Category Archives: Science

SpaceX-Nasa launch scrubbed due to poor weather

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The first crewed flight from US soil since 2011 was called off 16 minutes before lift off; the next opportunity is on Saturday

The United States’ long-anticipated return to human spaceflight will have to wait a few more days after poor weather forced mission managers to scrub Wednesday’s planned launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida.

The first crewed flight from US soil since 2011 was called off 16min 53sec before the scheduled 4.33pm lift-off time, with SpaceX and Nasa officials blaming “strength of electric fields in the atmosphere”, translating to lightning near the launchpad.

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Ancient Roman mosaic floor discovered under vines in Italy

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Pristine ‘archaeological treasure’ near Verona may date to 3rd century AD, say experts

A perfectly preserved ancient Roman mosaic floor has been discovered near the northern Italian city of Verona.

Archaeologists were astonished by the find as it came almost a century after the remains of a villa, believed to date to the 3rd century AD, were unearthed in a hilly area above the town of Negrar di Valpolicella.

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Coronavirus live news: WHO sounds alarm over surge of Covid-19 cases in Latin America

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Longest official mourning period in Spain’s democracy; unrest grows in UK PM’s party over Dominic Cummings lockdown breach; WHO says Americas are new Covid-19 epicentre. Follow the latest updates

There have now been 118,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the 54 nations of Africa, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

So far, about 48,000 people in Africa who have tested positive for the virus have recovered, while 3,500 have died, according to the latest updated from WHO African region on Wednesday morning.

Over 118,000 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 48,000 recoveries & 3,500 deaths. View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: https://t.co/V0fkK8dYTg pic.twitter.com/W1hbvugno1

Hi, this is Damien Gayle taking the reins of the live blog now, bringing you the latest headlines and stories, and the best of the Guardian’s coverage, from the coronavirus pandemic around the world.

If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for coverage please drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@gmail.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.

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Coronavirus live news: US deaths from Covid-19 have passed 100,000

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Qatar Covid-19 app ‘exposed 1m people’s personal details’; WHO sounds alarm over surge of Covid-19 cases in Latin America

Tom McCarthy writes that one of the key problems facing American efforts to emerge from the Covid-19 crisis is the population’s aversion to vaccines.

Only about half of Americans say they would get a Covid-19 vaccine if available, according to a poll, as a top US government scientist tempered claims by Donald Trump that the United States would be able to invent, manufacture and administer hundreds of millions of vaccine doses by the end of the year.

Related: Just half of Americans plan on getting Covid-19 vaccine, poll shows

Further to our story at 20.29, data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the United States has recorded more than 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, moving past a grim milestone even as many states relax mitigation measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The US has recorded more deaths from the disease than any other country in the pandemic, and almost three times as many as the second-ranking country, Britain, which has recorded more than 37,000 Covid-19 deaths.

Related: US passes 100,000 coronavirus deaths as states relax lockdown measures

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How South Africa’s action on Covid-19 contrasts sharply with its response to Aids

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Country’s swift response is distinct from the handling of the HIV crisis 20 years ago. Have lessons been learnt?

Twenty years ago Nelson Mandela made an impassioned plea for international cooperation on “one of the greatest threats humankind has faced”.

Aids was ravaging lives and overwhelming health systems, at its peak killing up to 1,000 people a day in South Africa.

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‘The human fingerprint is everywhere’: Met Office’s alarming warning on climate

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Exclusively compiled data from the Hadley Centre’s supercomputer shows alarming climate trajectory

The human fingerprint on the climate is now unmistakable and will become increasingly evident over the coming decades, the UK Met Office has confirmed after 30 years of pioneering study.

Since the 1990s, global temperatures have warmed by half a degree, Arctic sea ice has shrunk by almost 2 million km2, sea-levels have risen by about 10cm and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 60 parts per million (17%), according to figures exclusively compiled for the Guardian to mark the 30th anniversary of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for climate science and services.

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‘The big show’: US poised to return to human spaceflight with historic launch

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in partnership with Nasa, to launch Falcon 9 rocket from Florida carrying two American astronauts

In a historic moment a decade in the making, the skies above Florida will light up on Wednesday when the launch of a rocket born from a groundbreaking public-private partnership returns the United States to the business of human spaceflight.

Not since the retirement of Nasa’s space shuttle fleet in 2011 has the US possessed the capability to send its own astronauts into orbit, and the success of this week’s mission, formally known as SpaceX Demo-2, is likely to shape the direction of the space agency’s near-Earth ambitions for a generation.

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Experts sound alarm over lack of Covid-19 test kits in Africa

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Global competition for kits and national constraints cause concern as lockdowns ease

Public health experts have warned about the risks of low supplies of coronavirus test kits as lockdowns in African countries begin to ease and urban populations become more mobile.

Different countries on the continent have adopted a range of testing strategies, but international competition for test kits and a lack of global coordination of resources have meant many African countries are testing with significantly limited reach.

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Coronavirus live news: Putin says Russia past peak of outbreak despite highest daily death toll

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WHO warns of second peak as global cases pass 5.5m; Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar denies picnic with friends was rule breach; world health leaders urge green recovery

I’m handing over to my esteemed colleague Kevin Rawlinson shortly, so I’ll leave you with a summary of today’s main global developments on the coronavirus pandemic:

A diplomatic rift has broken out between Tanzania and the US. The East African nation said it had summoned the top official at the US embassy to object to an advisory that warned of “exponential growth” of Covid-19 cases in the country.

Tanzania’s divisive leader John Magufuli has repeatedly played down the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic, appearing to model his response on the early approach taken by Donald Trump in the US.

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Why glass frogs have see-through skin becomes clear in study

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While colour of body changes little, legs are more translucent to help amphibians to blend in

The mystery of why glass frogs have see-through skin has been solved, scientists say: the unusual feature is a type of camouflage.

Glass frogs are found in tropical Central and South America, and get their name from their skin.

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WHO halts hydroxychloroquine trial for coronavirus amid safety fears

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Malaria drug taken by Trump could raise risk of death and heart problems, study shows

The World Health Organization has said it will temporarily drop hydroxychloroquine — the malaria drug Donald Trump said he is taking as a precaution — from its global study into experimental coronavirus treatments after safety concerns.

The WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in light of a paper published last week in the Lancet that showed people taking hydroxychloroquine were at higher risk of death and heart problems than those who were not, it would pause the hydroxychloroquine arm of its solidarity global clinical trial.

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Boris Johnson’s senior adviser refuses to apologise for lockdown breach – as it happened

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Dominic Cummings will not resign; WHO drops hydroxychloroquine from global study into experimental coronavirus treatments. This blog is now closed

We’ve fired up a brand new blog at the link below – follow me there for the latest:

Related: Coronavirus live news: WHO drops hydroxychloroquine trial as Mexico death toll questioned

The White House on Monday issued a statement amending the timing of the start of new restrictions on travel from Brazil to the United States to 11.59pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, 26 May.

The White House announced on Sunday that it was restricting travel from Brazil to the United States, two days after the South American nation became the world’s No. 2 hotspot for coronavirus cases.

In its original announcement, it said the restrictions would come into force on 28 May.

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Global report: US suspends travel from Brazil as schools reopen in parts of Australia

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Chile’s president says hospitals are ‘very close to limit’, France records lowest number of daily Covid-19 cases since March, India restarts domestic flights

President Donald Trump has further limited travel to the US from the world’s coronavirus hotspots by denying entry to foreigners coming from Brazil, which is second to the US in the number of confirmed cases.

Trump had already banned certain travellers from China, Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland and, to a lesser extent, Iran. He has not moved to ban travel from Russia, which has the world’s third-highest caseload, approximately 20,000 fewer than Brazil’s.

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Exclusive: big pharma rejected EU plan to fast-track vaccines in 2017

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World’s top drug firms turned down proposals for work on pathogens like coronavirus

The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies rejected an EU proposal three years ago to work on fast-tracking vaccines for pathogens like coronavirus to allow them to be developed before an outbreak, the Guardian can reveal.

The plan to speed up the development and approval of vaccines was put forward by European commission representatives sitting on the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – a public-private partnership whose function is to back cutting-edge research in Europe – but it was rejected by industry partners on the body.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch first astronauts from US soil since 2011

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Falcon 9 rocket to make history as billionaire seeks to commercialise space travel

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company hopes to make history on Wednesday by launching the first astronauts into space from US soil in nine years, as the billionaire takes the next step in his dream to commercialise space travel.

Donald Trump will be among the spectators at Kennedy space centre in Florida to witness the launch, which has been given the green light despite the coronavirus lockdown.

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Sweden ‘wrong’ not to shut down, says former state epidemiologist

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Scientist who oversaw the response to Sars says country has failed the vulnerable

The predecessor of Sweden’s state epidemiologist has broken her silence on the country’s controversial coronavirus strategy, saying she now believes the authorities should have put in place tougher restrictions in the early stages of the pandemic to bring the virus under control.

Annika Linde, who oversaw Sweden’s response to swine flu and Sars as state epidemiologist from 2005 to 2013, had until now expressed support for her country’s approach under her successor, Anders Tegnell.

But she has now become the first member of the public health establishment to break ranks, saying she has changed her mind as a result of Sweden’s relatively high death toll compared with that of its neighbours, Denmark, Norway, and Finland.

“I think that we needed more time for preparedness. If we had shut down very early ... we would have been able, during that time, to make sure that we had what was necessary to protect the vulnerable,” Linde told the Observer.

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Everyone wants to ‘follow the science’. But we can’t waste time on blame

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The Royal Society president says scientists must not be made scapegoats for policy failures

In 1981, a virus that had jumped the species barrier some decades earlier to infect humans began to wreak havoc among the gay community in San Francisco and New York. A taskforce was set up to study the cause of this disease, and it took a few years to identify HIV as the definitive cause of Aids and its genome to be sequenced, and nearly 15 years before a cocktail of drugs meant that having an HIV infection was no longer a certain death sentence.

Forty years later, the cause of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan was identified as a new coronavirus Sars-CoV-2, and its sequence determined in a matter of weeks. That, in turn, paved the way for a sensitive test for infection and, now, antibody tests for people who may have had the disease. That we know so much in such record time is due to sustained international investment in science.

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Coronavirus live news: Austria’s president apologises for curfew breach

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France asks citizens to avoid foreign trips; US likely to impose travel restrictions on Brazil; Afghanistan cases top 10,000

The Daily Mail - usually one of Boris Johnson’s supporters in the press - has called on the prime minister to sack Dominic Cummings, trailing its headline with the following:

In the clearest way, Dominic Cummings has violated the spirit and letter of the lockdown. Boris Johnson says he ‘totally gets’ how the public feels about this. Clearly he totally doesn’t. Neither man has displayed a scintilla of contrition for this breach of trust. Do they think we are fools? For the good of the government and the nation, Mr Cummings must resign. Or the prime minister must sack him. No ifs. No buts.

The White House has announced it is prohibiting foreigners from traveling to the US if they had been in Brazil in the last two weeks, two days after the South American nation became the world No. 2 hot spot for coronavirus cases.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the new restrictions would help ensure foreign nationals do not bring additional infections to the US, but would not apply to the flow of commerce between the new countries.

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Sweden’s Covid-19 policy is a model for the right. It’s also a deadly folly | Nick Cohen

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The Swedes were the Brexiters’ poster nation, but now have Europe’s worst death rate

Covid-19 is nature’s way of making bad situations worse. From the moment it turned the world upside down, you could have predicted that the Chinese Communist party would have arrested whistleblowers and covered up the threat to humanity. It’s what it does best, after all.

You would not have needed mystical powers to divine that Viktor Orbán would have used a pandemic as an excuse to turn Hungary into the European Union’s first dictatorship. Nor did it take a modern Nostradamus to foresee that, if you put men who care nothing for competence, complexity, or the difference between truth and falsehood in power, you will live to regret it. Or in the case of tens of thousands who trusted Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, die needless deaths.

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