Germany

The chairman of an EU finance ministers meeting on further support for economies hit by the new coronavirus said on Thursday an agreement among all of the bloc's capitals was now "very close" after previous negotiations collapsed.

The Netherlands was the single opponent of a deal proposed on Wednesday morning after sixteen hours of negotiations.

In 2019, 20.3% of the EU population was aged 65 years or over; this was 0.3 percentage points higher than a year before and 2.9 percentage points higher than the corresponding share from a decade earlier. This article looks into the elderly population across EU regions, older people being considered at higher risk from the coronavirus.

According to the Robert Koch Institute, the number of deaths increased by 246, Reuters reports.
A total of 2.349 people have died since the outbreak of the epidemic in Germany.

The resettlement procedure for unaccompanied minors from Greek reception and identification facilities to other European Union states will begin next week. 

The plan foresees that 12 will head to Luxembourg next Wednesday and another 50 to Germany two days later.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide reached roughly 1.5 million on April 9 as the pandemic swept across the globe.

Johns Hopkins University's website showed over 88,538 people have died from the virus. The total number of people recovered from COVID-19 neared 330,000 according to the data.

Europe

The novel coronavirus has so far killed 222 Turkish citizens living abroad, diplomatic sources said on April 8. 

A total of 74 in France, 46 in Germany, 37 in the Netherlands, 19 in the U.K., 18 in Belgium, 10 in the U.S., 10 in Sweden, four in Austria, three in Switzerland, and one in Lebanon died from the virus.

The post-coronavirus world order will be different than that of today and the previous era and Turkey has to make its efforts to be ready for this future, Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun said at a teleconference meeting with Turkey's ambassadors in China, South Korea and Italy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet agreed on Wednesday to accept 50 migrant children and youths from overcrowded camps on Greek islands, government sources said.

The move was a first step by Germany, officials said, as worries mount about the health situation in the Greek camps due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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, quoted by AFP.

Singing operatic arias accompanied by the wailing of a Giant Schnauzer puppy is not easy, but Lilli Wuenscher has had to get used to it.

"When I sing high notes he starts to howl and cry," said the Leipzig Opera soloist about her puppy Ludwig -- named after Ludwig van Beethoven.