Lockdown Britain has embraced the sausage, with sales up 33%. But there’s much more you can do with them than fry-ups, sandwiches and casseroles

When you Google famous quotes about sausages (say you need an opener for an article), one of the first comes from Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who apparently once said: “Sausages are just funny. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it.”

Waller-Bridge is not wrong. Sausages are inherently funny. But their comedic value is also what holds them back. In the kitchen, no one takes sausages seriously. You very rarely see anyone serving sausages on Come Dine With Me; it would be an act of self-sabotage. You cannot win with sausages. They’re a culinary joke, unrefined, a bit naff.

A serious concern since the emergence of Covid-19 has been whether those who have had it can get it a second time – and what that means for exiting this crisis.

The Guardian’s science correspondent, Hannah Devlin, looks at how our bodies fight coronavirus when infected, how we develop immunity and if we can get reinfected with Covid-19

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To mark 250 years since British explorers landed in Australia for the first time, authorities are planning to unveil new memorials at Captain James Cook's landing site in Botany Bay, while a replica Endeavour sailing vessel will circumnavigate Australia – when Covid-19 restrictions allow. But one Aboriginal elder, who grew up on the shores of Botany Bay and has spent years involved in the resurrection of his Indigenous Dharawal culture, explains why Aboriginal people will not be celebrating

• Paul Daley: Commemorating James Cook’s arrival, Australia should not omit his role in the suffering that followed

Huge losses driven partly by fall in valuation of Australian pay TV service Foxtel and decline in news advertising revenue

Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire, News Corp, lost US$1bn in the three months to the end of March and is expecting more financial pain as the economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis continues.

The chief executive, Robert Thomson, said there was a fresh wave of cost-cutting ahead for the group, including a “strategic review of our Australian newspaper holdings” that could signal further job losses at the company’s smaller mastheads.

Victoria Cross recipient’s suit against Nine newspapers can’t be held until in-person hearings resume after coronavirus

The highly anticipated defamation trial brought by Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith against the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald will not go ahead next month after the federal court ruled a remote hearing under Covid-19 rules may breach national security.

The delay in the case came as justice Anthony Besanko said he had to consider whether to delay the trial despite a submission that Roberts-Smith and his family are suffering from the ongoing publication of articles by the Nine newspapers.

Australian National Audit Office evidence to Senate appears to contradict Morrison’s claim that he provided no authorisation

The prime minister’s office asked Bridget McKenzie to seek Scott Morrison’s “authority” for intended recipients of $100m of sports grants and coordinate the announcement with Coalition campaign headquarters, according to new evidence to the sports rorts inquiry.

The evidence from the Australian National Audit Office to the Senate inquiry contradicts Morrison’s claims that McKenzie, the former sports minister, was the ultimate decision-maker for the grant program, and that changes were not made after parliament was dissolved.

Word of mouth turned the riches-to-rags show into a sleeper hit. Its creator and stars explain why it is going out at its peak

Schitt’s Creek was always going to be a hard sell. There is that title for a start; an off-putting pun that instantly sets the comedy bar below ground level. Couple that with a hackneyed fish-out-of-water premise involving a rich family forced to slum it in a backwater town and you’ve got a one-season sitcom at best. Co-created by and starring Dan Levy, best known as a presenter on MTV Canada, and his dad Eugene, most famous for playing Jim’s embarrassing dad in the American Pie films, it was rejected by HBO and Showtime, eventually finding a home on the little-known US pay-to-view channel Pop. Even its main draw, the great Catherine O’Hara, was initially unenthused by the project, turning down the role of the Rose family’s self-obsessed matriarch Moira, citing her own laziness.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

Too many connection drop-outs, too many missed cues: at least phone calls are intimate

This week, a parcel presumed lost arrived. It was from my mum. Inside was a mask she’d sewn; sunflower seeds to plant; an Easter egg and a card: “To my lovely daughter, I miss you so much!” it read. “Absence truly makes the heart grow fonder. But indifference doesn’t. Video call me. Mum xx”

My mum and I are very close. We speak most days and would usually visit weekly; if it were up to her, it would be more. Her dream is to have all her children, our partners and someday grandchildren living under the same roof. One big happy family, bonded by love, loyalty, south Asian melodrama and unsolicited comments about weight.

Ugly makeup is imperfect, sloppy, chaotic – and only worn to please the wearer, against social expectations

In 2018, Rosanna Meikle felt like a failure. She was toiling through beauty school, and she hadn’t been able to find much work nor garner much attention for her creations online. She was exhausted from the sameness she saw around her, “a sea of beautiful girls, smoky eyes and plumped lips”, she remembers. “My school was in an expensive area of Auckland, which made me feel so out of place. I couldn’t afford the products or the clothes, my kit wasn’t ‘professional’ enough and neither was my look.”

Related: ‘It makes me feel human’: 11 women share their lockdown beauty regimens

Around the 19-minute mark, I noticed something odd; it wasn’t that I felt any less out of breath than normal, but I felt detached

Mindfulness is the last thing I want to practise while running. When I’m really up against a wall (which is to say, after four minutes), the only thing that keeps me going is listening to Maniac and imagining I’m that gorilla in a paddling pool. So I approached this with a closed mind, and discarded a lot of podcasts because they were too woo-hoo, or because you had to listen to them before you run (“no headphones” is a typical mindful runner’s instruction), or because the person had an annoying voice. Finally, I settled on The Milestone Pursuit podcast, by a likable blokey Londoner, Steve Hobbs. He didn’t sound at all spiritual; he sounded like a person who would help you with your bike if your chain came off.

He has one mindful episode that I’ve listened to seven or eight times. Total convert. But full disclosure: I’ve never got to the end. It lasts 36 minutes, and I still don’t run for that long. So it’s partly suspense that keeps me going back.

Those less convinced in Australia cast doubt on source of Wuhan lab ‘intelligence’. Plus: Trump and Jennifer Hawkins

The origin of the coronavirus has opened up a new battlefield between the Murdoch press and just about everyone else – and given the Daily Telegraph’s Sharri Markson an international platform on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.

Following in the footsteps of her colleague Miranda Devine, who also made it onto Fox News, Markson told Tucker Carlson Tonight the “bombshell dossier” she had uncovered showed some of the world’s foremost intelligence agencies were investigating whether the virus was linked to a lab in Wuhan.

News Corp is campaigning full-bore for the US president, with reports of a Wuhan lab ‘intelligence’ dossier being seeded across its empire

In liberal democracies, the integrity, impartiality and professionalism of intelligence agencies matters. That’s why it is essential that intelligence agencies remain aloof, not only from the political debates of the day, but also from the policy decisions that individual governments may take. The intelligence community’s core task is to provide brutally realistic analysis on the threat environments we face so that governments can then make the best-informed policy decisions possible to preserve our common security.

The failures of the intelligence community before the Iraq war, the gullibility of much of the western media, as well as the cynical manipulation of both by the political class of the day, provide us with a stark reminder of what can go radically wrong. On 8 September 2002 the New York Times published one of this century’s most consequential news articles. The front-page story, supplied by the Bush administration, claimed that Saddam Hussein had stepped up his quest for weapons of mass destruction by acquiring key components for a nuclear weapon. In the UK, the Blair government’s “dodgy dossier” compounded the error. John Howard did the same in Australia. The problem was that it just wasn’t true. These were over-egged stories designed to soften the public up for what would become a disastrous war.

• Ronaldo Souza pulled from event after positive coronavirus test
• UFC 249 scheduled for Saturday night with no fans in building

The Ultimate Fighting Championship has withdrawn a bout from Saturday’s card in Jacksonville after middleweight Ronaldo ‘J’acare’ Souza and two of his cornermen tested positive for coronavirus, the mixed martial arts promotion said.

Related: UFC 249: Ferguson faces Gaethje as Dana White touts only game in town

From hosting the remainder of the Premier League season in Perth to the UFC Fight Island concept, ideas have ranged from bold to crazy

“When you’re going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill might not have had the coronavirus pandemic in mind when trotting out that particular gem, but trust him to find the right words almost a century before the fact. The Churchillian equivalent of “keep calm and carry on” is a mantra embraced by much of society right now, and sport is no different.

While health remains the primary concern in all walks of life, sporting bodies the world over have found themselves engaged in sessions of radical thinking to stave off looming economic ruin. In what predicament other than a global crisis could the term “NRL Island” be anything other than a genius concept for reality television?

The app will ask for your name (or pseudonym), age range, postcode and phone number. Scott Morrison says the Australian government’s covid safe tracking app won’t be mandatory to download and install, but its uptake numbers could play a part in easing Covid-19 restrictions

• Authorities admit app is not working properly on iPhones
  
• How Australia’s Covidsafe compares to other countries’ contact tracing technology
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The Australian government has launched Covidsafe, an app that traces every person running the app who has been in contact with someone else using the app who has tested positive for coronavirus in the previous few weeks, in a bid to automate coronavirus contact tracing, and allow the easing of restrictions.

Here’s what we know about the app so far.

Is Australia flattening the curve? We bring together all the latest Covid-19 confirmed cases, maps, stats and graphs from NSW, Victoria, Queensland, SA, WA, Tasmania, ACT and NT to get a broad picture of the Australian outbreak and track the impact of government response.

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Due to the difference in reporting times between states, territories and the federal government, it can be difficult to get a current picture of how many confirmed cases of coronavirus there are in Australia.

Here, we’ve brought together all the figures in one place, along with comparisons with other countries.

Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has detailed a gradual opening up of society with the timing the stages to be determined by the states

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• Coronavirus Australia maps and cases: live numbers and statistics

Scott Morrison and the chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, have laid out a three-step plan to reopen Australia after the coronavirus crisis. Morrison said he hoped step three could be achieved in July, but it would be up to each state and territory when they moved from one step to the next.

Below are some of the areas that will be opened up at each stage, according to the plan – and you can see the timeline for easing restrictions in each state here.

Lockdown has granted me the blessing of getting to know my father, but it has also underlined the severe health inequalities we face

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I hardly recognise the man in front of me. He staggers on one leg, his eye twitches, his stomach stretches past his waist.

“I got some fry bread for us,” he grins, his toothless smile reminding me he is getting old and so am I.”

From accidentally making money due to currency fluctuations, to paying down debt, for some Australians cancelled overseas trips have had surprising windfalls

From June 2018 to June 2019, the Australian Bureau of Statistics says Australians made a record 11.3 million trips overseas – double the number of trips just 10 years ago. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of Australians have been forced to cancel or alter their international travel plans.

This has left many Australians struggling to get refunds from travel providers. Flight Centre was charging $300 in processing fees per person, in some cases leading to fees that cost more than the value of the refund, until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission stepped in and threatened legal action, causing the company to waive fees for trips cancelled by travel providers. The ACCC also warned travel providers against retroactively changing their cancellation policies after tour companies including Topdeck and Intrepid attempted to retrospectively apply updated refund policies that would force customers to take credit rather than cash for cancelled trips.

Each Saturday we add 15 (or so) new songs to a Spotify playlist to soundtrack your physical distancing amid coronavirus – and help artists you love get paid

We’ve published a bunch of articles about how the coronavirus crisis has impacted the Australian arts industry. But there are small things you can do. It’s an imperfect solution, but streaming Australian music can help.

Each week, in partnership with Sounds Australia, Guardian Australia will add some 15 new songs to a playlist for you to put on repeat.

When the coronavirus crisis hit, Yolngu elders moved back to east Arnhem Land homelands where they found freedom, peace, and power

• This is part two of a four-part series about Indigenous caretakers of culture in the time of coronavirus
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Adapting to change is something Yolngu are good at, senior Rirratjingu songman Witiyana Marika says.

When the coronavirus first started making news, community leadership met to plan how they would manage if Covid-19 arrived in eastern Arnhem land. Senior men and women met with the emergency taskforce, the local Miwatj health service and the Laynhapuy homelands organisation to take the most vulnerable people further away from risk.

They’ve faced drought, extreme heat and bushfires, and now they have to deal with a new paranoia courtesy of the pandemic

Australia’s bats are turning up in increasing numbers in city suburbs. But as they search for food, they’re bringing for some a newfound paranoia thanks to a global pandemic that likely sprang from one of their overseas relatives.

In Ingham in far north Queensland, an influx of more than 200,000 little red flying foxes in January was variously described as a “swarm”, a “tornado” and an “infestation”.

As the US deals with a Covid-19 catastrophe in its meatworks, the Melbourne factory points to the potential for outbreaks in Australia

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Working in an abattoir at the best of times is tough. The hours are long, the labour is intensive and, for rank and file labourers, the pay is low.

Now, in the Covid-19 crisis, workers have one more thing to worry about – around the world their factories have proved to be a hotbed of infection. As Australia moves to ease lockdown laws, meat workers may still be at the frontline of exposure and infection.

Trad says she will cooperate with investigation into allegation she interfered in appointment of school principal

Queensland’s deputy premier and treasurer, Jackie Trad, has stood down from ministerial duties over an investigation into the appointment of a Brisbane principal.

The Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) is investigating the recruitment and selection process for the principal of the Inner City South Secondary College.

Deep recessions have long shadows and already there is a gaping hole opening up in our pandemic response

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The great recession was followed by Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of authoritarianism particularly in Europe.

Big economic events have big political consequences.

Politicians have set a high bar for themselves – success on coronavirus has created community expectations that will be challenging to shift

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“Let’s not give everything back, let’s not throw away all the progress we’ve made by letting our frustration get the better of us.” This was Daniel Andrews on Friday afternoon, shortly after national cabinet resolved to gradually restart economic and social activity by July.

The Victorian premier wanted people to understand he’d be hastening slowly – the message being here in the Massachusetts of Australia, we decide how quickly we’ll remove coronavirus restrictions. We don’t apply an arbitrary national average.

Covid-19 has spread around the planet, sending billions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope. Find out where the virus has spread, and where it has been most deadly

• Coronavirus map of the UK
• Coronavirus map of the US
• Coronavirus cases in Australia

The millions of unemployed in Thailand due to the coronavirus include elephants dependent on tourists to feed their voracious appetites. With scant numbers of foreign visitors, commercial elephant camps and sanctuaries lack funds for their upkeep and have sent more than 100 of the animals trudging back to their natural habitats.

As businesses in the United States slowly begin reopening, researchers in Pennsylvania are turning to dogs to help them fend off a second wave of COVID-19.

Scientists are cautioning that it’s still too early to know how the novel coronavirus mutates after a preliminary study in the U.S. claimed that a new strain of the virus has emerged that is more dominant and contagious than the original.

What may be the latest hope in the hunt to develop a treatment for COVID-19 comes from an unusual source – a furry, four-year-old llama named 'Winter' that is living on a farm in the Belgium countryside.

The European Space Agency said Friday that human urine could one day become a useful ingredient in making concrete to build on the moon.

Coronavirus: The symptoms

Bill Oddie hails Brooke-Taylor as 'true visual comic' Stephen Fry, Rob Brydon and Jack Dee also pay tribute Brooke-Taylor joins public figures to have died after contracting Covid-19 Read our live coronavirus updates HERE

Tomlinson appears in a bathtub wearing nothing but a shower cap in the cover video

The comedian praised "selfless" NHS workers on the front line

Coronavirus: the symptoms

The comedian's death was announced over the weekend

The actress and her husband, Tom Hanks, were both hospitalised with the deadly virus

The actress has resurfaced as a TikTok star

Hussain made his debut on Wednesday's show

The musician has been home-schooling his two children

Draper is one of the thousands of people in the UK to have been diagnosed with coronavirus

The group originally released the chart-topping track in 2005

The 7 Rings singer sang all six parts of the classic ballad

Price said her 'phobia of water' made things difficult during the tough course

The actor and his wife both tested positive for the virus in Australia

The Queen of Pop shared the picture on Instagram

The actor and his wife Sabrina both tested positive for Covid-19 last month