Well-publicized philanthropy shows how afraid the super-rich are of a larger social safety net – and higher taxes

As millions of jobless Americans line up for food or risk their lives delivering essential services, the nation’s billionaires are making conspicuous donations – $100m from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for food banks, billions from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for a coronavirus vaccine, thousands of ventilators and N95 masks from Elon Musk, $25m from the Walton family and its Walmart foundation. The list goes on.

Related: Call for super-rich to donate more to tackle coronavirus pandemic

Why should we believe that Gates or any other billionaire’s 'boldness' necessarily reflects society’s values and needs?

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US

As businesses start to reopen, many are wondering if they can be legally responsible if someone gets sick. CNBC's Ylan Mui reports on liability protection efforts.

Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans and CEO and president of the National Urban League, discusses the worst U.S. jobs loss since the end of World War II and the groups that are struggling the most.

Conor Flynn, Kimco Realty CEO and president, join 'Power Lunch' to discuss the reopening of his shopping centers and the changes in the retail industry as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

With football on hold during the coronavirus pandemic, one of the world’s leading freestylers is helping fans remain active under lockdown. Every day, Liv Cooke a four-time world record holder, posts footage of herself performing a freestyle trick with instructions on how to follow suit at home

• A trick a day: how freestyler Liv Cooke is bringing light to the lockdown

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.”

• Scott Duxbury: ‘How is there any semblance of fairness?’
• League would ‘bear no resemblance to the one we started’

Watford have joined Aston Villa and Brighton in voicing objections to the Premier League’s plan to play out the season at neutral venues on police advice, claiming it would be unfair to relegate clubs on the basis of a competition that “bears no resemblance to the one that was started”.

Sitting just above the bottom three when the league was suspended and uncomfortably aware Villa could leapfrog them if they play and win their game in hand, Watford were due to play five of their remaining nine fixtures at Vicarage Road and feel that being deprived of home advantage could affect the number of points they gather.

One of the founders of the Northern Ireland Peace People and a joint Nobel laureate

The afternoon of 10 August 1976 in the Provisional IRA heartland of Andersonstown in west Belfast was hot and sunny. But, as ever, the ongoing conflict was being played out, this time with a British army patrol pursuing a suspect speeding car through streets busy with people shopping and walking.

At about 2pm, when the chase reached Finaghy Road North, soldiers opened fire on the speeding car, killing “Volunteer” Danny Lennon, the 23-year-old driver. His car immediately went out of control and veered on to the pavement outside a church. Before it careered to a halt against the railings, it had run down three children and their mother, Anne Maguire. Eight-year-old Joanne and her six-week-old brother, Andrew, died immediately while another brother, two-year-old John, died from his injuries the next day. Anne, after days in a coma, survived, but killed herself eight years later. Another son, Mark, aged seven, who was on his bicycle ahead of the family group escaped injury. A second person in the car fled the scene.

Head of BBC radio drama who was instrumental in the success of Joe Orton, Sue Townsend, Tom Stoppard and others

To readers of books, John Tydeman is a fictional BBC producer who loomed large in the literary aspirations of Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole. To Townsend, as for many other writers, he was the real-life radio drama producer who encouraged her, produced her first radio play about the secret diary of “Nigel” Mole, and then introduced her to the publishers Methuen.

As with another of Tydeman’s proteges, Joe Orton, Townsend’s success was dizzying. Between the debut of Nigel in January 1982 and the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ that September – simultaneously read as a serial on Radio 4 – Townsend had provided Adrian with a book’s worth of diary entries and become a publishing sensation. For the rest of Townsend’s life, Adrian would continue to submit poetry to Tydeman, who would continue to reply with growing exasperation. His letters, with Adrian’s poems, were published by Penguin in 2017.