Of the 22,049 confirmed reported deaths so far in hospitals in England, 11,575 (52 per cent) were people aged 80 and over while 8,547 (39 per cent) were 60-79.

A father-of-two who spent 19 days in an induced coma in hospital has made an "incredible" recovery from coronavirus in time to celebrate his son's second birthday.

A 10-year-old double-leg amputee has raised more than £10,000 by walking a marathon distance during coronavirus lockdown.

Grimes and her boyfriend Elon Musk want to call their newborn son X Æ A-12 Musk, but California law might prevent it.

Drug dealers are adopting new disguises so they can move around freeley during the coronavirus lockdown, a gang expert has said.

The Government has exceeded its 100,000-a-day coronavirus testing target, Matt Hancock has declared.

Donations have poured in for a 100-year-old woman who was robbed after thieves tricked their way into her home in Darlington.

Shadow justice secretary David Lammy responded to the figures by calling for an urgent investigation into the disproportionate number of deaths.

Obese people with coronavirus are more at risk of dying, one of the UK's leading scientists has said.

The rate of transmission of coronavirus is "much reduced" and the death toll is steadily falling, the Downing Street press conference has heard.

British people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities are two to three times more likely to die from coronavirus, new research has found.

Up to 15,000 pubs face permanent closure if they cannot reopen before October, an industry boss has warned.

Brits across the country have erupted in applause in tribute to healthcare workers during the seventh week of the Clap for our Carers initiative.

A single dad who has fostered 12 children has taken in another child who had nowhere else to go during the coronavirus pandemic.

Boris Johnson has said the Government will proceed with "maximum caution" when it comes to easing the coronavirus lockdown, with his spokesman adding that any changes next week will be "very limited".

Longtime friend pays tribute to war hero, who was involved in six kills, saying he was a "true gentleman"

Legal proceedings have reportedly been launched against the Duke of York over an unpaid bill relating to a Swiss chalet.

Britain's coronavirus death toll has passed 31,000 after a rise of 626.

The UK is "not out of the woods" and will live with coronavirus for some time as the death toll passes 31,000, Environment Secretary George Eustice has said.

Downing Street has said JustGiving will want to "reflect" on fees taken for processing Captain Tom Moore's £32 million fundraiser for NHS charities.

Boris Johnson has asked Vladimir Putin if Russia would help play a more integrated role in global efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

The country's Ministry of Health also recorded just 721 new confirmed cases on Friday, bringing total infections to 223,578.

The UK's official coronavirus death toll has risen by 346 to 31,587.

Is the Æ supposed to sound like 'eye' or 'ash'? We're just as confused too

'Today, the world has lost one of the greats of magic, but I have lost my best friend,' Siegfried Fischbacher said in a statement

The Supreme Court, for the first time, livestreamed its oral argument on Monday. It has discussed whether generic terms can become protected trademarks by the addition of a dot-com domain.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky described the global pandemic as the "most harrowing crisis of our lifetime" and said the coronavirus has cut the company's anticipated revenue in more than half.

Peer review moves to Twitter, muddling public health information.

Consumers are starting to see meat shortages after thousands of workers fall ill.

YouTube, Facebook crack down on two viral videos for spreading medical misinformation.

In this age of mobile phones, cybercafes and satellite links, it's harder than ever to truly escape ... but not impossible. Dervla Murphy, who has ventured to the ends of the earth with only the most basic provisions, explains how

The individual traveller's "age of adventure" has long since been ended by "S&T" (science and technology: an abbreviation that dates me). Now our planet's few remaining undeveloped expanses are accessible only to well-funded expeditions protected by mobile phones and helicopters - enterprises unattractive to the temperamental descendents of Mungo Park, Mary Kingsley et al. Happily, it's still possible for such individuals to embark on solo journeys through little-known regions where they can imagine how real explorers used to feel.

Reviewers tend to describe my most exhilarating journeys as "adventures", though to me they are a form of escapism - a concept unfairly tainted with negative connotations. If journeys are designed as alternatives to one's everyday routine, why shouldn't they be escapist? Why not move in time as well as space, and live for a few weeks or months at the slow pace enjoyed by our ancestors? In recent decades everything has become quicker and easier: transport, communications, heating, cooking, cleaning, dressing, shopping, entertaining. "S&T" have reduced physical effort to the minimum - but are we genetically equipped to cope with our effortless new world? The stats show increasing numbers of us developing ulcers, having nervous breakdowns, eating too much or too little, taking to drink and/or drugs, retreating from our own reality in plastic surgery clinics. It's surely time to promote the therapeutic value of slow travel.

On a 9,288km journey inspired by the centennial anniversary of the railway’s completion in 1916, photographer Annie Ling captures life onboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, and beyond the carriage window

Elena Ferrante’s Naples, Umberto Eco’s medieval mysteries, EM Forster’s Tuscany … Italy comes alive through these great books
• 10 of the best novels about France

Long before Covid-19, there were always bad things in the press about Italy: corruption, mafia, bureaucracy. But, whenever I went, life seemed to work out even so. People may be poor but they still sit in the sun, drink and chat; music and culture are a birthright; the right seems in the ascendant but on the ground it feels blessed with far-seeing idealists – it has almost four times as much land under organic cultivation as the UK, for example. For now, my remedy to the withdrawal symptoms I feel is to visit via the written word. Many writers have set books in Italy – I was sorry to leave out Martin Amis’s The Pregnant Widow (Calabria), and Ali Smith’s How to be Both (Ferrara) – but here are my top 10 romanze italiane.

Seattle-based Spaceflight Inc. has signed an agreement to secure most of the payload mass on a Firefly Aerospace rocket that's due to lift off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base in 2021. The agreement, announced today, establishes Spaceflight as the mission's anchor customer and commits the company to managing the logistics for multiple payloads on the Firefly Alpha rocket. That should help Firefly maximize use of the rocket's 630-kilogram (1,389-pound) capacity for a launch to sun-synchronous orbit. Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is planning to launch the Alpha on its maiden flight from Vandenberg later this year. The company suffered a setback in… Read More

One month after the debut of the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset, or CORD-19, the database of coronavirus-related research papers has doubled in size – and has given rise to more than a dozen software tools to channel the hundreds of studies that are being published every day about the pandemic. In a roundup published on the ArXiv preprint server this week, researchers from Seattle's Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft Research and other partners in the project say CORD-19's collection has risen from about 28,000 papers to more than 52,000. Every day, several hundred more papers are being published, in… Read More

Bill Gates has been big on vaccines since before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but in a new blog posting, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist says the only way to end the pandemic for good is to offer a vaccine to almost all of the planet's 7 billion inhabitants. That's big. "We've never delivered something to every corner of the world before," Gates notes. It's especially big considering that a vaccine hasn't yet been approved for widespread use, and that it may take as long as a year to 18 months to win approval and start distribution. Some… Read More

The ancient Roman city’s House of the Lovers has reopened to the public 40 years after it was severely damaged in 1980 by an earthquake

• Pompeii’s House of Lovers reopens to public

As Elon Musk's Starlink and Jeff Bezos's Project Kuiper race to create high-speed internet using satellites orbiting Earth, there's a small problem that could get in the way: debris. From dead spacecraft that have been around since the dawn of the space age to flecks of paint smashing windows on the International Space Station, rubbish is clogging up our orbits. And with objects moving as fast as 15,500mph (25,000 kmph), the satellite services we've come to depend on are at constant risk of collision. So how to fix the problem with junk in space? Ian Anderson investigates

After a string of studies that highlight the possible link between air pollution and Covid-19 deaths, Ian Sample hears from Prof Anna Hansell about the complicated relationship between pollution, health and infection with Sars-CoV-2

Hannah Devlin speaks to Prof Sabra Klein about why women are much less likely to become seriously ill or die from Covid-19, and what the implications of this knowledge for future treatments might be

With false information linking the coronavirus to 5G telecoms or Chinese labs being widely shared on social media, Ian Sample speaks to social psychologist Dr Daniel Jolley about why the pandemic is such fertile ground for conspiracy theories

As hay fever season approaches, Nicola Davis asks Prof Stephen Durham about the differences between the immune response to an allergen, such as pollen, and a pathogen, like Sars-CoV-2. Should those with allergies should be concerned about Covid-19?

Exclusive: report criticising government lockdown proposals heavily redacted before release

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Government scientific advisers are furious at what they see as an attempt to censor their advice on government proposals during the Covid-19 lockdown by heavily redacting an official report before it was released to the public, the Guardian can reveal.

The report was one of a series of documents published by the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) this week to mollify growing criticism about the lack of transparency over the advice given to ministers responding to the coronavirus.