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Victoria Repa had an unlikely start in life for a successful tech entrepreneur - she grew up in a tiny village in the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine.

There were only 12 children in her class at secondary school, and resources were limited. "Lessons would only last 20 minutes in winter," remembers the 27-year-old, "because we didn't have any heaters."

The school also didn't have any computers, so the future tech entrepreneur didn't benefit from any IT classes.

However, there were no shortages of books, and her great passion was devouring the ones about business.

Her favorite author was the celebrated US investor Warren Buffett. The main lesson that Victoria absorbed from the so-called "Sage of Omaha" was that to succeed at anything in life you had to know absolutely everything about the subject.

She wanted to one day follow in his footsteps, and be a successful entrepreneur.

Another abiding memory from her adolescence was the "sense of pain" she felt for being overweight.

"I was born into a family where everyone always had excess weight," she says. "My mother always told me 'you can do nothing, it is our family problem, and that's it'."

But as Victoria progressed through her teenage years she came to feel that she could do something about it. And that if she was successful it might make her happier.

Looking back, she says it was this experience that first got her thinking about one day creating a business around fitness and wellbeing.

"For me it became like a mission, to create tools for people to find their ideal state of body and mind."

Yet in her small Ukrainian school, such a mission seemed far-fetched. And so she put it to the back of her mind. After excelling in her exams, she did a general degree at her local university - Donetsk National. She then won a fully-paid scholarship to study business and financial economics at Kyiv School of Economics in the Ukrainian capital.

With most of her peers graduating into secure, well-paid jobs, Victoria initially followed the crowd. She took a position in the finance department of consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble.

The job brought financial benefits that her parents could only have dreamed of. Yet Victoria didn't feel fully satisfied.

She remembered the plans she had at school to follow in the footsteps of her business heroes, and build a huge company from scratch. She didn't want to continue to be just a corporate employee.

This was in 2016 when she was 24. "I didn't have a family to support, so I thought 'I'm young, I can still take risks'," she says.

By then the massive growth in smartphone use was, of course, clear, with the app market offering a host of opportunities for start-up businesses.

So Victoria decided to leave her safe and secure job to try to fulfill her childhood ambition.

She wanted to build an app that would both help people lose weight, and help heal the pain she had felt as a child. Following Warren Buffett's advice, she was entering a market she understood.

Basing herself in Kyiv, she joined forces with her co-founder Vitaly Laptenok. He had expertise in creating video content for social media marketing campaigns.

While the Ukrainian capital is home to software companies such as Epam, Luxoft, and Global Logic, who do outsourcing work on behalf of multinational companies, it doesn't have a developed tech start-up tech scene.

But while Victoria and Vitaly didn't have an ecosystem of nimble start-ups to lean on, in terms of reaching their desired market, their geographic location was not a problem. Thanks to social media, and Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store, they knew they could reach customers around the world.

So, noticing that fitness and wellbeing content was gaining huge traction on sites like Instagram, particularly in the US, they set about drumming up interest in the first iteration of their app, which was called BeautyHub.

However, still finding their feet, it fell flat. This didn't faze Victoria, who had picked up another bit of advice from business books - "fail fast, and fail cheap".

As products go, apps don't come with many overheads. If they die a death, you can quickly move on, she says.

It was in 2018 that her and Vitaly's app, by then called BetterMe, started to enjoy success. Offering personalized fitness and diet courses, user numbers began to rise strongly thanks to positive word-of-mouth.

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Today, despite strong competition from rivals such as MyFitnessPal, My Diet Coach, and Lose It, BetterMe's five sister apps have now been downloaded more than 40 million times.

It has 500,000 paying subscribers, around 80% of whom are women, and annual revenues of more than $60m (£51m). It has main offices in Kyiv and Cyprus.

Lauren Ryan, a leisure analyst at research group Mintel Leisure, says that what has helped boost the popularity of BetterMe, and other health and fitness apps, is the high price of gym memberships.

"The cost of membership fees and busy working lifestyles, mean gyms are not a feasible option for many," she says. "[So] demand cost-effective 'pocket personal trainers' as grown.

"And 16-34s are the most interested in digital fitness products, indicating that the trend is here to stay."

As BetterMe continues to grow, Victoria says she has gone from being a "chief everything" type of chief executive to now being able to stand back a bit, and let her 80-strong workforce get on with things.

While the success of the app has made her feel much better about herself, she says that what gives her the greatest satisfaction from her job is users posting pictures to demonstrate their weight loss.

"Before and after pictures mean more to me than revenue graphs," she says.

Administrator FRP is "urgently looking at options" for the future of the firm.

These include mothballing the business using government support, as well as trying to sell all or parts of it.

Most of the company's 2,000 employees will be paid through the government's job retention scheme while these options are explored.

This allows for staff to be paid up to 80% of their salary.

The restaurant chain's collapse came minutes after rent-to-own firm BrightHouse - the biggest rent-to-own operator in the UK - also collapsed.

Collectively, the two firms employ 4,500 people.

Carluccio had already warned it was facing permanent branch closures due to the coronavirus.

Before the outbreak, it was hit by the crunch in the casual dining sector and recently urged the state to step in.

Geoff Rowley, joint administrator, and partner at FRP said: "We are operating in unprecedented times and the issues currently facing the hospitality sector following the onset of Covid-19 are well documented.

"In the absence of being able to continue to trade Carluccio's, in the short term, we are urgently focused on the options available to preserve the future of the business and protect its employees."

Mr. Rowley said FRP looked forward to working with HMRC to access the support is provided for companies in administration and their employees.

He added: "As this fast-moving situation progresses, we will remain in regular communication with all employees and key stakeholders, and will provide a further update in due course."

Denise (name changed) has been working for Carluccio's for the past four years and was employed at its branch in the Grand Central shopping center in Birmingham when it first emerged that the chain was in trouble.

"We weren't told anything," she said. "We found out via BBC News."

Denise said Carluccio's staff had been assured that their March salary would be paid as normal, but when they got their payslips, they found that they had received only 50% of what they were owed.

"That's holiday pay, sick pay, they've deducted 50% of everything," she told the BBC. "I can't pay my rent this month. I don't have children, but other people who have are having to make decisions about whether to pay rent, heating bills or food bills."

She said that officials from the Unite union were contacting Carluccio's on their behalf, seeking clarification about when the other half of the money would be paid.

"We've received legal advice and we've been told that what they've done is illegal," she said, adding that the deductions brought their pay to below the minimum wage.

John Colley, associate dean at Warwick Business School, told the BBC that firms in the sector were likely to follow Carluccio's into administration.

"They over expanded, as did many other restaurant chains," he said.

Price wars and increases in the minimum wage had put restaurants under severe pressure, he added.

"I think the fact that Carluccio's was so quick to go into administration says that this was not due to coronavirus," said Prof Colley.

"All the issues were there anyway and this is just the last straw."

Restrictions aimed at curbing the coronavirus pandemic have recently forced all cafes and restaurants to close.

Carluccio has faced some difficult times in recent years, closing a third of its restaurants in 2018 as part of a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) rescue plan.

Like many in the casual dining sector, it has felt the brunt of a fall in consumer spending, combined with higher business rates, and increases in the National Living Wage.

Prezzo and Byron also used CVAs to close restaurants while Jamie's Italian went into administration last year.

The chain was founded more than 20 years ago by celebrity chef and restaurateur Antonio Carluccio, who died aged 80 in 2017.

Brent crude fell to $22.58 (£18.19) a barrel at one point on Monday, its lowest level since November 2002.

Meanwhile, the price of US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell below $20 a barrel and close to an 18-year low.

Oil prices have fallen by more than half during the past month as companies cut back or close production.

In addition to the drop in demand, a price war broke out earlier this month between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

This began when Saudi Arabia failed to convince Russia to back production cuts that had been agreed with the other members of the Opec oil producers' group.

The decision came as refineries around the world are processing less crude oil. Demand for transport has been hammered by grounded airlines and fewer cars on the roads as countries bring in tougher measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

However, an analyst said a collapse in demand from the measures taken to counter the spread of coronavirus was now the main factor.

"Oil prices failed to keep pace, with growing (coronavirus) lock-down measures and reports that this could drive global demand down 20%, potentially pushing the world to run out of storage capacity," said Morgan Stanley analyst Devin McDermott, citing a forecast by the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

Shale oil producers in the US have been particularly hard hit by the slump in prices since early March.

There are growing calls for the US to suspend royalty payment fees from drillers and to buy more oil to fill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or have stated such as Texas restrict production, Mr. McDermott said. The US is now the world's top oil producer.

"Since the 1930s, states have had the authority to limit oil and gas production in order to support oil prices," Mr. McDermott said.

"Though this practice is not widely used today, both federal and state regulators still have the ability to place restrictions on production levels."

The slump in oil prices has heralded the return of £1 liter of petrol. It's through the price of filling up, or a cheaper cost of living, that a lower oil price typically equals a boost to the UK economy.

But not so much now.

While lower prices may be welcomed by key workers such as nurses, paramedics or supermarket cashiers who drive to work, most people are holed up at home. In case they think they're missing out, it's important to remember that the fall in oil prices won't be reflected in full at the pump - more than half the price of a liter reflects taxes.

The biggest impact will be felt by countries that rely heavily on the oil they produce for income. Algeria, Nigeria and Libya, for example, need oil to be close to $100 per barrel to balance the government's books.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia, which is still recovering from the last major drop in oil prices in 2014, could face a funding shortfall of more than £100bn. The irony, of course, is that it is Saudi that triggered this oil price war to punish its rival Russia - a country which is far less vulnerable to drops in the price of crude.

Some US workers at Amazon and US food delivery firm Instacart are threatening strikes, and have accused the firms of not providing proper protection.

Last week, US senators wrote to Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to express concerns.

The companies have said they are taking extra precautions, amid booming demand for delivery services due to the virus.

"We are going to great lengths to keep the buildings extremely clean and help employees practice important precautions such as social distancing and other measures", a spokesman said in a statement.

"Those who don't want to work are welcome to use the paid and unpaid time off options and we support them in doing so".

Amazon said it had adjusted its practices, including increasing cleaning of its facilities and introducing staggered shift and break times.

Mr. Bezos earlier this month addressed the worries in an open letter to staff, thanking them for their work.

The company, which is looking to hire 100,000 more warehouse workers in the US to help address the surge in orders, has also said it would boost pay for warehouse staff around the world, including $2 per hour in the US and £2 per hour in the UK, where the staff has been told to work overtime.

However, US lawmakers on Friday questioned Amazon over the number of confirmed cases among its staff, as well as reports of shortages of protective and cleaning supplies.

The firm earlier faced strikes by workers in France and Italy and has been hit by legal complaints about the issues in Spain, according to a global alliance of unions coordinated by UNI Global Union.

Monday's call for a strike against Instacart was organized by the Instacart Shoppers and Gig Workers collective, which had accused the company of profiting by putting people making its deliveries "directly in harm's way".

The organization said the firm should provide protective gear, offer hazard pay and extend the pay for those unable to work because of the virus, whether due to a required quarantine or pre-existing condition.

"This is an extraordinary time in history, and as Shoppers, those of us who are able - and have the means to protect ourselves - do want to help those in our community by delivery groceries and supplies," the organizers wrote.

"But with Instacart neglecting the basic wellbeing of its 150,000+ drivers, we believe there is no choice but to not only walk off but to raise awareness to the company's practices."

On Sunday, after the call about Monday's strike, Instacart said it was working with a manufacturer to produce its own hand sanitizer and changing its tip policy. It had earlier said it would pay bonuses and provide 14 days of sick leave for its shoppers or part-time employees diagnosed with the disease or placed under isolation orders.

"We are immensely grateful to the entire shopper community for continually stepping up as household heroes for families who are relying on Instacart now more than ever," the firm said.

"We are continuing to monitor this situation and working around the clock to make sure we're providing you with the resources and support you need."