Care minister’s request is admission that centralised programmes have fallen short

Ministers have asked local directors of public health to take charge of Covid-19 testing in English care homes in what will be seen as a tacit admission that centralised attempts to run the programme have fallen short.

In a letter to sector leaders, seen by the Guardian, the care minister, Helen Whately, acknowledged that testing of care home residents and staff needs to be “more joined up”. She describes the new arrangements as “a significant change”.

• Follow a classic Merseyside derby at Wembley, as it happened
• Everton v Liverpool at Wembley – in pictures
• Email Scott with your thoughts here

3.48pm BST

Half-time advertising break.

3.46pm BST

And that’s the end of the first 45. Plenty of thinking to do for Kenny Dalglish, Bob Paisley and the rest of the Liverpool management team. Everton took a while to get going, but they eventually assumed control and have been much the better team since. Peter Reid, Kevin Ratcliffe and Gary Lineker have been the standout turns. They deserve their lead. Unless there’s a seismic shift in momentum, Everton will be drinking from the cup of redemption in about one hour’s time!

Horn was famed for introducing a pet cheetah to the magic show and was mauled on stage by a tiger in 2003

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy, the duo whose extraordinary magic tricks astonished millions until Horn was critically injured in 2003 by one of the act’s famed white tigers, has died from coronavirus complications. He was 75.

Horn died of on Friday in a Las Vegas hospital, according to a statement released by his publicist Dave Kirvin.

• GoFundMe page for Navajo and Hopi aid lists many Irish names
• Choctaw Nation sent donation in 1847 for potato famine victims

The list of recent donors reads like an Irish phone book. Aisling Ní Chuimín, Shane Ó Leary, Sean Gibbons, Kevin Boyle, Kevin Keane, Clare Quinn, Eamonn McDonald, on and on down a GoFundMe page that by Friday had raised $3.15m of a $5m goal.

The individual amounts are not remarkable – $10, $20, $30, some exceeding $100 – but the story behind the donations stretches back two centuries and encompasses a singular act of generosity that forged a bond between Native Americans and Ireland, a bond now renewed in the coronavirus era.

Country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko boasts of holding only parade in former Soviet Union

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Thousands of people, including elderly veterans of the second world war, turned out for Belarus’s Victory Day military parade despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Images from the parade showed crowds packed on to parade bleachers as the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, boasted of holding the only parade in the former Soviet Union to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Inaccuracies in the testing, such as false negatives and false positives, are potentially harmful

Mike Pence’s press secretary tests positive to coronavirus; China reports one new case; Russia reports 10,000 new cases for sixth day in a row

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Donald Trump has said coronavirus will “go away without a vaccine” and is expecting 95,000 or more deaths in the US, as Mike Pence’s press secretary tested positive for coronavirus.

The president’s comments, at an event with Republican lawmakers, capped a horror week in the US, in which it was revealed unemployment had risen to 14.7%, up from 3.5% in February, with 20 million people losing their jobs in April.

The hunt for an effective treatment for COVID-19 has led one team of researchers to find an improbable ally for their work: According to US and Belgian scientists, a four-year-old llama named Winter who lives in a secret location in Belgium could hold the key to a cure and help scientists find a treatment for COVID-19. The team — from The University of Texas at Austin, the National Institutes of Health and Ghent University in Belgium — reports their findings of a potential avenue for a coronavirus treatment involving llamas on May 5 in the journal Cell.

It is hard to remember that a lot of high tech research went on well before the arrival of electronic computers, lasers, and all the other things that used to be amazing but are now commonplace. That’s why we enjoyed [Michel van Biezen’s] two part post on how Michelson computed …read more

Convention considers online replacement of September event

Online event still takes place on same September 2-4 schedule as previously planned physical event

12-episode series previously set to premiere this fall

Taking deep breaths and forcing a cough can help clear mucus, but these techniques are unlikely to prevent or treat coronavirus infections – here’s why

People from an ethnic minority are disproportionately affected by covid-19. Researchers say the reasons are rooted in existing social and healthcare inequalities

A long-standing hypothesis suggests the BCG vaccine also serves to generally enhance the immune system, meaning it could protect against covid-19, and trials are under way to find out

A bunch of asteroids near Jupiter and Neptune with orbits perpendicular to the plane of the solar system may have come here from a different star system

Covid-19 contact tracers are part healthcare worker, part detective and part call centre operative. But what is the job really like? New Scientist spoke to one in Ireland to find out

Looking at how many more people are dying than usual gives an idea of the coronavirus pandemic’s true effect – and suggests a far higher death toll in many countries

A number of studies have found a link between air pollution and increased covid-19 deaths, but it isn't clear why. Both attack the lungs, but it could just be that more people live in polluted areas

The UK government has refused to say how many covid-19 contact tracers it has employed, with less than three weeks to go until its target of recruiting 18,000 of them by mid-May

Healthcare systems need to prepare for the extensive physiotherapy and mental rehabilitation that people put on ventilators for covid-19 will need as they recover

Once the coronavirus pandemic is over, we must work out how to stop the spread of poor information that has helped make a bad situation that much worse

Many countries are focusing coronavirus testing on people who have covid-19 symptoms. But regularly testing all essential workers would have more of an impact

Amid the global coronavirus outbreak, a second epidemic of preliminary, unverified and misinterpreted research has broken out. Can it be fixed?

The latest coronavirus news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news, features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information about the covid-19 pandemic

New Zealand is on track to eliminate covid-19 altogether, but keeping the virus out for good will be a challenge, and the economic impacts are likely to hurt

Имперский колледж Лондона опубликовал фотоэссе о том, как исследователи из департамента инфекционных болезней разрабатывают вакцину от COVID-19. Вот самые важные факты: Ученые разработали вакцину-кандидата за 14 дней после того, как получили расшифрованный геном вируса из Китая. Самоамплифицирующаяся РНК-вакцина, по сути, вводит новый генетический код в организм, подсказывая ему, как создать белок, который вызывает защитный иммунный […]

Using DNA to track down 67-year-old James E. Zastawnik, police made an arrest in the 1987 murder of an Ohio girl.

"It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on (Reade), and that she is still sensitive and effected (sic) by it today," Dronen wrote.

Against her will, Sita Tyasutami became "case one", the face of Indonesia's coronavirus outbreak.

Experts tell the BBC that euphoria over success models runs the risk of people becoming complacent.

Women post selfies demanding more representation in official bodies dealing with Covid-19.

Face masks, fresh air and porridge - how people tried to curb a deadly flu pandemic in 1918.

An investigation details how extremists are trying to exploit the pandemic via the social network.

Social media users have adopted the troupe as a dark-humoured symbol of death in the time of Covid-19.

In a joint investigation BBC Click investigates the groups behind fake news about the pandemic.

Two weeks after liberation, 95 London medical students arrived at Belsen to help care for survivors.

An investigation by BBC News Arabic has found how one Iranian airline contributed to the spread of coronavirus around the Middle East.

Park rangers in Africa say the closure of safari tourism is leading to an increase in poaching.

FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup 2019: clash of styles with keepers playing prominent role