This week the Upside reflects on the community spirit felt in our current crisis and the one that ended in 1945

Guardian colleagues have been up to all sorts during lockdown – when they’ve not been working hard that is. At least three have acquired pets and many are digging up the garden or allotment. Potato printing, street chalk drawing, spring cleaning, DIY, it’s all going on. One particularly ingenious staffer is knitting woollen hats for boiled eggs.

Country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko boasts of holding only parade in former Soviet Union

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Thousands of people, including elderly veterans of the second world war, turned out for Belarus’s Victory Day military parade despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Images from the parade showed crowds packed on to parade bleachers as the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, boasted of holding the only parade in the former Soviet Union to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Belarus leader holds parade prompting safety concerns as other nations curb WW2 events; Russia records 10,000 new Covid-19 cases; Spain’s daily death toll continues to fall. Follow the latest updates

• Global report: Trump says Covid-19 will ‘go away without vaccine’
• Mike Pence press secretary tests positive to Covid-19
• Brazil’s Bolsonaro must ‘drastically change course’, says The Lancet
• Coronavirus at a glance
• Australia – live news

3.54pm BST

A child was among sixteen migrants rescued four miles off the coast of France when their makeshift vessel bound for Britain ran into difficulties in the middle of the night, authorities said.

The group was picked up 3.8 miles off the French port of Calais after calling for help, French maritime authorities confirmed to AFP. A French maritime surveillance vessel rescued the migrants at around 5am and transported them to the Channel port of Dunkirk, where they were handed over to border police.

3.21pm BST

Vladimir Putin has told Russians they are invincible when they stand together, as he sought to send a message of unity after the country’s tally of Covid-19 cases reached the fifth highest in the world.

Addressing the nation in a speech as he presided over Victory Day celebrations, a sombre Putin invoked the memory of the country’s veterans who fought in the second world war.

We are united by our shared memory, hopes and aspirations, as well as a sense of shared responsibility for the present and the future. We know and strongly believe that when we stand together, we are invincible.”

Found on every continent except Antarctica, donkeys are some of the most well-bred and well-known animals in the world. 

World Donkey Day is a show of respect for one of the most enduring and respectable animals in the Equidae family. 

Throughout history, it has served throughout the world as both a mount and a beast of burden in some of the most challenging terrains and forbidding climates, and has done so with pride and endurance. 

But how much do you know about these surprisingly deep and intelligent creatures? 

Here are some fun facts you probably didn't know. 

These past few weeks months have been weird but luckily we can always rely on Caturday to deliver the smiles! 

Welcome, everyone! Another blessed Caturday is upon us and we all know what that means! Naps! Wait, no -- memes! 

Actually, why not both? Enjoy these purrfect Caturday memes and then treat yourself to a nice long catnap! 

Live May 3rd – May 10th  

via http://dvdp.tumblr.com/post/16832958868/todays-smile-by-qubibi-meta

Coronavirus will overshadow Earth Day's golden anniversary, but the movement's successes are worth celebrating, says Gary Paul Nabhan

Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, often spoken of as the birth of the green movement. Denis Hayes helped coordinate the first event, and speaks to New Scientist about its impact

I was scheduled to get a routine physical a while back, cancelled for obvious reasons, and last week Stevens County Medical Center called me to come in for it today, which feels odd. I guess our local clinic has not been overwhelmed — there have been zero reported cases of COVID-19 in Stevens County, perhaps […]

Up and to the office, where sat all the morning, among other things a great conflict I had with Sir W. Warren, he bringing a letter to the Board, flatly in words charging them with their delays in passing his accounts, which have been with them these...

(Lord's day). Up, and going down to the water side, I met Sir John Robinson, and so with him by coach to White Hall, still a vain, prating, boasting man as any I know, as if the whole City and Kingdom had all its work done by him. He tells me he hath...

Up and angry with my mayds for letting in watermen, and I know not who, anybody that they are acquainted with, into my kitchen to talk and prate with them, which I will not endure. Then out and by coach to my Lord Treasurer's, who continues still...

Up betimes, and by coach to St. James's; but there find Sir W. Coventry gone out betimes this morning, on horseback, with the King and Duke of York, to Putney-heath, -- to run some horses, and so back again to the office, where some witnesses from...

Up pretty betimes and out of doors, and in Fen Church street met Mr. Lovett going with a picture to me, but I could not stand to discourse or see it, but on to the next hackney coach and so to Sir W. Coventry, where he and I alone a while discoursing...

South African Fredie Blom celebrated his 116th birthday on Friday unfazed by the coronavirus crisis, over 100 years since the Spanish flu pandemic killed his sister. "I have lived this long because of God's grace," said Blom, possibly one of the oldest men in the world. Lighting a cigarette, he recalled the 1918 pandemic that left tens of millions dead worldwide including his sister.

From the moment COVID-19 started spreading in the U.S., you probably heard recommendations to wash your hands after contact with what are called high-touch surfaces: elevator buttons, public fauc...

Brazil could face "economic collapse" in a month's time due to stay-at-home measures to stem the coronavirus outbreak, with food shortages and "social disorder," Economy Minister Paulo Guedes warned Thursday. Brazil, Latin America's biggest economy, is also the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the region. But far-right President Jair Bolsonaro - who appeared alongside Guedes, his free-market economics guru - opposes stay-at-home measures to slow the virus, saying they are unnecessarily damaging the economy. "Within about 30 days, there may start to be shortages on (store) shelves and production may become disorganized, leading to a system of economic collapse, of social disorder," Guedes said. "This is a serious alert." Bolsonaro, who has compared the new coronavirus to a "little flu," said he understood "the virus problem" and believed that "we must save lives." "But there is a problem that's worrying us more and more... and that's the issue of jobs, of the stalled economy," Bolsonaro added. "Fighting the virus shouldn't do more damage than the virus itself."

Thousands of troops paraded before crowds of spectators in Minsk Saturday to mark 75 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany as Belarus held a celebration of Victory Day despite the coronavirus pandemic. Neighbouring Russia cancelled its Victory Day parade over the pandemic and Belarus was the only ex-Soviet country with reported cases to hold the annual event. President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been dismissive of the pandemic and the "psychosis" around the virus, watched in military uniform with top brass as some 4,000 troops marched past and planes and helicopters flew overhead.

People celebrate VE Day across Britain, following Germany's surrender in 1945.

How the government's policy has shifted from the first recorded case to the PM being treated in ICU.

Banks see stampede for bounce-back loans within hours of the new government scheme going live.

Coronavirus means people are marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day from their own homes.

In states like Texas, malls can operate at a 25% capacity and for some, it's a reason to get out of the house.

An airline industry body says it has been told coronavirus quarantining will start from the end of May.

Footage of last year's Red Square military parade play on TV as the pandemic mutes celebrations.

The Red Arrows fly over an empty central London to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

The Queen commemorates the 75th anniversary of VE Day with a televised address to the UK.

The Red Square parade was cancelled because of the pandemic, but in neighbouring Belarus the parade went ahead as planned.

Yesterday was the nth annual Blue Beanie Day. (I’ve lost track of what year the standardista holiday started.) I was awake at 1:00 AM on Friday night/Saturday morning, so I tweeted “Happy #BlueBeanieDay,” then slept. No blog post, no prelude—just a past-midnight tweet, over and out. Saturday, once or twice, I checked Twitter and retweeted […]

The post Another Blue Beanie Day appeared first on Zeldman on Web & Interaction Design.