A preliminary hearing opened Friday at Britain’s High Court in the Duchess of Sussex’s legal action against a British newspaper that published what she describes as a “private and confidential” letter she wrote to her father.  
Meghan is suing the Mail on Sunday and its parent company, Associated Newspapers, for publishing parts of an August 2018 letter she wrote to Thomas Markle. The civil lawsuit accuses the newspaper of copyright infringement, misuse of private information and violating the U.K.’s data protection law.
Associated Newspapers published sections of the letter in February last year. It denies the allegations — particularly the claim that the letter was presented in a way that changed its meaning. 
Lawyers for Associated Newspapers want the court to strike out parts of Meghan’s case ahead of a full trial, arguing that allegations of “dishonesty and malicious intent” should not form part of her case.
As the hearing opened via video conferencing, Anthony White, a lawyer representing the publisher, told the judge that lawyers for Meghan had made “further assertions of improper, deliberate conduct,” and that she accused the publisher of “harassing, humiliating, manipulating and exploiting” Thomas Markle.
White rejected the duchess’s allegations that the publisher had deliberately sought to “manufacture or stoke a family dispute for the sake of having a good story or stories to publish.” He said this was “irrelevant to the claim for misuse of private information”, and asked the judge to strike out that allegation.
The lawyer also rejected Meghan’s allegation that the publisher “acted dishonestly” when deciding which parts of her letter to publish.
Harry and Meghan were expected to listen in to the part of the hearing conducted by her lawyers.
Thomas Markle’s strained relationship with his daughter complicated Meghan’s entry into the royal family.
He had been due to walk Meghan down the aisle at her May 2018 wedding, but pulled out at the last minute, citing heart problems. The former television lighting director has given occasional interviews to the media, complaining in December 2018 that he’d been “ghosted” by his daughter after the wedding.
The letter was written three months after the royal wedding at Windsor Castle.  
Analysts have compared the legal case to the late Princess Diana’s lawsuit over photographs showing her exercising on gym equipment. The case was settled before it was to be heard.
Harry has long had a difficult relationship with the press. When the couple announced the legal action over the letter, he accused some newspapers of a “ruthless campaign” against his wife and compared it to how the press treated his mother Princess Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997.
Earlier this week the couple issued a strongly-worded letter announcing they will no longer cooperate with several British tabloid newspapers because of what they called “distorted, false or invasive” stories.  
The couple said they won’t “offer themselves up as currency for an economy of click bait and distortion.”  
The couple announced in January they were quitting as senior royals, seeking financial independence and moving to North America.
 
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Youth groups are staging a long-planned global climate demonstration online Friday because of restrictions on public protests during the coronavirus pandemic.
The student group Fridays for Future, whose past rallies have drawn hundreds of thousands onto the streets worldwide, is using a livestream to call on world leaders to act against global warming.
Some groups have found creative ways to stage very limited demonstrations despite the lockdown.
In Berlin, activists placed thousands of protest placards in front of the German parliament.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, 17, the most prominent face of the youth climate movement, said Wednesday during an online Earth Day event that the climate crisis “may not be as immediate as the corona crisis but we need to tackle this now, otherwise it will be irreversible.”
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Austria, which is loosening its coronavirus lockdown, said on Friday that most pupils will go back to school on May 18, with classes split in two groups that will each attend lessons half the week to ensure their desks are far enough apart.
 
Austria acted early in its outbreak to shut schools, bars, restaurants, non-essential shops and other gathering places more than a month ago. The public has been told to stay at home and work from there if possible.
 
That has helped slow the daily increase in infections to less than 2%. Austria has recorded a total of 15,011 confirmed cases of the disease, with 530 deaths.
 
The government says those numbers justify loosening its lockdown, which started last week with the reopening of DIY and garden centers as well as smaller shops.
 
Pupils in their final year were already due to go back to school on May 4, and the government said this week that schools would reopen “step by step” from May 15.
 
“If all goes well and infections do not increase further…, if the experiences of Denmark and Norway, which have decided to open schools early, are good, then the second phase of school openings will happen,” Education Minister Heinz Fassmann said.
 
“It is essentially all types of school for six-to-14-year-olds,” he told a news conference. While schools will officially reopen on Friday, May 15 for preparatory work, lessons would not resume in earnest until the following Monday, he added.
 
Most classes will be split into two groups, with one attending school Monday to Wednesday and the other Thursday to Friday, then swapping the following week, Fassmann said.
 
Pupils roughly 15 and older who are not in their final year should return to school on May 29, Fassmann added.
 
Denmark loosened its lockdown last week by reopening schools and day care centers, but concerns they might become breeding grounds for infection prompted thousands of parents to keep their children at home.
 
In Austria, the conservative-led government has faced criticism for reopening shops and other businesses before outlining plans for schools.
 
Hairdressers and larger shops are due to reopen from May 1, followed by cafes, bars, restaurants, libraries, museums and churches from May 15.
 
“The phased plan presented today is late and beyond overdue, but fundamentally an important step in providing the clarity for parents, pupils and teachers that the SPO has been calling for,” the leader of the opposition Social Democrats (SPO), Pamela Rendi-Wagner, said in a statement. 
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The European Union approved a $580 billion aid package to help mitigate the consequences of coronavirus pandemic lockdowns in member countries.European Council President Charles Michel said Thursday the package was expected to be operational by June 1. Michel said it would help pay lost wages, keep companies afloat and fund health care systems.”We all agreed that the health and safety of our citizens comes first,” Michel said. “We also agreed to continue to follow the situation closely, in particular as we approach the holiday season and to coordinate as much as possible to ensure a gradual and orderly lifting of restrictions.”At Thursday’s virtual summit, the EU leaders also agreed on a recovery fund, without giving a specific figure, intended to rebuild the 27-nation bloc’s economies. However, officials said $1.1 trillion to $1.6 trillion would be needed.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the impact of the economic crisis following the coronavirus outbreak is unprecedented in modern times.”While the pandemic knows certainly no borders and is blind to nationalities, some countries are certainly hit harder than others,” she said. “And unless we act decisively and collectively, the recovery will not be symmetric and divergences between member states will increase. I am therefore very happy that the leaders this evening tasked the Commission with shaping our collective response to the crisis.”The funds are urgently needed in the hardest-hit European countries, Italy and Spain.       
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European governments are rolling out plans outlining how they will start to cautiously unlock their countries and fire up their economies, but the lifting of lockdowns is being complicated by a string of studies suggesting that even in cities and regions hit hard by the coronavirus, only a small fraction of the population has contracted the infection.That presents governments with exactly the same dilemma they faced when the virus first appeared: Lock down and wreck the economy to save lives and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with the sick, or, allow the virus to do its worst and watch health care systems buckle and the death toll mount.There had been hope that sizable numbers — many more than confirmed cases — had contracted the virus, protecting them with some immunity, even if temporary, from reinfection. That would help ease the complications of gradually lifting restrictions.“The choice we face is no different to the one we faced at the beginning,” noted British commentator Daniel Finkelstein, a onetime adviser to former British Prime Minister John Major. “How long can we socially, economically and politically sustain the lockdown before we decide that the cure is worse than the disease?”It is a question every government is asking.Hopes of swift exits from lockdowns have been dealt a blow in Europe, as well as in the United States and Asia, by a series of studies indicating how few have been exposed so far to the coronavirus, thanks to the lockdowns. A study in California by public health officials and scientists at Stanford University and the University of Southern California suggests that 2.5%  to 4% of residents in Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco, and Los Angeles County have had the virus.FILE – Residents enjoy the weather despite an ongoing lockdown imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, in Nantes, France, April 23, 2020.A French study suggests less than 6% of France’s population will have been infected by the coronavirus by the time the country begins to unlock slowly in May, according to a study led by the prestigious Pasteur Institute. That would mean few people would have developed any possible immunity by the time the lockdown ends, meaning that if people mix more, more will contract the virus and more will go on to develop the disease COVID-19.“To achieve a sufficient level of collective immunity to avoid a second wave, you need 70 percent of the population to be immune,” said one of the authors of the study, Simon Cauchemez. He and his fellow Pasteur Institute researchers warn that a rapid lifting of restrictions could prompt a second huge wave of the epidemic. Collective immunity, also known as herd immunity, means the virus is less likely to spread to people who aren’t immune, because there are not enough infectious carriers to transmit it.Officials across Europe also say that the lack of testing capacity, or even of reliable enough quick antibody tests, is further hampering their plans to ease home confinement. Without better and speedy testing, public health officials won’t know if, when or where a second wave of virus infections is taking shape, making it harder to take preemptive measures with contract tracing. There remains a fierce debate among public health officials, virologists and government leaders about whether prior infection affords people any immunity, and if so, for how long.The World Health Organization has said it’s not known whether people who have been exposed to the virus become immune to it, and if so, for how long. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the WHO, told reporters this week that some preliminary studies suggest “some people will develop an immune response.” She added, “We don’t know if that actually confers immunity, which means that they’re totally protected.”Some European governments are trying to prepare their citizens for highly complicated unlocking plans, which will involve ambitious and long-term road maps to manage the impact of the unprecedented medical, economic and social stress the pandemic has caused.In Britain, the government’s medical and scientific advisers say that it is highly unlikely that a large percentage of people have already been infected. Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, said at a news conference that Britain will have to live with disruptive social measures for at least the rest of the year, saying it is “wholly unrealistic” to expect life will return to normal anytime soon.FILE – A woman takes photos of flowers in a park in London, April 22, 2020, as the lockdown in Britain continues due to the coronvirus pandemic.“This disease is not going to be eradicated; it is not going to disappear,” he said at the government’s daily coronavirus briefing. “So, we have to accept that we are working with a disease that we are going to be with globally … for the foreseeable future,” he added. He warned that the chance of having a vaccine, or even highly effective therapy for COVID-19, within the next calendar year was “incredibly small.”As the government remains highly cautious, Conservative lawmakers are becoming restive, warning midweek that its “safety-first” strategy was putting tens of thousands of businesses at risk. Senior Conservative lawmaker Charles Walker said, “There has got to be an economy to go back to. All MPs right now are dealing with dozens, if not hundreds, of local businesses that are fearing for their future.”  Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, is also coming under mounting pressure to ease restrictions quickly. She said Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic is “still at the beginning” and warned, “We will be living with this virus for a long time.” Merkel told the country’s parliament that she understood public frustration and the urge to relax coronavirus restrictions as soon as possible, but moving too fast, she added, risked setting back what had already been achieved with the restrictions.“Let us not squander what we have achieved and risk a setback. It would be a shame if premature hope ultimately punishes us all,” she added. Germany has the fifth-highest COVID-19 caseload behind the United States, Spain, Italy and France, but extensive and early testing has allowed fatalities to remain low. The country’s authorities have reported more than 150,700 infections and 5,354 deaths to date.The problem for all governments is they are running out of money to support their deflated economies. And Europeans are showing signs of tiring with the lockdowns and draconian restrictions. A study of data this week by Mannheim University in Germany suggests that the proportion of people avoiding friends and relatives has slipped from nearly 70 percent maintaining strict social distancing to less than 50 percent.FILE – People wind-skate at the Theresienwiese, site of the annual Oktoberfest beer festival in Munich, southern Germany, April 23, 2020. This year’s Oktoberfest has already been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.Most European governments have started to offer some concessions and are feeling their way nervously to relaxing some restrictions. In Germany, the latest case figures show that people who are recovering outnumber new infections. “It is precisely because the figures give rise to hope that I feel obliged to say that this interim result is fragile. We are on thin ice, the thinnest ice even,” Merkel told lawmakers.Nonetheless, Germany’s gradual easing of restrictions will see schools and hairdressers allowed to reopen on May 4. And stores no bigger than 800 square meters were permitted to resume business this week, along with bookshops and car showrooms.In the coming days, France too will present a plan detailing how slowly to unwind its lockdown after May 11. Protective masks, increased testing and maintaining social distancing will likely be highlighted, say officials. French retailers are to be allowed to restart their business on May 11, although with some curbs in areas with high infection rates.The easing comes as the government of President Emmanuel Macron has come under mounting pressure to get the economy running again. Restrictions may remain in place on traveling between regions.Italy has earmarked May 4 for relaxing some quarantine restrictions. Pressure has mounted on Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to get the country working again, with southern regions reporting zero infections. Across the nation, the numbers of new infections are declining daily. But problems remain in the north of the country, especially in Lombardy, the hardest-hit Italian region of all and the country’s commercial and manufacturing powerhouse, which accounts for a quarter of Italy’s GDP.Italy’s representative on the executive board of the WHO, Walter Ricciardi, has warned it would be highly premature to ease Lombardy’s lockdown. “May 4 is just too optimistic for Lombardy,” he said. Stefano Patuanelli, Italy’s economic development minister, has argued publicly for a patchwork approach, with regions with fewer cases being allowed to lift lockdown restrictions sooner.Some southern governors have warned that if a lockdown is not maintained on Lombardy and another hard-hit northeastern region, Marche, they will bar entry into their territories to anyone arriving from the north.
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A new World Bank study predicts remittances sent home by migrant workers from low- and middle-income countries may plummet by one-fifth this year, prompted by the coronavirus-driven global economic downturn.In Europe, that translates into billions of dollars lost to families in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. Shuttered shops and empty sidewalks on the normally bustling Avenue de Paris in Montreuil. (L. Bryant/VOA)Almost every business in the Paris suburb of Montreuil is shuttered on what is a normally bustling street — except for the Western Union money transfer office. Even so, it is seeing only a trickle of customers.  Retiree Boubacar Baka is sending his usual quarterly payment back to his family in Abidjan. He said it’s not much — times are tight. But he said his family has to eat.  With its many African residents, especially from Mali, Montreuil is sometimes called “Little Bamako.” On this day,  Western Union customer Sidi Djiabate, who is from Mali, has business to do.  Djiabate is sending a small sum to family in western Mali as a Ramadan gift. He said he is an office clerk here, and his job is secure. But he says times are tough in his homeland, where the coronavirus has also arrived. With Mali’s borders closed to slow the pandemic, he says people lack basics like sugar.  France is one of Europe’s biggest exporters of migrant worker remittances. The African diaspora here, estimated at 3.6 million people, sent more than $10 billion home in 2017.  Graffiti in the Paris suburb of Montreuil, nicknamed ‘little Bamako’ because of its large Malian diaspora. (L. Bryant/VOA)But coronavirus-triggered layoffs and lost wages are affecting those transfers. Staff at the Montreuil Western Union declined to be interviewed but said their clientele has dropped sharply in recent weeks.  There are other reasons for the slowdown in remittances. One is that a number of money transfer offices are closed under the current shutdown. Companies like Western Union have launched communications campaigns urging clients to send payments via internet or phone app.  But not everyone has a computer or smartphone.  A market in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis before the lockdown. (L. Bryant/VOA)Laurent Russier, mayor of the nearby town of Saint-Denis where about a third of the population is foreign born, said some remittances are going the other way, as well. He said migrant workers who have lost their jobs here are getting money from families back home.  The World Bank forecasts Africa alone could lose more than $11 billion in remittances from its diaspora this year, even as experts fear foreign investment and aid could also drop.     
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