A minute's silence will be held shortly, at 11:00, across the UK to remember key workers who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 100 NHS workers and care home staff have now died with the virus, as have transport staff and other key workers.

Read more here

Image source, Getty Images

Oil giant BP has reported that its earnings fell by 66% in the first three months of this year, as the industry grapples with coronavirus's impact on energy markets.

Underlying cost replacement profits - the company's definition of income - came to $800m, down from $2.4bn during the same period last year.

BP blamed the losses on tumbling energy prices, a drop in demand for fuels and refined products, and weak earnings from its oil trading arm and its stake in Russian state-owned energy firm Rosneft.

“Our industry has been hit by supply and demand shocks on a scale never seen before,” said Bernard Looney, who has been chief executive since February.

Oil prices remain depressed. The international benchmark Brent crude currently costs about $19 a barrel, down from around $70 in early January. US oil is trading at just $11 a barrel.

Spain's recorded 301 new deaths with coronavirus in 24 hours - down from Monday's figure of 331. The national total now stands at 23,822.

The number of confirmed cases rose by 1,308, bringing the country's total to 210,773.

Spain is one of the worst-affected countries in Europe but on Sunday it reported its lowest daily death toll in more than a month.

As restrictions begin to ease, children under the age of 14 have been allowed to leave their homes for the first time in six weeks.

A rising number of deaths linked to coronavirus in care homes in England and Wales has pushed the weekly death toll to a record high.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics show there were 2,000 coronavirus care home deaths in the week ending 17 April - double the previous week.

Projections for the following week - up to last Friday - suggest it rose again.

The total number of deaths in the week ending 17 April was more than 22,000 - the highest since records began in 1993 and double the number of deaths you would normally expect at this time of the year.

Read more here.

Human Rights Watch has called on China to release two activists who were arrested after contributing to a website that archived coronavirus information censored by the government.

Chen Mei and Cai Wei reportedly contributed to a website called Terminus 2049, where users could share reports and social media posts removed by government censors. They were detained along with Mr Cai's girlfriend, the Reuters news agency reported.

“The lack of free flow of information about Covid-19 in China has contributed to a global pandemic,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Yaqiu Wang. “Governments around the world should press Beijing to release the wrongfully detained activists and citizen journalists immediately.”

Several journalists and activists have gone missing in China since the outbreak began. Last week, a Chinese journalist detained in Wuhan reappeared after being missing for two months. Two others have not been heard from since the beginning of this year.

Image source, Getty Images

President Donald Trump has said he "can't imagine why" there has been a spike in calls about disinfectant to US emergency hotlines.

The country's commander-in-chief suggested last Thursday that health officials should look into injecting disinfectants to treat coronavirus - a shocking idea that public health officials immediately warned the public not to do.

Trump later claimed his comments were a sarcastic prank on reporters, but he had clearly addressed the remarks to the health officials present.

The governors of Michigan and Maryland on Sunday blamed the president for the increase in volume about such calls.

When asked whether he took responsibility for the rise, Trump said: "No, I don't."

Trump's remarks were widely criticised by doctors. Manufacturers of cleaning brands such as Dettol warned consumers never to ingest their products.

Read more here.

A minute's silence will be held in the UK at 11:00 (10:00 GMT) to pay tribute to key workers who have lost their lives to coronavirus.

Government workers will take part and officials said they hoped others would too.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has backed the plan, following a campaign by the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Nursing and the Unison trade union.

At least 90 National Health Service staff have died since 25 March, as have many care and transport workers.

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

France lays out its lockdown exit plan and Germany’s infection rate rises. Here’s the latest from Europe:

• Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will lay out how France will slowly exit its lockdown restrictions from 11 May. There will be a debate followed by a vote on the plans, which controversially involve children returning to school against the advice of the national scientific council
• Official data from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute shows the reproduction figure has risen to around 1.0 again – meaning each infected person is passing on the virus to one other. Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned states not to ease restrictions too quickly, as both confirmed cases and the death toll move higher
• Both Spain and Greece will announce further ways of easing restrictions on Tuesday. Portugal’s government is holding a closed-door meeting with health officials, and has said the discussions are key in any move toward loosening the lockdown

Animal shelters in several countries have reported a surge in requests to foster an animal during the coronavirus pandemic, as families look to give a temporary home for unwanted pets.

For some facilities this is welcome news as they struggle with a smaller workforce or being forced to close, though some UK-based charities have suspended fostering.

Watch how two families have welcomed two pets under lockdown.

Police in the Indian city of Mumbai have been told to stay at home if they're older than 55, after three officers died of Covid-19.

Officials said that the older policemen would stay at home until the lockdown ended on 3 May.

On Monday, a 56-year-old policeman in the city died while undergoing Covid-19 treatment, external, according to local media reports.

Mumbai is in the western state of Maharashtra, which has seen the highest number of cases in India. More than 500 new infections in the state were reported on Tuesday, according to health ministry data. That brought the total number of confirmed cases in Maharashtra to more than 8,500.

Image source, Getty Images

Could there be millions of doses of a Covid-19 vaccine available by September?

It seems significantly earlier than we had been cautioned to expect, but the Oxford University's Jenner Insititute believes it has produced an effective vaccine, and plans to carry out clinical tests on 6,000 people before the end of May.

The Jenner vaccine was tested on six rhesus macaque monkeys at the US National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last month, according to the New York Times, external.

The monkeys were exposed to high doses of the virus, and all six remained healthy 28 days later. Monkeys without the vaccine fell sick, according to the report.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which is funding nine different coronavirus vaccine projects, is hopeful a vaccine could be ready this year, Bloomberg reports, external.

CEPI had initially envisaged a later timescale because it had not taken factors into account such as companies working together.

All over the UK, National Health Service hospital staff are battling the coronavirus. The BBC visited the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital to meet its staff and patients, and see how the outbreak is being treated.

Image source, VICTORIA HOWE

Coffee and fast food. Those were the two things New Zealanders rushed for as the country emerged from almost five weeks of strict lockdown.

Long queues were seen in front of McDonalds chains, with one local saying he'd started queuing at four in the morning. And on social media, people were posting pictures of cups of coffee in celebration.

"That cup of coffee tasted amazing. Nothing beats a skilled barista," one coffee lover told the BBC.

New Zealand has now shifted its alert level down a notch to level three - meaning restaurants are allowed to resume takeaways and thousands of people can go back to work.

The country has some five million residents and just over 1,000 confirmed virus cases. So what exactly did it do right?

A combination of contact tracing, a quick lockdown, the closing of borders and a clear public message, says one expert.

Read more about how New Zealand got its coffees back so quickly.

Image source, Getty Images

The UK government failed to buy crucial protective equipment needed to be prepared for a pandemic, according to an investigation by the BBC's Panorama programme.

The BBC found there were no gowns, visors, swabs or body bags in the stockpile when the virus reached the UK.

The stockpile - there to be used in the event of a pandemic - was set up in 2009, but the government subsequently ignored a warning from its own advisers to purchase missing equipment.

NHS staff have said they are being put at risk because of the shortage of personal protective equipment - known as PPE.

Government minister Victoria Atkins told BBC Breakfast on Tuesday she was "very very sorry" to hear about the Panorama report.

"Like every other country in the world, [the virus] is unprecedented and the requirements for PPE have increased exponentially. We're doing our absolute best to address those needs and will continue to do so," she said.

Atkins said "a billion pieces of PPE" had been distributed across the UK since the virus arrived.

Panorama also found the government had downgraded its guidance on PPE in March, and on the same day took steps to remove Covid-19 from the High Consequence Infectious Disease list.

A government spokesperson said Covid-19 was taken off the list because it has a low overall mortality rate and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific laboratory test for the virus.

You can read more on the investigation here, or watch the full Panorama programme here.

Charlecote Mill was built in the mid-1700s but it's probably never known a time like this.

The Warwickshire mill and its staff are currently working in overdrive, as miller Karl Grevatt battles to clear a seven-week order book for flour. People all around the UK have taken up baking to pass the time under lockdown. (If some of you find that this mill looks rather familiar, that's because it had a starring role in our 1978 TV adaptation of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss.)

Image source, Getty Images

HSBC has said its first quarter profit almost halved on the same period last year, as the bank feels the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pre-tax profit for the period came in at $3.2bn (£2.6bn), down from $6.2bn for the first quarter of 2019.

At the same time, the bank increased its expectations of bad loans to $3bn due to the fallout from Covid-19 and an unprecedented oil prices slump.

Read more here

Image source, EPA

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters on Tuesday that 2.4 million people had downloaded and registered for the government's coronavirus contact tracing app.

The COVIDSafe smartphone app uses a Bluetooth wireless signal to exchange a "digital handshake" with another user when they come within 1.5m (4.9ft). The app then logs this contact and encrypts it.

Users will be notified if they have had more than 15 minutes of close contact with another user who tests positive.

Mr Hunt said 6,727 cases of coronavirus had been confirmed in Australia, along with 85 deaths.

Twelve cases had been confirmed since yesterday, just one from an unknown source, he said.

"That is perhaps the most important figure I have had the privilege of raising since coming into this role and dealing with the coronavirus issue," Mr Hunt said. "It means that as a country we are not just flattening the curve but we are consolidating it, extending it and securing it."

The UK is trialling is own tracing app, with development led by NHSX - the heath service's in-house digital team.

Image source, BBC Tamil

A district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has constructed walls to seal the border with its neighbouring state, Andhra Pradesh, amid fears over the spread of Covid-19.

The walls, measuring about 5ft tall, were erected at two entry and exit points along the border on Sunday to prevent car traffic between Tamil Nadu's Vellore district and Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district.

An official from Vellore district said that the move was meant to check the entry of migrant workers who sometimes enter the state without valid permission.

"Since the chances of getting detected at the main border crossing is high, some people tend to use little-noticed locations in remote places," the official told PTI news agency, external.

But some authorities have told local media that it is a "temporary measure" to keep tabs on the flow of vehicular traffic between the two states.

Image source, Getty Images

There will be no Tokyo Olympics if the Covid-19 outbreak is not brought under control by next year, the president of the Games' organising committee has said.

The Games was scheduled for this summer but postponed by a year because of the pandemic.

Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori said that another delay was not under consideration, telling Japan's Nikkan Sports daily that if the virus outbreak was not under control by summer 2021, "it's cancelled".

Yoshitake Yokokura, the head of the Japan Medical Association, said it would be "difficult" to hold the Games if there was no effective vaccine available.

Can the virus survive in the Sahara desert? How does the body fight off the virus? What does the 19 stand for in Covid-19?

We got a virologist to answer some of the most pressing questions children had to ask, and explain in simple terms how the virus works - have a watch, you might pick up a thing or two yourself.