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Shares in Tesla have risen after the electric car maker reported its fifth consecutive quarterly profit.
The California-headquartered company has overcome disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to post a 39.2% increase in third-quarter revenues to $8.77bn (£6.68bn) from a year ago.

Tesla said it was on track to deliver half a million vehicles in 2020, but has admitted that the goal had “become more difficult” because of the impact of coronavirus.

Image: Tesla shares in 2020
The Nasdaq-listed firm reported a 215% jump in pre-tax profit of $555m from the same period last year.
Earlier this month, Tesla said it produced a record 145,036 vehicles in the third quarter and delivered 139,300 vehicles.

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The company said it can achieve its targets by ramping up production of its mid-size seven seater Model Y – as well as its four-seater sedan Model 3 – at its Shanghai factory.

Tesla has defied the downward trend of the wider auto industry this calendar year with a 44% increase in global deliveries for the quarter.

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The company bucked an economic upheaval, even as US auto sales overall fell 9.7% from a year ago due to consumer fears about the economy hit hard by the pandemic.
Tesla also overtook Toyota to become the world’s most valuable car company, despite the Japanese company manufacturing and producing more vehicles.
And its fifth consecutive quarterly profit puts it on track to report its only annual profit since its founding in 2003.
Tesla’s stock has been one of the market’s best performers this year, up nearly 400% year-to-date.

Image: Tesla chief executive Elon Musk
Despite the meteoric rally, Tesla, although eligible, was excluded from being listed in the prestigious S&P 500 stock index.
Questions have been raised about the way Telsa achieves profitability, as a major portion of it comes from selling regulatory credits to other carmakers.
Tesla earns regulatory credits from governments around the world for manufacturing zero-emissions vehicles and sells these to other car manufacturers that produce vehicles that run on petrol and diesel. Telsa reported that $397m of its revenues were derived in this manner for the third quarter.
Its share price had been on a downward trajectory since chief executive Elon Musk presented the company’s new battery technologies and manufacturing strategies at the company’s battery day event.
The outlook from carmaker’s senior executives at the event was cautious – explaining that the new developments wouldn’t be ready for a number of years.
Rival General Motors has also announced the launch of its battery-powered Hummer pickup truck that it plans to begin selling in about 12 months.
The Hummer EV is expected to go 350 miles or more on a full charge – in line with Tesla’s top models.

The sharp rise in coronavirus cases is stretching the capacity of the Test and Trace service, forcing untrained staff to take on contact-tracing jobs, according to a leaked internal email seen by Sky News..
The measures taken to strengthen the service have raised disquiet inside Test and Trace, as staff from outsourcing firms will now take on jobs previously performed only by medically-trained contact tracers.

The email, which was sent to contact tracers last night, says that the jump in cases has created “a surge in demand”, producing “an immediate challenge to the capacity of the Test and Trace service.”

Image: Sitel are one of the companies involved in the system
In response, the email says, staff employed by outsourcing firms Serco and Sitel will begin identifying contacts and taking their contact details – work previously handled by clinically-qualified contact tracers.
The email says that “experienced agents from Serco and Sitel” will make this move “from tomorrow”. Sky News understands that this refers to Level 3 contact tracers, some of whom have been working on Test and Trace since it was launched in May.

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Under the categorisation system employed by Test and Trace, clinically-trained Level 2 staff identify the contacts of people who test positive and obtain their contact details, which are then passed to call centre staff in Level 3, who phone to let people know they need to isolate.

It is unclear whether the move is permanent, although the email says that NHS Professionals, which supplies temporary staff to the NHS, is “currently working hard to increase capacity”.

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The change has caused disquiet among contact tracers, who say that job specifications for Level 2 roles clearly state that medical qualifications are required.
A job advert posted in May by NHS Professionals as part of the “Join the Virtual Frontline” campaign says that “the skills and experience required for this position are at a Clinician Band 6 level” – a level obtained by pharmacists, dentists, vets, doctors and most nurses.

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Is the NHS contact tracing app working?

Public health experts have questioned the move, which comes into effect immediately.
“Contact tracing is something that requires a high level of skill. Given the poor performance of the national scheme so far, it will be important to monitor the impact of this change closely,” said Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“Asking call centre staff to take on roles meant for clinically-trained people is risky and likely to make performance of Test and Trace worse,” said Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London.
“The whole situation shows that at current levels of new cases per day, any contact tracing system is likely to struggle and highlights the necessity of reducing case numbers quickly through a short circuit break.”

Which tier is my area – and what are the rules of the three-tier lockdown?

The campaign recruited 3,000 clinically-trained contact tracers and 18,000 call centre staff, who were hired through outsourcing firms Serco and Sitel. Yet after stories emerged of contact tracers being paid to do nothing, 6,000 jobs were cut from the service in August.
Serco and Sitel have been heavily criticised for their role in the struggling service, which is currently only reaching 62% of contacts of positive cases, according to the latest official figures.
Serco CEO Rupert Soames recently defended his firm’s record, saying on Twitter: “Of the people Serco are tasked to phone, for whom we are given correct contact details… we reach over 90%.”
Mr Soames added that “we are not responsible for identifying contacts or getting their contact details.” The latest change means that will no longer be the case.

Coronavirus in the UK: How many have died or tested positive where you live?

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Sources inside Test and Trace confirmed that the system was stretched by the recent rise in cases, but added that the burden had also been increased by the “loss” of almost 15,000 positive cases as a result of an Excel spreadsheet error, which caused a sudden influx of people who tested positive for contact tracers to trace.
The latest move is one of a number of changes designed to increase the efficiency of the Test and Trace system. Earlier in the month, a leaked email seen by Sky News showed that single cases in educational settings would no longer be followed up by local public health teams.
Isolated cases in nurseries, schools, universities and colleagues would instead be treated in the same way as cases in the community, with contact tracing done by Level 2 contact tracers instead of specialist teams.
The Department for Health and Social Care did not respond to a request for comment.

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 could handle about 39,000 times its own weight.

The study, led by engineers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Purdue University, found the insect has two armour-like elytron that meet at a line, called a suture, which runs through the abdomen.

Image: The species is native to Southern California. Pic: Jesus Rivera/UCI
This unusual structure is layered and pieced together like a jigsaw, said Purdue civil engineer Pablo Zavattieri, who was part of a group of researchers that used CT scans to inspect the insect and run it over with a car.
The exoskeleton is thought to be one of the toughest structures known to exist in the animal kingdom.

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Professor Zavattieri said that when compressed, it fractured slowly instead of snapping simultaneously.

“When you pull them apart, it doesn’t break catastrophically. It just deforms a little bit,” he said.

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“That’s crucial for the beetle.
“This work shows that we may be able to shift from using strong, brittle materials to ones that can be both strong and tough by dissipating energy as they break. This beetle is super tough.”
The findings could inspire stronger structures and vehicles made with materials such as steel, plastic and plaster.
That’s because engineers currently rely on pins, bolts, welding and adhesives to hold everything together – techniques that are prone to degrading.

Image: The curvy line in the middle of the body is key to its strength. Pic: Jesus Rivera/UCI
Diabolical ironclad beetles are commonly found in Southern California’s woodlands and can withstand pressure such as bird pecks and animal stomps.
Other local beetles were crushed by a third of the weight it could hold, previous research had found.
The study, published in Nature, is part of an $8m project funded by the US Air Force to explore how the biology of creatures such as mantis shrimp and bighorn sheep could help develop impact-resistant materials.
Brown University evolutionary biologist Colin Donihue, who was not involved in the study, said it was the latest effort to solve human problems with secrets from the natural world.
Velcro, for example, was inspired by the hook-like structure of plant burrs, while artificial adhesives took a page from super-clingy gecko feet.
Professor Donihue said endless other traits found in nature could offer insight, saying: “These are adaptations that have evolved over millennia.”

A new boss – the third in six months – has been appointed to lead the contact tracing app for England and Wales, Sky News has learned.
Gaby Appleton, a former director at Elsevier, one of the world’s biggest academic publishing companies, has already started work on the app and held an all staff meeting on Monday, Sky News understands.

She will take over from Simon Thompson, the former Apple executive who was appointed to run the programme in June, just before the first contact tracing app was ditched after it encountered technical problems. It is understood he will continue to advise on the project.
Mr Thompson was always expected to leave after a short period of time, Test and Trace sources say, but the move has raised questions about the rapid turnover of executives at the top of NHS Test and Trace, and the role played by consultancies in its operations.
One Test and Trace source expressed their frustration with “the endless recycling of people at the top, each entering with their own ideas and agenda, and departing after just a few months,” saying it was “counter-productive to building the relationships needed for a cohesive system”.

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Last month it was reported that former Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe would take a key role overseeing testing at Test and Trace, but would only be in the job until Christmas.

‘Fat finger error’ gives contact-tracing app users wrong alert levels

Like other key members of the UK’s testing system, including Dido Harding, Ms Appleton spent time at McKinsey, where she helped clients “understand the economics of climate change”.

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Earlier this month, Sky News revealed the scale of private sector consultants’ involvement in the Test and Trace system, with a single consultancy – Deloitte – employing over 1,000 staff to work on the programme. Documents revealed by Sky News showed that some consultants from Boston Consulting Group were being paid day rates of around £7,000.
McKinsey has also played a role in the development of the system, according to a contract from August, which showed that Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) had paid the firm £563,400 to decide the “vision, purpose and narrative” of NHS Test and Trace.
Despite several initial teething problems, including “false alarms” telling people they had been near someone with coronavirus, which wrongly persuaded at least one app users to self-isolate for several days, the contact tracing app has been widely downloaded.

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Is long-awaited test and trace app up to job?

A DHSC spokesperson said it had “a customer base of more than 18 million users across England and Wales”.
Asked about the appointment of Ms Appleton, the spokesperson added: “Within her new role, Gaby will ensure the app continues to grow both its customer base and utility for users so it can continue to play a key role in managing the spread of coronavirus by protecting individuals, families and their communities.”
In a statement, Ms Appleton said: “The NHS COVID-19 App is undoubtedly already a key tool in the fight against coronavirus and I am excited about the opportunities for development moving forward to ensure it goes from strength to strength and cements itself as a key everyday utility for people in England and Wales.”
Baroness Harding welcomed Ms Appleton’s appointment, saying she would make sure the app “continues to go from strength to strength”.

A NASA spacecraft has successfully descended on an asteroid to collect a sample to return to Earth, the space centre has confirmed.
On Tuesday, the Osiris-Rex made a four-and-a-half hour journey from its orbit of the Bennu asteroid 200 million miles from Earth to hover just above its surface.

It had to dodge boulders the size of buildings and reach for a spot as small as a parking space with an 11ft robotic arm to grab a miniscule amount of rubble from the asteroid.
The mission lasted between five and 10 seconds, but the team in Denver had to wait for the radio communication delay to find out exactly what had happened.
Finally after 18 minutes, the Osiris-Rex sent confirmation the mission had been successful, drawing cheers from the NASA base.

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“I can’t believe we actually pulled this off,” said lead scientist Dante Lauretta, from the University of Arizona.

“The spacecraft did everything it was supposed to do.”

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Image: Cheers erupted in Denver when the Osiris-Rex confirmed it had carried out the mission. Pic: NASA
Osiris-Rex has been orbiting Bennu for almost two years, but this mission is a first for the US – only Japan has managed to collect asteroid samples before.
Scientists are aiming for between 60g and 2kg of Bennu’s black, carbon-rich rubble, but will have to wait until 2023 when the samples are returned to Earth to find out just how much was collected.
The van-sized spacecraft can make up to three attempts at the touch-and-go manoeuvre if inadequate samples are returned.
They will be parachuted down into the Utah desert in a capsule.
“That will be another big day for us. But this is absolutely the major event of the mission right now,” NASA scientist Lucy Lim said.
There is a slight chance that Bennu could collide with Earth in the next century.
If the scientists can analyse the material it is made up of, they can better predict the paths and properties of hazardous space rocks like it and help ensure the planet stays safe.

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 cells using using a combination of CT scans and positron emission tomography (PET) scans called PSMA PET-CT.
In PSMA PET-CT scanning, doctors inject a radioactive “tracer” into the patient. This tracer binds well to the protein PSMA, which is elevated in prostate cancer cells.
PSMA PET-CT scanning also happens to be very good at detecting salivary gland tissue, which is also high in PSMA.

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Writing in the Journal of Radiotherapy and Oncology, the researchers said the newly-found glands are likely to be used to lubricate the upper throat behind the nose and mouth, the scientists added.

They named them the tubarial salivary glands due to their location over a piece of cartilage called the torus tubarius.

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To confirm their discovery, the scientists, led by radiation oncologist Wouter Vogel, examined 100 patients and found all of them had the glands.
They also dissected the nasopharynx region of two cadavers and had the same results.
The scientists’ findings could also help reduce the side effects of some cancer treatments, they said.
Doctors using radiotherapy to treat head and neck cancers try to avoid the three main salivary glands because damaging them can leave patients struggling to eat, speak or swallow.
But unaware of the presence of a fourth set of glands, they were still radiating that area, meaning patients were still experiencing side effects.
Dr Vogel said: “Our next step is to find out how we can best spare these new glands and in which patients.
“If we can do this, patients may experience less side effects, which will benefit their overall quality of life after treatment.”

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 alcohol.
If criminals who have been banned from drinking are found to have consumed alcohol, the probation service will be alerted and they could be ordered to appear in court, fined or put in prison.
Probation staff will be able to tell if the tags have been tampered with and can differentiate between alcohol in drinks and that found in hand sanitiser or perfume.

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The tags have already been trialled in London, Humberside, Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire and will be rolled out across the rest of England next year.

Around 39% of violent crime is committed under the influence of alcohol, according to Ministry of Justice figures.

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Alcohol-related harm costs society approximately £21bn a year, the minister for crime and policing Kit Malthouse said.
He told Sky News: “We all know there’s a big cost of alcohol in society.
“We hope that by removing alcohol from the lives of offenders, it will reduce the crimes they commit.”
He said the sobriety tags are part of a “smarter approach” to managing criminals, adding: “When we put people in the prison system, it can have a poor impact, instead of sorting them out for the future.
“But by using this technology we can correct their behaviour and stop them reoffending in the future.”
During the pilots, offenders who were monitored stayed alcohol-free for 97% of the days they wore the tags.
Alice Glaister, senior probation officer at Croydon Crown Court where one of the pilots took place, said the devices were “very useful additional sentencing options” for “alcohol-dependent” offenders.

The US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google’s parent company Alphabet for using “illegal means” to keep its monopoly power.
The lawsuit is set to be the biggest in almost two decades and has drawn comparisons to a 1974 case against AT&T, which – after a six-year legal battle – was forced to divest its subsidiaries into individual companies.

The last comparable antitrust lawsuit was filed against Microsoft in 1998, which Reuters said cleared the way for “the explosive growth of the internet” as the scrutiny the company received prevented it from thwarting the competition.

Image: The lawsuit has bipartisan support in Washington DC
Google has not responded to the charges, brought by the Department of Justice and 11 states, which include “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services”.
The complaint against the company states: “Two decades ago, Google became the darling of Silicon Valley as a scrappy startup with an innovative way to search the emerging internet. That Google is long gone.

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“The Google of today is a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet, and one of the wealthiest companies on the planet, with a market value of $1 trillion and annual revenue exceeding $160 billion.

“For many years, Google has used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising – the cornerstones of its empire.”

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“Google is now the unchallenged gateway to the internet for billions of users worldwide,” the report adds of the company whose name had become a by-word for web searches.
“As a consequence, countless advertisers must pay a toll to Google’s search advertising and general search text advertising monopolies; American consumers are forced to accept Google’s policies, privacy practices, and use of personal data; and new companies with innovative business models cannot emerge from Google’s long shadow.
“For the sake of American consumers, advertisers, and all companies now reliant on the internet economy, the time has come to stop Google’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition.”

Image: It follows months of scrutiny of the largest technology companies
It follows a congressional report which accused Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google of monopolising the digital market and recommended antitrust laws be used to break up these companies.
The lawsuit marks a rare topic which has bipartisan support between the Trump administration and the Democrats.
All of the 11 states’ attorneys general are Republicans, but the move was also praised by progressive Democrat Elizabeth Warren, who had previously tweeted that she wanted “swift, aggressive action” to “#BreakUpBigTech”.
However it also comes weeks before the US election and, according to Reuters, could be seen as a political gesture by Donald Trump who has often accused the large technology companies of suppressing conservative views.
Separate lawsuits are also expected into Google’s broader business outside of search, including its digital advertising businesses.

It’s a brave soul who allows themselves to be deliberately infected with the COVID virus.
Even if you are young and healthy, there is no guarantee that you won’t become seriously ill.

Nor can you be sure that you won’t develop long COVID, the debilitating chronic consequence of infection that can affect people of all ages.

How close are we to a COVID-19 vaccine?

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‘I had an experimental vaccine in China’

But thousands of volunteers have expressed interest in the first human challenge trials for the disease that will be run in the UK – if the scientists can get final ethical approval.
Volunteers will be under intense medical scrutiny and will be given Remdesivir if they develop symptoms, a so-called rescue treatment.

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But recent research has shown the drug makes little difference, so that’s no great comfort.

The first 90 or so volunteers will just have the virus squirted up their nose as scientists work out the minimal dose needed to trigger an infection.

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They won’t even be given a vaccine – that comes in later trials.
It is extraordinary altruism. A vaccine is the most likely exit from the pandemic, with its dreadful impact on health and the economy.

Which tier is my area – and what are the rules of the three-tier lockdown?

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Widespread vaccine ‘unlikely’ before spring

Challenge trials will fast-track development.
Currently scientists are running clinical trials of vaccines that involve 10,000 or so volunteers over several months.
By comparing how many COVID infections there are in those given the vaccine versus those given a placebo, they hope to show whether or not it protects against the virus.
A challenge trial needs fewer volunteers and takes just a few weeks to show whether a vaccine has any effect.
And with a standard testing procedure you could make direct comparisons between vaccines.
Only those that look most promising would be pushed forward to the larger trials.
The big problem with challenge studies is that it would be unethical to deliberately infect people who are at high risk of serious disease.
The elderly need protection the most, but they have less active immune systems and tend to respond less well to vaccines.

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Postcode Lockdown: A Divided Nation

So traditional clinical trials, involving older volunteers, will still be needed.
COVID-19 will be with us for years. It is highly unlikely that the first wave of vaccines, some of which could be ready early next year, will stop the virus spreading.
But there are many other vaccines in early development and the quicker they can be tested the sooner life can get back to normal.

The Orionid meteor shower – named because they appear to come from the constellation Orion – will peak this Wednesday.
The annual meteor shower is caused by the Earth passing through dust and debris left by Halley’s Comet, which is visible to the naked eye from every 75 or 76 years.

The meteor shower is visible in both the northern and southern hemispheres during the hours after midnight. Halley’s Comet last appeared within the inner solar system in 1986, and is expected to return in 2061.

Image: A glimpse of an Orionid meteor captured by NASA in 2015
According to NASA, the Orionids “are considered to be one of the most beautiful showers of the year” and the meteors are known for their brightness and speed.
Potentially up to 25 shooting stars can be seen every hour at their peak on Wednesday, around midnight, although the shower itself will continue through to November.

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The meteors are travelling very fast, at about 148,000 mph (66 km/s), when the enter Earth’s atmosphere, meaning they sometimes leave glowing “trains” behind them.

These trains are formed of incandescent bits of debris which can sometimes glow for several seconds, and potentially even minutes if conditions are right.

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To spot the shooting stars, astronomers recommend wrapping up warm and finding a dark spot, away from light pollution, and be prepared to wait.
If you can avoid falling asleep, NASA recommends lying on your back with your feet pointing to the south east, and keep your naked eyes open and capturing as much of the sky as possible.
The largest of the fast meteors can also sometimes become fireballs, and NASA advises amateur astronomers to look for prolonged explosions of light when viewing the Orionids.