Gladys Berejiklian expected to announce four-week extension as single bubbles, rapid testing and accelerated vaccination rollout considered. Follow all the day’s news 10.34pm BST Chris Minns: We have offered bipartisan support for the health advice over the last four weeks and we will do as well going forward. At the moment what New South Wales needs to hear is a united front from the political...

Team will search for evidence of extraterrestrial life by looking for advanced technology it may leave behindA team of scientists will embark on a new international research project led by Harvard University to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life by looking for advanced technology it may leave behind.The Galileo Project is led by Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb. Loeb co-founded the...

Male spending – on petrol and meat – is apparently worse for the environment than women’s. But it’s the system, not individuals, that needs to changeSorry, boys, but it’s all your fault. Melting ice caps, flash floods, rising sea levels: men are to blame for the lot of it. Please don’t drown the messenger, I’m just relaying the results of a Swedish study that found that men’s...

Scottish analysis finds that despite shielding, high-risk individuals were more at risk of catching virus and dyingCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coveragePeople advised to shield during the first wave of the pandemic were eight times more likely to get Covid-19 and five times as likely to die following infection than the general population, a study has indicated.Researchers...

NSW premier expected to announce Covid roadmap as Blacktown apartment block locked downFollow our Covid live blog for the latest updatesNSW restrictions; NSW hotspots; border restrictionsVaccine rollout tracker; get our free news app; get our morning email briefingThe New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has hinted at a prolonged lockdown in greater Sydney well into September as case...

In the lead-up to the athletics competitions at the Tokyo Olympic Games 2020, Shivani Dave takes look at how advances in running shoe technology are resulting in records being smashed. Talking to Geoff Burns, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan who specialises in biomechanics, Shivani asks how so-called ‘super spikes’ work and if the mechanical advantage they provide...