Kerry Allen, BBC Monitoring

Image source, Getty Images

After a two-month delay due to the pandemic, China’s annual parliamentary sessions, known informally as the “two sessions”, opened today.

These events see the country's top leadership, along with thousands of officials and business leaders, meet to outline new laws and strategies for the year ahead.

Earlier reports in the country suggested that this year’s National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislative body, and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the leading national advisory body, would be shorter, and that fewer people would be in attendance than in previous years.

But the latter has certainly not been shown to be the case. The CPPCC opened with a full audience of attendees. Some have been filmed on national television shaking hands with each other outside Beijing's Great Hall of the People.

There are 2,158 members of the CPPCC National Committee. Those attending today's event are all shown wearing masks but the same cannot be said about China’s top leadership, the Politburo.

President Xi Jinping, and other key officials, have been filmed and photographed attending the events without face coverings.

International charity Médecins sans frontières (MSF) has raised the alarm over a "catastrophe" unfolding in its Covid-19 treatment centre in Aden, southern Yemen.

In the first half of May, the centre admitted 173 patients, of whom at least 68 went on to die, the organisation says. Many who reach the centre are already severely sick, which makes it hard to save their lives, it says.

It is feared the number of cases in the country may be far higher than reported. According to Johns Hopkins University, which surveys national public health agencies, there are only 30 deaths in the country and 184 confirmed cases.

MSF believes it is seeing only a small proportion of those people sick and dying in Aden, the organisation added in a statement, external.

“People are coming to us too late to save, and we know that many more people are not coming at all: they are just dying at home. It is a heart-breaking situation,” said Caroline Seguin, MSF’s operations manager for Yemen.

The country's health system has been damaged by years of civil war and ventilators are in short supply.

In the UK, 338 people with coronavirus died on Wednesday, according to the Department for Health.

That takes the UK's total to 36,042 deaths.

The true figure for total deaths is likely to be higher as not everyone is tested.

Meanwhile, 128,340 tests were carried out on Wednesday, taking the total number of tests up to 3,090,566.

The UK government has reached a deal to acquire antibody tests, a spokesman says.

The tests, which show if someone has previously had coronavirus, will first go to health and care workers. The tests will be free.

The spokesman said the health secretary, Matt Hancock, would set out details at today's evening briefing.

The government had previously been known to be in negotiations with the drugs manufacturer Roche.

Countries across Europe are easing lockdowns as spring turns to summer, and crowds are flocking to the continent's beaches.

Authorities in France, the Netherlands and the UK have all cautioned people against a trip to the seaside.

The French authorities reopened hundreds of beaches last weekend for running, swimming and fishing, but not for sunbathing or picnicking.

On Wednesday evening, the prefecture of Morbihan, in Brittany, said beaches in five municipalities had been closed because of "unacceptable behaviour", external by visitors in recent days, including incivility and ignoring social distancing.

You can read more about it here.

Two weeks ago people living on the Isle of Wight were invited to test a Covid-19 contact tracing app, which is expected to be at the heart of the UK government's testing strategy.

Megan Mackney was one of those to sign up.

She's just received a notification that she's been near someone with symptoms.

She had expected to be told to self-isolate and offered a test but that's not what happened.

Money raised by the immigration health surcharge (money paid by some foreign users of the UK's National Health Service) "goes directly back into the NHS to help save lives", the government has said amid calls from MPs and others to exempt health and care workers.

The prime minister's spokesman said: "Money we put into our health service has a direct impact on improving people's lives and ultimately saving lives."

The spokesman confirmed the planned rise in the surcharge from £400 to £624 per year would go ahead in October, describing it as a "very clear manifesto commitment made by the government" on the basis of which "the prime minister won a significant majority".

Several MPs from the ruling Conservative Party have backed calls for the government to exempt healthcare staff from the surcharge, which applies to non-EU migrants.

Lockdown is tough but it can sometimes bring unexpected benefits to people stuck at home. Two children in Vendôme, north-western France, were probably luckier than most: they discovered hidden treasure in their grandparents' house.

In search of material to build a den, they asked their father what they could use.

"He advised them to take their grandmother's sheets, in an unused room. But instead of finding sprigs of lavender between the sheets, as people used to do, two fairly heavy objects fell out," auctioneer Philippe Rouillac told French TV channel BFM.

The kids put the objects back without another thought, but a few hours later told their father about the discovery. He asked them to go and get them, but initially thought they were knife holders.

Later, he contacted an auction house to get an estimate and was told he had found two gold bars weighing 1kg (2.2lb) each. Their worth? More than €50,000 (£45,000) per bar.

"The children said to their father: 'We're going to be able to have a swimming pool'," the amused auctioneer recalled.

Anna Holligan
BBC News Hague correspondent

A Dutch slaughterhouse has been ordered to close after almost a quarter of employees who were tested for Covid-19 were found to have contracted the virus. It is the first slaughterhouse in the Netherlands to be shut down due to the pandemic.

A number of slaughterhouses across the border in Germany, in France and the US have already been closed. The Vion slaughterhouse supplies pork products to the industrial retail sector and exports to markets in Asia.

Some 45 staff have coronavirus, and that number could rise - almost 400 people working at the site in the eastern province of Gelderland haven't yet been tested.

Unions have already raised concerns about working conditions, saying it's often impossible for staff in cramped, poorly ventilated slaughterhouses to stay 1.5m (5ft) away from each other - in line with the Dutch social-distancing rules.

The food safety authority is now looking at how the processing can resume without risking further infection. Workers who've caught the virus have been told to self-isolate at home until they are symptom-free for at least 24 hours, and their housemates must go into quarantine for two weeks.

You may also be interested in: How Germany is having to clean up its act over the running of abattoirs

Image source, AFP

Concern is high about the spread of the pandemic in Latin America. Among the latest developments:

• In Mexico, eight football players from a top division club have tested positive for coronavirus. None of the players for Santos Laguna shows any symptoms. The rest of the team are still waiting for their test results. Professional football has been suspended for the past two months and there is currently no date for it to resume
• Bolivia's health minister has been arrested on suspicion of corruption. Marcelo Navajas is being investigated over the purchase of over-priced ventilators from a Spanish company. Shortly after his arrest, he was sacked by the president who said she would not allow anyone to steal from Bolivians
• The World Health Organization warned some days ago that the Americas were now at the centre of the coronavirus pandemic. The latest figures back that up with Brazil, Peru and Mexico among the four countries which have seen the fastest rise in fatalities (the fourth is Russia)

A further 2.4 million Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, despite hopes that easing lockdowns would help the economy.

The new filings brought the total number of claims since mid-March to roughly 38.6 million - roughly a quarter of the workforce.

The weekly figures have been declining since the end of March, but remain extremely high.

Florida and Georgia were among the states with the biggest increases in filings in the week ended 16 May.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon just announced the Scottish government has published its four-phase "route-map" towards ending Scotland's coronavirus lockdown.

Here is a quick roundup of the key things we learned from her announcement.

The Scottish government will move to the first phase of the easing next Thursday, which will allow people to:

• Do more outdoor activity
• Sit or sunbathe in parks or open areas
• Meet one other person from another household, while outside

However, visiting people inside their houses will not be permitted.

Schools in Scotland will reopen from 11 August in a a “blended model of part time in-school and part time at-home learning,”

Teachers and other staff will be expected to return to schools during June to prepare classrooms for the new term.

Early years childcare will reopen over summer and childminders can reopen in this first phase, she confirms.

A full test and protect scheme will be available across every health board in Scotland from the end of next week. Anyone with symptoms of the virus will be tested, she said.

Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

One in 400 people in England had coronavirus between 4 and 17 May, according to results from a household survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

This is the second of the ONS regular updates on the spread of coronavirus - initially in England and to be extended to the rest of the UK in the coming weeks.

It shows little change in the numbers infected: 35 infections in 32 households out of the nearly 15,000 household who returned samples.

But it can take around five days between being infected and testing positive for the virus.

So this set of figures won’t have captured the effect of any increase in cases caused by easing lockdown measures in England last week.

But with such low numbers of people infected and wide margins for error at this stage it’s hard to draw firm conclusions from the survey.

However as numbers surveyed increase, the study should provide an accurate indication of the spread of the virus by age, location and occupation.

Here are the key UK and global coronavirus headlines:

• Lockdown restrictions in Scotland are likely to be relaxed slightly from 28 May, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed
• Time is running out to finalise a test, track and trace strategy to avoid a possible second surge in cases, NHS bosses have said
• A two-day-old baby has died with coronavirus in South Africa - one of the world's youngest victims of the virus
• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has told the BBC that it will remove any content likely to result in "immediate and imminent harm" to users. It removed Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's claim that scientists had "proved" there was a coronavirus cure

• Sicily's coronavirus co-ordinator and nine other healthcare officials have been arrested suspected of taking bribes from equipment and services contracts, Italian police say
• US roads have become more lethal even though Americans are driving less due to quarantine and stay-at-home orders, a new report has found

Marianna Spring
Specialist disinformation and social media reporter

Image source, Getty Images

During an interview with BBC News, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to be taking a tougher stance on misinformation than ever before. But the company isn’t totally shutting down conspiracies - or public figures promoting them. In the past, elections or terror attacks have led to changes to policies about misinformation. But the unprecedented threat of the pandemic has left social media sites like Facebook with little choice but to tighten regulations.

It took weeks for Facebook to get on top of the avalanche of misleading coronavirus posts across its site but stricter enforcement does appear to have been somewhat effective - especially when it comes to conspiracies that could cause immediate harm. Zuckerberg is reluctant to shut down all conversation about 5G and vaccination conspiracies. He has concerns about free speech and banning conspiracies entirely can backfire, leading to cries of censorship or an “establishment cover-up”.

The peak of viral misinformation appears to have passed - but whether that's down to action from social media companies is difficult to determine. The anti-vaccination movement has swelled online during the pandemic - raising the prospect of delayed but still very real damage to public health.

And then there’s questionable advice dished out by world leaders. While Zuckerberg says they’ve cracked down on misinformation from Brazilian President Bolsonaro, he avoided talking about President Donald Trump, who has been widely criticised for promoting unproven cures online and during White House briefings.

Image source, Reuters

The families of overseas NHS support staff and care workers who have died with coronavirus can now stay in the UK permanently.

The Home Office bereavement scheme had previously only applied to certain professions, such as nurses.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has extended it to cover cleaners, porters and other low-paid roles after pressure from the opposition Labour Party and the unions.

The offer of indefinite leave to remain for bereaved families of support staff will be effective immediately and retrospectively, the Home Office said.

It comes after Syrian refugee Hassan Akkad, a documentary maker working for the NHS as a cleaner on a Covid-19 ward, shared a video on social media on Wednesday, external. In the video, directed to the prime minister, he says he feels "betrayed" and "stabbed in the back" that he and his colleagues weren't included in the bereavement scheme.

All Scotland's schools will reopen from 11 August, says Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Staff will return during June to prepare classrooms for a "blended model" of in-school and at-home learning.

She says the steps the government will take to ease the lockdown are by necessity gradual and incremental - and they must also be matched with "rigorous, ongoing monitoring of the virus".

She says no one should "act rashly or recklessly".

A total of 14,856 people in Scotland now have tested positive for Covid-19, an increase of 105 from yesterday.

A further 37 people who tested positive have died, taking the total to 2,221 deaths in Scotland by that measure.

Image source, Reuters

With the summer holidays fast approaching, many European nations - including Greece - have begun announcing plans to kick start their tourism industries.

Spain has been hit hard by the pandemic, and is only gradually easing its tight lockdown measures region-by-region. But ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera has told the Financial Times that tourists could be able to come back to Spain as early as July.

"We have never ruled out having international visitors if we can guarantee that people can move around within Spain," she told the paper. Currently Spaniards are not able to move between regions unless for exceptional circumstances.

Ribera said the country was thinking of establishing "safe corridors" for travellers from countries with a similarly low infection rate, and also suggested the government could relax recently announced plans to make all arrivals quarantine for two weeks.

The Scottish government has published its "route map", external to take Scotland "through and out of the Covid crisis".

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it would provide some direction as to what the "new normal" might look like and it will be supplemented in the days ahead with detailed guidance and advice for the public.

Image source, Getty Images

Watford defender Adrian Mariappa says he is one of three people who tested positive for coronavirus at the English club.

He told the Telegraph: "It's quite scary how you can feel absolutely fine and not really have left the house, and yet still get the virus.

"If it wasn't for the fact I had gone back to training and had this test, then I'd never have found out that I had the virus."

On Tuesday, it was announced there had been six positive tests across three Premier League clubs.

The Premier League has been suspended since 13 March because of the Covid-19 pandemic, with 92 fixtures remaining.

The league had previously identified 12 June for matches to possibly start again but there is now an expectation this will need to be pushed back.

Read more here.