Legal claim launched to help fund Covid-19 response in South American countryCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageVenezuela’s central bank has made a legal claim to try to force the Bank of England to hand over £930m ($1.13bn) of gold so the government of Nicolás Maduro can fund its coronavirus response, according to the document submitted in a London court.The claim...

As the spats continue, the Commons science and technology committee paints a more nuanced picture of what went wrongCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage Advisers advise, as the old saying goes, but politicians decide. What it doesn’t add but should is that when those decisions go wrong, both sides are monumentally tempted to blame the other.And so it has proved with...

The president has announced he is taking hydroxychloroquine to fight coronavirus. Perhaps he has also been injecting bleach in front of Fox NewsHow is Donald Trump still alive? Seriously, it defies science. The man reportedly drinks 12 Diet Cokes a day, appears to exist purely on Big Macs and doesn’t do any exercise because he thinks the human body is like a battery and working out depletes it....

£35m contract includes drug being taken by Trump which may cause heart problemsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageHydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug being taken by Donald Trump to try to prevent catching coronavirus, is being bought by the UK government as part of a £35m contract put out to tender on Friday.Ministers are seeking 16m tablets of the anti-malarial...

We were second in the world for preparedness. Then Boris Johnson et al deliberately de-prepared usCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage We are trapped in a long, dark tunnel, all of whose known exits are blocked. There is no plausible route out of the UK’s coronavirus crisis that does not involve mass suffering and death. If, as some newspapers and Conservative MPs...

US president claimed WHO too willing to accept Chinese explanations over coronavirus outbreakCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageMember states have backed a resolution strongly supportive of the World Health Organization, after Donald Trump issued a fresh broadside against the UN body, giving it 30 days to make unspecified reforms or lose out on US funding.A resolution...

Public Health England must give scientific reasoning, MPs say in letter to Boris JohnsonCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe failure to explain why the government took the significant and consequential decision to drop community testing at the start of the coronavirus outbreak is unacceptable, MPs have said in a damning letter to Boris Johnson.The science and...

Outbreaks don’t follow a straightforward pattern. To minimise risk, we must limit mass gatherings and deploy proper testingCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageAs the UK begins to ease lockdown restrictions, attention has turned to the prospect of a second wave of coronavirus cases. In Germany, where shops and restaurants have tentatively reopened, the reproduction...

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported in each of England’s local authoritiesCoronavirus - live news updatesFind all our coronavirus coverage hereHow to protect yourself from infectionPlease note: these are government figures on numbers of confirmed cases - some people who report symptoms...

Maybe it was because she was a healthcare worker and a mother whose family could not be there when she diedCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageWhy was she so special to me? Despite having done this job for a few years, sometimes it is impossible to predict which patients will be the ones you take home with you, the ones you think about as you cry yourself to sleep.Maybe...

Newly released footage captures the last known moving images of the evasive thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). Shot in 1935, the footage has been released to the public after it was digitally restored by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Unseen for 85 years, the 21 seconds come from a 1935 travelogue, Tasmania the Wonderland, believed to be shot by Sidney Cook. The vision captures...

Ian Sample talks to Prof Kate Jones about whether the current coronavirus pandemic is part of a wider picture of increasing animal-to-human virus transmission. Are we are looking at a future where outbreaks of new infectious diseases become more common? Continue...

We now know people and megafauna overlapped by up to 20,000 years, until changes to vegetation, water and fire When people first arrived in what is now Queensland, they would have found the land inhabited by massive animals including goannas six metres long and kangaroos twice as tall as a human.We have studied fossil bones of these animals for the past decade. Our findings, published in Nature...