
After weeks of disagreement - especially between the United States and China - the UN Security Council will meet on Thursday to discuss the coronavirus pandemic for the first time.

The sanitary charter aircraft contracted to repatriate Australians on board the coronavirus infected “Greg Mortimer” cruise, stranded off the Uruguayan coast is expected this Thursday in Montevideo, and will be flying to Melbourne on Saturday according to foreign ministry sources.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday pleaded for global unity in fighting the coronavirus and gave a strident defense of his agency's handling of the pandemic, in response to US President Donald Trump's criticism.

Rockhopper Exploration is responding to market developments by reducing staffing levels and activity related to the Sea Lion development in the offshore North Falkland basin. The company plans to maintain a smaller team, mainly focused on regulatory, fiscal and financial issues, pending a recovery in the external macro-environment.

The German foreign ministry has restricted use of the video conferencing service Zoom, saying in an internal memo to employees that security and data protection weaknesses made it too risky to use, newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday.

British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has announced exceptional plans to repatriate scientists, support teams and construction workers as they complete their Antarctic summer field season work.

A charter flight is expected in Montevideo on Thursday, April 9 to pick up and fly home to Australia most of passengers and crew on the “Greg Mortimer”, the cruise vessel stranded off the coast of Uruguay for the last two weeks because 128 people on board have tested positive for Covid 19.

Manufacturing giant 3M said it has an agreement with the Trump administration that will allow the company to continue to export N95 protective masks to Canada and Latin America amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Authorities in Germany have fallen victim to a multi-million-euro fraud involving masks much needed in the coronavirus pandemic, prosecutors said on Tuesday. North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and one of the hardest hit, paid 14.7 million euros for some 10 million masks in March only to discover they did not exist, according to prosecutors in Traunstein, Bavaria.

A former choirboy who accused Australian Cardinal George Pell of molesting him said on Wednesday he accepts the top Vatican acquittal, but urged survivors of child sex abuse to keep coming forward.