by Naaman Zhou (now); Kevin Rawlinson, Damien Gayle, on (#52PTG)
Iran reports 96 more deaths; Spain’s death toll shows slight rise; Germany calls for ‘very careful’ easing of lockdown; New Zealand says ‘worst is over’. This blog has closed – follow our new blog below
Damaging ideas within the Conservative party have weakened our ability to defeat the virusThe coronavirus pandemic struck the United Kingdom when its National Health Service was on its knees suffering from staff shortages and the longest waiting times ever recorded. A decade of austerity had taken a terrible toll. Yet public satisfaction in the NHS went up. This surprising gap between the NHS failures and the public’s belief in the health system seems to have been driven by the support from across the political spectrum for more funding. This probably, say researchers, started to impact on public perceptions, most notably on their optimism for the future.It would be a mistake to think the spread of Covid-19 can be checked by hope alone. The last 10 years have undermined the ability of the government to respond effectively and efficiently. As the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty told the Guardian, the “most damaging aspects of ‘austerity’ cannot and will not be undone†and represent “the fatal weakening of the community’s capacity to copeâ€. Continue reading...
Readers respond to psychotherapist Gary Greenberg’s article in which he questions whether there is a place for therapy in a pandemicAs a therapist, I was drawn to the Guardian long read (Therapy Under Lockdown: ‘I’m just as terrified as my patients are’, 23 April) but it didn’t resonate with me.What’s interesting to me is that we are not all necessarily “hapless victims†with “nothing to do but cower in our homesâ€. Many of us value slowing down, blue skies, clean air, and newly discovered neighbours. Continue reading...
New technique could help shed light on plants’ workings – and lead to unusual home decorEmitting an eerie green glow, they look like foliage from a retro computer game, but in fact they are light-emitting plants produced in a laboratory.Researchers say the glowing greenery could not only add an unusual dimension to home decor but also open up a fresh way for scientists to explore the inner workings of plants. 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
Research on writers appearing at the Edinburgh international book festival reveals 63% listen to their creations, and 61% feel they have their own agency
by Jedidajah Otte (now), Josh Halliday, Amy Walker an on (#52NW3)
WHO clarifies ‘immunity passport’ advice; global deaths pass 200,000; Russia case tally passes 80,000; Sweden’s deputy prime-minster admits problems with strategy. This blog is now closed.
So far this year there has been a close encounter between Venus and the moon every month, but Venus will now dim as it moves towards the sunThe waxing crescent moon passes Venus again this week. It’s been a regular monthly occurrence this year, but it’s so pleasing to the eye that it wins hands down for the one thing to make sure you look out for this week. This month, the conjunction takes place near the time of Venus’s great illumination. From here on in, Venus will become dimmer as it moves inexorably towards the sun to pass between it and our planet on 3 June. The new moon will be closest to Venus on the evenings of 25 and 26 April. It will be a thin crescent on both nights. The chart shows the view looking west from London at 21:00 BST on 27 April. On this night, around 20% of the moon’s surface will be illuminated. This is the evening that Venus will be close to its maximum brightness for this current apparition. Viewers in the southern hemisphere should look for the conjunction in the north-western sky after sunset. Continue reading...
by Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent on (#52P7T)
Experiment aims to understand how iron-age brochs developed and what they signifiedStone upon stone, the towering embodiment of their builders’ wealth, status or hunger for defence, Scotland’s iron-age brochs have fascinated and confounded archaeologists for centuries.The precise constitution of these architecturally complex roundhouses, and why they remain unique to Scotland, is the subject of ongoing research, but there is broad agreement that a broch is a drystone tower built between around 2,500 and 1,800 years ago, in the mid-iron age, often with cells and stairs built within the walls. Continue reading...
I’m mixed race and ‘culturally white’, and seemed to be a disappointment to my father – but we just weren’t closeMy dad said it to me when I was seven years old and it stung like vinegar on a paper cut. Of all the things you throw at kids you never know which ones will stick. This one accidentally stuck. I’m not black enough. The phrase, the unblackness, was planted, and developed like an irksome bruise I only feel when I bend a certain way. It’s a scar tissue formed from acid poured into my wound after I was hit by the paternal truck of not-black-enoughness. An unexploded bomb that’s leaking mustard gas into my blood.I’m fully grown now, but the comment still tinkles lightly on the piano of my mind. Whiteness is in my blood. Well, half of it. My mum’s never done an ancestry DNA test, but as a woman from north London who regularly burns in the British sun, it’s safe to assume she’s majority Caucasian. I’m mixed-raced and grew up in multicultural Brighton. When my parents split up, my dad stayed in Brixton and I was occasionally evacuated to him on school holidays. As a single parent, aware of her son’s racial identity, my mum rallied, and founded Mosaic, a support group for mixed-parentage families. Brighton is inherently liberal, but “How come your mum’s white, but you’re not?†was the power ballad of my childhood. Continue reading...
Excavations reveal that rubbish left outside the city walls wasn’t just dumped. It was being collected, sorted and resoldThey were expert engineers, way ahead of the curve on underfloor heating, aqueducts and the use of concrete as a building material. Now it turns out that the Romans were also masters at recycling their rubbish.Researchers at Pompeii, the city buried under a thick carpet of volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, have found that huge mounds of refuse apparently dumped outside the city walls were in fact “staging grounds for cycles of use and reuseâ€. Continue reading...
Behavioural economics is being abused by politicians as a justification for flawed policies over the coronavirus outbreakI first came across “nudge†– the concept many consider to be the pinnacle of behavioural economics – at a thinktank seminar a little over 10 years ago. We were all handed a mock wine menu and asked what we’d order.This was supposed to illustrate that most price-aware diners order the second-cheapest bottle to avoid looking tight and that restaurateurs use this to nudge us towards the bottle with the highest markup. I remember thinking it an interesting insight, but that these sorts of nudges were nowhere near as likely to transform the world as their enthusiastic proponent claimed. Continue reading...
by Allyson M Pollock and Peter Roderick on (#52P20)
A massive increase in testing and tracing should be the next phase, but decades of cuts and reorganisations have whittled away the necessary regional expertise
Social interaction is vital for young minds, and social media might be the only way of achieving this during lockdownShould we start to use “physical distancing†instead of “social distancing� Those keen on the change argue that, despite being physically apart, we can still be socially together. So we can connect and support each other even when avoiding unnecessary face-to-face contact.Related: Lockdown is giving my kids a crash course in screen and tween culture | Emma Brockes Continue reading...
Cross-party demand for transparency after chief adviser is revealed as attending meetings of SageBoris Johnson is facing cross-party calls to stop his chief adviser from attending meetings of the secret scientific group advising him on the coronavirus pandemic, as demands grow for the committee’s deliberations to be made public.The former Brexit secretary, David Davis, is among those calling for Dominic Cummings and Ben Warner, an adviser who ran the Tories’ private election computer model, to be prevented from attending future meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). 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
The Guardian’s Beijing bureau chief reflects on four months of risk and emotion at the heart of the Covid-19 epidemicOn 6 January, I wrote a short memo to our newsdesk: “Something we probably want to keep an eye on are these severe viral pneumonia cases that have been racking up (now 44) in Wuhan – China has said that it is not Sars.â€Since then, I have been reporting on coronavirus from Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and most recently Wuhan. I could not have known then how my life would soon be consumed by this story. I have spent the four months since constantly weighing the risks to my family, my colleagues and the people we interviewed against my responsibility as a journalist. Continue reading...
Scott expedition notebooks acquired by Natural History Museum hold ‘crucial data’Detailed century-old observations of penguin behaviour, including sexual activity so depraved and shocking it was recorded in Greek alphabet code, have been acquired by the Natural History Museum.Curators at the museum announced the purchase of original manuscript notebooks made by the explorer George Murray Levick, part of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic in 1910-13. Continue reading...