Incidents such as tanker stranding in Mauritius stress need for quick and effective solutions
Special sponges, magnetic soap and autonomous robots are among the latest wave of inventions aimed at tackling oil spills.
Incidents such as the tanker stranding in Mauritius in August can devastate the environment and threaten communities who rely on the sea or tourism for their livelihoods. They often take months or years to clean up.
Continue reading...Italian scientists provide further evidence of underground lake and smaller bodies of water in study
A network of salty ponds may be gurgling beneath Mars’ south pole alongside a large underground lake, raising the prospect of tiny, swimming Martian life.
Italian scientists reported their findings Monday, two years after identifying what they believed to be a large buried lake. They widened their coverage area by a couple hundred miles, using even more data from a radar sounder on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter.
Continue reading...A selection of comments from across the political divide on PM’s handling of pandemic
The brewing rebellion among Tory backbenchers over the lack of scrutiny afforded to parliament on Covid-19 restrictions – as well as concerns about their impact – has left Boris Johnson facing criticism from within and outside his party. Here are some of the more pointed comments levelled against the prime minister and his policies from across the political divide.
Continue reading...Substance has had promising results in ferrets, with hopes it may reduce transmission
A nasal spray is under development that could nip a coronavirus infection in the bud, with promising results already seen in ferrets, researchers have revealed.
With coronavirus infections surging around the world, the race is on to develop a vaccine. But researchers are also looking for other ways to tackle Covid-19.
Continue reading...WHO says global toll is likely to be over one million already; travel in and out of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague may be banned
The percentage of Covid-19 tests taken in New York state that have come back positive has inched up to 1.5%, governor Andrew Cuomo said, a worrisome trend for the former centre of the US coronavirus epidemic.
The rise in positivity in New York above the 1% target comes as 27 other states recorded increases in the number of cases for two straight weeks.
MEPs won’t yet be returning to Strasbourg due to rising coronavirus infections in France, the European parliament speaker said, despite a plea by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
The European parliament has its headquarters in Strasbourg in eastern France, where MEPs usually based in Brussels travel every month for 12 plenary sessions a year.
Continue reading...Le Monde reports 32% of outbreaks in France found in schools or universities; Victoria ends curfew
Families are counting down the days to moving into new homes in a Hong Kong estate that had been used as a Covid-19 quarantine centre in what had become a lightning rod for discontent, the South China Morning Post reports.
They included L.N. Siu, her husband and daughter, who were overjoyed when they were finally allocated a public housing flat at the Chun Yeung Estate in Hong Kong last December. They had been waiting eight years.
Romanians go to the polls on Sunday to choose mayors and local councillors, but a Covid-19 surge is threatening to hit the first electoral test after years of political turbulence with a high abstention rate.
Nationwide, the east European country of almost 19 million people has 43,000 seats to fill in the single-round election seen as a test ahead of national polls in December.
Continue reading...As Covid cases rise, an increasingly heated debate has emerged over whether to readopt stringent measures or return to ‘the business of living’
Britain has reached a Covid crossroads – and its leaders are being pressed to pick one of two stark options. Are they going to return to the lockdown days that brought life to a standstill six months ago, but succeeded in halting the rapid spread of the disease? Or are they going to turn their backs on “an authoritarian nightmare” that is preventing the nation from getting on with “the business of living”?
This is the basic division that has emerged over the summer in an increasingly heated debate between two unlikely groupings of scientists, columnists, campaigners and politicians.
Continue reading...The right fails to recognise that the Swedes’ real virtue in this pandemic is their social cohesion
Sweden is to the 21st-century right what the Soviet Union was to the 20th-century left. Conservatives have transformed it into a Tory Disneyland where every dream comes true. On the shores of the Baltic lies a country that has no need to curtail civil liberties and wreck the economy to curb Covid-19. “I have a dream, a fantasy,” sang Abba. “To help me through reality.” For much of the right, that fantasy is called Sweden.
Let the leader of the Conservative backbenchers stand for the Tory press and innumerable ideologues inside and outside Westminster. Sir Graham Brady ruined a perfectly good argument that parliament must have the power to scrutinise Johnson’s emergency decrees by announcing that there was no emergency. We could look to a country that merely had a ban on gatherings of more than 50, restrictions on visiting care homes, a shift to table-only service in bars and see that “Sweden today is in a better place than the United Kingdom”. Or as the Sun explained on Thursday as Boris Johnson met Anders Tegnell, the Swedish public health “mastermind”, a do-little strategy has spared Sweden a second wave of Covid-19 infections.
Continue reading...Coronavirus cases in France jump to record high as Spanish government calls for Madrid lockdown
The prime ministers of France and the Netherlands have issued stark warnings about their coronavirus figures, while in Spain, the western European country hardest hit by the virus, Madrid authorities have rejected the central government’s call for a lockdown across the capital.
Santé Publique France, the French public health authority, tallied 15,797 new confirmed cases on Friday, just shy of a daily record of 16,096 set on Thursday.
Continue reading...Researchers will test length of time virus stays infectious in different climatic conditions
It is the question scientists around the world are trying to answer: how long can the coronavirus survive in the tiny aerosol particles we exhale? In a high-security lab near Bristol, entered through a series of airlock doors, scientists may be weeks from finding out.
On Monday, they will start launching tiny droplets of live Sars-CoV-2 and levitating them between two electric rings to test how long the airborne virus remains infectious under different environmental conditions.
Continue reading...Spanish government calls for Madrid lockdown; Netherlands records worst day for new cases; cases in Reykjavík linked to two French visitors
The UK government has been continuing to source medical gloves used as PPE by frontline healthcare workers from a manufacturer in Malaysia repeatedly accused of forcing its workers to endure “slave-like conditions” in its factories, the Guardian can reveal.
Top Glove, the world’s biggest producer of rubber medical gloves, has faced multiple allegations of exploitation from migrant workers mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal.
Related: NHS sourcing PPE from company repeatedly accused of forced labour
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
Continue reading...Side-effects of bexarotene rule out use but trial suggests other drugs may halt multiple sclerosis
Doctors believe they are closer to a treatment for multiple sclerosis after discovering a drug that repairs the coatings around nerves that are damaged by the disease.
A clinical trial of the cancer drug bexarotene showed that it repaired the protective myelin sheaths that MS destroys. The loss of myelin causes a range of neurological problems including balance, vision and muscle disorders, and ultimately, disability.
Continue reading...Experts believe virus is probably becoming more contagious but US study did not find mutations made it more lethal
The Covid-19 virus is continuing to mutate throughout the course of the pandemic, with experts believing it is probably becoming more contagious, as coronavirus cases in the US have started to rise once again, according to new research.
The new US study analyzed 5,000 genetic sequences of the virus, which has continued to mutate as it has spread through the population. The study did not find that mutations of the virus have made it more lethal or changed its effects, even as it may be becoming easier to catch, according to a report in the Washington Post, which noted that public health experts acknowledge all viruses have mutations, most of which are insignificant.
Continue reading...Paris move would follow curbs in other French cities; world reports just under two million Covid-19 cases in one week
Travel restrictions around Europe aimed at curbing coronavirus contagion ravaged Spain’s tourism industry during the crucial month of August, depriving it of millions of tourists, Reuters reports.
The number of nights booked in Spanish hotels fell 64% last month from a year ago, data from the National Statistics Institute showed on Wednesday.
In the first eight months of the year, hotel bookings slumped 70% from the same period in 2019.
The Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has announced the cancellation of this year’s Vienna Opera Ball, a glamorous society event that usually marks the peak of the Austrian ball season.
The government cited rising Covid-19 infection rates in the Alpine country as the reason for calling off the event, which was planned for 11 February 2021. While the Vienna State Opera put a lot of effort into security concepts, the wellbeing of participants could not have been guaranteed, the government said.
Continue reading...Italian health minister says ‘we have to be cautious’; Iran death toll one of worst in Middle East; Madrid residents advised not to travel
The EU Council, scheduled for later this week, has been postponed after its president tested positive, reports Euronews political editor, Darren McCaffery.
MEANS: EU Council due to be held this Thursday and Friday has been postponed until next week, 1st and 2nd of September
The UN summit is proving to be a bad-tempered event.
In a recorded video, the US president, Donald Trump, called Covid-19 the “China virus”, adding: “We must hold accountable the nation that unleashed this plague upon the world.”
Continue reading...Announcement comes as Covid deaths increased by 27% in Europe week on week
The weekly number of new recorded coronavirus infections worldwide was last week at its highest level to date, the World Health Organization has announced, as deaths from Covid-19 in Europe increased by more than a quarter week on week.
Almost 1 million people have now died from the coronavirus since it emerged in China at the beginning of the year.
Continue reading...Simulation using world’s fastest supercomputer casts doubt on effectiveness in preventing spread of coronavirus
Plastic face shields are almost totally ineffective at trapping respiratory aerosols, according to modelling in Japan, casting doubt on their effectiveness in preventing the spread of coronavirus.
A simulation using Fugaku, the world’s fastest supercomputer, found that almost 100% of airborne droplets of less than 5 micrometres in size escaped through plastic visors of the kind often used by people working in service industries.
Continue reading...Former real estate mogul was investigated after criticising Xi Jinping over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic
China has sentenced an influential former property executive and critic of President Xi Jinping to 18 years in prison for corruption.
Ren Zhiqiang, the former chairman of Huayuan, a state-owned real estate group, was also fined 4.2m yuan, Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court said on its website on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Continued doubling of infection rate feared by top advisers is unlikely to happen, say some experts
On one thing, everyone agrees: the UK is at a turning point.
After a summer of crowded beaches and pubs reopening, followed by children returning to school and employees going back to the workplace, new cases of Covid-19 are definitely on the rise.
Continue reading...Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty’s briefing predicted an autumn of rising deaths and difficult lockdown choices
The UK government’s most senior scientists, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, have given a televised briefing about the recent increases in coronavirus cases, and what to expect – unusually, doing so without a politician there as well. Here is what we learned.
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