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UK death toll highest in Europe

Britain has overtaken Italy to report the highest official death toll from coronavirus in Europe with more than 32,000 deaths, figures released on Tuesday showed.

The high death toll could increase political pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who waited longer than other European leaders to order a lockdown to curb the spread of the virus in March.

Weekly figures from Britain’s national statistics office added more than 7,000 deaths in England and Wales, raising the total for the United Kingdom to 32,313.

Countries tentatively ease lockdowns

World leaders and organizations pledged $8 billion to fund a possible vaccine and treatments, many hoping explicitly to ensure that no country on Earth would be left out, but the United States did not contribute. Italy, among the world’s hardest-hit countries, allowed about 4.5 million people to return to work after nearly two months at home. Construction work can resume and relatives can reunite.

“I woke up at 5:30 a.m., I was so excited,” said Maria Antonietta Galluzzo, a grandmother taking her three-year-old grandson for a walk in Rome’s Villa Borghese park, the first time they had seen each other in eight weeks.

Global deaths exceed quarter of a million

Global coronavirus deaths rose past a quarter of a million on Monday after infections topped 3.5 million, a Reuters tally of official government data showed, even as several countries began easing lockdowns designed to contain the pandemic.

North America and European countries accounted for most of the new deaths and cases reported in recent days, but numbers were rising from smaller bases in Latin America, Africa and Russia.

U.S. and UK launch trade negotiations by videoconference

The United States and Britain launch trade negotiations by videoconference on Tuesday following the UK’s exit from the European Union, as both allies struggle with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and aim to shore up domestic supply chains.

The talks will be Washington’s first major new trade negotiation in 2020, and take place at the same time as London works out trade terms with the EU, with a year-end deadline.

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The Anchorage Daily News won the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism in collaboration with the investigative site ProPublica, while the photography staff of Reuters won the breaking news photography award for documenting last year’s violent protests in Hong Kong.

Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Macquarie, Ray-Bans, Nivea, Oil
Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

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Life under lockdown

Indigenous leaders in Brazil asked the World Health Organization to set up an emergency fund to help protect their communities from the threat of the coronavirus pandemic. Many of Brazil’s 850,000 indigenous people live in remote Amazon areas with little access to healthcare, and indigenous groups say the government of President Jair Bolsonaro has not included the communities in national plans to fight the virus.

Plans to close New York City’s subways at night to disinfect trains during the coronavirus pandemic risk pushing hundreds of homeless people “further into the shadows”, housing experts warned, calling for safe alternatives to house them. The overnight closing of the transit system, which starts on Wednesday, will allow for daily cleaning of the trains for the essential workers using them while most city residents are staying at home, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

Men who have had sex with another man in the past three months have been barred from taking part in an English coronavirus treatment trial a policy LGBT+ rights advocates say is discriminatory and unscientific. The English National Health Service is conducting trials to see whether plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 could be used to treat sufferers, and applying existing restrictions on gay and bisexual men donating blood.

Two dozen Lagos healthcare workers in scrubs and face masks rushed outside the isolation tents and, making sure to keep six feet apart on the bright green grass, danced and swayed as a saxophone and trumpet struck up the band. Inside the tents, some of the patients, all battling the coronavirus, watched through plastic windows and, if strong enough, danced and swayed along with them.