In city of 11m, officials threaten with punishment those who delay reporting symptoms

Study found differences compared with those who did not offend or who only transgressed as adolescentsParents should not worry about their teenagers’ delinquent behaviour provided they were well behaved in their earlier childhood, according to researchers behind a study that suggests those who offend throughout their life showed antisocial behaviour from a young age and have a markedly different brain structure as adults.According to figures from the Ministry of Justice, 24% of males in England and Wales aged 10–52 in 2006 had a conviction, compared with 6% of females. Previous work has shown that crime rises in adolescence and young adulthood but that most perpetrators go on to become law-abiding adults, with only a minority – under 10% of the general population – continuing to offend throughout their life. Continue reading...

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The press – and opponents within and without the Tory party – have brought Dominic Cummings to heel. But his mission remains the pursuit of polarising politics.Dominic Cummings, the chief special adviser to the prime minister, thinks the answer to Britain’s problems is hiring brilliant people to work outside of bureaucratic constraints. He may be right, but not if one of his first hires as a “weirdo and misfit” to join him in No 10 is anything to go by. Andrew Sabisky quit after it emerged he was not a wunderkind but a rightwing provocateur who promoted ideas about eugenics cloaked in the sham argument that this is hard science. Mr Sabisky, 27, had no academic research of note to his name. From a well-off family, he hardly fit Mr Cummings’ call for “true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole”.It speaks volumes about the arrogance of Downing Street that Boris Johnson did not immediately dump Mr Sabisky – or even disassociate himself from his views which are routinely found in the darker, damper recesses of the internet. You cannot have such people in government unless you mean to give the impression that you agree with them. But someone in No 10 thought better. Mr Johnson’s team had gone out of its way to back Mr Sabisky. When the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said Mr Sabisky’s comments were “not my views and those are not the views of the government” he was slapped down by Downing Street’s press operation. Continue reading...

Covid-19 not as deadly as Sars, figures show, and children not affected in same way as adults

Idea that members of one race are intellectually superior has had to be confronted regularlyThe notion that members of one race are inherently more intelligent than members of another – brought back into circulation by the appointment of Andrew Sabisky, who claims that black Americans have a lower average IQ than white people, as a Downing Street adviser – is an idea with a deep and disturbing history.In modern times, the study most often rolled out as supporting “evidence” is a 2006 work from the English psychologist Richard Lynn. In the publication, Lynn concluded that black Africans had an average IQ of less than 70, compared with the average western IQ of 100. This, he claimed, explained the low level of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. Continue reading...

David Robson thinks the time it will take to make contact presents a problem. John Boyd questions the purpose of finding extraterrestrial life when we can’t respect life on our own planetWhile reading your report (Is anybody out there? Biggest hunt ever to begin for alien life, 15 February) I wondered why scientists are trying to persuade people to believe there is any point in contacting life on other planets. A five-minute online investigation tells me that the fastest object available would take 159,000 years to reach Trappist-1 (the most likely place to find life according to the article). Sending a signal would be quicker – about 40 years. It seems likely there is life out there, but, sadly, trying to make contact is pointless.

MySafe scheme for addicts aims to help reduce overdose deaths in Canadian cityA vending machine for powerful opioids has opened in Canada as part of a project to help fight the Canadian city’s overdose crisis.The MySafe project, which resembles a cash machine, gives addicts access to a prescribed amount of medical quality hydromorphone, a drug about twice as powerful as heroin. Continue reading...

Government urged to create more natural drainage systems to cope with impact of crisis

Researchers have identified a new psychological condition that affects some wearers of luxury items – although notably not those with a huge sense of entitlementName: Fashion impostor syndrome.Age: New for spring 2020. Continue reading...

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?

Move comes after hiring of new adviser who said black people have lower average IQs

Passengers flown from Japan after being stuck onboard now face 14 days in quarantine

Mushrooms used to be the territory of hippies, explorers, indigenous people and artists. Now tech bros and wellness gurus have taken over

Five-year study of animals in Devon finds measurable benefits to wildlife and peopleBeavers have alleviated flooding, reduced pollution and boosted populations of fish, amphibians and other wildlife, according to a five-year study of wild-living animals in Devon.The report, which will help the government decide whether to allow wild beavers to return to England after being hunted to extinction more than 400 years ago, concludes that the species has brought measurable benefits to wildlife and people. Continue reading...

Detention of prominent scholar Xu Zhiyong comes amid wider crackdown on freedom of speechThe Chinese authorities have detained a prominent activist and legal scholar who issued a blistering attack on president Xi Jinping for mishandling the coronavirus crisis amid a nationwide crackdown on speech freedom.Xu Zhiyong, a former law lecturer and founder of the social campaign New Citizens Movement, was taken away by police on Saturday evening while he was seeking refuge at the home of a lawyer in the southern city of Guangzhou, activists Ye Du and Hua Ze said. Continue reading...

Diamond Princess evacuations begin as China announces death toll in country up to 1,665Hundreds of Americans have been flown out of Japan after leaving the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship on Sunday night, as a further 70 people onboard tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total to 355.The removal of US citizens from the ship, moored at Yokohama, south of Tokyo, came as other countries said they would fly their citizens home just four days before the official quarantine set by Japanese health authorities was set to end. Continue reading...

The waning crescent moon can be seen low in the pre-dawn sky passing the red planet and, from North America, blocking Mars from viewEarly morning skywatchers should look south-east tomorrow to see the waning crescent moon pass close to Mars. The red planet is by no means at its brightest but will still be visible as a moderately bright object in the morning sky for the next few months. And it will always display a distinctive red hue to its light. From London, UK, Mars rises a few hours before dawn. The chart shows the view looking south-east at 0600 GMT on 18 February. From Sydney, Australia, Mars is much easier to spot. It is higher up in the eastern sky and forms a dramatic line pointing almost straight down with the crescent moon at the top, and Jupiter and Saturn underneath it. The alignment forms a spectacular parade of morning planets to look out for. If you are in North America, you could be in line for an even bigger treat. The moon will pass in front of Mars, blocking it from view, in the pre-dawn hours on the morning of 18 February. Continue reading...

Washington becomes first US state to legalise practice as interest in green burials surges in UKIt is viewed as a fitting end for a banana skin or a handful of spent coffee grounds. But now people are being urged to consider human composting and other environmentally friendly “deathcare” options.Speaking before a talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Seattle on Sunday, Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, a professor of soil science and sustainable agriculture at Washington State University, said: “Death certainly isn’t the biggest environmental impact we have in our life process. But we can still look for new alternatives.” Continue reading...

Serious thought is given to publishing troubling images, of death or distress for example, but even then context is keyOn the morning after the Streatham terror attack, the Guardian’s print edition carried a single-column photograph of the perpetrator, Sudesh Amman, at the bottom of the front page. The main image showed armed police at the incident. Later in the day, an online reader contacted me to express concern at the prominence given to the attacker; in fact, she thought that he should not be named at all. I drew her attention to a 2019 column by my predecessor, Paul Chadwick, in which he supported the Guardian’s policy of naming perpetrators but agreed with the position of the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, that it was important to ensure “the terrorist’s identity is not overly represented in our coverage, and that our coverage also focuses on the victims”.The reader acknowledged this but said: “I think it comes across as particularly high impact on the app, because of the formatting, and so you only see one or two stories.” Continue reading...

Eight of nine people who tested positive successfully treated and discharged from hospitalThe number of people tested for coronavirus in the UK has passed 3,000, according to official figures.Statistics from the Department of Health and Social Care show that 3,109 tests had been carried out in the UK as of 2pm on Sunday, an increase of 117 on the 2,992 reported on Saturday. Continue reading...

Taxi driver with diabetes and hepatitis B is fifth fatality outside mainland ChinaA taxi driver has died from the coronavirus in Taiwan, marking the first such death on the island and the fifth fatality outside mainland China from an epidemic that has curbed travel and disrupted global supply chains.The health minister, Chen Shih-chung, said during a news conference on Sunday that the deceased was a 61-year-old man who had diabetes and hepatitis B. Taiwan has to date reported 20 confirmed cases. Continue reading...

Whether you’re taking up the oboe or finessing your Finnish, scientific research offers tips to aid learningIf your aim for 2020 was to learn a new skill, you may be at the point of giving up. Whether you are mastering a new language or a musical instrument, or taking a career-changing course, initial enthusiasm can only take you so far, and any further progress can be disappointingly slow.From these struggles, you might assume that you simply lack a natural gift – compared to those lucky people who can learn any new skill with apparent ease. Continue reading...

A mother-of-two finds strength in her communityThis month marked the first time I’ve ever been to a queue-free post office, and been served by a man wearing gloves in the service station. “We’ve been told to use antibacterial gel every half hour too,” he told me. Supermarkets are quieter than usual, but with no signs of panic buying – unless hand sanitiser counts. “I went to five shops and couldn’t find any,” a neighbour texted me. Dozens of people are “self-isolating”, and it’s a risky place for secret affairs because of the chance everyone you’ve been in touch with will need tracing.This is life at the centre of the UK coronavirus breakout, Hove. I’d like to pretend that I’ve been brave, but it wouldn’t be true. I found the outbreak four streets away of a virus that had at that point killed hundreds of people in China alarming. The anxiety I felt came in waves, sending my maternal protectiveness into overdrive. Continue reading...

As confirmed cases on ship rise, US plans to airlift Americans from Diamond Princess adds urgency to pleas for evacuation from UK passengersPressure is growing on the British government to airlift UK citizens stranded on a cruise ship stricken by coronavirus, as a Chinese tourist in France yesterday became the first person to die from the disease in Europe.The US announced late on Friday that it would be evacuating more than 400 of its nationals from the quarantined ship, the Diamond Princess, which has reported nearly 300 confirmed Covid-19 cases, and British travellers called on their government to do the same. Continue reading...

Scientific knowledge, whether about a human species or the planets, is powerful because it is provisional and cumulativeFor the past decade, scientists have thought that DNA sequences from Neanderthals were found only in non-African populations. Neanderthals, a human species that died out around 40,000 years ago, lived mainly in Europe and parts of Asia.As Homo sapiens migrated from Africa into Europe and Asia some 70,000 years ago, the two species mingled. Roughly 2% of the genomes of modern European and Asian populations is inherited from Neanderthals. But sub-Saharan Africans, it was believed, possessed no Neanderthal DNA. Continue reading...

Passengers on Diamond Princess liner ‘disillusioned’ with government over lack of action• All the day’s developmentsPressure is growing on the British government to airlift citizens stranded on a cruise ship stricken by coronavirus, after a Chinese tourist in France became the first person to die from the disease in Europe.The US announced late on Friday that it would be evacuating more than 400 nationals from the quarantined ship, which has had nearly 300 confirmed coronavirus cases, and British travellers called on their government to do the same. Continue reading...

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?

We are meant to have desires and should worry less, said Aristotle, while Epicurus cautioned that most of the stuff we think we want won’t make us happyFour hours spent wandering the aisles of Ikea for nothing. My boyfriend and I had long since stopped talking. I was ready to slap the next person who uttered a Swedish word. As I pushed my heaving cart into another room full of boxes I took a deep breath and fought the urge to cry. Thank God for philosophy, I thought to myself.I first got interested in philosophy as a teenager. It was on the curriculum at my high school in Paris, but its image was pretty crusty – philosophers were greybeards who wrote convoluted sentences and looked as if they might need a good wash, right? But when I was 16, a teacher gave me a copy of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and I was struck by one phrase: “That whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.” Continue reading...

French health minister confirms death of man from virus that has killed more than 1,500 people

Liu Mengdi could only look on as her relatives were ravaged by the virus. Now she has been warned to stop posting about their trauma

Project is collaboration between privately-funded firm and New Mexico observatoryAstronomers will sweep the entire sky for signs of extraterrestrial life for the first time, using 28 giant radio telescopes in an unprecedented hunt for alien civilisations.The project is a collaboration between the privately-funded Seti Institute and the Very Large Array observatory in New Mexico, one of the world’s most powerful radio observatories. Gaining real-time access to all the data gathered by VLA is considered a major coup for scientists hunting extraterrestrial lifeforms and an indication that the field has “gone mainstream”. Continue reading...

Recent discoveries in space and Earth sciences have provided encouragement to searchers for distant civilisationsIs there anybody out there? For centuries human beings have wondered, although the ways in which we have gone about this have varied, encompassing spiritual and metaphysical questions as well as scientific ones. As we have gained greater understanding of the universe, however, our searches have taken on more concrete form. Questions about extraterrestrials have become a subject for science rather than science fiction and philosophy.Now a new collaboration between the Very Large Array observatory in New Mexico and the privately funded Seti Institute in California, could mean that our curiosity about aliens is closer than ever before to being satisfied. Data from the VLA’s 28 giant radio telescopes, configured so as to scan a vast expanse of sky, will be fed through a special supercomputer that will search for distant signals. Scientists who work at the Seti Institute said the announcement means their research, for a long time confined to the eccentric margins of respectable science, are now “almost mainstream”. Continue reading...

People attended London conference with delegate who has since tested positive

Authorities used DNA links developed through publicly available genealogical websites to free man wrongfully convicted of killing housemateCalifornia authorities used the same DNA techniques that led to the capture of the suspected Golden State Killer to free a man who spent about 15 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted in the slaying of his housemate.Ricky Davis was ordered released from custody during an emotional court hearing in Placerville, near Sacramento, on Thursday, after authorities used extended DNA links developed through publicly available genealogical websites to build a family tree that led to the arrest of a new suspect in the killing of his housemate. Continue reading...

Harvard professor Marc Lipsitch says world’s fourth most populous country may have missed cases

Massachusetts is suing the e-cigarette company for its predatory ads to children. Hopefully other states will follow suit

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?

Top White House official Larry Kudlow questions approach of Politburo as China brings in ‘wartime’ measures in more cities

What happened at the dawn of the universe, just trillionths of a second after the start of the big bang, remains a mystery. Revisiting these moments in his new book, At the Edge of Time, Dan Hooper explores many of the unknowns in cosmology. Hooper guides Ian Sample through the birth of our universe to its enigmatic constituents of dark matter and dark energy Continue reading...

The nation pauses for Bramble Cay melomys Remembrance Day

It’s red, it’s cold, it’s 4bn years old: Nasa data from Arrokoth reveals ‘profound truths’ about the solar systemNasa has unveiled details of the most distant object visited by a spacecraft, in observations that could resolve a decades-long puzzle of how the planets first emerged from the hazy dust of the early solar system.The ultra-red, peanut-shaped object, called Arrokoth, sits located 1bn miles beyond Pluto in the Kuiper belt, a vast donut-shaped region that is home to thousands of dwarf planets and icy objects. Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft made a flyby on New Year’s Day 2019, but the extreme distance from Earth means the probe is still beaming back data gathered during the brief encounter. Continue reading...

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?

Prof Chris Whitty says a four-point tactical plan is in place to help country cope with virusCoronavirus – live updatesBritain is hoping to delay any possible outbreak of coronavirus in order to prepare the NHS if it cannot be contained, the chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, has said.“If we are going to get an outbreak here in the UK, and it is an if, not a when, putting it back in time into the summer away from the winter pressures on the NHS … is a big advantage,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Continue reading...

Budget cuts in England and Wales have reduced independent oversight – and could lead to serious miscarriages of justiceIn a case involving a knife attack in 2015 by a group of young people, one of the three victims who were stabbed was carrying a bag containing some of his clothes, which was discovered at the scene. When examined, the bag was found to have some blood on it that contained DNA matching one of the alleged attackers. To the prosecution – and potentially to a jury when the case went to court – the DNA evidence put the defendant squarely in the frame. Fortunately though, the prosecution’s forensic evidence was checked by a scientist employed by the defendant’s lawyer and paid for by legal aid (which is increasingly rare due to budget cuts).Related: Police cuts could see rise in miscarriages of justice, says forensic expert Continue reading...

What symptoms are related to the Covid-19 virus from Wuhan in China, how is it spread and when should you call a doctor?

Confirmed cases of the flu-like virus span 29 countries, with 1,300 deaths, all but three in mainland China

The group have been confined to a hostel for three weeks and want their government to help them fly back home

Stupendemys geographicus, armed with sturdy horns, lived from about 13m to 7m years ago alongside giant crocodiliansScientists have unearthed new fossils of one of the largest turtles that ever lived: a car-sized reptile which prowled the lakes and rivers of what is now northern South America from about 13m years ago to 7m years ago.The fossils of the turtle – Stupendemys geographicus – were found in Colombia’s Tatacoa Desert and Venezuela’s Urumaco region, and for the first time provide a comprehensive understanding of the creature which grew up to 13ft (4 meters) long and 1.25 tons in weight. Continue reading...

Latest update on coronavirus outbreak, including WHO press conference and first case in London