Deaths in England and Wales are highest on record in mid-April while cases in the US surpass 1m

The worldwide Covid-19 death toll rose by 6,365 on Tuesday, pushing the total through 200,000

Eurozone GDP in historic fall, millions more Americans file for unemployment, Shell cuts dividend for first time since second world war and UK's AstraZeneca combines with Oxford on a potential vaccine

A live blog from FT.com

Spain allows outside exercise for the first time in weeks while Russia’s daily case count rises by a fifth

The FT's live blog on the Covid-19 pandemic

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez says no other option remains but to maintain the state of alert

Russia's coronavirus outbreak worsens and Federal Reserve research finds a correlation between deaths from the influenza pandemic in 1918-1920 and extremist voting in Germany in 1932 and 1933

The US private sector shed a record 20m jobs in April as coronavirus lockdowns and the resulting closure of non-essential businesses led to historic joblessness

BT halts dividend for first time since dot com bubble two decades ago, BA parent IAG warns of further cuts as recovery set to take three years and shoemaker Puma warns worse to come as profits halve in first quarter

Germany's dominant export sector in record decline, South Korea may be forced to close bars and nightclubs after partygoer is found to have infected at least 14 people

Swiss company announces ‘challenging’ results a day after its chief executive quit

Pharma and chemicals group says it will ‘defend itself vigorously’ amid mounting cases

Concern over use of chemicals drives research into alternatives

German chemicals group faces surge in plaintiffs alleging cancer link to Roundup

Amid charges of greenwashing from activists, the private company is investing in football, cycling and other ventures

Products vital to combat coronavirus could become more expensive and scarce

At the start of the year, it looked like Europe would be in for a “Summer E-Scooters / E-Bike War,” as both regional startups and U.S.-backed unicorns vied for the pockets of city commuters. Consolidation came when German startup Circ was taken over by U.S. competitor Bird at the start of the year. Still on […]

Banked, a London-based fintech using open banking to enable account-to-account payments at checkout (and beyond), has raised £2.35 million in further seed funding. The round was led by Force Over Mass, with participation from previous investors Backed and Acrew Capital, along with a number of high-net-worth individuals, such as Paul Forster (co-founder of Indeed.com). It […]

The Europas Awards — which have been recognising the hottest European tech startups in since 2009 — are now open for the public voting stage, prior to the formal judging process. The entries have been sorted and sifted by journalists to compile an editorially-driven ‘long list’ of some of Europe’s most exciting startups and investors. […]

Meet Kairn, a new startup coming out of stealth today with a sneak peek of what the company has been working on. As Wunderlist shuts down, Kairn wants to prove that there’s still room for an innovative task-management service. “We’re building a task manager that is smart and focused on capturing tasks,” co-founder and CEO […]

Under lockdown, vulnerable families are imprisoned in a cage of terror, stress and abuse

The quarantine lockdown is driving a record number of users to Facebook’s products. On a conference call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed a number of new metrics highlighting a significant bump in Facebook usage during the broader quarantine lockdown. In the past month, more than 3 billion internet users logged onto a Facebook service, including its […]

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web. The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and […]

The anti-Brexit movement wasted energy on negative campaigning and parliamentary wrecking tactics

The German finance minister’s proposition on EU deposit insurance are not quite what they seem

Security and climate change will be high on Ursula von der Leyen’s list of priorities

From Brexit to fiscal policy, the EU’s largest member states have seen the mainstream wrongfooted

The EU is culpably complacent about the challenges of the digital age

Direct payments should be made to citizens and companies

Carlos Ghosn takes the stage

Countries look for evidence that Covid-19 infections have passed their pinnacle

In its first-quarter earnings report today, Samsung said it expects the COVID-19 pandemic to continue impacting its business for the rest of the year, cutting into sales for smartphones and TVs, but increasing demand for PCs, servers and memory chips as people continue to work or study from home. Samsung’s results for the first-quarter of […]

At a time when more transactions than ever are happening online, payments behemoth Stripe is announcing three new features to continue expanding its reach. The company today announced that it will now offer card issuing services directly to businesses to let them in turn make credit cards for customers tailored to specific purposes. Alongside that, it’s going […]

Thanks to smartphones and their downsized keyboards, autocomplete has become a nearly ubiquitous feature of how we write these days. To save us precious seconds composing and (at least in my fat-thumbed case) correcting words, our keyboards now prompt us with suggestions of what we’re trying to write to get the job done a little […]

Traditionally dominated by big players like Adobe and Autodesk, the world of design has been flush with a newer wave of startups that are creating collaboration spaces and new cloud-based tools designed to address the needs of creatives. Today, two of those players are combining. Dribbble, an online community for designers that lets them post […]

Transport demand will rebound while the pandemic will reboot the use of plastics

Wunderlist is going away, but fans of the productivity app may find some consolation in founder Christian Reber’s announcement that he is launching a new startup called Superlist. “Superlist will be more than just a todo app, but never as bloated as the project management software you loathe to use,” he tweeted. “Slick, fast, and […]

In spite of being in the midst of a pandemic sowing economic uncertainty, one area that continues to thrive is cloud computing. Perhaps that explains why Microsoft, which saw Azure grow 59% in its most recent earnings report, announced plans to open a new data center in New Zealand once it receives approval from the […]

A lot of enterprise cybersecurity efforts focus on malicious hackers that work on behalf of larger organizations, be they criminal groups or state actors — and for good reason, since the majority of incidents these days come from phishing and other malicious techniques that originate outside the enterprise itself. But there has also been a […]

Microsoft and Amazon are at it again as the fight for the Defense Department JEDI contract continues. In a recent series of increasingly acerbic pronouncements, the two companies continue their ongoing spat over the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI contract spoils. As you may recall (or not), last fall in a surprise move, the DoD selected […]

Mike Mackenzie’s daily analysis of what’s moving global markets

Brent crude slips back below $30 a barrel after a six-day run of gains

The coronavirus outbreak has driven more consumers to turn to their smart speakers for news, information, music and entertainment, according to new data released today by NPR and Edison Research. Around three-quarters of U.S. adults 18 and up said their routines have been impacted due to COVID-19 and their media habits have changed as a […]

Tumblr is making a change to how it deals with hate speech on its blogging platform. The company announced today it will also remove the reblogs (repostings) from any blogs that were suspended for violating its policies around hate speech. Already, the company says it’s identified nearly 1,000 blogs that were banned for blatant violations […]

Twitter announced today it’s introducing a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier to understand who you’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. The company will also test putting engagement actions — including likes, Retweet and reply icons — behind an extra tap to make replies […]

Shares in the educational IT provider rose 4.2 per cent

Investors seek better-quality government bonds

Copper is well poised to make new all-time highs

The Nasdaq 100 is at its highest relative level since the technology bubble