As some countries begin to talk about easing restrictions, the extent of the lockdowns in place across Europe still varies widely.

This chart shows when European nations saw their first case and how they responded.

Click here for more graphics about how lockdowns are being enforced around the world.

Two men have been charged with terrorism offences in the US after threatening to spread coronavirus.

The Justice Department has classified coronavirus as a "biological weapon" and hoaxes can carry sentences of up to five years.

In the first incident, a man in Florida is accused of coughing and spitting on police officers while being arrested for domestic violence in March.

According to court documents, the 31 year old told one officer: "Well I got the corona." He later tested negative for the virus.

Meanwhile, another man in Texas faces a similar case after falsely claiming on Facebook that he had paid someone to spread coronavirus at supermarkets in the city of San Antonio.

More than 14,800 people have died of the virus in the US, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Image source, Reuters

One astronaut and two cosmonauts have set off from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome for the International Space Station.

Strapped into the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft are Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin, Ivan Vagner and Nasa astronaut Chris Cassidy.

It's a strange time to be travelling, but crew member Ivanishin said where they were going was the "safest place on earth" right now.

"Although space flight carries with it a specific risk, we understand that for the next few months the International Space Station will be the safest place on earth," he said.

(P.S. In case you were wondering, a cosmonaut and an astronaut are just two different terms for the same job)

Image source, AFp

British theatres could need up to three months notice before they are able to reopen, the chair of the Arts Council has warned.

Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Sir Nicholas Serota said some theatres could bounce back within a couple of weeks but others could take six times as long.

And even then, he warned: "It will take time to build back the audiences. I think people will not want to assemble in large numbers within a confined space”.

But he said theatres had shown their resilience through offering past performances and classes online.

Sir Nicholas also praised the government’s furlough scheme but warned artists, writers and musicians still face “really grave difficulty”. He said the Arts Council has set aside £20m of its reserves to help.

After similar measures in New York, Broadway theatres have warned that they do not expect to return until June at the earliest.

Here's how one theatre in Russia has responded to having to close:

The Thai capital has banned all sales of alcohol for 10 days to try to curb partying during Songkran, also known as the Buddhist New Year.

The festival happens every year between 13 and 15 April. It was traditionally marked by pouring water over statues of the Buddha.

But the festival has since turned into the world's biggest water fight. Throwing water is meant to wash away bad luck from the previous year.

The event draws hundreds of thousands of tourists every year - mostly to Bangkok. Similar new year festivals also take place in neighbouring Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar - though with varying degrees of water-throwing.

Thailand has reported over 2,300 Covid-19 virus cases so far, and 30 deaths.

Image source, Getty Images

Concerns have been raised about the UK's dairy industry amid disruption to the supply chain during the pandemic.

Some dairy farms - including this one in the Midlands - say they are having to throw away thousands of litres of fresh milk and fear going out of business.

Union bosses are now calling for a crisis meeting with the government.

Ministers say they have already put measures in place to support the sector and are working closely with farmers.

A Chinese city on the Russian border is entering lockdown due to an increase in coronavirus cases - even as the rest of China cautiously opens up.

In Suifenhe, 1,000 miles from Beijing, people have been ordered to stay indoors, with some exceptions.

The border is closed to people, although not goods, and a 600-bed isolation hospital is being built.

One business owner told the BBC she was "very scared" - but another local said he had confidence in the government.

• Read our full story here.

Image source, Getty Images

Toby Luckhurst
Europe desk, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

Countries across Europe are cautiously starting to ease their lockdown measures, as infection rates slowly decline.

Small shops will open in Austria and Czech Republic, and schools in Denmark will re-open on 15 April. German health minister Jens Spahn suggested there could be “a gradual return to normality” after Easter if the current positive trend in numbers continues.

Even in the worst affected nations there are reasons for optimism. Reports in Italy suggest restrictions could be eased on 4 May. And on Thursday morning, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the country may be finally passing the worst of the outbreak. “The fire starts to come under control,” he told parliament.

Concerns remain however about the Easter weekend, when people usually travel to see loved ones. As of midnight, Portugal has banned people from leaving their local area without official documentation, with police vehicle checks to enforce the closure.

And the EU has still not decided how to respond to the economic meltdown. Finance ministers will hold another teleconference from 16:00 UK time to try to sort out a bailout plan

Image source, EPA

A ceasefire announced by the Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Houthi rebels in Yemen is due to begin in the coming hours.

The coalition's spokesman said the two-week truce would come into effect from midday on Thursday local time (10:00 BST). The spokesman said the decision was partly in response to the spread of coronavirus - although no cases have been reported in Yemen so far.

But it's unclear if the Houthi forces - who control the capital Sanaa and much of northern Yemen - will also observe the ceasefire. Within hours of the announcement, both sides accused each other of carrying out attacks.

Last month, the UN called on the warring parties to speed up their efforts to end the five-year war.

Yemen is already suffering the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with 80% of the population dependent on some form of aid.

It can be a difficult time for those living with someone who has the virus.

Here are some tips on the best way to take care of them - and also how to take care of yourself. Remember - you can only take care of someone if you yourself are well!

Image source, Getty Images

The UK government is set to borrow billions of pounds from its overdraft to help the country through the pandemic.

It has secured a temporary overdraft extension with the Bank of England to give it a cash buffer and help the markets function properly during the crisis.

The latest official statistics show the UK economy was stagnant in the three months to February, just before the coronavirus pandemic escalated. Economists had expected it to grow.

Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said that the UK's GDP could "fall at a speed and magnitude no-one has ever seen and no economy has ever experienced before".

In Wednesday's daily briefing, Chancellor Rishi Sunak warned that coronavirus "will have a significant impact ... on people's jobs and livelihoods".

Read more about the UK's overdraft extension here.

Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst

Image source, Getty Images

A plant charity is predicting a boost for wild flowers because some councils have stopped mowing verges and parks during the coronavirus outbreak.

The Plantlife charity has for years urged councils to cut grass less often and to delay cutting until flowers have had chance to seed.

Plantlife has had some success, but now, in a search of social media and council websites, it has found more councils are reducing mowing in the crisis.

The councils include Lincolnshire, Flintshire, Stockton-on-Tees, Newcastle and Wigan.

In another benefit for nature - the reduction in nitrogen emissions from vehicles is likely to help delicate wild flowers, which ordinarily face competition from more aggressive plants fertilised by the nitrogen.

Guide book publishing giant Lonely Planet is among those affected by the sudden halt to global travel.

The publisher has announced plans to close most of its operations in London and Melbourne.

The company said it would reduce its operations for the foreseeable future and would suspend publishing the Lonely Planet magazine.

There have now been nearly 1.5 million positive tests for coronavirus worldwide.

The scale of testing has varied considerably from country to country, but the real number of infections for many nations is thought to be much higher than the number of positive tests.

Here are the countries with the most positive tests to date:

US 432,132

Spain 148,220

Italy 139,422

Germany 113,296

France 83,080

China 82, 867

Iran 64,586

UK 61,474

Turkey 38,226

Belgium 23,403

Out of the 1,484,811 people who have tested positive, nearly 330,000 are known to have recovered. More than 88,500 deaths have been linked to Covid-19.

Statistics from the Johns Hopkins University, external.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is predicting severe effects for global trade this year.

In a new report, the WTO forecasts a contraction of between 13% and 32%. That extremely wide range of possibilities goes to show how much uncertainty there is about the current pandemic.

Click here to read our full story on the WTO outlook.

A clip of the BBC's Emily Maitlis opening current affairs programme Newsnight has been widely shared online.

Maitlis debunked the idea that coronavirus was a "great leveller" that had affected equally the rich and poor, calling it a "myth".

"Those on the front line right now, bus drivers, shelf stackers, nurses, care home workers, hospital staff and shopkeepers - they are disproportionately the lower paid members of our workforce. They are more likely to catch the disease because they are more exposed."

Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has said the country could begin to ease its lockdown by the end of April.

"If scientists confirm it, we might begin to relax some measures already by the end of this month," Conte said in an exclusive interview with the BBC's Rome Correspondent Mark Lowen.

He also defended his government's handling of the crisis, saying: "Going back, I would do the same."

"For us to severely limit constitutional freedoms was a critical decision that we had to consider very carefully. If I had suggested a lockdown or limits on constitutional rights at the start, when there were the first clusters, people would have taken me for a madman," he said.

• On the debate among EU countries over the economic response to the outbreak, Conte said: "If we do not seize the opportunity to put new life into the European project, the risk of failure is real"
• Conte said the idea that Russian aid to Italy during the outbreak could have conditions attached was "an offence to the Italian government… and also to Vladimir Putin, who would never dream of using this as leverage"
• "Behind the numbers are names and surnames, life stories and broken families," he said of the human cost of the pandemic. "The Italian nation is suffering"

"This is a picture of mum and she works for the NHS. I'm very proud of her."

Children of key workers drew images of their parents and showed them to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who video-called pupils at Casterton Primary Academy in Burnley on Wednesday.

The Duke and Duchess also thanked teachers and school staff for their hard work.

A new study suggests that most of the Covid cases in New York - the worst hit state in the US - came from travellers in Europe, the New York Times reports., external

"The majority is clearly European," Harm van Bakel of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the co-author of the paper, told the Times.

The study is awaiting peer review.

A separate team at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine came to a similar conclusion, despite studying a different group of cases.

On 1 Feb, President Trump barred foreign nationals from entering the country if they had previously been in China. But it was not until March that he began blocking travellers from most European countries.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

The near-global lockdown has brought something of a breather to Asia's normally congested megacities.

Where just weeks ago gridlock and pollution were part of the daily routine, traffic has all but disappeared in some places.

In Manila, the city's chronically jammed Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue saw a staggering 96% drop in cars, according to data published by the mapping company TomTom.

In Delhi, in India, congestion was down by about 59%, while the Indonesian capital Jakarta saw a 48% drop on the same time last year. In Bangkok, Thailand, traffic was down by 31%.