for the first time in nearly three weeks, ending an absence that prompted rumours about his health. the country's official news agency said he'd opened a fertiliser plant. there was no mention of where mr kim had been. the united states government has authorised the emergency use of an experimental anti—viral drug, remdesivir, as a treatment for the coronavirus. the food and drug administration said it was reasonable to believe that the benefits of the treatment outweighed the risks for patients hospitalised with severe covid—19. canada has announced an immediate ban on 1,500 types of military—grade assault weapons. the move was a campaign pledge by prime ministerjustin trudeau — however, officials in his party were divided and the action was delayed. now on bbc news:

the week in parliament. hello there and welcome to the week in parliament, where there are more questions for ministers over the government's handling of coronavirus. the labour leader wants to know... why he thinks that coronavirus continues to spread so fast in the care sector? filling in for borisjohnson, dominic raab admits it's a challenge but says it's one the government will grip. we can get the numbers down in care homes, as we've seen in hospitals and as we've seen in the country at large. the chancellor announces his latest loan scheme, promising fast and easy access to help for small firms. and away from the coronavirus pandemic, mps give initial approval to a bill to help victims of domestic violence. threatened and terrorised by someone who thinks it's ok to use his wife,

partner or family as an emotional or physical punch bag. it was another week of the extraordinary "new normal", with the public being urged to continue staying inside to slow the spread of covid—19. on tuesday, a minute's silence was held to commemorate key workers who have died with coronavirus. prime minister boris johnson, who returned to work on monday, joined the tribute at 11am. millions paused as a mark of respect to those on the front line. more than 100 nhs and care staff have died with the virus, as have many transport and other key workers. the commons continued to meet as a hybrid house, with many mstoining debates and committees virtually via videolink and just a handful in—person in the chamber. pmqs — normally a rowdy affair — was once again socially distanced and almost silent.

for the second week, dominic raab was filling in for boris johnson. the labour leader, sir keir starmer, asked about the rising coronavirus death toll. he said the total number of deaths — in hospitals, care homes and the community — was now probably over 27,000. we are possibly on track to have one of the worst death rates in europe. on monday, the prime minister said in his short speech that many were looking at our apparent success in the united kingdom, but does the first secretary agree with me that, far from success, these latest figures are truly dreadful? i absolutely share his, i guess, ourjoint horror at the number of deaths, tragedies each and everyone. equally, i'm going to disagree with him that it is far too early to make international comparisons. if they are to be done, they should be done on a per capita basis. we've all heard from the front line in the care sector expressions of real anxiety about the situation they finds themselves in, so can the first secretary explain

why he thinks that coronavirus continues to spread so fast in the care sector? dominic raab said the biggest challenge was the "ebb and flow" of people into care homes. i will not shy away from saying this is a challenge, but it is a challenge that we must grip and that we can grip to make sure, to make sure that those... we can get the numbers down in care homes, as we've seen in hospitals and as we've seen in the country at large. finally, on a strategy to end the lockdown, sir keir said other countries had come up with proposals. if you look at those plans, as he has done and i have done, it is clear there are common issues, such as schools reopening, business sectors reopening. these are the issues that, if he wants me to put them on the table, i will, because they are clearly the issues that need to be addressed. dominic raab said the government was taking advice from its scientific advisory group for emergencies — known as sage. if he is suggesting we can set out concrete proposals now despite clear evidence and advice from sage that we should wait for their review

of evidence in the next week or so, i would gently say that that is the wrong thing to do. and if he thinks he knows better than sage and the scientists that have suggested that, he needs to explain. 0ther mps asked about life after lockdown. will garden centres and nurseries be allowed to reopen in short order? we will continue, as i have indicated earlier, to keep the evidence under each measure under review. while working people are making sacrifices under this crisis, state support is available to big businesses that dodge taxes. and pay millions to superrich shareholders and executives. so will the government follow the likes of denmark and stand up to big business by saying, "if you want state support, you have to prohibit dividend payments and share buy—backs and you cannot be based in a tax haven"? i think we should take, frankly, some of the partisan baggage out of this, focus on targeting the businesses that will create the growth which will drive us through this

crisis and support the workers up and down this country who rely on those crucial businesses. dominic raab. the chancellor set out a new scheme to give small companies access to taxpayer—backed loans to help them through the crisis. rishi sunak told the commons the new system would offer quick loans of up to £50,000. he began by telling mps no—one should be in any doubt about the seriousness of the situation. more than one and a half million new claims have been made to universal credit. over 4 millionjobs have now been furloughed and survey evidence suggests a quarter of businesses have stopped trading. these are already tough times and there will be more to come. setting out the details of his so—called "bounceback loans", he said there'd be no capital or interest repayments for one year, with the government paying the interest for the first 12 months. there will be no forward—looking test of business viability, no complex eligibility criteria, just a simple, quick standard form for businesses to fill in.

for most firms, loans should arrive within 2a hours of approval. i've heard from small business owners who have put their life and soul into their firms, but they have less then two weeks of cash flow left and they are devastated. we all need to work together to get the different support schemes working for our country. we must fix this. this scheme he announces is good and deferring may be useful, but many small businesses just feel this stores up debt for the future, and it's understandable they may not want to take on more debt. so i ask him, will he look at more grants? and overdrafts and revolving credit to help businesses through these difficulties. the lib dems' acting leader asked about the self—employed who worked in jobs such as taxi driving or cleaning. i know the treasury are worried

about fraud, but i wrote to the chancellor on the 8th of april with the lib dem proposal to help these self—employed people and protect the taxpayer. will he please now help these self—employed people dependent on dividends before it's too late? mr speaker, we've designed these schemes at pace in order to get support to as many people as we can in the time available. the decisions we've taken enable that and at this point, complicated change to those schemes willjust mean we would be delayed getting support to millions of people who are either already in receipt of it or very shortly about to receive it. rishi sunak. back at prime minister's questions, the snp‘s leader at westminster was looking to the future and brexit. remember that? the uk is due to end its transitional period, where nothing much changes in its relationship with the eu, at the end of december. the government's insisted it won't delay that deadline. but ian blackford was alarmed at the rumoured lack of progress in the talks. refusing to admit the inevitability

of an extension isn't a tough or a clever negotiating tactic. it's a reckless and a foolish gamble. will the secretary of state embrace common sense and recognise the need for a brexit extension? show some leadership. face down the hard—liners in the tory party. extend the brexit transition and let us all get on with the job of tackling this health crisis together. dominic raab, who was briefly brexit secretary under theresa may, gave that short shrift. if his desire is to avoid more uncertainty, the right thing for us to do is double down and get a deal by the end of this year. if his desire is to dig ourselves out of the economic challenges that we, the european union and the world face, the answer is not to engage in protectionism but to do this deal, give a shot in the arm to businesses on both sides of the channel, and that is what we are absolutely, wholeheartedly focused on doing. and we are doing it as one united kingdom. dominic raab on brexit.

well, on monday, michael gove told mps that that the coronavirus crisis should "concentrate minds" in brussels over trade talks with the uk and he too rejected the suggestions that the pandemic should delay the transition period. appearing before the brexit committee, mr gove was reminded that the eu's chief negotiator, michel barnier, had described progress so far as "disappointing". the talks haven't made progress on the key issues. there are just two more rounds to go and british businesses have no idea what they are planning for apart from the prospect of a major economic shock to the globe. is the government asking itself whether the timetables it set out for this process are still realistic in the light of that fundamental changes since you last give evidence to our committee? yes. i think that it's important to bear in mind that what the government is putting forward is a set of arrangements which are based on existing precedents. we're not asking for anything

bespoke or new tailor—made, we are asking simply for a series of off—the—peg arrangements which replicate what the eu has with other countries. in a word, you're saying that the covid crisis doesn't change the timetable. is that the case? i think the covid crisis, in some respects, should concentrate the minds of eu negotiators, forcing the vital importance of coming to a conclusion. an optimistic michael gove there. you're watching the week in parliament with me, alicia mccarthy. and don't forget — you canjoin us on bbc parliament at ”pm every weeknight for a round up of the day here at westminster. domestic abuse charities have seen a huge increase in demand during the coronavirus lockdown. the government says it's invested an extra £2 million for online and phone services to provide help

2a hours a day and is to spend £3 million supporting children who witness abuse at home. mps also gave initial approval to the domestic abuse bill, which improves the provision of safe accommodation for victims and prevents them being cross examined in court by their abusers. thejustice secretary began with some shocking statistics. it is staggering that some 2.4 million people experience domestic abuse each year. unforgivable that on average, more than two individuals, majority of whom are women, are killed each and every week as a result of domestic homicide. tackling domestic abuse needs to be everyone‘s business. labour said more must be done during the coronavirus lockdown. it can't be right that vital services for the most desperate people would be in a position of turning people away due to a lack of funding.

a few months ago, labour's rosie duffield shared her own experience of domestic abuse. she said women were suffering right now. they are living locked down, locked in, locked away. threatened and terrorised by someone who thinks it's ok to use his wife, partner or family as an emotional or physical punching bag. what almighty cowards they are. bullies who see the opportunity of a global crisis to show those smaller and weaker than them that they are in control. unfortunately, i had a stepdad who reigned with physical terror and i regret that i remember the difficulties we had when he became violent. and when he decided one day to come home and beat my mum to a point where she needed strong support,

and where he came upstairs and blamed me, an 11—year—old kid, and used words that i would not repeat in parliament ever. those are things that shape you. those are things that unfortunately, you can never forget. the former prime minister, theresa may, had a suggestion. i would urge police officers and local authorities to look at the experience of the new york police department in the past and to consider as i know some already are, the random contact or visiting of homes where there are known perpetrators or where there've been reports of domestic violence. it must be done carefully to ensure that does not exacerbate the situation, but it can help those victims. labour's harriet harman wanted the defence of rough sex to be outlawed. she addressed thejustice secretary directly. you are the man with the power here. you are the government minister. this is your bill.

be the man who listens to what women are saying about this. don't be the man that knows better than us. listen to what we are saying about this and make the change we are asking for. the bill passed its initial stage without a vote and will now go off for detailed scrutiny. meanwhile, the northern ireland assembly debated its domestic abuse bill, which makes coercive control an offence, as it has been in england and wales since 2015. northern ireland is currently the only part of the united kingdom without legislation and it criminalises such behaviour and given the part that it plays in domestic abuse without the inclusion of psychological, emotional and control issues, along with physical damage, the police and legal system cannot support victims adequately and protect them from further abuse. but one mla thought the bill compared poorly with the domestic abuse legislation going through westminster. behaviour is abusive if it contains any of the following.

physical or sexual abuse. violent or threatening behaviour. controlling or coercive behaviour. economic abuse. psychological, emotional or other abuse. that's it. that's clear? that's unambiguous, largely. and that's intelligible. compare that with clauses one, two, three, four and five, one two, three and and particularly and three. that's why i said it is a model. a suggestion rejected by an alliance mla. all that is in the definition is covered by our bill and i think that our system is more robust than england and wales. the bill went on to clear its second stage and will now be considered in more detail. peers backed a bill denying parole

to killers who refuse to disclose the location of their victim's body. the legislation has been named helen's law after helen mccourt, whose killer was freed from jail without ever revealing where to find her remains. the bill also applies to offenders who don't reveal the identity of child abuse victims pictured in illegal images. the minister cited the case of vanessa george — jailed for abuse at a plymouth nursery. she took photographs of herself abusing children in her care and swapped indecent images over the internet. the pain felt by the victims and theirfamilies has been compounded by the fact that the children that she photographed cannot be identified from the images she produced, and she has hitherto refused to disclose their identities. for many families that placed their trust in vanessa george, they do now and may never know if their children fell victim to her cruelty. 0ne peer worried the bill didn't address offenders holding on to power by refusing to disclose information.

be it the murderer, be it the rapist, be it the child abuser, of whatever kind, that misuse of power is the fundamental question that we should be looking at that the law at the moment does not adequately address. it addresses acts, acts that can be properly adjudicated on, but the concept of power and how that is misused is a much more difficult one. lord mann. now, back to the coronavirus pandemic?. first minister nicola sturgeon advised the scottish public to wear face coverings in enclosed public spaces. she said it would not be mandatory but that would be kept under review. the scottish conservative leader wanted clarification at fmqs. can she be absolutely clear

in which circumstances face coverings are used concerning this has already been reported as a requirement for all scots to wearing face coverings when leaving home, which is not the intention she is trying to convey. evidence is not overwhelming, but there's evidence that i have seen where there could be some benefit in an situation where if somebody has the virus but is asymptomatic and may be sharing the virus but does not know they have it, they may give some additional protection from passing the virus to others. this is advice, if you're leaving your own home to go into an enclosed space where you will be with other people and it will be difficult to keep the recommended two metres of social distancing, than those of the circumstances in which you should wear a face covering, and not a medical mask. but she added it was no substitute for social distancing and good hand hygiene. during that session, nicola sturgeon had also faced questions about the levels of testing in scotland — and testing came up at welsh first minister's questions too.

mark drakeford told assembly members there was "no value" in testing everybody in the country's care homes for coronavirus because symptoms could develop quickly. his comments came in response to questions from the leader of the opposition. it's disappointing to hear that the welsh government is choosing not to test all care home residents and staff. so first minister, how will the welsh government step up its testing capacity and capability and tell us a bit more about how this government will trace and track any future outbreaks. and by not choosing to test all care home staff residents, the welsh government is sending the message that community testing is not that important in the first place.

the reason why we do not offer tests in carse homes either symptomatic and asymptomatic is because, in a clinical evidence tells us that there is no value in doing so. testing people who have no symptoms today, for that to be a reliable message to them, you would have to test them again tomorrow because you can go from being having no symptoms to having the symptoms and 2a hours. the leader of your party has said we're possibly on track to having some of the worst death rates in europe. he was referring to the uk, of course, but it is sadly true for wales. why have we done so badly compared to so many other countries? i want to remind the member, six weeks ago, we faced a position here in wales where we had a genuine fear that coronavirus would take off to an extent that the nhs would be overwhelmed and we would rather not

have beds in critical care or ventilators that were necessary and all the efforts that we have made in the nhs, means that we are not in that position and have not been in that position. mark drakeford. the uk's media watchdog, 0fcom, has said that theories linking covid—i9 to 5g technology, denounced as rubbish by scientists, are the most common example of online misinformation in the uk. mps on the digital, culture, media and sport committee heard from executives from the leading social media companies about what they were doing to counter both misinformation and disinformation about the virus. twitter is twice as poor at taking disinformation down as other social media platforms. they stated false posts stayed almost six out of ten times. why is that the case of the number of posts,

what are the issues that you are facing? we broadened our rules to cover harmful covid—19 misinformation on the 18th of march. it's also a relatively small sample, 225 pieces of misinformation, when on twitter, the scale we're operating at is, we've now challenged 3.4 million accounts that appearred to be engaging suspiciously or manipulatively in the covid—19 conversation. when it came to retweets about misinformation about, for instance, 5g or injecting bleach, imbibing bleach, did you take action against those sorts of of misinformation? something like #injectdisinfectant were blocked from trending. this is weekend, we blocked a website that was not safe because it was harmful. action had been taken against political leaders.

we do have a policy where there may come a time it is in the public interest to be aware that a world leader has shared a tweet, but if it does break our rules, we will hide it and note that it is harmful and does break the rules. ididn't i didn't ask you to answer that... gillian knight clearly unhappy at that response. another mp quoted a facebook post. "are there any 5g masts where we live? i need to go out in, it might cause the virus." still up there. that was 26 days ago. we believe it is not facebook's placed a site with his resume true, —— to presume what is or is not true so we go to outside organisations to come to the decision that we should remove the sort of 56 content. we started removing it on the basis of where it was flagged to us by users. usually, we'll start to take

down a piece of content, we start applying our policies and certain way and in some cases, which are to develop technology which will help us to proactively search that content is really cutting edge technology which will be able to build in other contexts and will be able to apply to 56 at a situation that we started taking this content down on april the 12th for about ten days or so and we've been proactively finding and removing this content. we need to take quick action against content that disputes the existence of the virus or the spread of the virus as it is described by the nhs and the world health organisation. we will take action quickly and from the videos we have removed, we have seen that 85% of those videos have less than 100 views. so ever since we updated our policy, we've been able to take quick action and catch this harmful misinformation before it spreads. finally, some happier news. it was announced on wednesday that boris johnson's fiancee carrie symonds had given birth to a baby boy. it follows a tumultuous few weeks for the couple after borisjohnson was admitted to intensive care

and carrie symonds was forced to self—isolate after developing symptoms of coronavirus. the commons speaker was first to send his best wishes. on behalf of everyone in the house of commons, massive congratulations to the prime minister on the birth of his son. such happy news amidst such uncertainty. 2020 is certainly a year we would never forget. you can say that again! and that's it from me for now, but dojoin david cornock on bbc parliament on monday night at 11pm for another round up of the day at westminster. but for now from me, alicia mccarthy, goodbye.

hello there. well, you probably noticed over the last couple of days the weather has been a bit unsettled with lots of showers. certainly friday no exceptiont to that theme. you can see the extent of all those showers moving across the uk, and they brought with it some dramatic skies. a double rainbow spotted around the southend—on—sea area of essex, and a little bit further south in sussex we had this dramatic bolt of lightning coming from one of the storm clouds with some hail mixed in as well. over the next few hours, showers moving eastwards across england, only slowly clearing here. the showers will then tend confined to the north—east of scotland, where it will stay cloudy all night. temperatures 3—7 degrees. now, as far as the weekend goes, we are going to see an improvement in the weather. spells of sunshine and for quite a few of us, it will stay dry. showers around, particularly across the north and east, but with lighter winds, it will feeljust a little bit warmer. here's the area of low pressure that's been bringing the showery weather over the last couple of days.

it's tending to move its way further eastwards, but we start off with an area of cloud and a bit of rain tied in with a very weak low. that low weakens further but as we go into the afternoon we start to see some cloud develop and the cloud will tend to develop where we see north—westerly winds bashed together with more northerly winds. this is a convergence zone. across some eastern areas of scotland, eastern areas of england, that is the area you are most likely to see showers popping up during the afternoon. elsewhere, it is a largely dry picture. as i say, with lighter winds and more sunshine to go around, it's going to feel warmer. temperatures for most of us between around 1a and 18 degrees celsius. in many respects, sunday looks like a similar kind of day. a dry morning foremost with some sunshine. perhaps a bit cloudier towards the south—west, and perhaps into the afternoon, we could start to see some showers developing and if they do pop up they can be slow—moving in nature and some can be on the heavy side as well. temperatures again for most between 1a and 18 degrees celsius. heading into next week, well, high pressure looks set to take

up residence towards the north—east of the british isles, but towards the south—west, low pressure lurks, so we'll have a north—east/south—west split to the weather. cloud increasing, probably rain as well, but the further north and east you go, the drier the weather stays.

welcome to bbc news — i'm lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: north korean state media report kim jong—un attending an official event — apparently quashing rumours of his ill—health. american authorities authorise the drug remdesivir as an emergency treatment for covid—19. and — the british government claims success in coronavirus testing — but the opposition questions the numbers. britain's farmers fear the consequences of a labour shortage as european workers stay away and not enough britons step in.