The UK must tread carefully. While some countries seem to be emerging from the shadows, no one is safe when Covid spreads so freelyThe pandemic has transformed the lives of billions around the globe, but beyond that common experience, it has highlighted and deepened divides rather than closed them. On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund warned that inequality both within and between countries...

Social worker, 56, treated at Mt Sinai hospital in New YorkSome patients left with serious damage from ventilatorsSurgeons in New York City have performed the first windpipe transplant in the US, giving a woman who suffered severe asthma a new trachea, the tube that transports air from the mouth to the lungs.Doctors say such operations could help Covid-19 patients left with serious windpipe damage...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsWhat are thoughts? Where do they come from, and where do they go when they disappear? Are they “filed” somewhere, a bit like memories, where we can find them again, or once a thought has gone is that it? Sue Christian,...

Latest updates: Labour scepticism over Covid-status certificates intensifies, meaning government may lose vote in Commons on issueKeir Starmer likely to oppose Covid status certificates if put to voteWhat are Covid-status certificates and how might they work?Boris Johnson confirms easing of England lockdown next week Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage 10.23am BST Last...

I thought this crisis had shown who the key workers of the UK were. So why are things now getting worse for us?Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden is president of the Doctors’ Association UK and a senior registrar in intensive care medicine.It’s 4am and resus looks like a bomb has hit it. We have had to open almost every piece of kit available to keep the patient in front of us alive. Wearily, I register...

Australian Antarctic Division says 109 people on board were uninjured, but the incident was ‘potentially traumatic’ for someAn engine room fire that destroyed two vessels on board Australia’s Antarctic resupply ship has left expeditioners shaken as they begin their journey home.The vessel, the MPV Everest, was in the middle of the Southern Ocean, four days into a two-week journey, when the...

The UK’s young have become the pigeons of the public realm, only remarked upon when they leave litter in the parkHouse prices were having a mini-boom by last July, buoyed up by what felt like the windfall of a stamp duty holiday and the pent-up demand of the first lockdown. By the autumn, prices were still climbing, but not to worry, said the experts: they’ll crash again when people start to...

Researchers at the University of the Philippines Los Baños aim to catch thousands of bats to develop a Japanese-funded simulation model over the next three years that they believe could help avert potential pandemics. They hope the bats will help in predicting the dynamics of a coronavirus outbreak by analysing factors such as climate, temperature and ease of spread Continue...

In the run-up to Christmas, the government dithered and made last-minute rule changes that left many people baffled. A surge in coronavirus cases soon followedAll through the spring of 2020, and into the summer, Michelle Mcallister carefully shielded her husband, James Mcallister. Michelle, 39, who lives in the Wednesfield area of Wolverhampton, was a full-time carer to James, 52. A former used...

Highest proportion of participants since 2013 saw 30 or more stars in Orion constellationThe number of stars visible in the skies above Britain increased in this year’s annual count, indicating a lessening of light pollution in lockdown.CPRE, the countryside charity, said 51% of people taking part in its citizen science count in February noted 10 or fewer stars in the Orion constellation,...

New variants of concern have changed the game, spreading worldwide and threatening to derail pandemic control effortsAt the end of 2020, there was a strong hope that high levels of vaccination would see humanity finally gain the upper hand over Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. In an ideal scenario, the virus would then be contained at very low levels without further societal disruption...

Recently, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) assessed the African elephant as two separate species – the forest elephant and savannah elephant. The move has increased these animals’ ‘red list’ categorisation to endangered for savannah elephants and critically endangered for forest elephants. In an Age of Extinction extra for Science Weekly, Patrick Greenfield...