Category Archives: Science

Coronavirus live news: New Zealand reports another new case as Brazil nears 1m infections

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Deaths worldwide near 500,000; US health expert says country is ‘still in first wave’; Argentinian president enters voluntary isolation amid coronavirus surge. Follow the latest updates

The hospitalisation of Honduras president with Covid-19 and pneumonia Wednesday has drawn attention to another country struggling under the pandemics strain as cases rise sharply in the capital, AP reports.

President Juan Orlando Hernández announced late Tuesday that he and his wife had tested positive for the virus. Just hours later he was hospitalised after doctors determined he had pneumonia.

From March to 7 June, Honduras confirmed 6,327 coronavirus infections. In the 10 days since, it added 3,329 more, a surge that has come after the government began a gradual reactivation of the economy.

The full story on Australia’s unemployment rate now:

Australia lost a further 227,000 jobs between April and May, resulting in a total loss of 835,000 jobs in seasonally adjusted terms since March and a 0.7% jump in unemployment to 7.1%.

Related: Australia loses 227,000 more jobs, taking unemployment to 7.1%

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Coronavirus live news: New Zealand to trace 320 ‘close contacts’ of virus pair who stopped to meet friends

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Beijing raises alert level and grounds hundreds of flights; India’s official death toll leaps by more than 2,000 to reach 11,903; Brazil suffers record case increase

Around 11,000 mink at a farm in Denmark will have to be culled after they were found to be infected with the coronavirus, the country’s authorities have said.

The outbreak is the first in Denmark, the world’s biggest producer of mink skins, but comes shortly after the virus was found at 13 mink farms in the Netherlands, where about 570,000 mink have been ordered culled.

If you’re planning to meet Vladimir Putin in the next few weeks, be warned: you will have to pass through a special disinfectant tunnel to get to the Russian president.

Putin’s official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has confirmed a report by Russian state television that three airport-style tunnels have been built for the president: one at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, where he has reputedly being doing much of his work during the pandemic, and two at the Kremlin.

В резиденции Путина для защиты от коронавируса установили специальный туннель. Он предназначен для дезинфекцииhttps://t.co/jjwWbuZ2EX pic.twitter.com/h62KWARvsr

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Pandemics result from destruction of nature, say UN and WHO

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Experts call for legislation and trade deals worldwide to encourage green recovery

Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

The illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade as well as the devastation of forests and other wild places were still the driving forces behind the increasing number of diseases leaping from wildlife to humans, the leaders told the Guardian.

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Don’t blame public for Covid-19 spread, says UK scientist

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Exclusive: Prof John Drury says cooperation more prevalent than selfish behaviour

From empty supermarket shelves to crowded parks, public behaviour has come in for criticism during the Covid-19 outbreak.

But blaming the spread of Covid-19 on selfishness or thoughtless behaviour is misguided and distracts from the real causes of fatalities, according to one of Britain’s leading behavioural psychologists.

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Coronavirus live news: New Zealand records first new cases for weeks as Beijing bans high-risk travellers from leaving city

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China reimposes partial lockdown in capital to tackle new cluster; US authorities revoke emergency use of hydroxychloroquine; two imported cases in NZ. Follow the latest updates

Germany has launched their coronavirus tracing app today, which officials say is so secure even government ministers can use it.

Smartphone apps have been touted as a high-tech tool in the effort to track down potential Covid-19 infections. Experts say finding new cases quickly is key to clamping down on fresh clusters, especially as countries slowly emerge from lockdowns and try to avoid a second wave of infections and deaths.

Russia has reported 8,248 new coronavirus cases today, bringing its nationwide infection tally to 545,458. The authorities said 193 people had died of the virus in the last day, raising the official death toll to 7,284.

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Hydroxychloroquine: US revokes emergency approval of malaria drug for Covid-19

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Food and Drug Administration says drug is unlikely to work against coronavirus and notes heart risks

US regulators revoked the emergency authorization for malaria drugs championed by Donald Trump for treating Covid-19, amid growing evidence they don’t work and could cause serious side effects.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Monday the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were unlikely to be effective in treating the coronavirus. Citing reports of heart complications, the agency said the drugs’ unproven benefits “do not outweigh the known and potential risks”.

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Covid-19 can damage lungs of victims beyond recognition, expert says

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Organs of some who die after over a month in hospital sustain ‘complete disruption’, peers told

Covid-19 can leave the lungs of people who died from the disease completely unrecognisable, a professor of cardiovascular science has told parliament.

It created such massive damage in those who spent more than a month in hospital that it resulted in “complete disruption of the lung architecture”, said Prof Mauro Giacca of King’s College London.

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Coronavirus live news: Beijing locks down 10 residential compounds amid new outbreak

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WHO warns UK not to lift lockdown; Iran deaths top 100 for first time in two months; cases worldwide near 7.9m. Follow the latest updates

The number of confirmed Covid-19 infections has passed 25,000 in Afghanistan while a key testing laboratory paused work due to lack of kits.

The health ministry has detected 761 new cases from 1,551 tests in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 25,527.

Norway will halt its Covid-19 track and trace app, and delete all data collected so far, after criticism from the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.

The app was introduced by some Norwegian authorities to limit the transmission of the coronavirus.

We don’t agree with the DPA’s evaulation, but feel it is necessary to delete all data and put work on hold as a result of this.

We will as a result weaken an important part of our preparedness against a spread in infection, as we now lose time for development and testing of the app.

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Scientists report flaws in WHO-funded study on 2-metre distancing

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Mistakes mean findings should not be used as evidence for relaxing rule, say professors

Senior scientists have reported flaws in an influential World Health Organization-commissioned study into the risks of coronavirus infection and say it should not be used as evidence for relaxing the UK’s 2-metre physical distancing rule.

Critics of the distancing advice, which states that people should keep at least 2 metres apart, believe it is too cautious. They seized on the research commissioned by the WHO, which suggested a reduction from 2 metres to 1 would raise infection risk only marginally, from 1.3% to 2.6%.

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Lords seek to allow gene-editing in UK ‘to produce healthy, hardier crops’

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Changes could introduce gluten-free wheat and disease-resistant fruit and vegetables, say peers


Peers are preparing plans to legalise the gene-editing of crops in England, a move that scientists say would offer the nation a chance to develop and grow hardier, more nutritious varieties. The legislation would also open the door to gene-editing of animals.

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The Lancet’s editor: ‘The UK’s response to coronavirus is the greatest science policy failure for a generation’

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Richard Horton does not hold back in his criticism of the UK’s response to the pandemic and the medical establishment’s part in backing fatal government decisions

There is a school of thought that says now is not the time to criticise the government and its scientific advisers about the way they have handled the Covid-19 pandemic. Wait until all the facts are known and the crisis has subsided, goes this thinking, and then we can analyse the performance of those involved. It’s safe to say that Richard Horton, the editor of the influential medical journal the Lancet, is not part of this school.

An outspoken critic of what he sees as the medical science establishment’s acquiescence to government, he has written a book that he calls a “reckoning” for the “missed opportunities and appalling misjudgments” here and abroad that have led to “the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of citizens”. 

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Coronavirus live news: Beijing back into partial lockdown as new cluster emerges

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Anthony Fauci calls Trump rallies a danger to health; Australia’s chief medical officers warns against BLM rallies

Three activists of Algeria’s Hirak protest movement were ordered to be held in pre-trial detention for offences including “endangering the lives of others during the [coronavirus] confinement period”, a prisoners’ defence group said on Saturday.

The Hirak movement led peaceful protests in 2019 after Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his candidacy for a fifth presidential term, calling for Bouteflika’s immediate resignation.

Airlines are slowly trying to return to business after the pandemic grounded entire fleets of planes around the globe for months and put their very existence in doubt.

My colleague Gwyn Topham reports.

Related: Lots of distancing, no long-distance: airlines cautiously return to the sky

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Climate worst-case scenarios may not go far enough, cloud data shows

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Modelling suggests climate is considerably more sensitive to carbon emissions than thought

Worst-case global heating scenarios may need to be revised upwards in light of a better understanding of the role of clouds, scientists have said.

Recent modelling data suggests the climate is considerably more sensitive to carbon emissions than previously believed, and experts said the projections had the potential to be “incredibly alarming”, though they stressed further research would be needed to validate the new numbers.

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No ‘patient zero’ as Covid-19 came into UK at least 1,300 times

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Study prompts further criticism that chances to suppress infection early in outbreak were missed

There was no “patient zero” in the UK’s Covid-19 epidemic, according to research showing that the infection was introduced on at least 1,300 occasions.

The findings, from the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, have prompted further criticism that opportunities to suppress the spread of infection in February and March were missed.

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Spanish archaeologist sentenced for faking Basque finds

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‘Third-century’ artefacts with hieroglyphics and Basque words referred to non-existent gods and to René Descartes

A Spanish archaeologist whose staggering discoveries included one of the earliest representations of the crucifixion and proof that the written Basque language was centuries older than previously thought has been found guilty of faking the finds.

The saga began in June 2006 when Eliseo Gil presented artefacts excavated from the Roman town of Veleia, near the Basque city of Vitoria.

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Coronavirus live news: pandemic accelerating across Africa; over 2 million cases in US

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Shortage of test kits ‘leading to virus spread in Africa’; Mexico confirms record daily infections; Brazil deaths near 40,000

Another 1.5 million people in the US filed for unemployment benefits last week even as states continued to relax their coronavirus quarantine measures, writes Dominic Rushe and Amanda Holpuch in New York.

In just 12 weeks more than 44 million claims have been made for benefits as people lost their jobs. Rehiring appears to have started. Last week the labor department said the unemployment rate had dipped in May to 13.3% from 14.7% in April – although officials said difficulty collecting data meant the figure was probably 3% higher.

Related: 1.5 million Americans file for unemployment as states relax restrictions

Nearly three-quarters of new cases of coronavirus are coming from 10 countries, mostly concentrated in the Americas and south Asia, the director general of the World Health Organization has said.

Speaking at the UN health agency’s member state briefing on Thursday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the global situation was deteriorating, even as Europe appeared to be over the worst of the outbreak.

More than 7 million cases of Covid-19 have now been reported, and more than 408,000 deaths.

Although the situation in Europe is improving, at the global level, it is getting worse. More than 100,000 new cases have been reported each day for the most part of the past two weeks.

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Is the worst of the pandemic behind us? Here’s what scientists know | Devi Sridhar

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A second wave of coronavirus cases would be disastrous – but there are ways to prevent this happening

Over the weekend, there were no new deaths from coronavirus in London, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Slowly, the number of hospitalisations and deaths is falling across the UK. Rather than celebrating these early signs that the worst of the pandemic could be behind us, however, some scientists are warning of a second wave of infections – an increase in coronavirus cases in the coming weeks or months, which could occur even after a sustained fall in the number of cases. 

These warnings often refer back to the 1918 flu pandemic. That outbreak killed tens of millions of people when it returned the following winter in a deadlier form after the first outbreak had been controlled. But there’s a confusing lack of consensus from scientists about whether we’ll see a second wave of coronavirus cases. Although the future is uncertain, we can imagine four scenarios for what might come next. 

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Bird figurine is earliest Chinese artwork ever discovered, say experts

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‘Refined’ 2cm carving found in Henan dates to palaeolithic period up to 13,000 years ago

A tiny figurine of a bird, carved from burnt bone and no bigger than a £1 coin, is the earliest Chinese artwork ever discovered, according to an international team of archaeologists. 

The carving, less than 2cm in length, has been dated to the palaeolithic period, between 13,800 and 13,000 years ago, which pushes back the earliest known date of east Asian animal sculpture by more than eight millennia. 

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How would a coronavirus vaccine work and will we even get one? – video explainer

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Science editor Ian Sample explains how vaccines work, runs through some of the main obstacles to creating one for coronavirus and preparing it for public use, and tells us which scenario he thinks is most realistic in the next 18 months 

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‘The older I get, the less I fear’: meet the Italian Larry David

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A decade after his two much-loved comedies about the vicissitudes of ageing, director Gianni Di Gregorio explains why, against his own expectations, he had to make another

In 2000, after a decade of caring for his ailing mother in her large flat in Rome, Gianni Di Gregorio wrote a comedy about a bloke called Gianni who looks after his 93-year-old mother in a large flat in Rome. No one was interested in the story, in which the unemployed bachelor ends up running around after a cohort of old ladies whose spirit and vigour remain undimmed despite various ailments. Everyone thought he was crazy: who would be interested in a funny film about four old women and a middle-aged bloke?

Related: Gianni Di Gregorio: The incidental director

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