While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, April 21

Germany and other parts of Europe took tentative steps to ease lockdown measures on Monday but officials warned the battle against the coronavirus pandemic was far from over.

Some shops reopened in Germany and Denmark and parents dropped their children off at nurseries in Norway as tight restrictions in place for weeks were lifted in parts of the continent.

After being hit hard by the virus that first emerged in China late last year, Europe has seen encouraging signs in recent days, with death rates dropping in Italy, Spain, France and Britain.

The hope is tempered by fears of new waves of infections, warnings that life will not be back to normal for many months and deep concern over the devastating impact the virus is having on the global economy.

But even the smallest return to normality was welcome.

The US debate over when to lift restrictions to curb the coronavirus outbreak intensified on Monday, with protesters describing mandatory lockdowns as "tyranny" and health workers and officials portraying them as a matter of life and death.

Stay-at-home measures, which experts say are essential to slow the spread of the virus, have ground the economy to a virtual standstill and forced more than 22 million people to apply for unemployment benefits in the past month.

In Pennsylvania, where Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has pledged to veto a bill in the Republican-led General Assembly that would force him to reopen some businesses, a few hundred protesters, some in cars, demonstrated in the capital Harrisburg.

The World Health Organisation insisted Monday that it sounded the alarm on the novel coronavirus right from the very start and had hidden nothing from Washington about the deadly pandemic.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there were no secrets at the UN agency after facing scathing criticism from Washington, which has accused the organisation of initially downplaying the outbreak in China.

"We have been warning from day one that this is a devil that everyone should fight," Tedros told a virtual briefing in Geneva.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his centrist election rival Benny Gantz signed a deal on Monday to form a national emergency government, ending a year of unprecedented political deadlock.

The power sharing agreement clinched after weeks of negotiations gave a clear end-date for the premiership of Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving leader, who has become for many the face of the nation.

Netanyahu, who is under criminal indictment in three corruption cases, will remain prime minister for 18 months after which Gantz will replace him, according to the agreement signed by both men.

Arsenal's players and coaching staff have agreed a 12.5% salary cut due to the Covid-19 pandemic, making the London-based club the first in the Premier League to announce such a measure.

Several Premier League clubs have furloughed employees since the new coronavirus outbreak while others, such as West Ham United and Southampton, have said their players have accepted wage deferrals.

League leaders Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Bournemouth reversed decisions to furlough non-playing staff following criticism.