed. Follow our new blog below

Spotting the 10-15 meteors per hour expected at event’s peak will be challenging, but not impossibleThis week’s must-see naked-eye celestial event is the Lyrid meteor shower. This is one of the oldest meteor showers, with Chinese references dating back to more than 2,500 years ago. Modern analysis shows that the meteors are dust ejected by Comet Thatcher, which orbits the sun once every 415 years. Currently in the depths of the outer solar system, Comet Thatcher will return in the year 2276.The Lyrids are an active meteor shower from 16 to 25 April, but the peak this week could happen in the early hours of 22 April or later that night as 22 becomes 23 April. They are called Lyrids because they emanate from a point in the constellation Lyra, the lyre. Between 10-15 moderately bright meteors are expected per hour at the storm’s peak. The chart shows the view looking north-east from London on 22 April at 11pm BST. Unfortunately, Lyra never rises very high in the southern hemisphere. This will make seeing the Lyrids challenging, but not impossible. Continue reading...

Ministers have governed by press conference for too long. MPs must start to hold them to account for their actions in the Covid-19 pandemic

Hospital death toll reaches 16,060 with daily rise of 596, as government hit by claims it missed chance to lessen impact during February and March

Warning that infections could be missed amid questions about credibility of testing operation

Any vaccine has to work, but it also has to be safe. Making it happen is one of the government’s biggest priorities

It’s the data that gets all the headlines, but the two main sources of information in the UK have their own limits“Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Right? Well, not quite. As many people are discovering during the Covid-19 crisis, even something as seemingly straightforward as the count of people who have died might not be as robust as to be taken at face value. In the UK, distinctions between the data from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have led to talk of whether deaths are being underestimated and even whether the figures can be trusted.The pandemic highlights several difficulties in counting, reporting and modelling mortality data. Arguably, the most important problem is the “denominator” – what is the actual number of people who are infected by the virus? This is virtually impossible to determine, except perhaps in the unlikely scenario of real-time, continuous, population-wide testing. The absence of this figure creates problems when rescaling the outcomes – for example, deaths – to the number of people at risk, which is not known with precision. And because we cannot know for certain the total number of infected, international comparisons also become tricky: does Germany have more cases than the UK because it tests more and reports the results more systematically? Continue reading...

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported near you

How I learned about the pleasures of withdrawing from life and living within myselfThe first thing I do each morning is open the back door and sniff the air. It contains a surprising amount of information. Recently, it has become a little warmer. It still has a bite, but it lacks the viscosity it had in the coldest months. Now, it carries the scent of leaves and flowers, of turned earth. It is suddenly full of birdsong.I’ve spent my whole life falling in and out of isolation – and this is one of the tricks I’ve learned. Living as an undiagnosed autistic woman until I was nearly 40, I’ve regularly suffered mental and physical crashes that drag me outside of life for a while. By trying to be like everyone else, I’ve pushed myself too far, too often. Continue reading...

A simulation exercise three years ago had a ‘sobering impact’, and warned about lack of NHS capacity to deal with an outbreak