Peru is being "cautious" in not disclosing the flight path of a plane loaded with Covid-19 testing kits, its disease response chief has said, with the US accused of "confiscating" supplies meant for other nations.

Pilar Mazzetti, who leads Peru's operational center for Covid-19 response, told Reuters that a plane carrying masks and 300,000 testing kits is due to arrive in the country from China on Monday or Tuesday next week.

However, the aircraft's route is being kept "secret" out of fear that the vital shipment could be "confiscated" midway and diverted to a third country, she said.

Having packed my TV in a box some 20 years ago (did I miss anything good?), I feel I have developed a certain immunity to some of the more blatant propaganda techniques waged upon the populace by the media and Government. On the occasions I do get to see them, I often find myself at a loss to know whether to laugh out loud at the absurdities, or weep that many will swallow them without question.

My favourite recent example of this in the media is this piece here on the BBC (the Babylon Bee Corporation?), where they examine the sinister measures being taken by some of Europe's more authoritarian leaders, asking whether they are using Covid-19 as an excuse to oppress their populations and increase their power. Be thankful, O ye readers of such happenings, that nothing like that could ever happen in free countries such as Britain, France and Italy. If there ever came a time in free and happy Britain where they rushed draconian legislation through Parliament without opposition, put the population under house arrest, sent the economy into a tailspin, and set the police on us in case we sit on park benches — Heaven forfend — be assured that it would all be entirely benevolent and for our own good.

Support for green parties, and their causes, has slumped across Europe. When you're fighting a silent killer and the economy is going to ruins, their ill-conceived, woke activism just doesn't seem to matter.

The Covid-19 pandemic has left many victims in its wake, the elderly, those in poor health, doctors and nurses working on the frontline... and the climate change brigade.

It seems that many people across Europe have had a rethink about the wisdom of the green agenda in these unprecedented times. When you are being stalked by an invisible killer, locked in your own home for weeks on end and not able to visit those outside your immediate household because you risk being caught by the police and fined, then thoughts of climate change and other issues that in pre-Covid days seemed important, don't really seem to matter that much any more.

The view seems to be that tackling rising sea levels and Amazonian deforestation can wait for another day.

Iran's president said the country has extended furloughs for prisoners for another month as officials struggle to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

Hassan Rohani's announcement on April 19 followed an earlier decision to allow so-called low-risk businesses -- including many shops, factories, and workshops -- to resume operations in Tehran.

Rohani said mosques and other religious centers would remain closed for another two weeks and that decisions on gatherings during Ramadan will be decided later.

The Islamic holy month is scheduled to begin April 23.

Iran has reported more than 80,000 confirmed infections and more than 5,000 deaths. But many Iranians and other experts think the government has intentionally underreported the extent of the pandemic.

The Health Ministry has said the real infection and death toll may be higher due to limited testing.

"Having a child right now feels like a big luxury." Facing an out-of-control disease, a grim economic climate and with some states banning abortions as non-essential, many women are rushing to terminate their pregnancies.

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted every aspect of life in the US, including one deeply controversial topic: abortions. Several states - including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas - are trying to ban abortions, calling them "non-essential" procedures in the wake of a public health crisis. As a result, some clinics have closed, while others are experiencing a spike in requests from women hoping to get an abortion while they still can.

The Trust Women abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, reported performing 252 abortions in March, up from 90 in March, 2019. Julie Burkhart, the chief executive of Trust Women, told RT.com this week that between the Wichita, Kansas clinic and her other clinic in Oklahoma City (which was briefly closed but has since reopened), they have seen a "300 to 400 percent" increase in their patient load.

During a Las Vegas city council meeting on Wednesday, Mayor Carolyn Goodman (I) called on Nevada's Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak to quickly reopen the state for business so that her city's residents can start an economic recovery.

"This shutdown has become one of total insanity, in my opinion," Goodman said, "for there is no backup of data as to why we are shutdown from the start, no plan in place how to move through the shutdown or how even to come out of it."

Citing experts, she said that coronavirus is expected to endure indefinitely and argued that the virus has only killed less than 0.5 percent of the state population.

One year after a fire nearly destroyed the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the cause of the blaze remains a mystery.

On April 15, 2019, the 850 year old gothic building was engulfed in flames, sending its iconic spire crumbling to the ground.

Despite police initially asserting that an electrical short circuit was the probable cause of the fire, Europe Echaffaudage said that the electricity supply to the two lifts on the site "was perfectly within specifications and well maintained."

12 months on and there is no official conclusion as to how the fire started.

The UK government has extended its lockdown for another three weeks. But could the shutdown of society be doing more harm than good? In fact, is there any evidence it is doing any good at all? Dr John A Lee, a recently retired professor of pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, has repeatedly called for a critical and dispassionate examination of the evidence in relation to Covid-19, raising questions about the government and its advisers' interpretation of the data. spiked caught up with him to find out more.

spiked: You have been a relatively lone voice in questioning mainstream assumptions about coronavirus. Why have you found it important to speak out?

Dr John A Lee: As a doctor and a scientist my entire career, I believe that medicine and science have improved life immeasurably over the past 200 years, and especially over the last 50 years. But in the particular mix of science, medicine and politics that we are seeing now, I am not absolutely sure that is the case. I think it is more important than ever to try and look at this issue in a clear way in order to make sure that we are really doing the right thing on the basis of the right ideas. And it isn't clear to me at the moment that we are.

spiked: What problems do you see in the way figures are currently being recorded and reported?

Lee: The figures are just so unreliable. It's very difficult to understand when you are looking at figures from different countries, and figures in isolation about things like death, what they really mean. And obviously, if we can't understand what the figures mean, it is quite difficult to then know what we should do about them.

These figures are then fed into models of the disease and the epidemic which are being used to influence and inform public policy. But those models are only as good as their input data and the assumptions they make. And there are so many unknowns which means the models' outputs are really quite questionable. And given that we have now got ourselves into this situation, for a variety of reasons, getting ourselves out of it using the same models and predictions is even more questionable. So we are in a very difficult situation.

For example, we are currently in lockdown for two reasons. One is that the initial figures suggested that we were dealing with a very highly virulent disease. The World Health Organisation initially suggested that the case-fatality rate - the proportion of people diagnosed with the disease who die - would be 3.4 per cent. This is a very high number which would have caused a huge number of deaths. But as we have had gradually more and more data coming in, those percentages have been falling. In many examples, more complete data are now suggesting case-fatality rates of 0.4 per cent. My guess is that it will end up between 0.5 and 0.1 per cent, and probably nearer to the lower end of that. So if the disease isn't as virulent as was originally thought, the number of deaths will be correspondingly lower.

Nearly a third of 200 randomly tested residents of Chelsea, Massachusetts, were found to have Covid-19-related antibodies in yet another indication that the virus could be far more widespread and much less lethal than believed.

All of the participants "generally appeared healthy," but around half of them admitted that they had suffered at least one coronavirus symptom in the past month, according to the Massachusetts General Hospital researchers. Those who had previously tested positive for Covid-19 in the regular nasal swab were deliberately excluded from the study.

A total of 64 out of 200 blood samples tested positive for antibodies "linked to COVID-19." However, Dr. Vivek Naranbhai who conducted the testing, warned that the staggering result does not necessarily mean that up to a third of the Chelsea population had already contracted the virus ― and recovered without even knowing ― and that many of those tested might still be contagious.

The WHO, media and national governments have told us for weeks now that COVID-19 is a plague-like pandemic that is or will decimate the global population. One month into total lockdown of the west and much of the rest of the world, let's check their own statistics to gauge how far along their 'plague' is...

I began collecting data on the 26th of March and chose what was then the top ten countries by 'infection': China, Italy, Spain, the US, Germany, Iran, France, Switzerland, the UK, and South Korea. To these I added the world statistics as well as Australia - just because I live here - and on the 12th of April 2020 I added (and backdated) Sweden as a control group of a 'non-lockdown' country (although South Korea also did not have extensive lockdowns).

I also kept the statistics of the top ten countries by 'death', starting 26th March: Italy, Spain, China, Iran, France, the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. Obviously I added the world total, Australia and Sweden to remain consistent with the above list.