The Government has missed its testing target of 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of April for the sixth day running.

Thousands have tuned in to watch Katherine Jenkins' stunning performance in front of an empty Royal Albert Hall as she marked the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

Deputy Irish Premier Simon Coveney has said the Covid-19 pandemic has made the timeline for a UK-EU trade deal "virtually impossible".

UK arrivals could be told to self-isolate for 14-days PM will reportedly recommend face masks while at work or on public transport More money will be set aside for cycle lanes to limit rush hour travel

British YouTube star KSI joined the Evening Standard's campaign to feed London during the coronavirus crisis, hailing it as "amazing".

A top aide to US Vice President Mike Pence has tested positive for coronavirus, just one day after another White House staff member was diagnosed.

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

Some 140 people were found making their way to Britain by the Border Force and brought ashore at Dover, according to Sky News.

Police say they are "fighting a losing battle" over enforcing the lockdown after "hundreds" turned out in parks across east London to enjoy picnics in the sunshine.

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

'I was thinking two weeks of quarantine and then things would go back to normal, but we realized pretty quickly that was not the case'

The company has faced criticism in recent years for its handling of issues ranging from user privacy to policing hate speech to stopping the spread of disinformation.

"Deepfakes" have received a lot of attention as a way to potentially spread misleading or false information and influence public opinion. But two specialists say that might not be a huge concern.

The musician’s breezy vocals sit quite well with his light acoustic guitar plucking on the track

The post Hear Jaipur Singer-Songwriter Akash Chopra’s Somber Debut Single ‘Peace’ appeared first on My Site.

The British vocalist and singer-songwriter suffered a cardiac arrest on May 6th in Florida

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The track is the Mumbai-based acoustic outfit’s first release this year

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The world music duo on reinventing their 2011 track ‘Karpur Gauram’ with 17 musicians from nine countries

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Twin sisters Nishita and Atisha Lulla talk about recording a previous single in Mumbai, the country-folk influence and more

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The year-old band also called on Zygnema’s Sidharth Kadadi to produce their second release

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The Bengaluru turn up on dissonance and retain prog flavors on their latest song

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Pianist-singer behind “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally” set the template that a generation of musicians would follow

The post Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87 appeared first on My Site.

Peer review moves to Twitter, muddling public health information.

Posts from high-profile accounts tout questionable virus therapies and cures.

The author of The Miniaturist on the beguiling blend of tradition and modernity (and pancakes) in a city that provided the inspiration for her 17th-century-set debut novel and Waterstones Book of the Year 2014

• Top 10 free things to do in Amsterdam
  
• A new Amsterdam – and a new Rijksmuseum

Amsterdam is classically romantic but is also funky, forward-thinking and citizen-friendly. In the old centre, around the southern canal belt, there are these beautiful 17th-century merchants’ houses that 21st-century Amsterdammers still live in. I’ve always thought it wears its historical cloak quite casually and doesn’t just dwell in the past.

The Rijksmuseum is stunning and I love it as a fascinating, cool, accessible museum, as well as for the part it played in inspiring The Miniaturist. I came across Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house there by chance. It’s an exact scale replica of her real home, and Oortman spent a fortune having it created. I thought at the time it was an interesting story, but I didn’t think I was going to write a novel about it. I’m in its debt, really.

Despite much change, the Nepalese capital’s staggering views and warm memories are as vivid as ever for the veteran mountaineer and leader of 19 Himalayan expeditions

My first sight of Kathmandu and the Himalayas was in 1960 as part of Lt Col Jimmy Roberts’s expedition – we made the first successful ascent of Annapurna II. At 7,937 metres, it’s a superb peak that’s just short of what mountaineers see as the magical height: 8,000 metres.

Arriving in Kathmandu was extraordinary. There was only one hotel, the Royal, an old palace run by a wonderful, eccentric Russian called Boris. There was also just one guesthouse, and practically no tourists.

The oldest national park ranger in the US tells us why she’s proud of the second world war home front park in Richmond, just across the bay from San Francisco

I settled in the greater Bay Area as a six-year-old in 1927. When I graduated from high school in 1938, my two opportunities for employment were working in agriculture or being a domestic servant. At that time, labour unions weren’t racially integrated and, during the war, I worked as a clerk for the segregated boilermakers’ union.

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

The first known comet to visit us from another star system has an unusual make-up.

On Monday, officials in Los Angeles County released preliminary results of a study that suggest roughly 4.1% of the county's adult population has already had the coronavirus, which translates to between 221,000 and 442,000 people, factoring in adjustments for statistical margin of error.That's a much higher number than confirmed case counts indicate. (As of early Tuesday, the county had 13,816 cases.)"We haven't known the true extent of COVID-19 infections in our community because we have only tested people with symptoms and the availability of tests has been limited," Neeraj Sood, a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California and lead investigator on the study, said in a statement.Dr. Barbara Ferrer, LA County's public health director, said in a statement that the early results pointed to the possibility that many people may have been unknowingly infected.The study relies on rapid antibody tests, which have faced concerns about accuracy.And as The Mercury News reported, a Stanford study that also showed higher rates of infection in Santa Clara County drew criticism, although that was largely from statisticians over the study's methodology.Still, experts have emphasized that more studies will help develop a clearer picture of the virus's true prevalence.In any case, officials say it's crucial to continue to adhere to public health orders for many reasons, including that if more people are infected but asymptomatic, they could unknowingly spread the virus.______A change to the USNS Mercy's assignmentOn Monday, my New York Times colleague John Ismay and I spoke with leaders aboard the Navy hospital ship Mercy. Here's our dispatch about how their assignment has changed:In the weeks since the Mercy arrived at the Port of Los Angeles from San Diego, the hospital ship's mission has been clear: Serve as a crucial relief valve for patients who have not been infected with the coronavirus as hospitals fill up with patients sick with COVID-19.In recent days, the work has shifted, but that underlying goal has remained the same, the commanding officer of the ship's medical facility told us."FEMA, after having made an assessment of the situation and the local needs, has changed our assignment," said Capt. John Rotruck, the medical treatment team's commanding officer.The Mercy has sent 40 medical staff members -- two family practice doctors, 16 nurses and 20 corpsmen, including two respiratory technicians -- to help care for patients who do not have COVID-19 at a state-run skilled nursing facility in Orange County."We're essentially augmenting their staff," Rotruck said, as the anticipated surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations has, for now, been held at bay.The capacity onboard will decrease to 250 beds from 1,000, in large part as a result of that staffing shift -- although officials emphasized that leaves more than enough space at the rate the Mercy has been taking in patients.At the same time, leaders aboard the Mercy said that most of the military crew is moving off the ship to stay at nearby hotels to make it possible for crew members to keep their distance from one another as they work, eat and sleep.Sailors will be bused from their hotels to work their shifts aboard the ship.The move, which will decrease the number of crew members staying aboard the ship to roughly 140 from more than 800, came as the number of crew members who may have been exposed inched upward.By Monday, Rotruck said that nine crew members had tested positive for the coronavirus and that about 130 people were in quarantine because they had come into what federal officials define as close contact with at least one of those nine. All of those in quarantine tested negative.All nine who have COVID-19 were outpatients as of Monday -- meaning their cases were not severe enough to warrant being hospitalized -- and their conditions are being closely monitored.Rotruck said that moving crew members off the Mercy was unusual but not unprecedented.During a previous mission, for instance, some medical staff members flew to Vietnam to provide medical care to patients on the Mercy, although they did not sleep on the ship.However, Rotruck added, "We have not done it to this scale," with the vast majority of the ship's crew members living ashore.A spokesman said Friday that the crew aboard the Navy hospital ship Comfort, which is docked in New York City, recently moved most of its crew to hotels ashore as well.Rotruck said that the Mercy was ready to care for coronavirus-negative seniors living in nursing homes, as the governor has previously announced, but none had been transferred yet.Such nursing home patients may be moved to the Mercy for care through the typical intake process, if, for example, a facility needed to free up space to care for COVID-19 patients.As of Monday evening, the ship had taken in 65 patients total since it docked in San Pedro, and its crew had performed 22 surgeries. There were 13 patients still being treated onboard, meaning that 52 had been discharged.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

The impact on human health of an invasive ragweed plant may be "seriously underestimated".

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

Scientists map ancient underwater landslides in the region chosen for Jakarta's replacement.

The health of insect populations globally is far more varied than previous research suggested.

The space agency announces the companies that will work on landers to return astronauts to the Moon.

Native woodlands can resist the spread of invasive species if they block light reaching the ground.

BBC News looks at what we know and don't know about the Earth's changing climate.

Two Seattle-area space ventures — Tethers Unlimited and Rocket Propulsion Systems — are among 124 businesses receiving $750,000 Phase II grants from NASA's Small Business Innovation Research program. The two-year grants, announced today, support the further development of technologies that can benefit future space missions as well as life on Earth. All of the recipients, hailing from 31 states in all, received $125,000 Phase I grants during earlier rounds of funding. "We are encouraged by the ingenuity and creativity we’ve seen from these companies in their Phase I work," Jenn Gustetic, NASA's SBIR program executive said in a news release.… Read More

NASA has awarded the University of Washington a $499,864 grant to develop a competition that calls on students to turn a simulated lava tube into a habitat suitable for harboring humans on the moon or Mars. The exploration and habitation skills competition will be funded as part of NASA's Artemis Student Challenges program, which plays off the themes of the Artemis moon program to inspire the next generation of explorers and engineers. The competition will involve navigating a rover through a facsimile lava tube and surface structures, generating maps, identifying valuable resources and deploying an airtight barrier to seal the… Read More

Certain habitats can help dampen the spread of ash dieback, which threatens ash trees.

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

Letter seeks to dispel view that Prof Neil Ferguson was single architect of lockdown idea

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A group of leading UK scientists have insisted that the scientific basis for the coronavirus lockdown is the work of a large group of experts, and that epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson is just one voice among many.

In a letter co-ordinated by Dr Thibaut Jombart, an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, more than 25 prominent scientists said debates after Ferguson’s “individual error” – in which he flouted lockdown rules by receiving visits at home from his lover – had amplified a misconception that he alone persuaded the government to change policy.

Recent deaths have stood out, but scientists say they must be interpreted with caution

Amid the steady stream of stories on the lives lost to coronavirus are cases that stand out as remarkable. In the past month, at least two pairs of twins have died in Britain and two pairs of brothers, all within hours or days of each other. But do the deaths point to genetic factors that make some more likely than others to succumb to the disease?

Most scientists believe that genes play a role in how people respond to infections. A person’s genetic makeup may influence the receptors that the coronavirus uses to invade human cells. How resilient the person is to the infection, their general health, and how the immune system reacts will also have some genetic component.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford dropped by his cottage last month, days after asking the province’s residents to stay away from theirs. His office says Ford "drove alone" and was there for less than an hour to check on construction.

Alberta's police watchdog have released new details about an armed confrontation that left one person dead and a police officer seriously injured.