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.”

In this extract from her Griffith Review essay the author wrestles with ageing and the deep need to keep writing

Why did they ask me for an essay about stopping writing? And why did I say yes? Did I tell someone I’d stopped? Have I stopped? I could, if I wanted to, couldn’t I? I’m 77 and I’m pretty tired. And lately I think I’ve copped what the French call “un coup de vieux”: a blow of old. I’ve got arthritis in my left wrist, my right knee gives twinges, and my left foot sometimes aches and stabs all day. Other days, nothing hurts at all. I don’t know what this means.

I am an old woman.

With more Australian artists being asked to play for free in the lockdown, many are asking if it might do more harm than good

If live music died in mid March, it’s sure been noisy at the funeral. On platforms old and new, live gigs performed at home have streamed from trickle to tidal wave, breaking over the mobile devices of captive audiences. Global gig guide aggregator Bands In Town has added a livestream dropdown, and a new Australian state has been ceded by Eventfinda and tucked alphabetically between Victoria and Western Australia: the state of “Virtual”.

For fans it’s been fun. We’re loving seeing musicians’ pets and plants and enormous fingers fumbling for the flip screen button and, unless we’ve bought a URL ticket, there’s scandalously little to lose by dropping into, and out of, a show.

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.

Some people have found returning to the family home a blessing, but for others it has been anything but smooth sailing

Covid-19 has reshaped geographic boundaries. It has left many financially distressed. Expatriates have returned from overseas for indefinite periods of time, and vulnerable people require more help than usual. For all these reasons, and many more, adult children have found themselves doing something that might previously have been unthinkable: moving back in with their parents.

Some are finding the experience transformative. One woman, who left New York for her parent’s rural home, told me that the space and country air have made her reconsider whether she will ever return to the city. But there are also downsides. “I’m craving male attention more than I ever have before,” she confessed. When flirting over apps stopped cutting it, she wound up ordering a vibrator in an unmarked box, and fended off her younger siblings in order to retrieve it from the mailbox.

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”.

One study suggests one in three people from 16 to 64 have been victims of image-based abuse. But most will never step foot in a police station

When Laura* was 14, she was convinced that her boyfriend was the love of her life. So, when several girls messaged her to say he had sent them a video of her drunk and engaging in a sexual act, she told herself they were lying.

“I was just like, ‘Oh, you don’t know anything about our relationship. I don’t believe you,’” she says. “But after we broke up, he pretty much sent it to everyone that I knew.

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.

The cardinal maintains he didn’t know about the Victorian town’s notorious paedophile priests, a claim the royal commission found ‘implausible’

“Why isn’t all of Australia talking about what happened here in Ballarat?”

That’s the question Clare Linane remembers asking her husband, Peter Blenkiron, 12 years ago as they were sitting in the kitchen talking about his abuse. Linane’s husband, brother and cousin had all been abused when they were children between 1973 and 1974 by Christian Brother and now convicted paedophile Edward “Ted” Dowlan. They knew they were among thousands of people living in and around Ballarat – Victoria’s largest inland city – who had been affected by child sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy.

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

Paul Kelly warns people over 70 and with existing diseases are at high risk from coronavirus as pandemic restrictions ease

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The deputy chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, is warning people to take care if visiting mums on Mother’s Day, as frictions emerge over the lockdown in Victoria.

In some states, authorities are allowing people to pay family visits on Sunday as coronavirus pandemic restrictions are eased, but Kelly has restated warnings that people over 70 and with existing chronic diseases are at high risk from coronavirus.

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.

It's been years since Coyote Peterson was stung by a Japanese giant hornet -- a subspecies of the Asian giant hornet -- but the American wildlife educator vividly remembers how the sting immediately felt like a 'red hot fire poker' being shoved into his skin, followed by residual, almost unbearable pain that lasted for hours.

The Toronto Zoo announced on Wednesday it had successfully hatched a baby Madagascar spider tortoise, its first successful hatching of the critically endangered species.

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.

Insect experts say people should calm down about the big bug with the nickname "murder hornet" -- unless you are a beekeeper or a honeybee.

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.

Washington state has another bug to worry about in addition to Asian giant hornets -- gypsy moths, which the state's governor says could become an "infestation."

Hurricane season is fast approaching and it is likely to be active -- maybe even an extremely active -- season.

Coronavirus: The symptoms

"I am very aware that I'm not the only one going through this torture" Read our live coronavirus updates HERE

Harry Potter star Rupert Grint has announced he and partner Georgia Groome are expecting their first child together.

Rochelle Humes has revealed that she is expecting her third child with husband Marvin in an Easter themed Instagram post.

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

The Little Mix singer has reportedly broken up with former Love Island contestant Chris Hughes

She said: "It is nice to get away for your own time and not people relying on you for everything all the time.

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

Like many, Ovie Soko has staved off lockdown boredom by getting rid of his hair

The singer said the milestone would be a "very special moment".

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

The choir leader told Twitter followers how a runner failed to maintain a two metre distance and "fell" on his young son

The comedian and her husband Chris Fischer welcomed their first child in May last year

McCoy is Keough's second child with her husband, Kyle Bosworth

The singer has reportedly handed over cash to good causes in his hometown of Suffolk

The 99-year-old is walking the length of his garden 100 times to raise funds

The cause of death is currently unknown

The TV star is adding some sparkle to her household tasks

Turley and her boyfriend Finn Tapp are currently staying with her parents in Scotland

The TV presenter has united the nation – though not in the way he hoped to