Image source, Getty Images

If you're just joining us, welcome - and here are some of the top coronavirus stories from across the globe.

• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has faced Labour leader Keir Starmer for the first time in Prime Minister's Questions after the PM recovered from coronavirus. The PM, among other things, has said there is an "epidemic" in care homes in the UK "which is something I bitterly regret"
• Several European leaders - including Italy's prime minister - say people may be able to take summer holidays this year if the coronavirus epidemic stays under control. Airbnb has already seen a jump in bookings
• US President Donald Trump says the White House coronavirus task force will be winding down, with Vice-President Mike Pence suggesting it could be disbanded within weeks
• More than two-thirds of people surveyed in 20 African countries said they would run out of food and water if they had to stay at home for 14 days

The number of people dying from coronavirus in Scotland has fallen for the first time, according to new statistics.

Data from the National Records of Scotland (NRS) showed that the virus was mentioned in 523 death certificates in the week to 3 May.

This was lower than the 656 deaths that were recorded the previous week.

NRS said it was the first weekly reduction in the number of Covid-19 deaths since weekly reporting began on 16 March and brought the total number of people who had died from confirmed or suspected cases to 2,795.

Boris Johnson says the ambition for the government is to hit 200,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of May.

It comes after the government said it had hit its 100,000 testing target for the end of April, including mailed testing kits, but the numbers have since dropped below that mark.

Starmer had asked him: ""On Monday, there were just 84,000 tests and that meant 24,000 available tests were not used. What does the Prime Minister think was so special about April 30 that meant that testing that day was so high?"

Matt McGrath
BBC News, Environment correspondent

We are living through the biggest carbon crash ever recorded.

No war, no recession, no previous pandemic has had such a dramatic impact on emissions of CO2 over the past century as Covid-19 has in a few short months.

One of the many things that has changed because of this is traffic. By air and on roads, the world has cut back heavily on travel. As can be seen in our chart above, almost every country has seen a huge drop in road use. This also has resulted in a massive fall in the use of oil.

While the lockdown might feel rather uniform across the world, there have been huge variations in emissions reductions from different cities.

If we take Paris and New York as examples, the contrast, as shown on our chart below, is huge. While Paris saw a CO2 drop of 72% (+/-15%) in March, compared to normal, New York saw a fall of around 10%.

Why the big difference? Read our full story to find out and see the impacts of climate change and Covid-19 explained in five charts.

Reality Check

Labour leader Keir Starmer referred to the UK having the highest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe, after overtaking Italy yesterday.

The figures announced yesterday by both countries at their daily briefings showed the UK on a total of 29,427 deaths and Italy on 29,315 deaths.

But there are challenges around making a straightforward comparison between the two countries.

Both countries’ figures are for deaths by people who had tested positive for the virus - so they are underestimates of the numbers who have died either directly or indirectly from Covid-19.

The UK's stats included more than 4,600 care home deaths but it's not clear how many Italy has counted in its figures.

Also, these figures are dependent on the number of tests carried out. Italy has carried out more than 2.2 million tests, while the UK has done over 1.3 million.

It will be a long time before we have reliable figures for how many deaths are actually linked to coronavirus in either the UK or Italy.

You can read more about it here.

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, HoC

Keir Starmer points out that the government has been producing slides showing international comparisons.

He says "the answer is the UK was slow into lockdown, slow into testing, slow on tracing and slow on the supply of PPE".

He adds that "deaths in care homes continue to go up" and asks: "Why hasn't the government got to grips with this?"

Boris Johnson replies that "the epidemic in care homes is something I bitterly regret".

He adds that a "huge amount of effort" has gone into providing PPE to care homes.

He also says "in the last few days there has been a palpable improvement" in care home figures.

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, HoC

Sir Keir Starmer takes to the despatch box for the third Prime Minister's Questions of his tenure as Labour leader - but first time opposite Boris Johnson.

He welcomes the PM "back to his place" and congratulates him on the birth of his son.

Sir Keir quotes Mr Johnson on his return to work two weeks ago, when he talked of the "apparent success of the government" dealing with coronavirus.

But he says, with the death toll becoming the highest in Europe, "that is not success or apparent success".

He asks the PM: "How on earth did it come to this?"

Mr Johnson says: "Every death is a tragedy and he is right to draw attention to the appalling statistics, not just in this country but around the world."

But he says the data is not yet there to "draw conclusions".

The PM adds: "What I can tell him is at every stage as we took the decisions we did, we were governed by one overriding principle - save lives and protect NHS."

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, HoC

"The whole House is delighted at his recovery," Sir Lindsay Hoyle says, speaking about the prime minister.

"It is good to be back," says Boris Johnson.

"I would like to pay tribute to the 107 NHS and 29 care workers who have sadly died from coronavirus," he adds.

Johnson faces six questions from the leader of the opposition - who is asking about protective kit and the death rate in care homes.

Image source, PA Media

Next week could be crucial in the potential return of English football, according to two people involved in the sport.

The Premier League hopes to return on 12 June, with a vote due on Monday on various proposals, including playing at neutral grounds.

The league wants to remove home and away fixtures to avoid crowds congregating outside stadiums and it needs 14 of the 20 clubs to vote in favour for that proposal to pass.

League Managers' Association chief executive Richard Bevan has told the BBC the season will probably be cancelled if that idea is voted down.

Meanwhile, Coventry City chief executive Dave Boddy says, external the "middle of next week... is the tipping point" for whether the Football League can return.

England's second to fourth tiers need to finish by 31 July and Boddy thinks if players do not start training next week that will be impossible.

The German Bundesliga is hoping to return this month - although reports in Germany now suggest the government has pushed it back to 22 May.

Prime Minister's Questions is kicking off in the chamber now with Prime Minister Boris Johnson returning for the first time since he was ill with coronavirus.

He faces Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for the first time, with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab having stood in last week due to the birth of Johnson's son.

Tom Burridge
Transport correspondent

Image source, AFP

The boss of Heathrow has told MPs that a temperature-check system for health screening is being trialled at the airport on people departing for countries where this type of check is a requirement.

The airport's chief executive John Holland-Kaye said he hopes a common international standard can be agreed soon for health screening at airports.

He also said Heathrow was in the process of working out how many front-line staff at the airport would be made redundant. A third of management roles have already been cut.

He warned that the UK government needed to produce a plan on what common standardsairports in the UK should adopt so that they can increase operations safely and as quickly as possible.

Otherwise, he said, large numbers of front-line jobs at Heathrow would be lost.

Holland-Kaye had previously warned social-distancing would be impossible at airports.

The number of Covid-19 infections in Iran has reached 101,650, the government said, as confirmed cases picked up again after a drop in recent days.

A health ministry spokesman said the number of deaths had risen by 78 in the past 24 hours to 6,418.

Iran has been the worst-affected country in the Middle East and some observers say the official figures may understate the true situation.

A BBC News Arabic investigation has revealed how Iran's largest airline, Mahan Air, ignored flight bans and contributed to the spread of Covid-19 in the region.

Image source, Reuters

More than half the workforce at a US meat processing plant have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials have revealed.

Some 730 employees at Tyson Foods in Perry, Iowa, representing 58% of staff, have contracted the virus, the Iowa Department of Public Health told a daily news conference.

Tyson's plant at Perry was one of 22 US meat factories across the US Midwest that temporarily closed in April. A company spokesman told the Des Moines Register, external that it had undergone a "deep cleaning" before reopening.

US meat processing plants have come under close scrutiny during the pandemic. Late last month, US President Donald Trump ordered them to stay open to protect the nation's food supply. At that time, an estimated 3,300 US meatpacking workers had been diagnosed with coronavirus and 20 had died.

Last month, we told you about the oubreak at the Smithfield pork plant in South Dakota, where more than 600 cases had been confirmed.

As well as commenting on Prof Neil Ferguson, as we reported earlier, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has also been talking about testing in care homes.

Asked what he could have done differently, he told Sky News: "I think it's very hard.

"I feel like we've put a huge amount of effort and resources behind supporting care homes from the start, maybe we should have explained that more clearly."

But he added it "would have been wonderful" if the UK had gone into this crisis with a global-scale diagnostics industry like Germany.

Asked by a viewer whether it was more than a "coincidence" that there were two laboratories researching coronavirus in Wuhan before the breakout, Hancock said: "Well, we have looked into this but we don't have any evidence. There isn't evidence that this is a man-made coronavirus."

Image source, Getty Images

Former Conservative cabinet minister Rory Stewart has pulled out of the race to be mayor of London citing the difficulty of running as an independent candidate after the contest was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement on Twitter, Stewart said while the "considerable challenges" of running as an independent candidate were "manageable for a normal race", they were "forbidding for an extended and delayed election".

He added it would have been the "honour of his life" to serve London as mayor and praised the city's "courageous" response to Covid-19.

The election was originally due to be held on Thursday.

Boris Johnson is back in the UK's House of Commons for Prime Minister's Questions from 12:00 BST.

It's his first appearance opposite Labour's Sir Keir Starmer, who was elected as his party's leader in early April.

And it's the PM's first time back since having coronavirus and since having another child - a baby with his fiancée Carrie Symonds.

He will answer MP's questions as the UK's death toll becomes the highest in Europe and as a government adviser on coronavirus quit amid reports he broke lockdown rules with visits from a woman.

Follow live updates here.

Adam Easton
Warsaw Correspondent

Image source, EPA

Although the number of infections and deaths is much lower in Poland than in many western European countries, the pandemic has caused unprecedented confusion over whether to hold presidential elections this month.

According to Polish law, the first round of the election is scheduled to take place on Sunday, with Poles going to voting stations despite the coronavirus restrictions. Postal voting would be available to the over-60s.

The governing Law and Justice party has proposed holding a postal-only presidential election as a safe and legal way to hold the ballot this month. With only four days left, the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, is due to vote on the proposal later on Wednesday or on Thursday.

If parliament rejects the postal-only election then, by law, Poland is heading for a traditional election on Sunday. But that is not likely to happen. The state electoral commission has said the election cannot be properly organised in time.

So there is likely to be some form of postponement. The postal-only proposal, if passed, allows for the election to be held on May 17 or May 23.

Other potential solutions would postpone the election to a later date. One long pushed by the opposition is for the government to impose a state of natural disaster, which automatically bars any elections, and would put off the ballot until August at the earliest.

One of the reasons Law and Justice wants to hold the election in May, despite the pandemic, is because it calculates that its ally President Andrzej Duda, could win in the first round. If the election is postponed for months, President Duda's chances could be diminished by rising unemployment and an overall gloomy economic scenario.

Claire Marshall
Environment correspondent, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

The head of a charity which works on protecting African wildlife, Tusk, says the coronavirus pandemic is the biggest threat to conservation in his 30 years of working in the sector.

Charlie Mayhew told the BBC that his organisation expects to lose $2m (£1.6m) from cancelled fundraising events alone.

The number of coronavirus cases across the continent is relatively low, but despite this, the tourism industry has collapsed.

Almost four million people work in the conservation industry - guiding safaris, working in lodges and hotels, and protecting wildlife.

Now, with large numbers of people out of work, there are reports of an increase in poaching.

Tourism can often make up half the revenue for wildlife reserves, and the loss of that income will make it much harder to fund the rangers that protect the animals.

Tourists and their guides out on safari can also act as a deterrent to poachers. Now those extra pairs of eyes and ears are gone.

Image source, Getty Images

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to announce his plans to ease lockdown and restart the economy on Sunday.

But what will everyday life be like?

One of the first things many people will be desperate to know is whether they can visit friends and family again while others will want to get out to the High Street for some retail therapy.

Here are some thoughts on what the "new normal" might look like.