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Police warn Bank Holiday drivers after 142 per cent surge in 'extreme' speeding during lockdown




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Have the five key tests for easing lockdown been met? One expert gives his view




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Mundane acts of lockdown life celebrated in photography exhibition to support NHS workers

The mundanity of coronavirus lockdown life is being celebrated in a photography exhibition to raise money for frontline workers.




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Extraordinary projections for UK economy 'both worse and better than feared'

Today's extraordinary projections of the course of the economy over the rest of the year from the Bank of England are, bizarrely, both worse and better than might be feared.




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Drug dealers posing as joggers and key workers to avoid detection during Covid-19 lockdown, expert says

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




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Joe Exotic's Oklahoma zoo officially reopens to the public under the name of Tiger King Park

The animal park behind Netflix hit Tiger King has official reopened its doors for business after closing due to the coronavirus outbreak.




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Lockdown extended in Scotland as Nicola Sturgeon warns easing restrictions could be 'potentially catastrophic'

Nicola Sturgeon has extended the coronavirus lockdown in Scotland by three weeks, insisting that any easing of restrictions could be "very risky".




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Extinction Rebellion activists spray Barclays HQ with 'fake oil' in middle of lockdown

Extinction Rebellion activists have sprayed fake oil over the Barclays head office in an apparent breach of lockdown rules.




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Coronavirus 'not beaten yet' but UK can think about next phase of lockdown, Dominic Raab says

The UK is past the peak of the coronavirus outbreak but the country is still at a "dangerous" stage of the pandemic, Dominic Raab has said.




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400,000 people in the UK could have coronavirus with 20,000 falling ill every day, say experts

Around 400,000 people in the UK could currently have coronavirus, according to a new official study, while experts say 20,000 more could be infected with the virus every day.




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Wales eases lockdown by reopening garden centres and libraries and relaxing exercise rules

Wales has taken the first step to easing lockdown by relaxing exercise rules and reopening some libraries, tips and garden centres.




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Brits should expect 'limited changes' to lockdown next week, says minister

British people should not expect major new freedoms on Monday, with "limited changes" expected to the coronavirus lockdown, a minister has said.




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Plans to ramp up rail services to start next Monday, claims Union

Plans to ramp up rail services have been brought forward by a week and will start from next Monday, a union is claiming.




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Brexit trade timeline 'virtually impossible', says Deputy Irish Premier

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




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Next steps of UK lockdown 'to include face masks at work, more cycle lanes and visitor quarantine'

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






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Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender?

We're used to thinking of DNA as a rigid blueprint. Karissa Sanbonmatsu researches how our environment affects the way DNA expresses itself—especially when it comes to sex and gender.







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SpaceX has fired Starship’s Raptor engine, and the vehicle still stands

The Raptor rocket engine burned for about 4 seconds.




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Co-mingling with COVID? Harvard expert weighs in on safe reopening options

Dr. Joseph Allen studies where building design meets health—he took our questions for 30min.




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Swarm Technologies chooses Momentus and SpaceX to launch constellation of tiny satellites

Swarm Technologies has struck an agreement with California-based Momentus for the launch of a dozen telecommunication satellites, each the size of a slice of bread, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December. The December rideshare mission is the first of a series that Momentum plans to execute for Swarm, continuing into 2021 and 2022. Swarm plans to have 150 satellites launched over the next couple of years for a communication network in low Earth orbit. The first 12 SpaceBee satellites covered by the agreement announced today will be deployed into orbit from the Falcon 9. The inch-thick satellites fit… Read More





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AI in Africa: Teaching a bot to read my mum's texts

How African researchers are using the continent's languages to help spur innovation in Artificial Intelligence.





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NASA puts Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX on the list for lunar lander development program

NASA has selected teams led by Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX to develop lunar landing systems capable of putting astronauts on the moon by as early as 2024. "We want to be able to go to the moon, but we want to be a customer," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters today during a teleconference. "We want to drive down the costs, we want to increase the access, we want to have our partners have customers that are not just us, so they compete on cost and innovation, and just bring capabilities that we've never had before." Fixed-price contracts totaling… Read More





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Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo makes its first gliding test flight over New Mexico

For the first time, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane flew free in the skies over New Mexico's Spaceport America, its new base of operations. The SpaceShipTwo plane, known as VSS Unity, has made rocket-powered flights beyond the 50-mile space milestone during tests at California's Mojave Air and Space Port, but today's unpowered test flight was the first to be flown from Spaceport America. "Today's VSS Unity flight is another exciting milestone for Virgin Galactic's progress in New Mexico," Dan Hicks, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, said in a news release. "We are extremely happy and proud of… Read More





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NASA and SpaceX get set to make history with landmark spaceflight during pandemic

Everything is in readiness for the first mission to send humans into orbit from U.S. soil since NASA retired the space shuttle fleet in 2011 – from the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that will take two astronauts to the International Space Station, to the parachutes that will bring them back down gently to an Atlantic Ocean splashdown, to the masks that NASA's ground team will wear in Mission Control. The fact that the launch is coming in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic has added a weird and somewhat wistful twist to the history-making event. "That certainly is disappointing," NASA… Read More





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NASA confirms it’s working with Tom Cruise (and SpaceX?) to make a movie on space station

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has confirmed in a tweet that the space agency is working with movie star Tom Cruise on a project that involves shooting a film on the International Space Station. Deadline Hollywood reported on Monday that a space movie project involving NASA and SpaceX is in the works, but that "no studio is in the mix at this stage." Bridenstine followed up with a tweet saying that NASA was "excited" to be working with Cruise, and explaining that "we need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make NASA's ambitious plans a… Read More





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Climate change: More than 3bn could live in extreme heat by 2070

Areas such as India, Australia and Africa are predicted to be among the worst affected.





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Scientists explain magnetic pole's wanderings

The North Magnetic Pole has been racing across the top of the world, from Canada towards Siberia.





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Lethbridge stormtrooper takedown now to be investigated by external police force

Lethbridge police are being investigated by an outside force after handcuffing a woman in a stormtrooper costume outside a Star Wars-themed business earlier this week. But still the force faces accusations that not enough is being done to investigate what happened.



  • News/Canada/Calgary

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COVID-19 expected to peak in world's poorest countries soon, UN says

The United Nations said a "smart strategy" is to contain coronavirus in the world's most vulnerable countries to stem a "further phase of the pandemic."





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Amid pandemic, Pompeo to visit Israel for annexation talks

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Israel next week for a brief visit amid the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, a trip that’s expected to focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to annex portions of the West Bank, the State Department said Friday. Pompeo will make the lightning trip to Jerusalem to see Netanyahu and his new coalition partner Benny Gantz on Wednesday as the Trump administration tries to return to business as normal by resuming governmental travel and reopening an economy devastated by the COVID-19 outbreak.





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Exclusive: Iran-linked hackers recently targeted coronavirus drugmaker Gilead - sources

Hackers linked to Iran have targeted staff at U.S. drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc in recent weeks, according to publicly-available web archives reviewed by Reuters and three cybersecurity researchers, as the company races to deploy a treatment for the COVID-19 virus. In one case, a fake email login page designed to steal passwords was sent in April to a top Gilead executive involved in legal and corporate affairs, according to an archived version on a website used to scan for malicious web addresses. Ohad Zaidenberg, lead intelligence researcher at Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky, who closely tracks Iranian hacking activity and has investigated the attacks, said the attempt was part of an effort by an Iranian group to compromise email accounts of staff at the company using messages that impersonated journalists.





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Police drop investigation into Brexit campaigners accused of breaching spending rules

Police have dropped an investigation into two prominent Brexit campaigners accused of breaching spending rules during the referendum campaign. In 2018 the Electoral commission said that Alan Halsall, of Vote Leave, and Darren Grimes, founder of pro-Brexit youth group BeLeave, failed to declare a payment related to the campaign. The watchdog said that BeLeave "spent more than £675,000 with (Canadian data firm) Aggregate IQ under a common plan with Vote Leave". This spending took Vote Leave over its £7 million legal spending limit by almost £500,000. Vote Leave paid a £61,000 fine, but denied wrongdoing, while Mr Grimes won an appeal against his £20,000 fine in July. The Commission also referred the pair to the Metropolitan Police but on Friday it was revealed that the investigations had now been dropped. A spokesman for the Leave campaigners said: "The Metropolitan Police has written to Vote Leave board member Alan Halsall and BeLeave founder Darren Grimes to confirm that it will not be acting on allegations made against them by the Electoral Commission and various Remain campaigners. "This marks the end of a two-year ordeal for both individuals." Mr Grimes, 26, said the development called into question whether the Electoral Commission was "fit for purpose". He had insisted since the allegations were first made that he was "completely innocent" of making false declarations in relation to the £680,000 donation. In a statement, Mr Grimes, a former fashion student originally from County Durham, said: "The Metropolitan Police has found, after investigation and consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, that there is no case to be answered. "Once again the Electoral Commission has been found to be part of the mob, a quango out of control that isn't policing elections so much as punishing Leavers who have the temerity to win them. "My ordeal at the hands of the kangaroo court that is the Electoral Commission is now over, but questions must now be asked of whether that body is fit for purpose." Mr Halsall, the responsible person for Vote Leave, said he was "delighted to have been exonerated" and thanked the police for their "professional" investigation. "I was very disappointed that my colleagues at Vote Leave and myself were never given the opportunity of making our case in person to the Electoral Commission before being fined and reported to the police," he added. "It seems a rather unusual way of conducting an inquiry into such matters that only the so-called whistleblowers who made these allegations are interviewed by the regulator." A spokesman for the Met said an investigation into the Electoral Commission's allegations against Vote Leave and BeLeave, submitted on July 17 2018, was handed over in October to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). "On Tuesday, March 3 preliminary advice was received from the CPS," said the force spokesman. "This advice has now been duly considered and no further action will be taken."





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AP Exclusive: Docs show top WH officials buried CDC report

The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation’s top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government emails obtained by The Associated Press. The files also show that after the AP reported Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval. It included detailed “decision trees,” or flow charts aimed at helping local leaders navigate the difficult decision of whether to reopen or remain closed.





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Germany sees increased risk of hard Brexit if Britain refuses to extend deadline




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Hard Brexit more likely because of coronavirus and lack of progress in talks, says German foreign minister

A hard Brexit is more likely due to the coronavirus crisis because Britain and the European Union have made so little progress in talks, Germany's foreign minister has said. Heiko Maas said that negotiations between Britain and the EU so far on the future trade relationship had yielded few gains with the UK disregarding the political declaration, which he said was "simply not on". Britain left the EU in January, and talks with the bloc are now focused on setting new trading terms from 2021, when London's status-quo transition period ends. However, the talks quickly hit an impasse when negotiations resumed last month, according to diplomats and officials. "It's worrying that Britain is moving further away from our jointly agreed political declaration on key issues in the negotiations," Mr Maas told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. "It's simply not on, because the negotiations are a complete package as it's laid out in the political declaration." Mr Maas said there was currently neither common ground on how to shape a comprehensive trade deal or on whether to extend the negotiation period beyond the end of the year. "The British government is still refusing to extend the deadline," Mr Maas said. "If it stays that way, we will have to deal with Brexit in addition to the coronavirus at the turn of the year." Simon Coveney, Ireland's foreign minister, said on Friday that the coronavirus pandemic had made an already difficult timeline for a British-European Union trade deal "virtually impossible" and that it would make sense to seek more time.





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Egypt’s president expands powers, citing virus outbreak

Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has approved amendments to the country's state of emergency that grant him and security agencies additional powers, which the government says are needed to combat the coronavirus outbreak. An international rights group condemned the amendments, saying the government has used the global pandemic to “expand, not reform, Egypt’s abusive Emergency Law.” The new amendments allow the president to to take measures to contain the virus, such as suspending classes at schools and universities and quarantining those returning from abroad.






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Frontier, amid bankruptcy, is suspected of lying about broadband expansion

Small ISPs want investigation as Frontier tries to block FCC funding for rivals.





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Temperature screening not always reliable to mitigate coronavirus risk, experts say

Canada's chief public health officer Theresa Tam was quick to shut down the approach during the daily ministerial update on Monday.




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South Korea experts say ‘reinfected’ coronavirus cases appear to be false positives

In some cases, the tests may detect old particles of the virus, which may no longer pose a significant threat to the patient or others, scientists say.





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Coronavirus: Summer heat cannot be expected to slow spread of outbreak, report finds

Received wisdom doesn't hold up in pandemics, experts say




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'A bad time to be alive': Mass extinction 444 million years ago linked to loss of oxygen in Earth's oceans

'By expanding our thinking of how oceans behaved in the past, we could gain some insights into oceans today,' says scientist at Stanford University




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Exercise may directly protect against liver cancer, study suggests

Experiment in mice indicates exercise provides high level of protection from cancer, even among those with diabetes and obesity




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Coronavirus: Oxford University to begin human trials of Covid-19 vaccine next week

More than 500 people enrol to test jab following trials in animals