Science

Ericsson will supply equipment for BT’s 5G network in major UK cities, including London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff. The Swedish firm’s equipment is expected to manage around half of 5G traffic for BT and its main brand EE, with Nokia already having been announced as another partner in the project. BT’s chief technology and information

The Donald Trump campaign website has been hacked. The website’s “About” page was briefly replaced by a message which stated: “the world has had enough of the fake-news spreaded (sic) daily by president donald j trump.” It appeared to be an unsophisticated scam aimed at collecting cryptocurrency. There was no clue to the identity of

Vampire bats “socially distance” when they are sick, a new study suggests. Dozens of bats were captured from a hollow tree in Belize; some were injected with a substance that mimics the symptoms of a bacterial infection, while the other half got saline injections and were put in a control group. Researchers tagged them with

The new boss of the contact-tracing app has only taken the job for six months, Sky News has learned, raising concerns about the rapid turnover of executives at the top of the troubled Test and Trace programme. Gaby Appleton, a director of academic publishing company Elsevier, was revealed by Sky News last week as the

Facebook has launched its own dating feature to rival existing apps such as Tinder. Facebook Dating will appear on the social network’s mobile app and website for users in the UK and Europe from Wednesday. It will allow people to explore potential romantic relationships with users who are interested in the same groups and events

The key to making stronger buildings and planes could lie in the anatomy of a crush-resistant insect that can survive being run over by a car, scientists have found. To understand the secret behind the impressive strength of the inch-long diabolical ironclad beetle, researchers tested how much squishing it could take – and discovered it

Scientists have discovered a new organ in the throat while carrying out research on prostate cancer. Previously experts thought there were only microscopic salivary glands inside the nasopharynx region behind the nose. But researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute discovered a new set of salivary glands around 1.5in in length while scanning for prostate cancer

Sobriety tags that monitor criminals’ alcohol levels every 30 minutes are being rolled out in Wales from today. The ankle tags will be handed out to “alcohol-dependent” offenders as part of new abstinence orders that can ban them from drinking for four months. They monitor the person’s sweat and test it for the presence of

The question of why UK arrivals aren’t tested for coronavirus has been asked repeatedly in recent months, by airlines, unions, MPs and passengers themselves.  Despite being standard practice in many parts of the world, the government maintains that airport testing isn’t a suitable alternative to a 14-day isolation period for travellers from risky countries because it

Instagram is being investigated for a potential leak of children’s personal information by the Irish privacy watchdog, which is the EU’s lead authority on Facebook. The Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) is investigating whether Instagram‘s parent company Facebook has been illegally processing children’s data. “The DPC has been actively monitoring complaints received from individuals in this

A NASA spacecraft will this week attempt to descend on an asteroid and bring back a sample in a 10-second mission. The Osiris-Rex has been circling the Bennu asteroid for nearly two years – hundreds of millions of miles away from Earth. But on Tuesday it will try to collect a handful of dirt and

More than one coronavirus vaccine will be available in the first quarter of 2021, a government scientific adviser has told Sky News. Sir Jeremy Farrar, who sits on the SAGE committee, said: “I think in the first quarter of next year we will have vaccines – will have more than one vaccine.” It is unlikely

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is smaller and much closer to Earth than previously believed, according to astronomers from the Australian National University, who have given a new data for when it will explode. While it is normally one of the brightest stars in the sky, Betelgeuse appeared to be dimming in late 2019 –

The UK may have already “missed the boat” for a pre-planned lockdown, forcing the government to introduce emergency restrictions like the ones in March, a leading government scientific advisor has warned. Professor Graham Medley, who sits on the Scientific Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told journalists that a two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown could “buy time” to

A trio of astronauts have reached the International Space Station in just three hours by using a new fast-track manoeuvre. NASA’s Kate Rubins, alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchko, blasted off from the Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan early on Wednesday morning. The launch used a two-orbit, three hour approach for the first time.

Facebook is banning adverts that discourage people from having vaccinations, but posts from anti-vaxxers will still be allowed on the platform. Adverts that perpetuate false information about vaccinations, such as the discredited theory that they give people autism, are already banned by the platform, and the latest move will expand the ban to paid adverts