After years in exile, my hopes for a joyous family reunion were dashed by the country’s miserable economic situation

My brothers and I leapt out of bed at the first glimmer of dawn on Christmas morning – and there they were. Every Christmas of my childhood that I can remember, the shiny black school shoes were neatly lined up by the door. A new pair for all of us. Then came the new clothes proudly presented by my parents – the fruit of long hours of labour. And then, in our new finery, off we went to church. The long sunny hours of Christmas Day, usually with a brief but refreshing afternoon thunderstorm, were spent at huge family gatherings, feasting on chicken and rice, washed down with an array of brightly-coloured soft drinks – cherry plum, cream soda and Fanta orange.

As the years went by and independence came to Zimbabwe, many things changed. But Christmas traditions remained much the same, with big gatherings to which people travelled many miles, new clothes, lots to eat and drink.

When I arrived in mid-December, the tales of hardship were heart-breaking. There’d be no gifts for children this year.

A woman’s descent into poverty provides a powerful finale to the Zimbabwean author’s trilogy

“You want nothing more than to break away from the implacable terror of every day you spend in your country – where you can no longer afford the odd dab of peanut butter to liven up the vegetables from Mai Manyanga’s garden.” This is the voice of Tambu, first encountered in the Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga’s much-praised 1988 book Nervous Conditions, a passionate, first-person account of a 1960s Rhodesian childhood scarred by the war of independence.

Now, in the final instalment in the trilogy, Tambu is middle aged and writing in an appropriately distanced second person. Dangarembga sets herself the challenge of writing about how alienated personhood becomes when life stories lose hope and in a country where effort is no longer followed by reward.

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Iquitos, still reeling from a dengue fever outbreak and plagued by poverty, relies on air deliveries for medicine, equipment and oxygen

In the final hours before Covid-19 claimed her life, Cecilio Sangama watched helplessly as his eldest sister Edith gasped for breath.

Hospitals across Peru’s largest Amazon city had run out of oxygen, and the shortage had pushed the black market price of a cylinder well above $1,000 (£810).

Germany’s top coronavirus expert says children play as big a role as adults in spread

• Coronavirus – latest updates
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More countries across Europe are preparing to reopen schools in the coming weeks despite conflicting advice from scientists, some of whom caution against underestimating children’s potential to spread the coronavirus.

Some schools and nurseries in Denmark and Norway have already reopened, and grandparents in Switzerland are allowed to hug grandchildren under 10, following a ruling by the health ministry’s head of infectious diseases that it is safe to do so.

Man found to have had virus a month before government confirmed first cases

A French hospital that retested old samples from pneumonia patients has discovered that it treated a man with the coronavirus as early as 27 December, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases.

Dr Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that scientists had retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who tested negative for flu.

The UK’s fund management industry is losing the war against index tracking

What’s gone wrong with Britain’s fund management industry? Over the past year share prices have soared globally, which usually translates into boom times for asset managers, whose income is based on a percentage cut from the total amount of money under management. Yet the UK’s industry is beset with scandals and sliding fortunes among some of the once most-revered names.

Jupiter is attempting to arrest its decline with a £370m takeover of Merian (once Old Mutual’s investment arm), creating a £65bn group that boss and serial deal maker Andrew Formica promises investors will be “highly earnings accretive”.

Eric Marshall, Hodges Capital Management portfolio manager, and Lori Calvasina, RBC Capital Markets head of U.S. equity strategy, join 'Power Lunch' to discuss what the economic data is indicating to investors.

Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, and David Kelly, J.P. Morgan Asset Management's chief global strategist, join "Squawk on the Street" to discuss the historic April job loss and what it means for markets.

Art Cashin of UBS joins "Squawk Alley" to discuss the state of the markets and the economy.

Across America, dairy farmers have dumped countless gallons of fresh, entirely usable milk, because there is no one to buy it. The shelter-in-place orders given by governments around the country in response to the coronavirus pandemic have shuttered big customers such as restaurants and schools and kept people at home. About 50 percent of the milk produced in the United States goes to restaurants and other food service operations, according to the National Milk Producers Federation.

From Rashford to Tielemans, we check in on how our initial Next Generation players have got on before the 2019 ones are announced this week

• Harley Willard: what happened next to one 2014 selection?

In 2014 we decided that it would be interesting to pick the best young players from each Premier League club – as well as 40 from around the world – and follow them for five years to see how they progressed.

The idea was to try to get a sense of how difficult it is to become a professional footballer despite being one of the best in that country at the age of 16 or 17.

• President calls for resumption of football despite crisis
• Brazil has more than 5,900 deaths due to the coronavirus

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro wants to see football competitions restart soon despite the country’s high number of coronavirus cases, arguing that players are less likely to die from Covid-19 because of their physical fitness.

Bolsonaro is one of the few world leaders that still downplays the risks brought by the coronavirus, which he has likened to “a little flu”.

Former Barcelona player and Chile coach on Camp Nou life, Guardiola and why Sánchez could yet shine for Manchester United

“Most of the time, you fail; there are many more defeats than victories,” Juan Antonio Pizzi says. He is right, even when it comes to his peer group – possibly the most successful coaching class in history – but it is still an unusual reflection for a man who was La Liga’s top scorer and, as a player and manager, won the league in three countries. All the more so when it is a reflection prompted by the time he led Chile to the 2016 Copa América. Minutes after winning the final, Pizzi sat before the press – and started talking about failure.

He laughs now but there was a lesson there. “It’s true: when you take over a team, most of the objectives you set, you fail to meet,” he says. “And however much you try to console yourself with your style, methodology, some improvement, what you want is to win and when you don’t, which is most of the time, disappointment comes. You lose more than you win and your mind is occupied more with defeat than enjoying victory, which is gone very quickly.”

Des Buckingham followed Under-20 World Cup success by qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics but lost his job last week

There is a word that Des Buckingham, during almost six years working in New Zealand, has used as a mantra to live by. In the Maori language, Mana represents a spiritual essence that almost defies translation but in everyday use it broadly applies thus: a way of holding oneself through dignity, respect, humanity and authority.

It has been invaluable over the past five days because Buckingham is navigating one of the biggest disappointments of a young coaching career that, since he moved to the other side of the world after leaving Oxford United in 2014, had rarely let up.

With the sporting calendar on hold during the coronavirus pandemic, football stars around the world are challenging each other to perform tricks with loo roll as part of the #stayathomechallenge to encourage fans to practise social distancing

Club’s charity has adjusted swiftly amid Covid-19 and faces challenges with youngsters previously involved in crime

Like most workers in the charity sector, George Henry knew he had a problem when the UK entered lockdown on 23 March. As the targeted interventions manager at the Palace for Life Foundation – Crystal Palace’s charity – Henry uses football to help disadvantaged young people in south London and organises a team of mentors who try to keep them on the straight and narrow.

“Most of them have been arrested or been in gangs and we try to get them into positive outcomes,” he says. “We’re based in schools and a custody suite for our Divert programme, which aims to get them back into employment and training. Around this time of year we usually help with the transition from year six to year seven but because of the lockdown that couldn’t happen.”

Pioneering musician, whose songs Tutti Frutti and Long Tall Sally were among the most flamboyant of the rock’n’roll era, has died aged 87. We look back over his life and career

• Little Richard dies aged 87

[To be published in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part II, Section 3, Sub-section (i)] Government of India Ministry of Finance