Minister ‘quite concerned’ about delay to finalising UK’s participation in €80bn Horizon Europe schemeA fresh Brexit row has been blown open with Brussels after David Frost accused the EU of being close to breaching the trade deal struck last Christmas.He said the UK was “getting quite concerned” about Brussels delaying ratification of the UK’s participation in the €80bn (£67bn)...

Dr Karen Postle says Tory MPs’ views on masks would be mildly amusing if it weren’t for the gravely serious consequences, while Susannah Kipling despairs that ‘virtue’ is being hijacked as a term of abuse. Plus letters from Emma Blashford-Snell, Mike Terry, Rosemary Gill and Christine GallagherAre Tory ministers vying with one another in a contest to portray the most libertarian, populist...

Australia’s Parkes Observatory detected an ET-like pattern that suggested something was out there. But it was just a case of mixed signalsGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingAstronomers searching for alien life thought they’d spotted signs of intelligence beyond the solar system – but the signals turned out to be human.Parkes Observatory’s Murriyang radio telescope...

Indris sound like ‘bagpipes being stepped on’ but their 1:2 beats are the first to be identified in non-human mammalsThey have fluffy ears, a penetrating stare and a penchant for monogamy. But it turns out that indris – a large, critically endangered species of lemur – have an even more fascinating trait: an unexpected sense of rhythm.Indri indri are known for their distinctive singing, a...

Does your internal monologue play out on a television, in an attic, as a bickering Italian couple – or is it entirely, blissfully silent? Claudia*, a sailor from Lichfield in her late 30s, is not Italian. She has never been to Italy. She has no Italian family or friends. And she has no idea why a belligerent Italian couple have taken over her inner voice, duking it out in Claudia’s brain while...

Discovery of foundations of ‘industrial scale’ medieval tannery at abbey has astonished expertsIt is Britain’s biggest and most famous monastic ruin and one that conjures up bucolic images of peace, reflection and very little noise apart, perhaps, from the occasional waft of Gregorian chanting.In reality, archaeologists have revealed, Fountains Abbey near Ripon was as busy, noisy and...

Seventh-largest constellation is most easily spotted by finding the square denoting the horse’s bodyWe began the month with a look at the constellation of Cassiopeia, the vain queen who inspired the wrath of Poseidon, so we will end it with a look at another constellation derived from that same myth: Pegasus, the winged horse.In the Greek myth, the hero Perseus rode Pegasus to the shoreline to...