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The Isle of Man has become the first place in the British Isles to announce that it will drop social distancing.

The rules, which apply to the general public, will be relaxed from Monday.

Although 24 people have died as a result of coronavirus on the Isle of Man, there have been no new cases there for 22 days.

Social distancing will remain for those working in hospitals and care homes.

Gatherings will be restricted to 30 people outdoors, while people indoors will be able to invite up to two people into their homes from another household.

Restaurants, gyms, and schools will reopen.

The island’s Chief Minister Howard Quayle described the change as a bold move, which has been taken to get society back to normal there.

He added that it could be reversed if new cases of the virus emerge. The island’s border remains closed to non-residents.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed "deep internal crises" in the US for its high number of coronavirus infections and death toll, and claims Russia has done a better job of handling its outbreak.

"I can't imagine someone in the [Russian] government or regions saying we are not going to do what the government or president says," he told state TV.

"It seems to me that the problem [in the US] is that... in this case, party interests, are put above those of society's as a whole, above the interests of the people."

The US has more than two million confirmed cases of coronavirus and a death toll of more than 115,000 - the highest in the world.

Russia has had more than 528,000 confirmed cases - the third-highest in the world after the US and Brazil. Its official death toll is currently 6,948 - but this figure is highly controversial.

The country is in the process of revising its death tolls to take into account people who died with Covid-19 but didn't have the disease listed as their main cause of death.

Moscow city officials said on Wednesday that, under the new system, more than 5,000 people had died in the capital in the month of May alone.

A 20-year-old man has died from a suspected drug overdose following an illegal rave in Droylsden, north-west England, which was attended by around 4,000 people on Saturday night, Greater Manchester Police has said.

A separate gathering on the same night in nearby Carrington was believed to have been attended by around 2,000 people, police said.

Assistant Chief Constable Chris Sykes said the raves were "clearly a breach of coronavirus legislation" and "had tragic consequences".

At the Carrington rave a number of serious incidents took place, including three reported stabbings and the alleged rape of an 18-year-old woman, police said.

In England, gatherings of more than six people are not currently allowed under lockdown rules - however there have also been reports of large illegal raves in other areas of the country, including London.

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It will likely be "months" before travellers will be allowed into the US from Britain, according to Dr Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Since March, America has placed a travel ban on visitors from the UK, China, Brazil and the European Union. Dr Fauci told the Sunday Telegraph , externalthat the restriction could be in place until a coronavirus vaccine is developed.

"I don't think there's going to be an immediate pull-back for those kinds of restrictions. My feeling, looking at what's going on with the infection rate, I think it's more likely measured in months rather than weeks," said Dr Fauci.

He also noted that while infection rates are dropping in cities, including New York, Chicago and New Orleans, cases are still spreading elsewhere in the country

"[The virus] could go on for a couple of cycles, coming back and forth," he added. "I would hope to get to some degree of real normality within a year or so. But I don't think it's this winter or fall, we'll be seeing it for a bit more."

But Dr Fauci expressed optimism about the chances of a vaccine being developed by the end of the year.

“You can never guarantee success with a vaccine, that’s foolish to do so, there’s so many possibilities of things going wrong," he said. "[But] everything we have seen from early results, it’s conceivable we get two or three vaccines that are successful.”

A further 27 people have died in hospital in England after testing positive for coronavirus, taking the total number of confirmed deaths in hospitals to 27,954, NHS England has said.

UK-wide figures - which use a different timeframe to those of individual nations and also include deaths in the community and care homes - are expected to be published by the Department of Health later.

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Spain is going to re-establish travel connections with other EU countries in the Schengen Zone from next Sunday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said.

The only exception is Portugal, which is keeping its own land border closed until 1 July.

Spain was initially planning to restart full EU travel on 1 July, but it has decided to lift "border checks with all member countries on 21 June" instead, Sánchez said in a televised speech earlier today.

The country had one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, but on 4 May, the government outlined its four-stage plan to start easing the restrictions.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said people should be able to "shop with confidence" when non-essential stores reopen in England on Monday.

Speaking during a visit to the Westfield shopping centre in east London, the prime minister said he hoped to see a "gradual" build-up of people returning to the high street - but that shoppers should follow social distancing rules to do so as safely as possible.

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Ahmedabad, home to more than seven million, is the largest city in the western Indian state Gujarat. It's also the worst affected by the pandemic, accounting for more than 75% of the state's caseload, and nearly all of its deaths.

With more than 21,500 confirmed cases, Gujarat has India's fourth-highest number of cases. But the state's mortality rate for Covid-19 patients is the highest, with 6.2% dying. That's more than double the national average of 2.8%.

When Gujarat's high court expressed "concern at the alarming number of deaths in Ahmedabad hospitals", the state government said that more than 80% of those who had died suffered from comorbidities, or other ailments, which made them more vulnerable.

But public health experts say it's hard to pin down a single reason for the higher rate.

Read more here.

A further three people have died after testing positive for coronavirus in Wales, taking its total number of deaths to 1,444.

One more death has been recorded in Scotland, taking its total to 2,448.

We expect UK wide-figures to be published by the Department of Health later today.

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For those of you just joining us, here's a round-up of some of the top coronavirus stories today.

• UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said people should feel confident that it is safe to go shopping when non-essential shops reopen in England on Monday
• Labour's David Lammy has said it is a "scandal" that the recommendations of a report on the impact of coronavirus on people in black, Asian and minority communities have been "buried"
• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has commissioned a review into the 2m social distancing rule

And in global news:

• India is to convert another 500 railway carriages to create 8,000 more beds for coronavirus patients in Delhi amid a surge in infections
• An area of the Chinese capital Beijing has been put under strict lockdown measures after the city's first coronavirus cases in more than 50 days
• The Iranian government has reported its coronavirus death toll has risen above 100 in a day for the first time since April

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There's been criticism of a study from the US suggesting that the coronavirus could have been present in the Chinese city of Wuhan as early as August last year.

The study by Harvard University, which gained significant publicity when it was released earlier this month, has been dismissed by China and had its methodology challenged by independent scientists, external.

Researchers say there was a noticeable rise in vehicles parking outside six hospitals in the city from late August to 1 December 2019. This coincided with an increase in searches for possible coronavirus symptoms such as "cough" and "diarrhoea".

But an analysis by the BBC has found serious flaws in their conclusions.

Read more here

As some secondary schools in England get ready to open their doors to more pupils this week, we find out what students and teachers in Hampshire think about going back and how they've found learning in lockdown.

Some were surprised to find they actually missed school and want some normality back:

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The Iranian government has reported more than 100 deaths in a single day from coronavirus, for the first time since April.

"It was very painful for us to announce the triple-digit figure," said a health ministry spokeswoman, Sima Sadat Lari. "This is an unpredictable and wild virus, and may surprise us at any time."

She announced on television that there had been 107 new fatalities, meaning nearly 9,000 people have died with Covid-19 in Iran.

The country reported its first coronavirus cases in the city of Qom in February. The government introduced strict confinement measures, but they were relaxed in April to help ease the impact on the economy.

On Saturday, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said some citizens were failing to observe measures introduced to check the spread of the virus. He also said he would bring back the lockdown if the situation deteriorates further.

On 3 April, news outlets across the world marked the point that global cases reached one million.

And now, just over two months later, the figure is rising towards eight times as many.

The real number is expected to be much higher, as many people have not had access to testing and some countries have been accused of underreporting.

According to Johns Hopkins University in the US, external, the worldwide total is currently 7.8 million.

You can explore the BBC's own global tracking work here.

Image source, Emilia Davies

People who have been in close contact with someone found to have Covid-19 are now being traced in the UK.

BBC Wales journalist Emilia Davies found herself among them.

It was a Thursday afternoon when my phone started to ring. I was working and didn't recognise the number so let it go to voicemail.

After about half an hour, I listened back to the message.

It was Vanessa - not her real name - from the Cardiff and Vale contact tracing team.

"I'm wondering if you could give me a call back please?" she said.

I was slightly alarmed when I heard the message, but had an idea why she was calling.

Read more

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The reduction in drug testing during the coronavirus pandemic has been a "let-down", "frustrating" and "disheartening", according to several athletes.

In March, both UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) publicly announced a reduction in their testing programmes.

Ukad chief executive Nicole Sapstead warned that athletes and coaches were "strongly mistaken if they believe the rules can be broken amid the coronavirus outbreak".

Despite those assurances, the USA's two-time Olympic triple jump champion Christian Taylor called the situation "frustrating and disheartening".

"We're already battling the constant battle of people trying to find loopholes and grey areas, and the frustrating part is [anti-doping agencies] said 'here's a window that you can take advantage of,'" he told BBC Sport.

Read more here.

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India's lockdown has been extended for another two weeks, though some activities have been allowed to reopen.

In Bangalore, this was the moment medical staff in the city walked through a shower of rose petals and flowers.

The flowers were thrown by members of the public as a tribute to healthworkers' response to the pandemic.

It came as India's daily number of new confirmed cases reached almost 12,000.

In Delhi, 500 railway carriages are going to be converted to create another 8,000 beds for coronavirus patients, as part of a new package of emergency measures. Nursing homes will also be requisitioned, and testing rapidly increased.

Earlier shadow justice secretary David Lammy told the Andrew Marr Show it was a "scandal" a leaked report on the impact of coronavirus on people in black, Asian and minority communities had been "buried".

The Labour MP said he had personally lost an uncle and a classmate to the virus. Watch what he said here:

You can see from the graph below how the number of confirmed cases in the US has levelled out in recent weeks, but stubbornly refused to drop.

The US is still reporting around 20,000 cases a day nationally. However, the situation is not the same in every state. In recent days the governors of Oregon and Utah halted plans to ease lockdown restrictions, citing local spikes in infections.

More than 90% of the US population was under mandatory lockdown orders at one point, but most states have now loosened their stay-at-home rules and allowed some businesses to reopen. It's a move health officials fear could further spread the virus.

Image source, Hellen Family

An 11-year-old girl has been unable to fly to the US for spinal surgery to help correct her "painful" scoliosis due to coronavirus.

Katie Hellen, from Spondon in Derbyshire, was due to be in Philadelphia for the operation, but restrictions caused by the virus have halted plans.

The family raised money for Katie to travel to the US for a procedure unavailable on the NHS.

They are now trying to raise £50,000 to have the treatment done elsewhere.

Read more