Apple said Thursday that it was awarding $10 million to a maker of nasal swabs and other materials for collecting samples for Covid-19 tests in a move aimed at boosting the swab maker's production to 1 million collection kits per week by early July.

The two companies said the award would help Murrieta, California-based COPAN Diagnostics expand into a larger facility and create 50 new jobs in Southern California. In addition to providing the funding, Apple said it would help COPAN Diagnostics design and source new equipment from York, Pennsylvania-based K2 Kinetics and Waukesha, Wisconsin-based MWES, both makers of industrial robotics systems.

The U.K. government has confirmed that nearly 400,000 gowns ordered from Turkey have been impounded after it was found that they do not meet British safety standards. The news, first reported by the U.K. newspaper The Daily Telegraph, comes after the government has faced a wave of criticism for not procuring adequate amounts of personal protective equipment, or PPE, for medical workers.

The shipment of gowns from Turkey was initially announced by the government when addressing the shortage of PPE available in the country. The shipment was delayed, but arrived in London last month on a Royal Air Force plane. The gowns are now reportedly being kept in a government warehouse after inspectors found they were faulty.

“We are working night and day to source PPE internationally and domestically and brought together the NHS, industry and the armed forces to create a comprehensive PPE distribution network to deliver critical supplies to the frontline," a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said. 

The U.S. also received a shipment of supplies from Turkey on April 29, including medical gowns, which was greeted by a delegation from the Turkish Embassy as well as State and Defense Department officials at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. No issues have been reported with that shipment.

Air France-KLM forecast a "prolonged negative impact on passenger demand" in a statement on Thursday, after the company lost 1.8 billion euros, or $1.9 billion, in the first quarter.

"We're not seeing a return to 2019 levels until, at a minimum, 2022 — an absolute minimum," Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith said according to Reuters. Current forecasts indicate that Air France is expecting European borders to reopen in September at the earliest, resulting in a 40 to 50 percent decrease in activity compared to the same period in 2019.

The partner airlines expect that the second quarter of this year will be far worse, with traffic down 95 percent. Air France has implemented protective measures in its flights to keep activity going, notably the mandatory wearing of masks to take effect from May 11.

The largely black and white painting shows a child holding aloft a doll in a superhero cape and an apron with a red cross. The toy nurse's right fist thrusts forward in a flying Superman pose.

Banksy’s latest piece, which went on display at Southampton General Hospital in the south of England on Wednesday, marks the spirit of gratitude for healthcare workers that has swept across Britain during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Britain's Prince George wants to do his sister Charlotte's school projects instead of his own work, his mother Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, said Thursday in an interview with ITV. 

Kate appeared on the show "This Morning" to launch a photography project designed to capture "the spirit, the hopes, the fears and the feelings" of the U.K. during the coronavirus crisis. In collaboration with London's National Portrait Gallery, the "Hold Still" will crowd-source 100 of the best photos submitted by the public to provide "a snapshot of the people of the U.K. at this time." 

"That’s the power of photography, it can capture a moment and tell a story," said Kate, the wife of Queen Elizabeth II's grandson, Prince William. She added that her three children check in daily with family members they can't see in person, and that they are having "in some ways a lot more contact than perhaps we would have done before." 

Black people in Britain are more than four times as likely to die from coronavirus than white people, according to data published Thursday by the U.K.’s Office of National Statistics, which analyses population data for England and Wales.

The analysis showed that even when accounting for socio-economic factors along with age and health, black people are still 1.9 times more likely to die from coronavirus. People of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, or mixed ethnicity also had what the ONS calls a “statistically significant” rise in risk of death from coronavirus, versus those of white ethnicity.

“These results show that the the difference between ethnic groups in COVID-19 mortality is partly a result of socio-economic disadvantage and other circumstances, but a remaining part of the difference has not yet been explained,” the report said.

China is open to cooperating with the World Health Organization on a virus tracing investigation, Hua Chunying, a Chinese political spokesperson said at a press conference on Thursday. Chunying emphasized, however, that the country is opposed to an investigation where China is already presumed to be guilty. 

"China remains open to all kinds of cooperation with WHO on issues including virus tracing, as long as it is conducive to better cope with major infectious diseases," she said. China opposes that the United States and other countries can't wait for a "presumed international investigation of guilt" on the issue of traceability, she added. Recently, U.S. officials have offered differing claims on the virus' origins.

On Wednesday, the head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, said the organization was in talks with China to send a follow-up mission to the country to investigate the animal source of the pandemic. This comes just days after the WHO said China had not invited the organization to take part in an investigation into the origins of the virus.

Russia's number of total confirmed cases of coronavirus overtook France and Germany on Thursday, reaching 177,160 infections. There was also a new record for the daily number of confirmed infections, with official government numbers showing 11,231 new cases, the fifth day in a row with more than 10,000.

These milestones come a day after President Vladimir Putin asked regional leaders to prepare plans for a gradual easing of lockdown starting May 12. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said Thursday 300,000 people have likely been infected in Moscow, despite an official tally of 92,676 cases in the city. 

Sobyanin said the growth in new cases is due to expanded testing, which has allowed for the identification of more asymptomatic cases.