Euobserver.com

France will begin to relax lockdown measures progressively from 11 May onward, its prime minister Edouard Philippe said Tuesday. Masks will be compulsory on public transport and in schools. The relaxation will be reversible, with a state of emergency extended into July, and France will increase testing to 700,000 people a week. France was at "risk of collapse" if lockdown measures were extended beyond what was "strictly necessary", Philippe said.

No surprise thus that the global pandemic serves as inspiration and influences the modus operandi of terrorists, both in terms of tactics and target selection.

Theatres are dusting off a 19th century play: Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. It is about truth, freedom and tyranny. It deals with the loner versus the group, the role of the elite and the power of the majority.

The commission will out forward guidelines for safe travel, as some member states and companies are already drawing up plans to restart tourism under the threat of the pandemic.

Political extremists are using the pandemic to incite violence and foreign spies are trying to hack sensitive video-talks, Belgium's security service has warned.

Legal, human-rights and anti-poverty organisations are now demanding the EU's financial watchdog launch an audit into how the EU supports war-torn Libya.

Germany is set to lead the EU's recovery plan - linking climate protection with economic perspectives - in conjunction with its upcoming EU's presidency.

In the first two weeks of April there was a 47 percent increase in calls to Spain's domestic violence helpline compared with the same period last year, the Guardian writes. The number of women contacting support services, which have been designated as essential by the government, by email or on social media is said to have increased by as much as 700 percent. Complaints to the police however have dropped.

The EU is asking more countries join its efforts to "support security, peace, stability" throughout the Sahel, the African region south of the Sahara, equivalent to the size of Europe. "We have also considered that its important to try to convince other international partners to join the coalition for Sahel," said Charles Michel, EU Council president. The impoverished region is pocketed with terrorist groups.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's human rights office said in a report that the postal ballot planned for 10 May Polish presidential election "diverges from the principles of stability of electoral legislation and legal certainty". The Warsaw-based ODHIR said the changes could "weaken public trust" in the election administration. The Polish parliament is expected to vote on the issue on May 6.

There is no significant risk of catching the coronavirus from euro banknotes, the European Central Bank (ECB) said Tuesday, citing lab tests that showed the virus survived far longer on other surfaces, AFP reported. ECB executive board member Fabio Panetta said that "banknotes do not represent a particularly significant risk of infection compared with other kinds of surface that people come into contact with in daily life."

Donald Tusk, the president of the centre-right European People's Party, Poland's ex-prime minister and the former head of the EU Council, said he would not participate in the upcoming presidential ballot on 10 May in Poland as the hurriedly-implemented postal voting process would be unconstitutional and unsafe, dpa reported. "We should not participate in the postal vote," Tusk said, adding that he deliberately avoided using the term "election."

Eight people in the Faroe Islands who recovered from their Covid-19 infections have tested positive again, the chief medical officer, Lars Fodgaard Møller, told Danish broadcaster DR. "We believe that they have not recovered, but have had viruses or dead viruses in the body, which show on tests". Testing is key in the small island's Covid-19 strategy, resulting in only nine patients not knowing where they got infected.

More than 3 million people are now reported to have been infected by the coronavirus around the world and over 210,800 have died, CNBC reports. Most cases reported: United States (987,022), Spain (229,422), Italy (199,414), France (165,962), and Germany (158,434).

A record 50.8m people worldwide are internally displaced due to conflict or disaster, with coronavirus posing a new threat, the BBC reports. In its annual report, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) says Covid-19 may add further risks to millions of already vulnerable people. Over 45m have been forced to abandon their homes due to violence, a further five million by natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods.

Saudi Arabia will no longer impose the death penalty on people who committed crimes while still minors, the country's Human Rights Commission says, according to the BBC. The announcement, citing a royal decree by King Salman, comes two days after the country said it would ban flogging. A record 184 people were executed in the kingdom in 2019, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

The head of the Japan Medical Association (JMA), Yoshitake Yokokura, has added his voice to speculation that the Tokyo Olympics, now due to be held next summer, could again be delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, the Guardian writes. "Unless an effective vaccine is developed I think it will be difficult to hold the Olympics next year," JMA president told reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Workers restarted on Monday the reconstruction of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris with new social-distancing measures after the project was previously suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak, the BBC reported. Face masks, hand gels and meals have been provided to the workers. In April 2019, a fire broke out under the roof of the cathedral. Afterwards, French president Emmanuel Macron said that the building would be restored by 2024.

The EU Commission will publish its spring economic forecast on 7 May, economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said Monday, in an important guide to how deep the EU executive thinks the bloc's recession will be due to the pandemic. The coronavirus crisis "dramatically changed the economic outlook", and a "deep recession this year in Europe is unavoidable", Gentiloni added.

East Africa is facing a "Level 3" food emergency as serious as the coronavirus crisis, as climate change creates ideal conditions for 'Biblical' swarms of locusts.