Prince William and Kate heard stories about Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill's "secret" birthday message his son when they chatted veterans about their VE Day memories.

The UK is set to bask in glorious sunshine on Saturday with temperatures forecast to hit 26C (78.8F).

The Queen has addressed the nation to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, saying veterans would have recognised the "love and care" of people during the coronavirus pandemic.

The UK is "not out of the woods" and will live with coronavirus for some time as the death toll passes 31,000, Environment Secretary George Eustice has said.

British YouTube star KSI joined the Evening Standard's campaign to feed London during the coronavirus crisis, hailing it as "amazing".

Britain is set for another day of sunshine, with temperatures expected to soar to 26C before cooler weather tomorrow.

Boris Johnson will reveal on Sunday the Government's "road map" on how it will lift restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, in what is expected to be a "modest" easing of lockdown.

Police say they are "fighting a losing battle" over enforcing the lockdown after "hundreds" turned out in parks across east London to enjoy picnics in the sunshine.

In Carpathia, Irina Georgescu shines a light on the richness of Romanian food culture

Sourdough has exploded in popularity during lockdown, but focaccia is experiencing its own modest rise

Is the Æ supposed to sound like 'eye' or 'ash'? We're just as confused too

'I was thinking two weeks of quarantine and then things would go back to normal, but we realized pretty quickly that was not the case'

Workers at Amazon, Target and other companies walked off the job on Friday to demand safer working conditions and transparency about how many front-line workers have gotten sick during the pandemic.

NPR's reporter in Nairobi finds his parents connecting with his kids through TikTok. Formerly the realm of Gen Z, the app's now a family board game where Grandma and Grandpa reveal their silly selves.

The Supreme Court is now holding hearings over a teleconference, making the audio publicly available. Jerry Goldman, the founder of the Oyez Project, offers some guidance on how to listen to it.

The year-old band also called on Zygnema’s Sidharth Kadadi to produce their second release

The post Exclusive Premiere: Mumbai Metallers Targe Call on The Demonstealer for ‘The Cortege’ appeared first on My Site.

Pianist-singer behind “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally” set the template that a generation of musicians would follow

The post Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87 appeared first on My Site.

The Raptor rocket engine burned for about 4 seconds.

A mutation in the virus seems to be getting more common, but we don't know why.

Peer review moves to Twitter, muddling public health information.

They are among the earliest enslaved African people brought to the Americas.

Trump admin allegedly told CDC its reopening guide would "never see the light of day."

A solar-driven hydrogen-producing machine that makes more copies of itself.

YouTube, Facebook crack down on two viral videos for spreading medical misinformation.

In this age of mobile phones, cybercafes and satellite links, it's harder than ever to truly escape ... but not impossible. Dervla Murphy, who has ventured to the ends of the earth with only the most basic provisions, explains how

The individual traveller's "age of adventure" has long since been ended by "S&T" (science and technology: an abbreviation that dates me). Now our planet's few remaining undeveloped expanses are accessible only to well-funded expeditions protected by mobile phones and helicopters - enterprises unattractive to the temperamental descendents of Mungo Park, Mary Kingsley et al. Happily, it's still possible for such individuals to embark on solo journeys through little-known regions where they can imagine how real explorers used to feel.

Reviewers tend to describe my most exhilarating journeys as "adventures", though to me they are a form of escapism - a concept unfairly tainted with negative connotations. If journeys are designed as alternatives to one's everyday routine, why shouldn't they be escapist? Why not move in time as well as space, and live for a few weeks or months at the slow pace enjoyed by our ancestors? In recent decades everything has become quicker and easier: transport, communications, heating, cooking, cleaning, dressing, shopping, entertaining. "S&T" have reduced physical effort to the minimum - but are we genetically equipped to cope with our effortless new world? The stats show increasing numbers of us developing ulcers, having nervous breakdowns, eating too much or too little, taking to drink and/or drugs, retreating from our own reality in plastic surgery clinics. It's surely time to promote the therapeutic value of slow travel.

Ahead of a new Patrick Leigh Fermor biography, our writer visits the Mani peninsula, home of the great man and unsung resting place of another British travel writing giant, Bruce Chatwin

To read an extract from Leigh Fermor's book, Mani, Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, click here

Old Mr Fotis turned my question over in his mind while sipping his morning coffee. Below the veranda some youths had been playing noisily on the harbour wall, but now they all dived into the turquoise sea and set off on the long swim to the rocky island in the bay. It had a fragment of crenellated wall on top of it, the ruins of a Venetian fortress. Fotis watched them go, half-smiling.

"We do seem to attract a lot of writers," said the old man eventually. "But that's a name I don't remember."

The oldest national park ranger in the US tells us why she’s proud of the second world war home front park in Richmond, just across the bay from San Francisco

I settled in the greater Bay Area as a six-year-old in 1927. When I graduated from high school in 1938, my two opportunities for employment were working in agriculture or being a domestic servant. At that time, labour unions weren’t racially integrated and, during the war, I worked as a clerk for the segregated boilermakers’ union.

The 89-year-old naturalist and broadcaster is brimming with enthusiasm for his latest TV series, Great Barrier Reef, and the wonder of filming underwater in a submarine. The first of three shows starts on BBC1 on 30 December

The first time I visited the Great Barrier Reef was in 1957 when I was on my way to New Guinea. In those days, television didn’t have a lot of money so, when you got to the other side of the world, you took advantage of it as you never knew when you were going to get back again, and so I took in the Barrier Reef on the way.

It was right at the beginning of the era of underwater swimming. There had been a Viennese pair, Han and Lotte Hass, who had a show underwater called Diving to Adventure. Those of us who had television sets – our jaws dropped! This wonderful girl in this white costume just knocking sharks on the head with the camera. Amazing!

From Fair Isle to German Bight, Charlie Connelly has visited all 31 sea areas, but still finds the poetry of the daily radio odyssey mesmerising

The shipping forecast is probably the closest thing we have in the modern age to a national epic. The institution’s rhythms and rituals have changed little since it was first broadcast on New Year’s Day 1924: there is poetry in the daily litany and mystery in its terminology. “The radio’s prayer,” Carol Ann Duffy called it. For Seamus Heaney it was “a sibilant penumbra”.

The forecast reminds us we’re a maritime nation and its map binds us to our continent, covering not only our own coasts and waters but an area extending from Norway to Portugal to Iceland. There is democracy in its geography, where tiny Fair Isle carries as much heft as mighty Biscay while Lundy, a sliver of rock in the Bristol Channel, is equal in importance to the Irish Sea. And from the salty old seadog in his brine-encrusted fishing boat to the merchant banker on his yacht, the shipping forecast, all seafarers are equally reliant on it.

Unesco has named the capital of Rajasthan, India, a world heritage site, partly for its jewellery and artisanal traditions, which continue to thrive on one of its main commercial streets

‘Sir, want precious stones?” a man asks me, quietly. I am on the Johari Bazaar, one of Jaipur’s most notable thoroughfares, a straight colonnade screened above by the facades of adjoining houses. Everything is painted orange, terracotta and burnt pink. The man wears white shalwar kameez, and an air of indifference. He unfolds white paper, revealing colourful stones. “Emeralds, sapphires, rubies …” he says. He is among one of several groups of men gathered in this area; they’re local dealers, discussing prices. The avenue, whose name means gem shop road, is lined with dozens of shops displaying magnificent necklaces, bracelets and rings.

Our project to document communities undergoing irreversible change took us to the frozen Zanskar river, which connects Ladakh and Zanskar in northern India.

Michał and I began our Before its Gone project at the start of 2017, with the aim of identifying, visiting and documenting locations and communities that are experiencing rapid (and irreversible) changes. The idea is to notice these changes so they can be remembered – and learned from.

Our first expedition was along the frozen Zanskar river that links Ladakh and Zanskar in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. When the temperature drops to -30C and mountain passes get covered with metres of snow, the Zanskar region becomes inaccessible for the winter, and the frozen river the only route connecting it with the rest of the world. For hundreds of years villagers across the mountains have used Chadar (the ice road trek) to get to school, work or to see a doctor. But that will change soon, as the Indian government plans to build a new road here. However, as our translator Stanzin Tundup told us, the road may not be the biggest engine for change.

Map-makers insert fake towns or trap-streets to catch out plagiarists, but Agloe, in New York state, took on a strange life of its own

In 2008, Argleton village in west Lancashire appeared on Google, complete with weather reports, a job site and an estate agent advertising houses for sale. Argleton vanished two years later. While its site was – and still is – a damp field in the middle of nowhere, it’s worth noting that Argleton is an anagram of G Not Real. Although Google never admitted to having created it, Argleton was a phantom settlement, planted as a trap.

In the world of digital mapping and cartography, snares to catch unwary plagiarists take the form of fake roads or places, known as “trap streets” or “paper towns”. For some, such as Lye Close or Noereal Road, the clue is in the name. (A real alleyway in Cardiff that served as a trap street in the 2014 Dr Who episode Face the Raven may, conversely, be the world’s only fictional fictional street.)

From samba to jazz and house, the DJ and founder of radio station Worldwide FM picks 10 tracks to transport you to Brazil

Originally released in 1980, this funky track from solo artist Cristina Camargo is pure “80s vibes”, Peterson says. “I’ve been loving this boogie tune, produced by Lincoln Olivetti and Robson Jorge, of late. It lifts the mood every time.” Olivetti and Jorge crafted Rio’s early-80s boogie sound, and produced classic albums by Brazilian disco legends in the mid-70s. “It reminds me of line dancing in Rio, particularly on a Sunday afternoon in Lapa, where sound systems play a mixture of this and classic British 80s cuts by the likes of Lisa Stansfield and Soul II Soul – very obscure!”

Elena Ferrante’s Naples, Umberto Eco’s medieval mysteries, EM Forster’s Tuscany … Italy comes alive through these great books
• 10 of the best novels about France

Long before Covid-19, there were always bad things in the press about Italy: corruption, mafia, bureaucracy. But, whenever I went, life seemed to work out even so. People may be poor but they still sit in the sun, drink and chat; music and culture are a birthright; the right seems in the ascendant but on the ground it feels blessed with far-seeing idealists – it has almost four times as much land under organic cultivation as the UK, for example. For now, my remedy to the withdrawal symptoms I feel is to visit via the written word. Many writers have set books in Italy – I was sorry to leave out Martin Amis’s The Pregnant Widow (Calabria), and Ali Smith’s How to be Both (Ferrara) – but here are my top 10 romanze italiane.

You may be familiar with these iconic images, but where did the events take place?

Where did this ship dock on 22 June 1948?

Felixstowe

Liverpool

Southampton

Tilbury

Where was this short-lived celebration?

Berlin

Budapest

Paris

Prague

Where did these three famously meet?

Geneva

Nuremberg

Potsdam

Yalta

Prime Minister Harold Wilson, with pipe and sunburnt legs, is on holiday where?

Anglesey

Isles of Scilly

Isle of Wight

Isle of Skye

This Pablo Picasso masterpiece depicts the carnage of the Spanish civil war in which region?

Asturias

Basque Country

Galicia

Catalonia

One of the most famous fights in history took place where?

Kinshasa

Las Vegas

Manila

Mexico City

This didn't end well. Where did it all start?

Belgrade

Sarajevo

Versaille

Vienna

This is somewhere between Ibiza and the Norfolk Broads – but where exactly?

Brixton

Camden

Hackney

Soho

It's a wrap! Where did this take place?

Berlin

Moscow

Paris

Stockholm

Gazza's tears made him the most famous person in the UK for a while, but where was this match played?

Milan

Naples

Rome

Turin

Where are these matchstick men and women?

Birmingham

Liverpool

Manchester

Newcastle

Fidel could always draw a crowd - where was this one?

Havana

Moscow

New York

Rio de Janeiro

Where did the Arab spring begin?

Egypt

Libya

Lebanon

Tunisia

The barefoot runner, the nasty fall ... but in which Olympics did this controversial race take place?

Moscow

Barcelona

Seoul

Los Angeles

Nelson Mandela was freed just over 30 years ago. Where was the jail he walked out of to greet cheering crowds?

Paarl, near Cape Town

Robben Island

Sun City, south of Johannesburg

Pretoria Central

Which English town did Malcolm X visit just nine days before he was assassinated?

Halifax

Northampton

Oldham

Smethwick

13 and above.

Past master!

9 and above.

You're an old hand at this

0 and above.

Best stick to Where's Wally!

5 and above.

You're history!

How the ancient techniques of the world's indigenous people could help to combat climate change.

The 5,100 sq km behemoth which broke away from Antarctica in 2017 drops its own large chunk of ice.

Bill Gates has been big on vaccines since before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but in a new blog posting, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist says the only way to end the pandemic for good is to offer a vaccine to almost all of the planet's 7 billion inhabitants. That's big. "We've never delivered something to every corner of the world before," Gates notes. It's especially big considering that a vaccine hasn't yet been approved for widespread use, and that it may take as long as a year to 18 months to win approval and start distribution. Some… Read More

NASA has selected teams led by Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX to develop lunar landing systems capable of putting astronauts on the moon by as early as 2024. "We want to be able to go to the moon, but we want to be a customer," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters today during a teleconference. "We want to drive down the costs, we want to increase the access, we want to have our partners have customers that are not just us, so they compete on cost and innovation, and just bring capabilities that we've never had before." Fixed-price contracts totaling… Read More