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

Thousands attend military parade in Belarus even as virus spreads rapidly in neighbouring Russia, UK airline industry warns of huge blow if travel quarantine is launched and Seoul closes down bars and clubs in wake of new cluster

German chemicals group blames Brexit and trade tensions for earnings fall

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a non-profit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infectious disease originated in […]

Ideally governments would co-ordinate fiscal policy but there is no sense of urgency

Shares soar in after-hours trading following better than expected figures

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

A series of big bankruptcies is unlikely but debt workouts will slow economic recovery

Tinder will add a video dating feature in the second quarter of this year, parent company Match announced on Tuesday as part of its Q1 2020 earnings report. The company also detailed the coronavirus impact, which slowed Tinder user growth in the quarter, as social distancing requirements and government lockdowns went into effect. Match didn’t […]

The UK’s data protection watchdog confirmed today the government still hasn’t given it sight of a key legal document attached to the coronavirus contacts tracing app which is being developed by the NHSX, the digital transformation branch of the country’s National Health Service . Under UK and EU law, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) […]

The UK has this week started testing a coronavirus contacts-tracing app which NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, has been planning and developing since early March. The test is taking place in the Isle of Wight, a 380km2 island off the south coast of England, with a population of around 140,000. […]

The UK may be rethinking its decision to shun Apple and Google’s API for its national coronavirus contacts tracing app, according to the Financial Times, which reported yesterday that the government is paying an IT supplier to investigate whether it can integrate the tech giants’ approach after all. As we’ve reported before coronavirus contacts tracing […]

Lofty ideas about open economies will have to be sold on directly improving voters’ lives

In a choice between discussing the WTO and the WHO, I’d take a rules-of-origin trade debate any day

Britain has less margin for error because it is zigging to everyone else’s zag

With police enforcing the lockdown, it may mean new roles for some old telly favourites

Post-lockdown, technology could help us contain Covid-19. But why stop there?

Before lockdown, my desire to eat Hobnobs outweighed my desire to be thinner. Not any more

The coronavirus pandemic’s global presence and ubiquity in everyday life is a perfect storm for misinformation, as conspiracy theorists from different corners of the web converge on a shared news topic—the only topic, at the moment. From the earliest days of the crisis, everyone from pro-Trump QAnon conspiracists to left-leaning purveyors of dubious home remedies […]

The global economy was already looking a bit ropey and vulnerable to shocks

Pandemic's economic impact compared with historic crises of 1930s and 2008

Box has joined a number of tech companies supporting employees to work remotely from home in response  the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. It’s applying the policy to all staff, regardless of location. Late yesterday Box co-founder Aaron Levie tweeted a statement detailing the cloud computing company’s response to COVID-19, the name of the disease caused […]

The tech industry is mobilizing its considerable resources to attempt to support efforts against the growing global coronavirus pandemic. Over the weekend, the CEOs of Amazon, Apple and Microsoft all shared updates regarding some aspects of their company’s ongoing contributions, which range from donations of medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline healthcare […]

Like many other websites at the moment, the career-oriented networking platform LinkedIn has seen a big boost in traffic as a result of people being asked to work from home and stay indoors overall to slow the spread of the coronavirus, with a bump of 55% more conversational activity between existing connections in recent weeks. […]

The UK has this week started testing a coronavirus contacts-tracing app which NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, has been planning and developing since early March. The test is taking place in the Isle of Wight, a 380km2 island off the south coast of England, with a population of around 140,000. […]

The UK may be rethinking its decision to shun Apple and Google’s API for its national coronavirus contacts tracing app, according to the Financial Times, which reported yesterday that the government is paying an IT supplier to investigate whether it can integrate the tech giants’ approach after all. As we’ve reported before coronavirus contacts tracing […]

The UK’s data protection watchdog confirmed today the government still hasn’t given it sight of a key legal document attached to the coronavirus contacts tracing app which is being developed by the NHSX, the digital transformation branch of the country’s National Health Service . Under UK and EU law, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) […]

The UK has this week started testing a coronavirus contacts-tracing app which NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, has been planning and developing since early March. The test is taking place in the Isle of Wight, a 380km2 island off the south coast of England, with a population of around 140,000. […]

The UK may be rethinking its decision to shun Apple and Google’s API for its national coronavirus contacts tracing app, according to the Financial Times, which reported yesterday that the government is paying an IT supplier to investigate whether it can integrate the tech giants’ approach after all. As we’ve reported before coronavirus contacts tracing […]

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]

Central bank of Latin America’s largest economy can now engage in monetary financing

Two sides hold call on ‘phase one’ deal in rare easing of war of words over pandemic

President Lukashenko under fire from neighbouring countries for lax approach to pandemic

Hopefully, its defeat will show the worth of intelligent and honest government

The superficial conclusion is that it will be a gift to populists and authoritarians 

A make-do-and-mend approach will not be enough — we need a societal transformation

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]

Government loans a start but not the end; Pendragon takes a pop at Lookers; insurers and honey badgers

The era of extravagant military purchases is surely over after the threat posed by the pandemic

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]

Countries in region issue debt at close to fastest rate in a decade due to pandemic

French group braced for revenue losses this quarter despite reopening most of its China factories

Shortages of components likely to be far worse than expected, warn experts

Battery maker Livent says industry is looking to diversify away from China