International and Indian celebrities to take part from home in fundraising event

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Mick Jagger and Will Smith will be among dozens of international and Indian celebrities performing from their homes in a four-hour concert to raise funds for the battle against coronavirus in India, where the number of cases is surging.

The country’s cricket captain Virat Kohli, actors Priyanka Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan are some of the top domestic names billed to perform or read messages during the event on Sunday.

Related: Mobs stop Indian doctors' burials: 'Covid-19 took his life, why take his dignity?'

Two years ago the photographer Palani Mohan received life-saving heart surgery. After his recovery he started to see the world and his work differently. He was drawn to images, old and new, that evoked silence and peace, and inspired reflection. ‘As we spend these days and weeks at home, I’m grateful for this time I have with my thoughts, and to witness the power of the small good things that surround us,’ he says. ‘My hope, especially in these difficult times, is that when you look at these images you can find a place for yourself within them, and be still.’

• Palani Mohan: the last rickshaws of Kolkata – in pictures

Bollywood star and popular member of India’s celebrated movie dynasty

Rishi Kapoor, who has died aged 67 of bone marrow cancer, starred as a leading man in almost 100 Bollywood films and was a member of the remarkable Kapoor family of actors and film-makers.

The son of the great director, producer and actor Raj Kapoor, Rishi started as a child actor, aged three, in his father’s hugely popular film Shree 420 (1955). But his proper debut came in Raj’s 1970 film Mera Naam Joker, playing the younger version of his father’s leading role. Rishi said that his father only gave him the part as he was unable to pay for a recognised star, and the film was not a commercial success in any case. The movie that gave Rishi stardom was his next, Bobby (1973), the story of a love affair between Raja, a rich Bombay teenager, and a poor girl, Bobby, from the wrong side of the tracks, played by Dimple Kapadia. In the story, also directed by Raj, he was Hindu and she was Catholic, which was in itself a bold move.

State-built Aarogya Setu has had record downloads but critics warn of civil liberties implications

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Narendra Modi’s request was simple: to help combat the spread of coronavirus, people should download an Indian government-built smartphone app that helps identify their risk of catching and spreading the virus.

“As more and more people use it, its effectiveness will increase,” the prime minister said in a televised address last month.

Labourers’ plight contrasts with affluent Indians flown home from abroad in coronavirus crisis

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Migrant labourers in Indian cities whose incomes have plummeted as a result of anti-coronavirus lockdown measures have been told that they will have to pay to board special trains taking them back to their homes in the countryside.

The decision has prompted derision in India, where most labourers live off what they earn in a day and have been surviving on state handouts.

Brian Waller questions the lack of political will when it comes to preventable deaths across Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, while Tony Haynes reveals how artists can explore attitudes to disease

Neil Singh’s powerful long read (Cholera and coronavirus: why we must not repeat the same mistakes, 1 May) tellingly compares the way in which the world is reacting to Covid-19 with how it has handled cholera, especially in developing countries. He states: “There is no biological or environmental reason why cholera can’t be eradicated … It is not the knowhow that is lacking, but rather the political will.”

Exactly the same conclusion can be reached in respect of the 5 million-plus children under five who are dying every year. According to the World Health Organization, many of these early child deaths are preventable or can be easily treated, but there is nothing remotely like the effort being put into this as in the response to Covid-19. Might the reason for that inaction be that more than 80% of these deaths involve children in central and south Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa?
Brian Waller
Otley, North Yorkshire

EU-hosted talks tout cooperation but is not addressed by India, Russia or US

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World leaders, with the notable exception of Donald Trump, stumped up nearly €7.4bn (£6.5bn) to research Covid-19 vaccines and therapies at a virtual event convened by the EU, pledging the money will also be used to distribute any vaccine to poor countries on time and equitably.

But in a sign of the fractured state of global health diplomacy, the event was not addressed by India, Russia or the US. After a weekend of persuasion, China was represented by its ambassador to the EU.

UK data from the Office for National Statistics has revealed that men are almost twice as likely to die from the disease as women. The trend was first seen in China, where one analysis found a fatality rate of 2.8% in men compared with 1.7% in women. Since then, the pattern has been mirrored in France, Germany, Iran, South Korea and Italy, where men have accounted for 71% of deaths.

UK data from the Office for National Statistics has revealed that men are almost twice as likely to die from the disease as women. The trend was first seen in China, where one analysis found a fatality rate of 2.8% in men compared with 1.7% in women. Since then, the pattern has been mirrored in France, Germany, Iran, South Korea and Italy, where men have accounted for 71% of deaths.

Kuwait police break up riot by Egyptian workers after large numbers of jobs lost across the Gulf states

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India is to send its navy and a fleet of planes to repatriate migrant workers stranded by the coronavirus pandemic, as mounting tensions sparked a riot in Kuwait and alarm among large numbers of laid-off employees across the Gulf states.

The riot in a migrant camp in Kuwait on Sunday night was led by Egyptian workers, some of whom brandished furniture as security forces fired tear gas and sound grenades towards them.

Civil society has outperformed the state in helping to feed India’s poorest. It should be seen as ally not enemy

The highways connecting India’s overcrowded cities to the villages had not seen anything like it since the time of partition 73 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of workers were on the move, walking back to their villages with their possessions bundled on their heads.

On 24 March, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide 21-day lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. States sealed their borders, and transport came to a halt. With no trains or buses to take them home, India’s rural-to-urban migrant population, estimated at a staggering 120 million, took to the roads. On 5 April a statement from the home ministry said 1.25 million people moving between states had been put up in camps and shelters.

Related: As the wealthy quaff wine in comfort, India’s poor are thrown to the wolves

‘Special corona fee’ levied to deter gatherings after police called in to break up crowds

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Officials in India’s capital have imposed a special tax of 70% on retail alcohol purchases to deter large gatherings at stores as authorities ease a six-week lockdown imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Taxes on alcohol are a key contributor to the revenue of many of India’s 36 states and federal territories, most of which are running short of funds because of the lengthy disruption in economic activity caused by the virus.

A radical new form of universal basic income could revitalise damaged economies

While countries in east Asia and Europe are gradually taking steps towards reopening their economies, many in the global south are wondering whether the worst of the pandemic is yet to come. As economists who work on poverty alleviation in developing countries, we are often asked what the effects of coronavirus will be in south Asia and Africa. The truth is, we don’t know. Without extensive testing to map the number of cases, it’s impossible to tell how far the virus has already spread. We don’t yet have enough information about how Covid-19 behaves under different conditions such as sunlight, heat and humidity. Developing countries’ more youthful populations may spare them the worst of the pandemic, but health systems in the global south are poorly equipped to deal with an outbreak, and poverty is linked to co-morbidities that put people at a higher risk of serious illness.

Without the information widespread testing provides, many poorer countries have taken an extremely cautious approach. India imposed a total lockdown on 24 March, by which time the country had about 500 confirmed cases. Countries such as Rwanda, South Africa and Nigeria enforced lockdowns in late March, long before the virus was expected to peak. But these lockdown measures can’t last forever. Poorer countries could have used the quarantine to buy time, gather information about how the disease behaves and develop a testing and tracing strategy. Unfortunately, not much of this has happened. And, far from coming to their aid, rich countries have outrun poorer nations in the race for PPE, oxygen and ventilators.

Mohar Singh was once one of the most feared men in the Chambal region

A notorious bandit who spent years rampaging across central India’s impoverished badlands before trying his luck as a Bollywood actor and politician has died aged 92, police have said.

Mohar Singh, once one of the most feared men in the Chambal region accused of hundreds of murders, kidnappings and other crimes, died on Tuesday, a senior police official in Bhind district told AFP.

Related: Masked assassins kill Bandit Queen

Riyaz Naikoo was member of region’s largest indigenous militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen

Indian government forces have killed a top rebel commander and his aide in disputed Kashmir, and shut down mobile phone and mobile internet services during subsequent anti-India protests.

Riyaz Naikoo, 35, was the chief of operations of the region’s largest indigenous rebel group, Hizbul Mujahideen, which has spearheaded an armed rebellion against Indian rule.

(August 1, 1947) 

Decades after Bhopal, lack of law enforcement and political will plagues Indian industry

The gas leak at a chemical factory in Visakhapatnam will immediately remind many in India and beyond of the 1984 Bhopal disaster, widely considered the world’s worst industrial disaster.

So far, the scale of the tragedies are very different. Eleven people are confirmed to have died in Visakhapatnam – but with hundreds hospitalised and thousands affected, there are fears the toll will rise. In Bhopal, 4,000 people died within days of the toxic gas leak from a pesticide plant in the central Indian city, and thousands more in the following years.

Gas from LG Polymers plant in Andhra Pradesh leaked into nearby homes while families slept

• Analysis: 36 years after Bhopal, another case of history repeating

At least 11 people have been killed and hundreds more taken to hospital after a gas leak at a chemical factory in south-east India.

A plastics plant owned by South Korea’s LG Corp started leaking styrene into the surrounding residential area at about 3am on Thursday. Some people were enveloped as they slept, while others collapsed in the streets as they tried to flee the area on the outskirts of the coastal city of Visakhapatnam.

Related: 'Bhopal’s tragedy has not stopped': the urban disaster still claiming lives 35 years on

Everyone within 5km of the plant in Andhra Pradesh told to leave over fear of repeat of accident that has left at least 11 dead

Indian officials have evacuated more people from the area around a chemical plant in the south of the country that leaked toxic gas, killing at least 11 people and sickening hundreds more.

There was confusion about whether the wider evacuation orders were sparked by a renewed leak at the LG Chem factory in Andhra Pradesh, or by the fear that rising temperatures at the plant could lead to another leak.

Related: India's chemical plant disaster: another case of history repeating itself

Related: 'Bhopal’s tragedy has not stopped': the urban disaster still claiming lives 35 years on

Pharmacists will be allowed to give out medication to patients who have already been receiving it

Pharmacists are to be allowed to hand out a range of super-strength medicines, including the heroin substitute methadone, without prescription during the Covid-19 crisis, under emergency measures that official drug policy advisers have warned could trigger a spike in drug misuse.

The Advisory Council for Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which makes recommendations to the government on the control of dangerous drugs, was asked by the home secretary to consider the risks of lifting restrictions on certain substances controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Two companies jointly have capacity to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses

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Two of the world’s biggest vaccine companies have joined forces in an “unprecedented” collaboration to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.

GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi, which combined have the largest vaccine manufacturing capability in the world, are working together on a hi-tech vaccine they say could be in human trials within months.

What is Covid-19?

Pharmaceutical giants will bury treatments in a thicket of patents, making them unaffordable to the world’s poorest

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How will the Covid-19 pandemic end? According to conventional wisdom, the crisis may ease in a few months, when some of the antiviral medicines on trial succeed. In a few years’ time, when a vaccine becomes available, we may eradicate the virus altogether.

Yet it’s unlikely that this is how the pandemic will actually play out. Although there is every indication that treatments for coronavirus may soon emerge, the mere fact of their existence is no guarantee that people will be able to access them. In fact, Covid-19 is more likely to end in the same way that every pandemic ends: treatments and vaccines will be buried in a thicket of patents – and pharmaceutical companies will ultimately make the decisions about who lives and who dies.

Related: The race to find a coronavirus treatment has one major obstacle: big pharma | Ara Darzi

Stock index up more than 3% in early trading on the back of hopes for remdesivir treatment

Optimism about a potential treatment for Covid-19 gave a shot in the arm to stock markets around the world, amid claims that a drug called remdesivir has spurred rapid recovery in 113 patients.

A University of Chicago hospital participating in a study of the antiviral medication, made by US firm Gilead Sciences, found that nearly all patients suffering severe fever and respiratory symptoms were discharged within a week. A report of the study, issued by specialist healthcare publication Stat News shortly after Wall Street closed on Thursday night, spurred hopes among investors that lockdowns around the world could soon be eased.

Pharmaceutical company says it can produce tests in the high tens of millions by June

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The pharmaceutical giant Roche has devised a new coronavirus antibody test, which it is aiming to launch in the UK next month.

Antibody testing, which has already been utilised in Germany, South Korea and Finland, is seen as a way for countries to exit lockdown by showing who has already had Covid-19 and could therefore have a degree of immunity.

Related: Antibody tests aren't perfect, but they may be Britain's way out of the lockdown | Eleanor Riley

Government bodies, industry and charities to collaborate in research efforts

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• Coronavirus vaccine – when will we have one?

The government has announced a new vaccines taskforce to help the development of a vaccine for Covid-19 and ensure its rapid production and rollout if one arrives.

The business secretary, Alok Sharma, also gave details of cash grants for work into both vaccines and potential treatments. Among the projects receiving cash is one led by Public Health England (PHE), which hopes to develop an antibody drug, something that has the potential to work as both a prophylactic and a treatment for those infected.

Related: The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine

Hydroxychloroquine, also known by its brand name, Plaquenil, is a drug used to treat malaria. It is a less toxic version of chloroquine, another malaria drug, which itself is related to quinine, an ingredient in tonic water.

Patients were used as guinea pigs but denied access to resulting therapies. This time, Big Pharma must be held to account

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The year I turned 11, my uncle Josiah Ssesanga was admitted to a hospital in Uganda with meningitis. It was 1994, and he was HIV positive. Between him and death stood a tattered post-civil war health system.

Treatments for HIV and Aids existed in other parts of the world, but in Uganda they were mostly limited to those used in clinical trials. For my uncle’s particular infection – cryptococcal meningitis – there was a drug called Fluconazole. But he didn’t know it existed; regardless, he wouldn’t have been able to afford it. and even among patients who took it, only 12% survived beyond six months.

Related: Macron calls for clinical trials of controversial coronavirus 'cure'

Related: Fear, bigotry and misinformation – this reminds me of the 1980s Aids pandemic | Edmund White

Any vaccine has to work, but it also has to be safe. Making it happen is one of the government’s biggest priorities

• Patrick Vallance is the UK government chief scientific adviser

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Covid-19 has made fundamental and long-lasting changes to the way we live our lives, not just in the UK, but across the world.

As we continue with social-distancing measures and deal with the most immediate issue of reducing the number of cases to protect the NHS and save lives, and keeping R, which is the average infection rate per person, below one, we also need to progress ways to tackle the disease in the longer term.

The vaccines taskforce will be working in lockstep with the public and private sector

Related: New UK taskforce to help develop and roll out coronavirus vaccine

ICI executive who helped turn its bioscience business into the pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca

Sir David Barnes, who has died aged 84, was the self-effacing but determined and clear-sighted chief executive who turned the bioscience interests of ICI into one of the world’s major pharmaceutical corporations, AstraZeneca.

Teased at its launch in 1993 that Zeneca sounded like a Czechoslovakian camera, Barnes responded that its performance would define its brand – and was vindicated. The first suggested name had been Zenica, but then Barnes, tracking the Bosnian conflict days before the launch, found to his horror that hostilities were threatening to spread to a previously unremarked town of that name. Alarmed that it “could become as notorious as Guernica”, he changed the spelling and held his breath.

The pressing need to find a solution to the pandemic means risks and shortcuts may have to be taken

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The stakes could hardly be higher; the prize still tantalisingly out of reach. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of many millions of people rests on the discovery of a vaccine for Covid-19 – the only sure escape route from the pandemic.

Yet the optimism that accompanied the launch of Oxford University’s human trials this week has to be put in context, and the hurdles facing the scientists need to be understood.

Video meeting seen as global endorsement of WHO and sign of Trump’s isolation on world stage

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Global leaders have pledged to accelerate cooperation on a coronavirus vaccine and to share research, treatment and medicines across the globe. But the United States did not take part in the World Health Organization initiative, in a sign of Donald Trump’s increasing isolation on the global stage.

The cooperation pledge, made at a virtual meeting, was designed to show that wealthy countries will not keep the results of research from developing countries.

Related: The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine – a perilous and uncertain path

Related: ‘Please don’t inject bleach’: Trump’s wild coronavirus claims prompt disbelief

Provide access to new treatments, technologies and vaccines across the world.

Commit to an unprecedented level of international partnership on research and coordinate efforts to tackle the pandemic and reduce infections.

Reach collective decisions on responding to the pandemic, recognising that the virus’s spread in one country can affect all countries.

Learn from experience and adapt the global response.

Be accountable, to the most vulnerable communities and the whole world.

Big drugs companies have long favoured outsourcing clinical trials to poor countries with lax regulations to cut costs and maximise profit

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Last week, in Oxford, the first volunteers in the first European human trial were injected with a potential coronavirus vaccine. At the same time, Pakistan’s National Institute of Health received an offer from the Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm International Corp to take part in a trial of another potential coronavirus vaccine.

Related: Africa's Covid-19 research must be tailored to its realities – by its own scientists | Monique Wasunna

In India, many poor people were recruited to HIV trials without knowing that they were taking part in experiments

Investors shrug off US growth gloom after promising data from remdesivir drug trial

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Shares have soared on the world’s stock markets after investors shrugged off a deep slump in the US economy and pinned their hopes on a possible breakthrough in treatment for Covid-19.

Despite news that the longest expansion in US history came to an abrupt end in the first three months of 2020, financial markets were buoyed by an update from the American biopharma company Gilead Sciences on its experimental drug remdesivir.

Firm’s recent success could have been very different had it been bought out by Pfizer in 2014

It’s perhaps not surprising that the worth of healthcare companies should emerge during a global pandemic, but we should offer thanks for the UK’s big pharma twins – AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline.

The former, with its share price at all-time high, is now jostling with Shell and Unilever for the title of biggest company in the FTSE 100 index. Successful research bets, especially on cancer drugs, have transformed Astra.

Preliminary results of US government trial show patients who received drug recovered faster than others

Hopes of an effective drug treatment for coronavirus patients have risen following positive early results from a trial of remdesivir, a drug first tried in Ebola patients.

Data from the trial on more than 1,000 severely ill patients in 75 hospitals around the world show that patients put on the drug recovered 31% faster than similar patients who were given a placebo drug instead. Remdesivir cut recovery time from a median of 15 days to 11.

Related: World's stock markets soar on coronavirus treatment hopes

With substandard medicines already in wide circulation, fears are growing that coronavirus could create a lethal ‘parallel crisis’

When Joana Opoku-Darko’s daughter Anna was 18 months old, she came down with malaria, a disease common in Ghana and especially deadly for children.

She bought medication from a pharmacy in Ghana’s capital, Accra; when Anna’s fever didn’t subside she took her to a hospital, where they ran some tests.

The current focus on curbing Covid-19 spread means there is less focus on routine market surveillance

Related: Fight the fakes: how to beat the $200bn medicine counterfeiters | Helen Lock

Trial of remdesivir shows fewer deaths and shorter hospital stays

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The first drug against Covid-19 to show promise in trials, reducing the time seriously ill people take to recover in hospital, is unlikely to be available widely in the UK soon, it has emerged.

Forty-six people in the UK have received remdesivir as part of the European arm of an international trial. Researchers would like to have given the drug to more patients but did not have the supplies.

Related: Coronavirus: what do scientists know about Covid-19 so far?

Drugmaker will manufacture and distribute vaccine if human trials are successful

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AstraZeneca, the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical group, is teaming up with Oxford University to manufacture and distribute a coronavirus vaccine if clinical trials currently under way show it is effective.

News of the partnership boosted AstraZeneca’s share price, helping it to become Britain’s most valuable company by market capitalisation.

Related: The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine – a perilous and uncertain path

Exclusive: St Vincent’s in Sydney is the only confirmed location so far, as NSW Health negotiates with US pharmaceutical giant Gilead

• Remdesivir: the antiviral drug is being touted as a possible coronavirus treatment – but will it work?
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The US pharmaceutical company Gilead is finalising the location of five hospitals in Australia to receive the highly sought-after experimental coronavirus drug remdesivir.

The only confirmed location is St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney, a major tertiary hospital and the centre of many of the New South Wales outbreak areas. A NSW Health spokeswoman confirmed the health department “has been engaging with Gilead on gaining access to the drug for Covid-19 patients”.

Related: Remdesivir: the antiviral drug is being touted as a possible coronavirus treatment – but will it work?

The partnership between AstraZeneca and the Jenner Institute should jolt our industry and banks

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There was some good news last week. Oxford University’s Jenner Institute announced it was teaming up with AstraZeneca to take a promising prototype of coronavirus vaccine into volume production by the autumn. Of course there are caveats – the institute’s confidence in its vaccine may not be validated by the trials that began last week.

Still it was heartening, after so much tragic incompetence, that a British university and a British company could forge a relationship of such potential national importance.

The piping through which emergency credit must flow is atrophied and weak

One virus; 18 ways of seeing the world. Covid Latam is a collective project documenting the coronavirus pandemic as it unfolds across Latin America. Photographers – 9 men and 9 women – are working in 13 countries: Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Cuba and Mexico to document the unfolding story of the pandemic through the Covid Latam instagram account

Determined to find an uplifting moment every day, the Yorkshire photographer Rebecca Cole has been in search of images that bring spring to her family and friends in lockdown. She has been sharing a daily image with them via Blipfoto for the last six and a half years, but photographing nature has provided a particularly welcome escape in recent weeks

Cutting short our holiday to Cuba as Covid-19 took off, it was an eerie feeling transferring through an emptying Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in the middle of the day with the shutters down on duty free. I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got home but, while life felt uncertain, I knew my wildlife - my haven - would still be there. The countryside around Burley-in-Wharfedale, my home, has become my daily sanctuary, now more than ever.

The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including a sunbathing squirrel and cuddling owls

People including veterans observe Victory in Europe Day amid lockdown

The photographer Olivia Harris has been seeking out the sun worshippers of London making the best of their front stoops, balconies, window ledges and gardens, and finding out how they are managing under lockdown

VE Day celebrations, physical distancing and lockdown – the most striking photographs from around the world this week

Second member of banned folk group dies in country where few political protest options remain

İbrahim Gökçek died at an Istanbul hospital after almost a year on hunger strike protesting against the detention of his wife, Sultan. She was still in prison, rather than at his side, when he died in intensive care on Thursday, two days after abandoning his strike.

Gökçek, a bass guitarist, is the second member of the banned left-wing folk music band Grup Yorum to die in just over a month after launching hunger strikes over the Turkish state’s treatment of their band: 28-year-old Helin Bölek, a singer, died on 3 April after 288 days of fasting.

The strange tale of how paradise came to be located in a Victorian semi not far from the town centre

That the Garden of Eden remains absent from travel bucket lists is, perhaps, unsurprising. Unlike El Dorado or Lyonesse, however, its location is no mystery. It even has an address: 12 Albany Road, Bedford. And while the Victorian house is modest in size, its garden does boast a cosy tearoom, and how it came to be there is as surprising as its geography.

More than 200 years ago, religious prophets – spiritual gurus of their day – attracted loyal followers and occasionally courted scandal. One such was Joanna Southcott from Devon, who in 1814, at the age of 64, declared herself pregnant with the new messiah. The baby failed to materialise and Southcott died a short while later, but not before presenting a mysterious locked box to her followers. It was to be opened in a time of national crisis, and would bring peace and prosperity on Earth – but only if 24 bishops prayed over it for three days. Bishops being busy fellows, Southcott’s box remained unopened and passed down through her followers until it came to the attention of Mabel Barltrop.

Cherished figures from pillar of country’s culture among the dead, as virus hits working-class areas

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Like so many of his neighbours in Madureira – a working-class neighbourhood considered Rio’s “cradle of samba” – Álvaro Silva was a diehard supporter of the local samba school, Portela.

Just a few weeks ago the 76-year-old percussionist watched in delight as the group to which he had dedicated more than half of his life took to the streets for its annual carnival procession.

Ireland’s 7,000 pubs, 50,000 staff and millions of customers are in crisis. Time for some blue-sky thinking…

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If it’s a balmy evening and you hear buzzing in the sky over Rathdrinagh, a townland in the middle of Ireland, the odds are that it’s not bees but beer.

Specifically, a drone carrying bottles of beer, and maybe a bag of crisps. “Bottles of Heineken usually, or sometimes a few cans of Bulmers,” said Avril McKeever.

Cities like Barcelona want to use crisis to allow people to rent properties at decent rates

Airbnb has revolutionised travel and since it was founded in 2008 hundreds of thousands of property owners have used the holiday accommodation platform to make ends meet, make a living and, in some cases, make a killing.

But while hosts, as they are known, are wringing their hands over the collapse of the travel industry and their loss of income, many city authorities are rubbing theirs at the prospect of thousands of holiday lets returning to the traditional rental market. Cities complain that the highly profitable holiday lets have driven up rents and forced out residents with the knock-on effect that local businesses no longer have a community to serve.

What does the second world war mean to millennials in Europe? We asked for their views

This weekend marks 75 years since the end of the second world war in Europe, and 70 years since the foundations were established of what became the European Union. With the continent facing its biggest challenge since 1945, do the lessons of the war and its aftermath have any resonance for young people? Millennials from around Europe share some of their thoughts and fears.

We would like you to share your tributes for friends and family who have died

Covid-19 has now claimed the lives of thousands of people in the UK.

Older people and those with underlying health conditions are much more vulnerable to the coronavirus, but it can affect people who are otherwise fit and healthy.

We’d like to hear from those who attended events between the end of February and early March such as Wolves v Espanyol and Cheltenham Festival

We’d like you to help us document the spread of coronavirus due to some of the mega-events that went ahead between the end of February and the first couple of weeks in March.

Those events include: Wolves v Espanyol Europa League game, Liverpool v Atletico Madrid Champions League tie, Six Nations cup games and the Cheltenham Festival.