Health and social secretary’s decision to grant contracts to UK firm Abingdon Health was the subject of litigationA legal challenge to the government’s award of multimillion-pound contracts for lateral flow tests that later failed to gain regulatory approval has been rejected by the high court.The health and social secretary’s decision to grant three contracts to UK firm Abingdon Health was...

Duvalius djokovici named after tennis champion for qualities including speed and strength, says researcherSerbian scientists have named a new species of beetle after the tennis player Novak Djokovic, Serbian media has reported.The insect, which belongs to the Duvalius genus of ground beetles that are present in Europe, was discovered several years ago in an underground pit in western Serbia....

Research into dopamine-producing cells and rogue proteins among efforts to find far-reaching treatmentIt was while watching University Challenge that the doctor first suspected something wrong with Jeremy Paxman. Normally highly animated, the TV presenter was less effusive and exuberant than usual. He had acquired what specialists in the field call the “Parkinson’s mask”.Paxman was formally...

Mensun Bound, who found Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, says question of raising wreck is a ‘hot potato’Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, Endurance, will “decay out of existence” on the Antarctic seabed unless it is raised and preserved, the archaeologist who discovered the wreck has said.Mensun Bound, who found the vessel in March, said the question of whether it should be hauled out of...