What’s needed after Covid-19 is a bigger, smarter state, with more devolved decisions, a greener economy and a stronger safety net

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The words are straining to come out. Boris Johnson hero worships Winston Churchill so it is obvious how the prime minister will pitch this week’s announcement of the plan to get Britain out of lockdown.

In late 1942, victory in the north African desert had suggested that the tide of the war might have turned but Churchill was cautious. “Now this is not the end,” he said in a speech at London’s Mansion House. “It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

It’s clear from a recent litany of disasters – from the coronavirus pandemic to America’s deadliest wildfire in a century – there are forces that cannot be domesticated

• Read an excerpt from the authors’ new book on the worst US wildfire in 100 years

About 12,000 years ago, human domestication of the natural world began in earnest with the intentional cultivation of wild plants and animals. Fast forward to today and our dominion over the planet appears complete, as 7.8 billion of us multiply across its surface and our reach extends from the deep-sea beds, which are being mined, to the heavens, where we are, according to Donald Trump, dispatching a space force.

Yet as has been made clear by a recent litany of disasters – from the coronavirus pandemic to America’s deadliest wildfire in a century – there are forces that cannot be domesticated. Indeed, our interference with the natural world is making them more liable to flare up into tragedy. We created the Anthropocene, and the Anthropocene is biting back.

The pandemic reminds me of a different invisible enemy. Once again, coordinated action is the only effective response

Deja vu. In recent days I’ve had that sense more than once. Every time I come home, remove my mask and wash my hands, I start thinking whether it is safe to keep on wearing the clothes that I had on outside. What if they are contaminated by the virus? Well, I can change clothes, but what if the particles have already jumped somewhere else, and are now in my home? Some would call it paranoia. I call it deja vu. I recognise those thoughts and remember the feelings.

That is because I first experienced them more than 30 years ago, in May 1986, on a trip to Kyiv, then the capital of Soviet Ukraine. It was a few weeks after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, and I was in the city – about 100km from the disaster area – on a business trip. We already knew that there was radiation in the air. Water trucks were spraying the streets, foreign students were leaving the city, and overseas broadcasters like the BBC were telling us to stay inside. But our own government was sending confusing and distressing messages: there is absolutely no danger, but make sure you keep children inside, and pregnant women too. Oh, and close your windows when you are at home.

Most Europeans support a universal basic income, yet young people doubt democracy’s capacity to deliver change

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The coronavirus crisis seems to be encouraging belief in radical change. An astonishing 71% of Europeans are now in favour of introducing a universal basic income, according to an opinion poll designed by my research team at Oxford university and published today. In Britain, the figure is 68%. Less encouraging, at least to anyone who believes in liberal democracy, is another startling finding in the survey: no less than 53% of young Europeans place more confidence in authoritarian states than in democracies to tackle the climate crisis. The poll was conducted by eupinions in March, as most of Europe was locking down against the virus, but the questions had been formulated earlier. It would be fascinating now to ask Europeans which political system they think has proved better at combating a pandemic, as the United States and China, the world’s leading democracy and the world’s leading dictatorship, spray viral accusations at each other.

Those two contrasting but equally striking survey results show how high the stakes will be as we emerge from the immediate medical emergency, and face the subsequent economic pandemic and its political fallout. What kind of historical moment will this turn out to be, for Europe and the world? It could lead us to the best of times. It could lead us to the worst of times.

Lockdown has allowed us a glimpse of how different our cities could be in a carbon-neutral world

• Read more stories from our wild cities week

“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

Never can John Wyndham’s opening lines from The Day of the Triffids have been quite so apt. My friends in London tell me that the heart of the city, like other great conurbations all around the world, is eerily quiet. It is almost as if a neutron bomb has struck, removing in an instant all signs of human life, while leaving buildings, roads and other man-made artefacts perfectly intact.

Social distancing rules will ‘kill cities’, experts warn – and the future of mass transit hangs in the balance

This is the second feature in our Life after lockdown series, which looks at how Covid-19 could change Australia for good

Before the pandemic struck, Sara Blazey made the same three-hour commute to work, three days a week, for the better part of 12 years. The 63-year-old family lawyer from the Blue Mountains works for a domestic violence legal advice hotline in Parramatta and it used to be that she would wake at 7am, drive seven minutes to Hazelbrook station and from there catch the 7.17am train to Parramatta before making the same one-and-a-half hour trip home in the evening.

With the pandemic, all that would change. Domestic violence support services such as the one Blazey worked for were declared “essential” services, meaning they could keep operating despite restrictions. To ensure they could do so safely, the organisation did what some commentators long thought impossible and began to transition its employees into working from home.

The Guardian investigates fire in the state of Pará - to reveal the loopholes that allow deforestation to be legitimised

We found the first fire without looking, crackling and roaring on farmland beside the busy Amazon highway, the flames consuming a road sign with its name – BR-163 – lying in the grass. Trucks thundered past, ferrying soya and corn from the agricultural heartlands of Brazil’s central-west to the ports of Santarém and Miritituba. Nobody was around.

Every year fires roar across the Amazon, and in just a few months they will be here again. But last August the number of blazes reached a nine-year high, and sparked an international crisis for Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Months later, their traces hung over the forests in the Amazon state of Pará, leaving blackened logs and charred tree stumps where there was once rainforest.

The 46-year-old actress is now revealing the agony she went through before receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) last August."Ever since my son was born, I was in an MS flare-up and didn't know, and I was giving it everything to seem normal," Blair told Robin Roberts in an interview that aired Tuesday on "Good Morning America." "And I was self-medicating when he wasn't with me. Blair recalled that she would get so fatigued prior to her diagnosis that she would need to pull over to take a nap after dropping her son, now 7, off at his school one mile away from their home. During her interview with "GMA" at her Los Angeles home, Blair was in an "exacerbation" of MS, or an attack that causes new symptoms or the worsening of existing symptoms.

Whatever effect warm weather has on the coronavirus, it won’t be enough to safely drop social restrictions.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that “I have not” read special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on Russian election...

Following the ousters of the Homeland Security secretary and Secret Service director, and the withdrawal of the would-be ICE director’s...

To public health specialists, it’s a disturbing trend that could lead to people ignoring government warnings.

The White House confirmed that both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have tested negative for coronavirus.

Millions more coronavirus tests will be needed to safely reopen the country, the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee said at a hearing Thursday.

The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation cited a lack of national coordination.

The speaker isn’t yet negotiating with Republicans or the White House on the next aid bill.

Using data from the COVID Tracking Project, we’re following how each state is responding to COVID-19.

“Returning these funds will allow truly small businesses ... to obtain the emergency loans they need to avoid layoffs," they write.

Countries scramble to fill the plates of the most vulnerable.

Join POLITICO for a series of virtual briefings and audio teleconferences to learn the latest updates on coronavirus and its impacts.

The California governor, who previously endorsed Sen. Kamala Harris, had yet to formally throw his support behind Biden.

HAIR loss treatment: The quest for magic cure to help halt the process of hair loss produces numerous searches and theories. Taking this essential mineral helps strengthen hair follicles which stimulate hair growth.

CORONAVIRUS can linger in the eyes for weeks and cause a host of problems especially for those who wear contact lenses. How can you protect your eyes during this difficult time and what are the symptoms to spot?

CORONAVIRUS has been raging in the UK for months now yet symptoms remain a mystery for many people. The NHS cites coughing as a main warning sign but how can you tell a regular cough from a COVID-19 one?

The state's African Americans face some of the country’s worst pollution — and some of its most severe COVID-19 outcomes. The two may well be linked.

We all want a conclusion to the COVID-19 saga. Will we get an end to the story of climate?

For this Colorado retirement community, living near a fracking site has been a nightmare. Now they can’t even leave.

Pipelines and pandemics are perils to Indigenous nations right now. Here’s how they plan to fight back.

After all, astral projection would definitely qualify as the lightest carbon footprint travel option.

Social distancing has made my world smaller. Maybe that's a good thing.

Two new reports argue that renewable energy and battery storage can make so-called peaker plants obsolete.

Even in the face of a global pandemic.

My kids are asking when the coronavirus will end. Here’s how I’m responding.

All good things must end, and although The CW’s cast for The 100 has survived several apocalypses in the course of the series, the seventh season is its last. The trailer for the 16-episode final season, which starts on Wed. May 20 at 8 PM ET/PT on The CW, has just been released. Upon completion […]

Roy Horn, who thrilled Las Vegas crowds as part of the big-cats-and-magic act Siegfried & Roy until a tiger attack ended his career in 2003, died today of coronavirus at Mountain View Hospital in Las Vegas. He was 75. Horn’s publicist said on April 28 that the magician had tested positive for COVID-19. “Today, the […]

Actor Nick Cordero’s wife, Amanda Kloots, has once again posted on her husband’s condition as he battles the COVID-19 virus. Cordero has had horrible complications since being hospitalized more than a month ago. His struggle has been memorialized by Kloots on Instagram, and she has again updated his health status. Kloots shared in an Instagram […]

UFC 249 has faced close scrutiny as the biggest sporting event to be held amid the coronavirus pandemic. Now UFC’s decision to proceed with the event raises further questions as one of the scheduled fighters, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, has been pulled from the card after testing positive for the virus, along with two members of […]

The Labor Party has walked out of the NSW Legislative Assembly after Opposition Leader Jody McKay is thrown out by the Speaker.

MORNING BRIEFING: The first non-stop commercial flight between New York and Sydney will depart shortly, and a man is charged over an alleged $170,000 diamond fraud committed in 2002.

Tim Cahill may be Australia's all-time leading goal scorer, but the Socceroos legend has been inspired by a young player who was also told he won't make a top-ranked team because of his size.

A Sydney jury is unable to reach a unanimous or majority verdict in the case of a Kulwinder Singh, who pleaded not guilty to setting his wife Parwinder Kaur on fire in 2013. She later died in hospital.

After 17 races, it became clear this $180,000 thoroughbred wasn't going to cut it on the track this is how Absolutely Win ended up at a Queensland slaughterhouse.

First Nations cabaret Natives Go Wild peels back the PT Barnum legend to reveal the Indigenous stories and talent behind the spectacle.

The NSW Government has revealed the exact locations of seven new stations on Sydney's Metro West line from the CBD to the western suburbs, which is due to open by 2030.