i'm mariko oi in singapore, the headlines: us stock markets suffer their biggest one—day percentage fall since 1987 as the trump administration issues new guidance on avoiding public spaces and unnecessary travel. the french president bans people from leaving their homes except for essential reasons from tuesday, saying the country is engaged in a "health war". i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme. work from home where possible and avoid "non—essential" contact with others. that's the message from britain's prime minister borisjohnson. the search for a vaccine is continuing — we'll be hearing from the head of an international research

team about their progress. live from our studios in singapore and london, this is bbc world news. it's newsday. good morning. it's 9am in singapore, and one o'clock in london. around the world, governments are introducing new measures and recommendations to fight the global coronavirus pandemic. on tuesday, the european union will discuss closing its borders to incoming travellers. in the uk, people are told to work from home and avoid congregating. in the us, president trump says a recession is possible. we've got more on all of that in a moment, but first here's the latest from the head of the world health organization. all countries must take a comprehensive approach,

but the most effective way to prevent infections and save lives is breaking the chains of transmission. and to do that, you must test and isolate. you cannot fight a fire blindfolded, and we cannot stop this pandemic if we don't know who is infected. we have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. test every suspected case. if they test positive, isolate them and find out who they have been in close contact with up to two days before they developed symptoms, and test those people too. a strong message there and we will bring you up—to—date about

the situation in france uk and spain. but let's start in the us, where new york city is eerily quiet. schools, bars, and restaurants are shut, as drastic steps are taken to contain the virus. president trump said there may be a recession in america, and wall street plunged further, suffering the second biggest percentage drop ever. the government has announced strict guidelines for americans to follow over the next 15 days, including working from home. nick bryant reports. foghorn. we live in a world right now where so much looks familiar, but almost everything feels different, and on the monday morning staten island ferry, these empty rows were a measure of community concern. these protective masks a global badge of fear. people are worried, and we don't know what to do, and that makes us worry more. i was just actually thinking this morning about how apocalyptic it felt. i was lying in bed and i was thinking, this is a movie. it can't be real. unbelievable, unbelievable. never seen it like this

in life, and i've been living here all my life. incredible. on the new york subway system, social distancing would usually be impossible in the middle of the rush—hour. but, this morning, it felt like a ghost train. this city of perpetual motion is shutting down, its bars, its restaurants, its school system. and it is frightening for new yorkers like liz sa nta na. oh, no, it's devastating, what's happening right now. it's a very emotional for a lot of service people, to lose theirjobs. sorry. times square is normally the pulsing heart of manhattan, bumper—to—bumper congested. but just about the only activity was on its dancing big screens, images from a chinese news channel, with scenes that are now playing out here. they call times square the ‘crossroads of the world,‘ but nobody wants to meet here anymore. the nation's capital looked like a scene from some dystopian drama.

and, at the white house, the physical barriers that protect the president are now being augmented by medical checks on people going inside. and it is notjust the health of the nation that is on donald trump's mind, but the economic fallout after another calamitous day on the markets, which took yet another hit after he had answered this question. is the us economy heading into a recession? well, it may be. we're not thinking in terms of recession. we're thinking in terms of the virus. once we stop it, i think there's a tremendous pent—up demand, both in terms of the stock market and in terms of the economy. and once this goes away, once it goes through, and we're done with it, i think you're going to see a tremendous, tremendous surge. us airlines are seeking a $50 billion government bailout, given so much of the world has been immobilised. but one sector of the american economy is experiencing a dramatic spike in sales. the queue here in los angeles was for guns.

nick bryant, bbc news, new york. let's get more on that dramatic fall on the us markets today — the second biggest fall in history. samira hussain is in new york. i think the problem is is that investors a re really in uncharted territory. one person i was speaking with on the floor earlier today said, we have never seen anything like this, even compared to 2008, 2009, but at least then there was some idea of where this was going to hit in terms of the economy. but in this particular instance, absolutely every single part of the economy is being impacted, so there is no real area for investors to kind of hide or wait until this blows over, and that is the other issue, of course. we heard from the president that this could perhaps go on until at least august, and that also rattled investors because that is a long time to be dealing with that amount

of uncertainty. the french president, emmanuel macron, says france is in a state of war agains the coronavirus. on sunday, hejoined people across france voting in municipal elections. but in a televised address on monday, he said too many people had not been respecting measures introduced to date. he said people should not leave home, except for essential reasons, from midday tuesday, orface punishment. translation: any and all infractions to these rules will be penalised. i speak to you which much solemnity. listen to medical advice which is to stay at home and avoid unnecessary contact. this is the most important. tonight i impose new regulations. there will be controls and limitations. the best one you should apply to yourselves as citizens, i call on your sense of civic duty and solidarity. the external borders

of the european union and the wider group of nations that belong to the schengen zone could be closed for up to 30 days. the head of the european commission, ursula von der leyen, proposed the plan, which has yet to be confirmed by member states. she said it would stop non—essential travel, but that returning eu citizens, workers who commute across borders and people delivering goods would be exempt. vauxhall‘s parent company will shut all of its european manufacturing plants this week until at least the 27th of march. in a statement, the psa group said it had seen a "significant" drop in demand and disruption to supply chains. other manufacturers such as ford, nissan and fiat chrysler have also suspended work at factories in spain and italy due to coronavirus. a man who stockpiled nearly 18,000 bottles of hand sanitiser has given it all to charity, according to reports. matt colvin, from tennessee, who was the subject of a new york times article, is being investigated for price gouging after he tried selling the sanitiser of an inflated price on amazon.

the actor idris elba has announced he's tested positive for the coronavirus. the star, who's been isolated since he found out about his possible exposure, said on twitter that he doesn't have any symptoms, feels ok, and will keep people updated about how he's doing. the spanish government has announced sweeping measures, allowing it to take over private healthcare. the number of cases there has risen to almost 9,500, and more than 300 people have died. spain has declared a state of emergency, placing the country on partial lockdown. damian grammaticas has more. this is spain on a warfooting, the military mobilised for this fight against the virus. instructing people to go

back to their homes. keep apart, police warned people in madrid. day one of a state of emergency. those who don't have masks improvise. you are only meant to get out if you are heading to work or buying food. like these italian students, stuck here in spain indefinitely as all flights to italy have been grounded, but they think the lockdown is justified. do you think this is necessary, all of these measures? absolutely necessary. it is the only way you can fight this situation. to stop the virus spreading? to stop the virus, yeah. so this is now a european capital under extraordinary measures. the buses run, but they are empty.

at the prado museum, police scan their mobiles for the latest information. the streets are disinfected. madrid's main train station is still working. but the risk from the virus is all around. irene, a doctor, is trying to get back to her hospital urgently. she was studying in the usa but got a call saying they needed her back here. she arrived from new york this morning. i guess this is an emergency and anything we can do to help, it is what we have to do. and this is why — spain's hospitals, a health system under severe stress. there is a desperate need to slow the pace at which people are being infected. this hospital on the edge of madrid has set aside more than 100 beds for coronavirus patients in the past few days. they are not overwhelmed, but the problem they have, they say, is that they are already running low on stocks of safety equipment, and that means the medical staff are being put at risk. alex, one of the nurses,

tells me that the masks we are carrying, are better than those the hospital staff are provided. translation: i think it is necessary that the government takes these measures. we are trying to stop a disease we don't understand. we see what some countries in asia did. we think this is the best thing to do. meanwhile, those forced to stay—at—home are trying to make the most of it. an aerobics session laid on free for everyone stuck in one group of apartments. followed by a game of communal flat—bound bingo, keeping spirits up even as the country shuts down. from this evening, spain is closing its borders, only residents and spanish citizens are allowed to enter the country. damian grammaticas, bbc news, madrid. in the uk, the british prime minister boris johnson has introduced stricter measures, saying that everyone here should avoid non—essential travel and contact with others.

more than 1500 people have tested positive for the virus in the uk. but scientists advising the government estimate that the actual number of cases is between 35,000 and 50,000. here's the prime minister explaining why the new measures are coming in now. we are asking people to do something that is difficult and disruptive of their lives. and the right moment, as we have always said, is to do it when it is most effective, when we think it can make the biggest difference to slowing the spread of the disease, reducing the number of victims, we are asking people to do something our political correspondent in westminster, chris mason, gave more details about the government's new measures. what has been quite striking today from a british perspective is the government here really cranking up

the timeline it had set out for potential measures and fast forwarding measures that many people a matter of just a couple of days ago thought might be a couple of weeks away, so the big change here in the uk today is this idea that if anyone in your household demonstrates symptoms such as a temperature or a persistent cough, then all of you have to self isolate for two weeks to give time for the person who is displaying the symptoms to work through the virus, if indeed that is what they have, and for anyone else with them who is likely to catch it from them, to also demonstrate those symptoms and potentially see the virus through themselves. so that is a big change as is the expectation that those with underlying health conditions, and the government has published a list of them online, all those over 70 should go for significant social distancing. perhaps, not in all instances staying behind closed doors but certainly keeping away from any unnecessary social contact. and when you step back from it,

the thing that really struck me today, for the second time in just a couple of days, is that i have just never seen a british prime minister in my lifetime, i'm a0 next month, say anything like the kind of thing we heard from boris johnson. anyone who wasn't around at the time of the second world war, they would have never heard a british prime minister setting out those kind of measures for how they expect british people to respond. you are watching newsday on the bbc. still to come on the programme: the best defence against covid—19 — good, old —fashioned soap. a chemistry professor tells us why. today, we have closed the book

on apartheid and that chapter. more than 3,000 subway passengers were affected. nausea, bleeding, headaches and a dimming of vision — all of this caused by an apparently organised attack. the trophy itself was on the pedestal in the middle of the cabinet here. now, this was an international trophy, and we understand now that the search for it has become an international search. above all, this was a triumph for the christian democrats of the west, offering reunification as quickly as possible, and that's what the voters wanted.

this is newsday on the bbc. i'm mariko oi in singapore. i'm kasia madera in london. our top stories: us stock markets suffer their biggest one—day percentage fall since 1987, as the trump administration issues new advice about avoiding public gatherings. france's president macron has ordered people to stay at home from tuesday unless they are going to work or to buy provisions, as the country engages in a "health war". let's take a look at some front pages from around the world where the coronavirus is front and centre. let's start with the financial times, which is reporting on the continued market losses that we saw around the world because of the coronavirus. the paper also reports that uefa, that is the body governing european football, is preparing to pospone the euro 2020 championship.

the japan times is also running a front—page spread on the economic cost of the outbreak. the paper reports the country's central bank will agressively buy risky assets and create a new one—year, zero—rate loan programme to offset market losses. the nikkei didn't respond well to the announcement, though, as investors were hoping for more drastic measures. and here in singapore, the business times has a report on measures taken in neighbouring malaysia. it writes that the country will be on lockdown for two weeks starting wednesday. schools and most shops will be shut, and only essential service agencies will operate. the race is on around the world to develop a vaccine for coronavirus. the coalition for epidemic preparedness innovations, which is sponsored by several philanthropic foundations and governments, is funding programmes at three centres. at one of them, the university of queensland in australia, researchers have already identified one possible candidate for a vaccine, although research is at

a very early stage. leading the vaccine team there is paul young, professor of virology and head of the school of chemistry at the university of queensland. he says they have been making very rapid progress. we began our programme of research, or at least vaccine search, the day we received the information from china of the sequence of the virus. that was back on 11 january. and within three weeks, we had gone through about 250 different versions our particular approach to vaccine generation, before we selected the lead candidate. so that lead candidate, which we're intending to take all the way through, is now already in preclinical animal studies to determine what immunity it can actually

elicit in animals. and ultimately, we'll be testing that in other animal studies of disease, to look at whether we can protect those animals. and with that, we will be moving into human clinical studies, phase one studies, probably around the end ofjune. now, we know when it comes to regular influenza, flu vaccines, they're not 100% effective. it's difficult to get such a vaccine to work. explain to us the challenges that you and the team are under to develop something for something like coronavirus. well, i think we're probably not under same sort of challenges that vaccine manufacturers had with influenza, which drifts and changes quite dramatically from year to year, and that's why we need to make new vaccines each year. coronaviruses don't mutate as rapidly as influenza, so this vaccine would likely last for some time and remain effective.

many vaccines that are in use, apart from influenza, which has those problems that i mentioned, have efficacy rates that are very high, around 80—90% efficacy. so we have absolute confidence we would be able to generate a vaccine that provides strong protection to the majority of those receiving it. and i guess the 100 — the $1 million question is by when, do you think? look, the rulebook has gone out with regards to this outbreak. obviously people are trying to accelerate development as fast as they can. i'm sure you've heard many people comment before that the typical pathway for a vaccine can be anything like 10—15 years. many people have been talking about accelerating that to 12 months to 18 months, but we're even now starting to try to accelerate that, given the scale of the outbreak.

you may have heard overnight that one of the other groups funded by cepi to advance a vaccine have already started their first clinical trial. their first human vaccinia has been vaccinated overnight. that has been a clearly unheard—of to move that fast. that they have moved into preclinical work in animals and completed that. and thatjust shows the level of concern everyone has. from our own perspective, what we are considering doing is advancing manufacturing. what normally happens is you wait to determine whether your vaccine works effectively in clinical studies, and only then you begin to ramp up the manufacturing for dissemination and deployment. we're starting to think about trying to get funding to advance manufacturing at the same time as we're doing clinical and preclinical studies, so we'll have a vaccine ready at scale when we know it's passed

those clinical studies. so everyone is thinking of new ways of accelerating that pipeline. it may seem simple, but the main defence we have right now against catching the coronavirus is good, old —fashioned soap. experts are urging us all to wash our hands and not touch our face as the main way of not catching the covid—19. but what is it about the humble bar of soap that makes the virus simply collapse and slide away? professor of chemistry palli thordarson is from the university of new south wales. he explained why soap is so effective. viruses, like everything else, like our own bodies, are just made out of chemicals. and in the case of this virus, it's the rna, and it's wrapped around proteins. and they they interact with each other in what we call supramolecular chemistry fashion, a fairly weak interaction. and then you've got this this greasy lipid layer around the virus, and that's essential for the virus. so, when you hit the virus with soap, the molecules in the soap are really similar to the ones in the lipid bilayer of the virus. and they start to exchange, and the soap molecules pierce into the lipid layer

and start to tear it apart, tear into the virus, tear everything, all the connections apart between the protein units. and the soap also carries these things away in little bubbles we coal micelles. so the virus essentially disintegrates and falls to pieces, like a house of cards, in the presence of soapy water. what about hand sanitisers, which a lot of people have been panic buying? are they better because they have alcohol in them? they are equally good. if you look at the advice from the world health organization, they recommend using soap or hand sanitisers. you should just use whatever you can get your hands on and you are comfortable with. the hand sanitiser works differently. yes, the ethanol is the active agent. it causes the virus basically to collapse. but they both do the job. and actually, what's much more important

is not what kind of soap you use, or what kind of hand sanitiser, if it's ethanol—based. it's how you apply on the hands. it doesn't matter if you have the fanciest, most expensive, bacteria killing—soap — and this isn't a bacterial problem, it's a virus. there is no need for us to get hospital—grade cleaning chemicals. they need to deal with real bacteria and viruses. different viruses are much more robust, and you can't kill them with soap. i would use both, switch between them as you are co mforta ble. you have been watching newsday. i'm kasia madera in london. and i'm mariko oi in singapore. stay with us. we will have more on the

world's financial markets as they continue to tumble, including japan's nikkei, which has just opened around 3% down. that's all for now. stay with bbc world news. hello. the week started on a dry, fine, sunny note for many parts of england and wales. and it really was a sparkler of a day, finishing with glorious colours in the sunset, as captured here across great yarmouth. it wasn't like that everywhere, because for scotland, for northern ireland, after a decent start to monday, so that weather front spread some cloud, some wind, some rain quite widely. now, that front drags a little bit further south. but you'll notice there's a kink in it, and it will be quite an important kink, because it thickens the cloud after a bright enought start in northern ireland and the rain is soon in here.

quite a bit of it, as well. and it spreads across the good part of rain in scotland on into the afternoon, some of it getting across the border. further south, wee bit of brightness. the south—westerly breeze will usher in some really mild airs. and if you get a wee bit of sunshine, to the eastern side of the pennines, east anglia, down towards the south—east, 13, 1a, 15 could well be yours. a more showery regime across the northern and western isles throughout the course of the day, and indeed on into the evening. once that little wave is away on the weather front that will allow it to relax its way ever further south. slow progress, it has to be said, because it's running into an area of high pressure across biscay and the near continent. so it's around and about on wednesday across wales, southern counties of england, the midlands and east anglia and lincolnshire. further north, much brighter skies, but that sunshine doing nothing for your temperatures. the last of tuesday's really mild air is trapped there, particularly in the south—east, where again we could peak at around 111—15 degrees. now, from wednesday on into thursday, that weather front, more a band of cloud than anything else at this stage for many southern

counties, mayjust have enough about it for there to be a bit of rain down into this far south—western quarter. but wales, north midlands, northwards, increasingly sunny as you drift that wee bit further north. but again, there's a chilly feel right across the piece. we are into single figures. a change from thursday to friday, but the overall setup is very little change, other than we might see a bit more activity on that weather front across the southern counties of england, so the chances of rain here, and a noticeable easterly wind. so that will make it feel fairly cool, to say the least. further north, at least you've got the benefit of the sunshine across the midlands, much of wales, scotland, northern ireland and the north of england. but again, those temperatures are in single figures. the weekend brings us the prospect of mainly dry weather, with some sunshine, feeling chilly, and there'll be some frosty nights, too.

i'm kasia madera with bbc world news. our top story: us stock markets have

suffered their biggest one—day percentage fall since 1987, as the trump administration issues new advice to try to curb the spread of the virus. the president has called on americans to avoid groups of more than ten people, avoid bars and restaurants and only make essential journeys, for the next 15 days. the french president has banned people from leaving their homes, except for essential reasons, from tuesday, saying the country is engaged in a "health war". and in the uk the message from prime minister borisjohnson is work from home where possible and avoid ‘non—essential‘ travel and contact with others. 55 britons are now confirmed to have died from the virus. that's all. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news,