Britain and France are working together to develop contact-tracing apps to fight coronavirus.

An NHS hospital doctor was followed for almost five miles by a man before being attacked in the street.

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Bus drivers paid their respects to a colleague who died with coronavirus symptoms as his funeral cortege passed through the depot where he had worked for almost 20 years.

The United States has authorised the emergency use of the Ebola drug remdesivir for treating coronavirus, clearing the way for the potential treatment of 140,000 patients around the country.

NHS ambulance staff have created a heartwarming video to say thank you to the community for the support they have received during the coronavirus crisis.

The NHS coronavirus contact tracing app will be trialled in the Isle of Wight this week before being rolled out more widely later this month, the Transport Secretary said.

Most Brits are against ending the coronavirus lockdown this week, with less than one in five thinking the time is right to reopen pubs, restaurants, stadiums and schools, a new survey shows.

Nearly half of NHS doctors have been forced to buy their own personal protective equipment (PPE) for coronavirus treatment or rely on donations, a new survey has found.

Fewer people would have died from coronavirus in the UK if the country had greater testing capacity sooner, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said.

Supporters of Julian Assange were cautioned by police as they protested outside a central London court today.

Care home workers say employers are playing "Russian roulette" with their lives as personal protective equipment (PPE) is withheld or rationed amid unclear guidance, according to a union.

A dating app is providing London bus drivers with free face bandanas, amid fears of a lack adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline transport staff.

Headteachers are planning for life after the lockdown to ensure the return to school will be safe for all children and staff.

More than three million Britons have downloaded an app designed by researchers at King's College London to track the symptoms of coronavirus.

Matt Hancock has urged people living on the Isle of Wight to download the coronavirus contact tracing app to "save lives" during the pandemic.

The UK will use a mobile app to try and control the spread of coronavirus, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said.

The UK public's right to privacy could become "another casualty" of the coronavirus crisis through the use of a contact-tracing app, Amnesty International UK has warned.

Urgent action is still needed to make it easier for vulnerable people to access supermarket delivery slots and other sources of supplies, Which? has warned.

Trials are beginning on a new coronavirus contact-tracing app which ministers have said will save lives and help lift Britain out of lockdown.

The number of new Covid-19 cases "needs to come down further", an expert has warned, as the UK death toll recorded its lowest daily rise since the end of March.

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A man has told how he pulled his young daughter to safety before a "horrific" crash that left his husband trapped between two vehicles in north London.

Felix Project volunteer Lauren Graham shares her story You can donate at virginmoneygiving.com/fund/FoodforLondonNOW

The last supermoon of the year is set to appear in UK skies on Thursday.

Teachers and staff in non-residential schools will not need personal protective equipment (PPE) when schools start to return to full capacity, a minister has said.

A new project capturing the stories of veterans has been unveiled by Poppyscotland for the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

A Labour MP has claimed she was sacked from her job as a temporary carer amid the coronavirus pandemic after speaking out about personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages.

The sister of a man whose body was found dumped in woodland launched an appeal today on the first anniversary of his disappearance to catch the "monsters" who killed him.

The mundanity of coronavirus lockdown life is being celebrated in a photography exhibition to raise money for frontline workers.

An army veteran forced into early retirement by injury is playing video games for 24 hours on VE Day to raise money for the charity that helped him through "dark times."

The Government is requesting a refund or replacement for 400,000 medical gowns flown over from Turkey which were later deemed "unusable".

A new artwork by Banksy has been painted onto the wall of an NHS hospital corridor to pay tribute to healthcare heroes battling coronavirus.

Brits across the country have erupted in applause in tribute to healthcare workers during the seventh week of the Clap for our Carers initiative.

Stars have paid tribute to Mercury Prize-nominated rapper Ty who has died aged 47 after contracting coronavirus.

Second World War veteran and NHS fundraising champion Captain Tom Moore has recalled the day the "fearsome war in Europe" ended 75 years ago.

The Queen's memories of her VE Day celebrations have been shared by Buckingham Palace to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe.

"There will be no social distancing in place," union rep wrote to city leaders.

From Fair Isle to German Bight, Charlie Connelly has visited all 31 sea areas, but still finds the poetry of the daily radio odyssey mesmerising

The shipping forecast is probably the closest thing we have in the modern age to a national epic. The institution’s rhythms and rituals have changed little since it was first broadcast on New Year’s Day 1924: there is poetry in the daily litany and mystery in its terminology. “The radio’s prayer,” Carol Ann Duffy called it. For Seamus Heaney it was “a sibilant penumbra”.

The forecast reminds us we’re a maritime nation and its map binds us to our continent, covering not only our own coasts and waters but an area extending from Norway to Portugal to Iceland. There is democracy in its geography, where tiny Fair Isle carries as much heft as mighty Biscay while Lundy, a sliver of rock in the Bristol Channel, is equal in importance to the Irish Sea. And from the salty old seadog in his brine-encrusted fishing boat to the merchant banker on his yacht, the shipping forecast, all seafarers are equally reliant on it.

A new virtual exhibition, What the Traveller Saw, the first of its kind by the Royal Geographical Society, marks the centenary of the birth of the writer and former Observer travel editor

Scientists are working on better solar cells that will turn more of the sun's rays into electricity.

Smartphones can be used to digitally trace Covid-19. But not if the public don’t download an app over privacy fears – or find it won’t work on their device

The idea of the NHS tracing app is to enable smartphones to track users and tell them whether they interacted with someone who had Covid-19. Yet this will work only if large proportions of the population download the app. No matter how smart a solution may appear, mass consent is required. That will not be easy. Ministers and officials have failed to address the trade-offs between health and privacy by being ambiguous about the app’s safeguards.

Instead of offering cast-iron guarantees about the length of time for which data would be held; who can access it; and the level of anonymity afforded, we have had opacity and obfuscation. It is true that we are dealing with uncertainties. But without absolute clarity about privacy the public is unlikely to take up the app with the appropriate gusto.

Frustrated by scarce supplies and a chaotic marketplace amid the coronavirus outbreak, some U.S. governors are seeking to bolster their home-state production of vital medical and protective equipment to ensure a reliable long-term source for state stockpiles. The efforts come as states have been competing against each other, the federal government, hospitals, emergency responders and even other countries to get items such as N95 masks, gloves, medical gowns and hand sanitizer — often paying higher-than-usual prices because of the high demand. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. got much of its medical supplies from China.

Myan Mode, a garment factory on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar, produces men's jackets, women's blazers and coats for Western fashion companies like Mango and Zara. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, it has seen a decrease in orders from international retailers.That was why it let go almost half of its 1,274 workers in late March, the factory's managing director said in response to protesters who arrived at the factory's doors to denounce the dismissals.Three fired sewing operators, however, said the factory was taking an opportunity to punish workers engaged in union activity. In an interview, the operators -- Maung Moe, Ye Yint and Ohnmar Myint -- said that of the 571 who had been dismissed, 520 had belonged to the factory's union, one of 20 that make up the Federation of Garment Workers Myanmar. About 700 workers who did not belong to the union kept their jobs, they said.Myan Mode's South Korean-based owner did not respond to requests for comment, and did not provide details about the firings.Moe, 27, was the factory union's president and had organized several strikes. Yint, 30, was the union's secretary, while Myint, 34, had been a union member since its founding in June 2018."The bosses used COVID as an opportunity to get rid of us because they hated our union," Moe said. He said he and other union members had been in discussions with the factory managers before the firings, demanding personal protective equipment and that workers be farther apart on the factory floor. "They thought we caused them constant headaches by fighting for our rights and those of our fellow workers."Union-busting -- practices undertaken to prevent or disrupt the formation of trade unions or attempts to expand membership -- has been a serious problem across the fashion supply chain for decades. But with the global spread of COVID-19 placing fresh pressures on the industry, it is a particular issue in South Asia, where about 40 million garment workers have long grappled with poor working conditions and wages."Union-busting is not a COVID-specific issue for the garment industry -- it happens all the time," said Luke Smitham of the sustainability consultancy Kumi Consulting.Zara's parent company, Inditex, which is supplied by Myan Mode, said its code of conduct for manufacturers expressly prohibited any discrimination against worker representatives. The company said in an email that it was "actively following the situation" at Myan Mode, and would "try to achieve the best possible solution for workers."Mango, which has started to reopen its stores in Europe, said in an emailed statement that it "understood the need to ensure that the human rights of factory workers are respected." The company added that it was maintaining "a continuous" dialogue with suppliers.Roughly 2% of garment workers in Myanmar, where the minimum wage is roughly $3.50 a day, and 0.5% of garment workers in Bangladesh belong to a union, according to affiliate data estimates collected by the global trade union IndustriALL. While Cambodia's workforce is more unionized than others in the region -- around 80% -- the unions there are fragmented, meaning successful collective bargaining negotiations can be difficult.Tear gas, water cannons, police brutality and imprisonment were some of the tools used by the governments of Bangladesh, Cambodia, India and Myanmar to punish striking garment workers and union members last year, according to the International Trade Union Confederation, an umbrella group for unions around the world. It noted that many workers in those countries who tried to form a union were dismissed from jobs or blacklisted by factories. And the number of countries that exclude workers from the right to establish or join a trade union increased to 107 in 2019 from 92 in 2018.Andrew Tillett-Saks, a labor organizer in Yangon, said he had seen a surge in unionizing by garment workers in Myanmar over the last 18 months -- and a reaction from factory owners. Before the pandemic, he said, some garment factories with fledgling unions were abruptly closing and firing union members, then reopening weeks later to supply the same brands under a slightly different name with a new group of nonunionized workers.Tillett-Saks said that much of the focus had been on whether brands would pay wages for workers during the pandemic, or for orders that had already been produced. But factory owners "taking this as an opportunity to break down labor movements in the supply chain could be an even bigger issue."Some brands, like H&M, have tried to facilitate union activity in supplier factories by signing ACT, an agreement brokered by IndustriALL and designed to secure fair wages for workers through collective bargaining and building guarantees of labor rights into purchasing agreements. But there are still hurdles. Before the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, can take action, allegations of mistreatment must be sent in writing from a national or international trade union organization and then reviewed internally by the agency -- a complicated process even before the pandemic."We have heard allegations of anti-union discrimination in recent weeks," said John Ritchotte, a specialist in social dialogue and labor administration in Asia for the International Labor Organization. "However, it is currently more difficult than usual for us to verify those allegations through our usual procedures because of travel restrictions and local lockdowns."In the weeks since the Myan Mode layoffs, around 15,000 jobs in the textile industry have been lost and about 40 factories closed across Asia, said Khaing Zar Aung, president of Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar.Moe said the fired Myan Mode workers had protested outside the factory for weeks, watching as daily wage workers entered and scores of exhausted former colleagues left at midnight after overtime shifts. Eventually, management offered severance but not re-employment to the 571 fired workers, plus 49 employees who had walked out in solidarity. All but 79 eventually took the severance pay.The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia said about 60% of its factories -- where union members have also been targeted -- had been severely affected by canceled orders of ready-made garment exports because of the pandemic.On March 31, several dozen union workers at the Superl leatherwear factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh -- which produces handbags for brands like Michael Kors, Tory Burch and Kate Spade -- were told they were being let go. One was a woman who was six months pregnant.Soy Sros, a factory shop steward and the local president of the Collective Union of Movement of Workers, wrote about the company's actions on Facebook, stating it violated a March 6 appeal from the Cambodian government saying COVID should not be used as a chance to discriminate against union members.Twenty-four hours later, Sros was forced by factory management to take down her post and make a thumbprint on a warning letter accusing her of defamation. On April 2, she was removed from the factory floor by the police and charged with posting fake information on social media. She is now in jail.Superl, which is headquartered in Hong Kong, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Michael Kors and Tory Burch, who regularly place orders at the factory. Another customer, Tapestry, the owner of Kate Spade, declined to comment.In Myanmar, Moe, Yint and Myint all said they did not regret joining the union despite the difficulties they had faced. They said the loss of jobs was proof that worker representation was needed."I worry for the future of garment workers here without representatives," Myint said, referring to both the firings at Myan Mode and other factories across Asia. "But for now, I worry about providing for my family and getting food on the table."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

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