India's biggest Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan, has said he will fund 25,000 personal protective equipment (PPE) kits for health workers on the front line in the western state of Maharashtra.

The 54-year-old actor was in the news last month after he announced several initiatives to help tackle the virus in India, including providing free meals and offering his four-storey office space for treating Covid-19 patients.

One of the country's most popular and recognisable faces, Khan has appeared in more than 90 films.

India has reported 339 coronavirus-related deaths so far.

Image source, Getty Images

China could temporarily freeze debt repayments by African nations to free up cash for those countries to tackle the coronavirus outbreaks, reports the Reuters news agency.

China is a major creditor to African economies, having lent them billions of dollars over the last two decades.

"The origin of Africa's debt problem is complex, and the debt profile of each country varies," China's foreign ministry told Reuters.

"We are aware that some countries and international organisations have called for debt relief programmes for African countries, and we are willing to study the possibility of it jointly with the international community."

China is a member of the G20 group of economies, which meets this week. The group is expected to make an agreement on debt relief for the world’s poorest nations.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are also pushing for debt relief to help poor countries during the virus.

Image source, Reuters

Austria is beginning to lift its lockdown measures. Smaller shops of less than 400 sq m (4300 sq ft), as well as DIY and gardening stores, are scheduled to reopen today.

But the country is sticking to a number of other restrictions. People have to wear face masks when they go out and are asked to maintain a 3m (10ft) distance from each other.

Austria has more than 14,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, with more than 7,000 of those already recovered. There have been 368 deaths linked to Covid-19.

Image source, Getty Images

Staff at one of the largest care home companies in the UK are feeling "helpless" and "emotional" due to the devastating impact of coronavirus, Sir David Behan, head of one of the country's largest care home groups, told the BBC.

"With this high number of deaths, staff are feeling helpless that they are unable to help people that they have cared for for a number of years," said Behan, who is executive chairman of the HC-One company.

Behan said there had been 311 deaths and 2,447 cases of suspected or confirmed Covid-19 within the company's 329 homes as of 20:00 BST on Monday.

One member of staff had also died over the weekend, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"The virus is having an emotional and psychological impact on the staff. They are feeling anxious not just about personal protective equipment but also anxious they will catch the virus and take it home to their loved ones."

His remarks come after charities warned many older people are being "airbrushed" out of coronavirus figures in the UK.

The official death toll has been under scrutiny for only covering people who die in hospital - but not those in care homes or in their own houses.

With schools across the US and many other countries closed for the rest of the calendar year, students will miss out on those once-in-a-lifetime rites of passage like graduation ceremonies and proms.

But one student in the US state of Indiana applied his video skills in an effort to give his classmates a chance to share uplifting messages with their friends.

Image source, Getty Images

The UK is in its fourth week of lockdown and police have raised concerns that some drivers are disregarding speed limits.

Officers have reported more speeding on empty motorways and A roads.

One car reached 151mph on the M1 in London, external as it was being followed by police. The driver later got out and ran off, and has yet to be arrested.

There has also been an increase in fly-tipping - illegal rubbish dumping - since the restrictions came into force.

A website where people can report fly-tipping said it had seen a 50% increase in the illegal dumping of waste across parts of the UK since the lockdown began.

The data was compiled by ClearWaste - an app, external where people can report incidents.

Red postal vans are a familiar sight in India. They make thousands of journeys every day, criss-crossing the country's wide network of post offices in 600,000 villages.

But the postal service does much more than deliver letters and packages. It is also a bank, a pension fund, and a primary savings instrument for millions of Indians.

Now, the the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it will also be transporting medical equipment and drugs to where they are needed most, at a time when normal transport has come to a standstill.

"We thought we could help with this as we have a supply chain that is intact," Alok Ojha, the senior superintendent of the postal service in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, told the BBC.

"Many people I spoke to said this would help as it helps keep drugs in the market and prevents hoarding," he said.

Read more

Image source, Getty Images

Shaimaa Khalil
BBC News, Sydney

Image source, Getty Images

It’s been almost three weeks since New Zealand went into a month-long lockdown.

During that time, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has held regular press conferences to update the nation on the latest Covid-19 numbers.

But Ardern has also used Facebook for more informal updates, posting family photos and sharing moments from her life under lockdown.

And her Facebook lives - usually after she’s put her baby to sleep - have been quite a hit.

“Left before anyone in my house was up,” she wrote in the latest post, external.

"Turns out mum had got up and packed breakfast and a cup of tea for me and left it outside my door."

Ardern has taken to ending almost all her public appearances with the same message “Be strong. Be kind.”

Scientific advisers for the government will meet later on Tuesday to review the impact of the UK's coronavirus lockdown measures. The UK is in its fourth week of lockdown and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has said the government does not expect to make changes to restrictions this week.

More developments from the UK:

• As of Monday, the official death toll recorded by the Department of Health's rose to 11,329 - up by 717 over the previous day
• A six-month-old baby is being treated in hospital for coronavirus, her parents have said
• Thirteen residents of a County Durham care home died after showing symptoms of coronavirus.
• There are 2,099 care homes in England with cases of the virus
• About 12% of firefighters and control room staff in some areas are self-isolating during the coronavirus pandemic, says the firefighters' union

• Eight crew members of a cruise ship moored in the Firth of Forth have tested positive

Image source, Getty Images

After hiring 100,000 extra staff last month, online retail giant Amazon is now on another recruitment drive for 75,000 more.

The tech giant needs more workers to cope with a massive surge in demand as more people stay at home and order online amid global lockdowns.

Amazon is urging US workers who have lost their jobs in its other divisions to apply for the new jobs.

The firm still has a waiting list for new customers.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus restrictions, and a record 16 million have now submitted unemployment claims.

Read the full story here.

If you're in self isolation or avoiding gyms, you may be wondering how you can continue to stay active. We got a fitness trainer (who’s also a farmer) to show us some simple exercises to do while cooped up at home.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC Tokyo correspondent

Image source, Reuters

It looks like Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido is starting to experience exactly what many epidemiologists had predicted; after the successful suppression of an initial outbreak, the relaxing of restrictions has led to a second wave.

Hokkaido was the first place in Japan to be hit badly by the virus. In mid-February the governor declared a state of emergency, schools were closed and people were urged to stay at home. The shutdown hit in the middle of the ski-season, the worst possible time. I was there myself at the beginning of March and the ski resorts were completely deserted. But it worked, and by the middle of March the infection rate had fallen to a handful of infections a day.

At the end of March schools re-opened and life in Hokkaido began to return to some sort of normality. But now just two weeks later a new state of emergency has been declared. By the end of last week new infections had climbed to between 15 and 20 a day which is higher than during the first wave in February. Schools have again been closed and people asked to stay at home.

Hokkaido is not alone of course – Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka and six other prefectures are now also under a state of emergency. Across Japan there are now close to 8,000 confirmed cases with Tokyo being the epicentre.

We reported earlier about the rise in Chinese cases that arrived in the border province of Heilongjiang via Russia.

The Chinese government has already responded by closing the crossing in border town Suifenhe - even to returning Chinese nationals - and by imposing a 28-day quarantine on arrivals in the provincial capital of Harbin.

Now, according to state media, external, the provincial government is offering 3,000 yuan ($425, £339) to those who report illegal crossings - and 5,000 to those who physically catch those entering illegally.

Soutik Biswas
India Correspondent

India’s grinding lockdown has been extended until 3 May. It has already caused economic disruption and social distress.

It has hurt the economy immensely. Joblessness has risen sharply, according to an independent assessment. India’s already sputtering economy is now expected to grow between 1.5-2.8% in 2020-21, according to the World Bank. Migrant workers, the backbone of key service industries, have either fled their shuttered workplaces or are stranded in homeless centres in cities. The thriving informal economy is in tatters.

Access to food, medicines and emergency medical care for non-Covid-19 patients has become difficult for the poor. The lockdown, says an economist, “seems to be the case of the privileged transferring their epidemic risk to the under-privileged”.

There is no doubt that lifting the lockdown at a time when India is seeing a rise in infections and trying to catch up on testing, can be risky.

At the same time, it is also abundantly clear that India will have to ease the lockdown to save the economy and livelihoods of people.

Some economic activity - farming, transportation of goods, wholesale markets, key gig economy services – has to reopen with social distancing and hygiene protocols.

How this will be implemented will depend purely on the acumen of the states.

Jon Sopel
BBC North America Editor

Donald Trump's news conference on Monday evening was the most dizzying, jaw dropping, eyeball popping I have ever attended. And I was at Bill Clinton's news conference in 1998 when he faced the press for the first time over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

I was at this president's first White House gathering when he called me "another beauty". I was in Helsinki when he had his first news conference with Vladimir Putin, and seemed to prefer to believe the Russian leader over his own security and intelligence chiefs on interference in the 2016 election.

I was in Vietnam when Mr Trump gave a news conference after his talks with Kim Jong-un had unceremoniously collapsed. So I've sat in on some corkers.

What made last night's encounter unique was the context. And secondly, this was, if you like, a distillation in one news conference of what three-and-a-half years of Donald Trump has been like to cover.

• Read more of Jon's analysis here.

Taiwan's success in containing the virus continues. For Monday, it recorded five new cases, all of which were imported, meaning people who had travelled to Taiwan from abroad.

One person had come from the US while the other four were passengers on the virus-stricken Coral Princess cruise ship in Florida.

In total, Taiwan has 393 confirmed cases of which 109 have already recovered. Six deaths have been linked to Covid-19.

Over the past weekend, the island had even seen its baseball and soccer seasons get under way. While the season was delayed and the first games were held without any fans in the stands, it did nonetheless provide people with a rare bit of live sports action.

Taiwan's success in limiting the spread is largely attributed to Taipei's early and decisive action to curb travel, pursue aggressive contact tracing and impose strict quarantine for all incoming travellers.

Image source, EPA

The city of Guangzhou in China says 111 Africans have tested positive for coronavirus as of Monday, state news agency Xinhua reports.

Around 4,500 Africans in the city have been tested since 4 April, and 19 of those with positive results were imported cases, officials said.

China has dismissed accusations that it was forcefully testing foreigners with African appearance.

There have been reports of Africans being evicted from their homes and forced into quarantine - leaving tensions running high.

Africans have also said they are being barred from restaurants and other public places, leading to complaints from some African diplomats and governments,

The Guangdong provincial government responded by insisting that China and Africa remain good friends, partners and brothers. The Chinese foreign ministry said "all foreigners are treated equally".

Mr Modi ended his speech with seven requests to Indians.

1. Please take care of the elderly

2. Do not break social distancing rules and use homemade cloth masks

3. Use home remedies to improve immunity

4. Download the government's Arogyasetu app. The app gives information on Covid-19

5. Look after poor people

6. Do not sack people if you are an employer

7. Respect the 'Coronawarriors' like doctors, nurses, policemen and sanitation workers.

The Indian prime minister has said that the next week - until 20 April - will possibly see even tougher measures to ensure that the virus doesn't spread to new areas.

"New hotspots will create more problems for India. That is why we have to be very strict for the next one week," he said.

But he has said that following that, there may be some relaxations of the lockdown in areas that report no new hotspots.

He said the government would issue detailed guidelines on Wednesday about the new measures.

Image source, Narendra Modi/Twitter

Mr Modi has praised his government's efforts to combat the spread of the coronavirus, saying that India responded better to the crisis than many other nations.

"We started screening international passengers even when there were no cases in the country. We announced a harsh 21-day lockdown when we had fewer than 500 cases," he said.

Mr Modi also praised India's "holistic and integrated" approach and has justified the decision to impose the three-week lockdown.

"Social distancing and the lockdown has really helped. The decision looks very costly economically. But there can be no cost for the lives of Indians," he added.

Experts say that India does not seem to be as badly affected yet - but have pointed to a worrying lack of testing. There has also been criticism about the way the lockdown was implemented - tens of thousands of migrant workers fled cities, possibly carrying the infection into rural areas.