Jaston Khosa was one of 600,000 men from African countries who fought for Britain. He was quietly buried on VE Day after a life of abject poverty

In a crowded, Zambian slum on VE Day, a family gathered to bury one of the last veterans of Britain’s colonial army. Jaston Khosa of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment was laid to rest on the day the world commemorated the end of the war in which he fought.

The 95-year-old great-grandfather was among 600,000 Africans who fought for the British during World War Two, on battlefields across their own continent as well as Asia and the Middle East. Although their service has largely been forgotten, the mobilisation of this huge army from Britain’s colonies triggered the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade.

He gave McCartney tips on how to scream in tune and paved the way for everyone from Otis Redding to Prince. Richard Penniman showed the world how rock’n’roll could be a manifesto for personal liberation

Little Richard’s Rip It Up entered the UK top 30, right at the bottom, in December 1956. It looked up at a chart that included Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, but was mostly filled with light opera gloop such as Malcolm Vaughan’s St Therese of the Roses, three different versions of the cod-calypso of Cindy, Oh Cindy, and toddler-friendly novelties including Dickie Valentine’s Christmas Island and Mitchell Torok’s When Mexico Gave Up the Rhumba, while the spirit of the blitz lived on with Vera Lynn’s A House With Love in It. Play any of these records either side of Rip It Up and the effects are guaranteed goosebumps, an involuntary laugh and real surprise. With the sheer volume of Richard’s raw-throated scream – ebullient, gleeful, quite filthy – the shock of the new can still be felt. Rip It Up – that title alone!

Think of Bowie. Think of Prince. Little Richard was doing the same thing – with greater extravagance – decades earlier

The Observer’s critics recommend the best new arts shows to enjoy on TV, on the radio and online

Barber Shop Chronicles
A never-before-broadcast recording of Inua Ellams’s 2017 hit play splicing stories and banter with barbs and laughter. Available to stream for seven days from 7pm Thursday on the National Theatre’s YouTube channel. Clare Brennan

Author David McKee reveals why, 40 years on, his cautionary tale of the perils of ignoring children is still relevant

For the past 40 years it has been a warning to parents about the monstrous consequences of ignoring their children. Now new illustrations of the classic picture book Not Now, Bernard have been created to better reflect the daily life of families in the age of smartphones and tablets.

Eliza Hittman’s coming-of-age story about a US teenager seeking a termination is heartbreaking and painfully authentic

From Eliza Hittman, the remarkable writer-director of It Felt Like Love and Beach Rats, comes another drama that manages to blend the gritty authenticity of a documentary with the poetic sensibility of pure cinema. In her impressively measured and beautifully understated third feature, Hittman tells an oft-hidden story of reproductive rights – an age-old issue that has urgent contemporary relevance. Yet Never Rarely Sometimes Always never feels polemical. On the contrary, it is perhaps best described as a perfectly observed portrait of female friendship; a coming-of-age story with road-movie inflections, piercingly honest and deeply affecting.

Feature first-timer (and accomplished musician) Sidney Flanigan is superb as Autumn, a 17-year-old from Pennsylvania who discovers that she cannot get an abortion in her home town without parental consent. Quietly desperate, Autumn reluctantly confides in her more outgoing cousin Skylar (rising star Talia Ryder, soon to be seen in Spielberg’s West Side Story), who agrees to accompany her across state lines to New York. The pair imagine that the trip will be brief but find themselves spending days and nights on the streets, waiting for the procedure that Autumn was denied in Pennsylvania.

Transport secretary announces £2bn package to get UK walking and cycling instead

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The enormity of the challenge of getting the UK back to work was laid bare on Saturday, as the government acknowledged that the capacity of Britain’s transport network will be reduced by 90%.

The transport minister, Grant Shapps, said at the daily Downing Street press briefing that even if a full public transport service is restored, the government’s two-metre physical distancing rule will mean 10% of the usual number of passengers will be able to travel.

The museums of Europe have begun reopening their doors to art lovers desperate to see old favourites and new works

I am cursing my bad luck not to be stuck in lockdown in the Prado. A friend wishes she had stowed away in a closet before they bolted the doors of the National Gallery. Others would give anything for a week in the Rijksmuseum, a day in the Uffizi, an hour with Rembrandt or Vermeer, even just a few minutes with a Samuel Palmer moonscape in the Ashmolean or a Turner sunrise at Tate Britain. Museums are places of the heart.

We see art in time and place; we cannot see it otherwise. Of course there are other whereabouts of the works we most long to set eyes on again, during this evil pandemic: the cave paintings at Chaumet in France, Fra Angelico’s Annunciation in a Florentine monastery, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty coiled in the glistening waters of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. These were all chosen in an unofficial and entirely self-selecting Twitter survey (mine), along with Leonardo’s The Last Supper and James Turrell’s Deer Shelter Skyspace, framing the blue heavens above Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

The rights of the most vulnerable, including those with dementia, should not be violated

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Last week, driving to the shops, I passed a care home and saw a figure standing at an upstairs window: an old woman looking out at a world she could not enter. She looked like a prisoner. And in a way, that’s probably what she was.

Let’s talk about old people. Let’s talk about people in care homes, about people living with dementia and dying with dementia, out of sight and out of mind, and what the lockdown means for them. Let’s talk about what we are not talking about enough, not thinking about enough, not caring about enough.

Sincerity is an increasingly rare commodity among our leaders, but sombre addresses by the Queen and Germany’s president had it in spades

Public suspicion is often aroused by the neat use of rhetoric, or by hearing a clever trick of speech. It is understandable that a stylish phrase or a persuasive analogy from the mouth of an authority figure should be met with caution.

Many are now also wary of the comparisons with the Second World War that are lobbed at the population each week by politicians, for the globe is not waging a military campaign or fighting a battle, there is no violent human enemy to defeat. Instead, we are all engaged in a unique and sustained mass experiment in protection and survival.

Research finds that both male and female judges are more likely to employ female clerks if they have worked with women

Discrimination over jobs is bad. Bad for those discriminated against, and bad for society, as talent is wasted and divisions sown.

Women reaching senior leadership positions in organisations is generally a sign of success for gender equality – but it can also lead to increased equality elsewhere. That is the important finding from new research on the (not famously diverse) world of judges. The study looks at the hiring of law clerks by senior judges in the US.

Marta was right when saying Formiga will retire eventually but PSG’s record-breaking midfielder is preparing for a seventh Olympic Games next summer

When England stepped out at Meadow Lane in October 2018, having qualified unbeaten for the Women’s World Cup, all eyes were on one opponent: Brazil’s six-times Ballon d’Or winner, Marta. Necks prepared to strain for a glimpse of the ageing giant of women’s football. It may have been a friendly but at 34 the Brazilian’s career clock was ticking. For most, it would be the only time to see her in the flesh.

When Marta limped off after 22 minutes the disappointment of the crowd was palpable. The Brazil performance matched Marta’s lacklustre mood but in the then 40-year-old Formiga they had a player who would not subscribe to her teammates’ indifference – with the young winger Ludmila the exception alongside her.

Two players and a photographer remember what it was like to face Castilla at an empty Upton Park in 1980

At half-time West Ham’s former chairman Len Cearns was sent on a futile mission by his fellow directors. They wanted him to go down to the home dressing room to ask John Lyall if there was any way his team could possibly remember that the foul language being used in the heat of battle was floating away from the pitch, rattling around the empty terraces and causing some discomfort for the people sitting in the posh seats.

“There was a lot of swearing going on in the game,” Alvin Martin says as he recalls West Ham hosting a European tie behind closed doors in the autumn of 1980. “You don’t realise it. You’re communicating in a factory way.”

Elite clubs will prey on desperate ones in the hunt for bargains as the game reels from its biggest financial hit since the 1930s

Even at the time – in 2017 – the fee Paris Saint-Germain paid Barcelona for Neymar was extraordinary: £198m was 125% more than the previous record, set a year earlier when Manchester United had signed Paul Pogba from Juventus. Transfer records simply aren’t broken by that amount in the usual run of things. It was a statement signing, a deal designed not only to land the player, but to emphasise PSG’s financial power, to highlight their status as a super-club while inflating the market to a level at which only the mega-rich could compete.

Three years on, with football suspended across the globe and major leagues desperately seeking ways to get games on to stave off financial apocalypse, the world looks very different. A model predicated on constant growth has received an abrupt shock.

Volunteers who help the British Grand Prix run smoothly want to get back trackside but questions remain on safety and testing

“We are like one big family,” says Carolyn Doyle of the bond between the marshals of the British Grand Prix. “We are there because we love it and we want to achieve the same thing – that’s what makes it really special.”

Much as it does bring great pleasure to this selfless collective, the sport knows their presence is invaluable. As Silverstone considers hosting two consecutive races behind closed doors in July, the volunteer marshals are having to consider the new realities imposed on Formula One by the coronavirus crisis.

Neighbours of Tamsin Calidas, who moved to Scotland from London, are keen to put their side as her book I am an Island looks set for success

Tamsin Calidas’s memoir about swapping Notting Hill for a croft on a small Hebridean island luxuriates in its landscape. The heather and the Munros, the raw skies and the wild tides of the Atlantic are lavishly described. The islanders, by contrast, are largely anonymous, thoughtless and cruel.

Campaigners call for return of 1930s wording to Twentieth Century Fox Film Co former offices

Disney, titan of the media and entertainment world, has enraged a group of Londoners attempting to preserve one of Soho’s best-known squares. And the battle is over one word: “Fox”.

In the south-west corner of Soho Square stands Twentieth Century House, a grand emblem of the American film industry’s key role in this part of the city since 1937. It is now in the hands of Disney.

Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn ‘uplifted’ after meeting with shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy

The family of Harry Dunn have urged the shadow foreign secretary to call for a parliamentary inquiry into the handling of their son’s death.

Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn said they felt “uplifted” and believed Lisa Nandy would “take things forward on our and the nation’s behalf” after a virtual meeting with her on Friday.

Tatiana Akhmedova wants high court to have access to son’s papers in her fight for £453m – but he says her claim is unlawful

It is proving to be a very modern divorce. Armies of lawyers and advisers; hundreds of millions of pounds at stake; priceless art; a superyacht; a key lieutenant switching sides; the son dragged into the proceedings by his mother. No wonder some involved have likened it to The War of the Roses, the dark Hollywood comedy about a feuding couple starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas.

But now attempts to secure the assets awarded following Britain’s biggest, bitterest marital breakup may hinge on how the high court views an arcane financial practice dating back to feudal times.

London and Manchester already have measures to restrict traffic, encourage walking and cycling, and cut air pollution

Roads are to be temporarily closed near schools when parents drop off and pick up their children, in order to deter people from driving on the school run – and to encourage more walking, cycling and scooting.

The plans to shut off roads at school rush hours, using barriers, cones and other measures, are already far advanced in London and Manchester and are expected to be followed in other cities and towns.

We might have to watch the rest of Europe return to the beaches while we’re still stuck at home

In the past month some mundane words seem to have regained their old mystery. “Travel” is one. In my dutiful daily hour on the rusting exercise bike in the garden I’ve been listening to favourite audiobooks of the remarkable far away: Jan Morris in Venice, Peter Matthiesson in the Himalayas, Bruce Chatwin in Patagonia. In the absence of the possibility of any kind of abroad the great descriptive passages seem doubly evocative.

Ministers’ shambolic briefings expose a terrifying lack of competence

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‘In spite of the sunny bank holiday, it is vitally important that we continue to abide by the current restrictions: stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.” That was the message delivered by the environment secretary, George Eustice, at Friday afternoon’s press conference. Yet just the day before, most newspapers were emblazoned with excited headlines foretelling a significant relaxation of social distancing restrictions, based on briefing from government sources: “Lockdown freedom beckons”, “First steps to freedom from Monday” and “Stay home advice to be scrapped”.

Despite the critical importance of clear public messaging to any public health strategy, the government’s communications have been marred by mixed messages throughout this deadly pandemic. Its core message, asking the public to stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives, has been very effective, but this has consistently been undermined by ministers and advisers inaccurately briefing the press that there is about to be a shift in policy. Before the Easter weekend, reports appeared that ministers thought that the public had been too obedient in following the lockdown, and that a relaxation was imminent. The same happened before this bank holiday weekend, forcing the government to clarify that there was no change in restrictions and that people must continue to abide by the law.

State reports 73 cases of children falling severely ill with toxic shock-like reaction that has symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease

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The deaths of three children in New York of inflammatory complications possibly linked to Covid-19 has prompted Andrew Cuomo, the state’s governor, to warn of “an entirely different chapter” of a disease that had been believed to cause only mild symptoms in children.

The governor reported the first death, of a five-year old boy, on Friday. At his morning press conference on Saturday, Cuomo raised the number of fatalities to three, after the death of a seven-year-old and a teenager.

Twenty-six of the new coronavirus cases were domestically transmitted, including 14 in Seoul

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South Korea has reported 34 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily number in a month, after a small outbreak emerged around a slew of nightclubs that a confirmed patient had visited.

Of the new cases announced on Sunday, 26 were domestically transmitted infections and eight were imported cases, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.

One boss, Dale Vince of the green energy firm Ecotricity, explains how he will get his 700 staff back to work

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Almost all the desks at Ecotricity’s headquarters in Stroud are empty. Pot plants, cards and personal photos are the only signs of the hundreds of employees at the green-energy firm who used to file in and out of the building in the Cotswold town every day.

Like most office-based employers, the firm’s founder, Dale Vince, sent virtually all of his 700-strong workforce home at the start of the lockdown in March. Now he is considering how to bring some of them back in anticipation of government guidance for reopening non-essential businesses.

Metropolitan Police Federation says No 10 is sending mixed messages and authorities needed to be ‘firmer right from the beginning’

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A body representing police officers in London has criticised the government’s pandemic response as “wishy-washy” amid concerns that the public has begun ignoring lockdown restrictions.

The Metropolitan Police Federation (MPF) said that, despite its assertions to the contrary, the government is sending out mixed messages.

People can contribute to projects that aim to leave a map of the national mood and allow future historians a glimpse of 24 hours in a pandemic

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“I have underlying health conditions, including asthma,” writes a frightened 40-year-old woman , shortly before Sunday’s news of whether the lockdown will be eased. “I’m terrified to leave the house, even for exercise, but I’m not sick enough to be ‘extremely vulnerable’. Covid-19 could quite probably kill me.”

The anonymous contributor is part of a project called Covid-19 and Me, run jointly by the Young Foundation and the Open University, two of a number of organisations which are asking thousands of men and women of all ages, ethnicities, incomes, beliefs and backgrounds across Britain to keep diaries, complete questionnaires and be interviewed by their peers. They want to know what it is like, at an everyday level, to live through a global pandemic, to create an ongoing “weather map of public feeling”.

Employers face a logistical nightmare as staff return

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Temperature tests, taped-off lifts and potential spikes in harassment complaints are all being examined by British businesses as they prepare for a slow and staggered return to work.

Companies have already been scrambling for legal and practical advice as they prepare for the realities of managing workplaces during the Covid-19 crisis. However, there are already major concerns that workers are unclear about what to do if they are being put at risk, while industry figures also warn that the mental health impacts of returning to a new “alien environment” are not being prioritised.

A summary of the biggest developments in the global coronavirus outbreak

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Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:

Only US is judged to have dealt with it worse, after it was reported the UK has the highest death toll of any country in Europe

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More people in this country now believe the UK has performed worse than Italy, Spain and France in the Covid-19 crisis than say it has done better than its European neighbours, according the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

The data shows that only the United States is judged by a majority of people in the UK to have fared worse. While two weeks ago more people thought that the UK had done better than Italy and Spain, now the reverse is the case.

Leaders of Unison, Unite, the GMB and Usdaw join TUC in calling for radical overhaul of health and safety in the workplace
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Britain’s biggest trades unions have warned Boris Johnson that they will not recommend a return to work for their three million members until the government and employers agree a nationwide health and safety revolution as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a letter to the Observer, leaders of the “big four” – Unison, Unite, the GMB and Usdaw – together with the Trades Union Congress, say many of their members have already lost their lives “transporting people and goods, protecting the public and caring for the vulnerable”.

Prime minister expected to outline ‘roadmap’ to new normality in address on Sunday

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Boris Johnson is expected to unveil a coronavirus warning system for England when he outlines his plans to gradually ease the lockdown.

The prime minister will drop the “stay home” slogan and instead tell the country to “stay alert, control the virus and save lives” when he outlines his “roadmap” to a new normality during an address to the nation on Sunday. Johnson is planning to tell workers who cannot do their jobs from home to begin returning to their workplaces while following social distancing rules.

Anthony Fauci and top advisers from CDC and FDA to work remotely because of potential exposure to Covid-19; global cases pass 4 million; Russia cases approach 200,000. Follow the latest updates

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8.42am BST

A navy ship carrying evacuees from the Maldives arrived in India today as part of an effort to bring home hundreds of thousands of nationals stranded overseas due to the coronavirus lockdown.

Workers and students were unable to return home after India banned all incoming international flights in late March as part of the world’s biggest lockdown to combat the spread of the deadly infectious disease.

8.32am BST

Malaysia’s government extended the time frame for movement and business curbs by another four weeks to 9 June, amid a gradual reopening of economic activity stunted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this week, businesses were allowed to resume business as usual, albeit under strict health guidelines, after having to close shop for two months as health authorities worked to contain the pandemic. Malaysia has so far reported 6,589 cases with 108 deaths.

Reaction from Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential candidate.

Washington (AFP) - Orders for vaccines against diseases such as measles have declined since a national emergency was declared in the United States because of the coronavirus pandemic, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

"I totally support your mask policy," a comment on Costco's Facebook said. "It is small minded individuals who don't understand the reason for it."

A Democratic-led subcommittee overseeing federal coronavirus aid is demanding that five companies return loans the panel says should have gone to smaller businesses. The subcommittee led by Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., sent letters Friday to the companies as its first official action. The House voted last month to create the panel over the objections of Republicans who say it is partisan and duplicative of other oversight efforts around the federal government.

Tia has decided to work at a migrant camp in Calais instead of returning home to her family during lockdown.

Boris Johnson's address from No 10 is expected to set out a "roadmap" for easing lockdown restrictions.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the firm will leave California after he is ordered to keep a factory shut.

The government says "operational issues" in the UK meant 50,000 samples had to be flown to US labs.

Experts warn the true number of infections may be higher due to low testing rates in many countries.

Ex-president strongly criticises successor Donald Trump over his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Top diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci is one of the three members of President Trump's task force to self-isolate.

The tests are for people arriving in Austria who want to avoid 14 days of quarantine, and cost €190.

Laura Fuchs is capturing New Yorkers who are trying to stay positive in the midst of the pandemic.

South Korea was once a Covid-19 hotspot but used technology and testing to avoid a total lockdown.

What a pleasant story to read! We’re all familiar with the entirely fictional story of Lord of the Flies, in which ship-wrecked boys revert to the natural savagery of all humans and set up a brutal regime and start oppressing and killing each other. It makes for a good story, I guess. Except that similar […]

Meet Sweety! The Ragdoll cat who gets into some cute crazy (yet very relatable) shenanigans!

Created by artist @redfur_13.art, who shared on her Webtoons bio, "My name is Red, and I own a young ragdoll cat named Sweety. She had two litters when she was young, and now has a forever home with me. "

You can follow the comic series, which updates twice a week) on Instagram or Webtoons! 

While self-isolating it's important to maintain a daily routine! 

Don't know where to start? No worries -- Simon's Cat is here to help in the best way he knows how! 

And that's not all, check out Simon's Cat new essentials in Simon's "Stay Home" Collection!