it's just gone past 5:303m in the morning. this is bbc news, the headlines: china has come to a standstill for three minutes to remember the victims on a national day of mourning. the outbreak began in hubei province in december. the country has recorded more than 3,000 covid—19 related deaths. as one of the largest hospitals in the world opens in london to treat 4,000 coronavirus patients, people in the uk are being urged to stay at home this weekend to try to stop the spread of covid—19.

britain's health secretary said the advice was not a request but an instruction. the us government is now urging all americans to wear face coverings to help stop the spread of the disease, but donald trump says he won't follow the advice. announcing the new guidelines, mr trump repeatedly stressed that they were voluntary. the number of people dying there with the coronavirus has topped 1,300 in a single day. schools and colleges in england have been given more details about how gcse and a—level grades will be calculated for pupils whose exams have been cancelled because of the pandemic. the exams regulator, quual, says teachers will be asked to estimate a mark, when ranking students. as our education editor, bra nwen jeffreys reports, the results will be published no later than august, but could be earlier. it's quite a freeing, strange thought, not having to worry about revision and exam stress for the next few months. but it is a weird feeling, yeah.

a lot of people are worried about the work that we have done till now because, obviously, a lot of people don't put the effort in until the last minute and they can sometimes turn it all around, just at the last minute. i don't know if i'll necessarily definitely get the grades that i need for my first choice any more, now that i can't pull it up in my exam at all. every year till now, exams meant grades. but now, in england and wales, teachers are asked to estimate instead and rank students top to bottom. the results then adjusted across the nation. so, i wanted to ask — will these gcses and a—levels be just as valued as any other year? the student certificates this year with their grades will be like any other certificates. they will use those grades to progress, they will use those grades in their lives just like any other set of students and that's hugely important. in chester today, two anxious students. for max, it's his gcse year.

charlotte needs her to a—levels to get into uni. all the hard work we want to put in, we want to make sure it's shown in our grades and through the seven years we've spent learning haven't gone to waste. but i trust my teachers. i think that for people who perhaps didn't get the grades that they'd like to go into sixth form, or college, or an apprenticeship, then they might consider retaking the exams. but for most, as long as they get a suitable grade, i think it would be harder to get back and get the grade they want than just to continue with what they've been given already. the challenge is going to be to make this system feel fair for everyone. but most of all for those kids in the middle who've worked really hard in the last few months to try get above a grade four. they already have a sense of what grades they're working at, or were prior to the school closures. they also therefore know, from that dialogue with their teachers, where, in essence, those teachers

will be predicting that those grades are going to be in the summer. in northern ireland, students still waiting for details. the real test everywhere will be results day. branwenjeffreys, bbc news, chester. now on bbc news — the travel show. my name's tony giles and i'm totally blind and severely deaf in both ears. now we're moving. feel the wind in my hair. i have spent the last 21 years travelling. i have visited over 120 countries. every continent in the world, including antarctica. my mission is to visit every country in the world. i started off in december planning this recent trip and i decided i'd just start in egypt, the top of north africa, and work my way through several

countries to to get to ethiopia. have a try of that. mm, it's good, it's quite sweet. yeah, right? it's my passion, it is what i do. it always makes me happy. it's the biggest challenge i can get. when i'm travelling country to country i usually take public transport.

when i get to the city i am visiting, i hear people get ready on a bus. the bus will pull up, stop. i usually wait for most people to get off. i get my backpack, get my stick out. meskel square, yes? bye— bye. bye—bye, thank you. i follow the people. i can hear them so i know they're getting off. i'm looking for a phone shop. i will ask people is there a shop nearby i can buy a sim card if i haven't got one. you can show me? thanks. excuse me, mate, could you help me put my new sim card in my phone?

i use a website called couchsurfing and ifind local people on the website and they have profiles and i have a profile so i contact them. hello, is that mr happy? hi, this is tony, couchsurfer. can you tell me how to get to your place, please? i'm going to take a taxi so what — where so i need to tell him to go? ok, so i will see in about half—an—hour, a0 minutes. thanks very much, bye. i need to find a taxi now. taxi? where are you going? hello. i go to gotera. gotera? yeah, gotera, yeah. 200 birr. 200 -150? 0k, go on. i lost my dad when i was 15, 16. i lost my best friend when i was 16, i don't really talk about. it was a big loss for me.

it sent me off into alcoholism for a good six to seven years. by the age of 2a i was almost an alcoholic. once i got my head out of the bottle, i could see that there was a different road to go down. i was hung up about being blind for a long time, especially as a teenager, early 20s. and then i suddenly realised the more people i met, i realised they wanted to be around me not because i was blind or different but because of who i was, my personality. driving along a straight road, a bit of wind. still smell the car fumes, they're everywhere.

hello, mr happy, it's tony. i think i'm at your street, at your place. i'm opposite a restaurant. i can smell the food but i am not sure how to get to you. apparently i'm by the gates, someone‘s told me. hey—hey, tony! hello! guess who's here. mr happy. yeah, i'm glad, i'm glad to see you. good to meet you. how are you? thank you very much for coming. you found it already. welcome to addis, my place already. thank you. he's a really nice guy. very friendly, as his name would say, happy. full of energy and was really happy to meet me, i was really excited to meet him. take a step. yes, there you go. you have it all easy. welcome to your couchsurfing place. thank you. your happy home. my space, thank you. take off the load. this will be your sleeping spot. 0k, just a mattress?

yeah, it's a mattress. i mostly even sleep here. 0k. i like to sleep on the floor. 0k, great. one of the main components about my travelling is food. eating food, talking about food, sometimes buying food and cooking. hello, i'd like to buy shiro, please. i was very fortunate that mr happy very kindly offered to cook for me some local ethiopian food. how much is that altogether? 70? i bought some shiro, and also a kilo of tomatoes and a kilo of chilli. people are lovely, very, very helpful, very kind. some people speak a little bit of english. i asked a guy to help me to find shiro, and he took right me to the shop.

and then the shopkeepers helped me buy the food. it was a lovely experience. sometimes it can be confusing, especially if there's a lot of people pushing each other, all shouting for the same thing. even when you can see, you don't quite know what you're buying. sometimes it is a bit more confusing but you just be patient and keep going, keep asking. most people will help you. what is shiro exactly? shiro is like a powder made of chickpeas. it is like one of the staple foods that we have here. so we call this dancing shiro time because the shiro kind of bubbles out and then dances. and you just cook it here, where the heat is coming from? yeah, where the heat,

we have a charcoal here, so natural fire—making. do you want to have a try of that? give me your hand. you just put it here and then you can just put it to your mouth and taste it. nice. it's good, it's quite sweet. yeah, right? that is from the tomato. i hope it tastes as good as it smells. of course, ready for it? lunch is here. what a nice smell, lunch! thank you very much. hungry? very hungry. great so we have our shiro in the centre, which is like the focal element of the food. and then we have a couple of vegetables. do you like kale? yep. kale is like our green vegetable. then we have some tomatoes by the side, and some chilis. mostly we take time to bless the food, in a way. we kind of give it a good vibration in a way so just take a few seconds

to be just grateful and thankful for having this food. thank you very much. great. the other thing cultural in ethiopia as we eat together, is something called "gursha". gursha is basically feeding each other. it is like, i made a bit like a bite and then i just give that to you. beside the content of feeding a person, it is also a sign of respect and care. it's like a mother feeding a child so there's some care into it. it is a culture we do here. so i'm going to give you one of that now. are you ready? this will be interesting. open your mouth and you have yourfirst gursha... wow. nice. this is incredible food. people, you have to come to ethiopia and eat this food. you like it? it is delicious, it's tasty, it's a little spicy, it's a little...so rich.

at least four or five different textures in this one dish i can taste on my tongue. now is your turn to give me a bite of that. see how you do the gursha. here it comes. you are like a pro. having this little ceremony, eating traditional ethiopian food with a lovely person, who i now consider my friend, is a wonderful experience. it's very humbling. to be able to share and exchange cultures is so wonderful. it is hard to describe, really. very emotional. i can't pick up a book and think, let's go to this place or let's go to that place. so i had to have the research, i had to have the knowledge

beforehand and i have a very, very good memory so i plan my route before i travel. i don't know who i'm going to meet, i don't know what's going to happen and to me that is all an adventure, it is exciting. many people say i could not do that, i couldn't imagine it. but i've never really seen so me, i don't worry about it because i don't know. it is all the unknown and that is what i love and enjoy. trying to find people that i can help me with on line. i found this guy called mike, a local guy, who seemed really interesting, good fun. i says i was coming to addis, want to meet up? have a coffee or have a chat about ethiopian life and culture? tony? mike, hi, good to meet you. thanks for coming. welcome to ethiopia. have a seat. ijust really wanted to meet

you and find out a bit more about ethiopia and what is going on in addis. likewise, i really wanted to meet you, when we contacted. we recently had change in government so it was not an election but by popular demand a new government has come up to power. it is a new government, a young leader, a kind of visionary. the people's man. the first time most people would have heard about ethiopia would have been 1985, the band aid and live aid, the famine. but there is more than that, what's more to ethiopia? that image stayed in people's minds and shuttered everything else. when the famine was over and we were back to safe times, nobody was reporting on that. like, if you take the farming side, ethiopia is the fifth—largest country in the world with the number of livestock. it is not as depicted.

0k, mike, where are we going? now we are going to the headquarters of the african union. so there, we are going to see a statue, a new statute that was just inaugurated and it is a statue of haile selassie, our last emperor. i've heard of him. if you do this, you are getting a nice picture, and if you turn the camera sideways, because it's... vertical, yeah. tony, you're a nice photographer. thanks. yeah. awesome. yeah, yeah. you have a talent for pictures. yeah, just shoot and point, hopefully something comes out.

how important is haile selassie to ethiopian people? for some, he was a hero, for others he was a villain. because whenever you occupy a throne, those are the things, the two balls you juggle. he had tried to modernise the country. so he did work a lot on education, that was one of his main interests. my grandfather was a big fan of him. he said, he used to come to their school, randomly, just to check on what the students were being fed. every time he would come, he would bring them grapes, apples, oranges. and how was he viewed by young ethiopian people today? haile selassie is immortalised, he is iconic. if you bring your hand, and interlace it here, and you do this... yeah, yeah. it goes back to unity. yeah, yeah, of course.

so, we are heading into north addis. we are going to see an art gallery, an art gallery for blind and visually impaired people. i'm assuming some kind of tactile art exhibition. different textures to make a picture or pictures. that's what i'm assuming. we'll find out when we get there. thank you. the entrance? hi, tony. welcome. hi. welcome to my studio. thank you, i'm really looking forward to it.

let me show you one of the art pieces. wow. so, we're touching a piece of art. these are people, who are laughing. this is their mouths. 0k. this is their nose. this is their eyes. these are like buttons, are they? yes. so it is a face. you can see their hands, they are screaming, happy, expressing themselves. do you like it? it's really good, it's really interesting. it really gives a blind person a better understanding of expression of people. it's amazing. it's really inspiring.

so many times you go to art galleries with your friends, and you sort of feel excluded. touching this made me feel included. a christian cross. actually art i can appreciate. i felt equal. it was really nice, really positive. i feel just like anyone else looking at art. radio: ethiopia's number one station for news, music and entertainment? that's us, 105.3 afro fm! driving through addis one afternoon, got a bit hungry, so got

a taxi to stop at a food stall on the street. i went in and talked to the guy there. i was talking to him and telling him my story, i travel around the world and i'm blind. we're about to go live on air. are you ready? yep! he said, do you want to come on my breakfast show? i said, yeah, that would be cool, yeah. talk to the people, share my story, maybe inspire a few people. good morning, good morning, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. how're you doing? it's the best breakfast in town, your voice of motivation, inspiration. every single day. i'm sitting here with an amazing person, tony giles is here in the studio. he is a blind person, but also partially deaf, but he has managed to travel to 138 countries around the world. good morning, everyone. the question i have for you right now, i'm sure a lot of our listeners are wondering as well, what are the main challenges you face doing this project you've been doing? one of the most difficult ones is getting

money out of atm machines, cash machines. i have to find somebody i can trust. i have to check them out, listen to their story, how they're sounding, figure out that i can trust them and go to the cash machine with them. they help me to read the screen, i can press the buttons and put my information in, and once i get the money, i have to ask them, what denomination are these? i can't read a menu in a restaurant, so i have to have an idea of the national dish of each country i visit. in ethiopia it's quite easy, injera. probably one of the other biggest challenges for me is crossing borders. i have to hand my passport over to someone, and i don't know where that passport goes, and i have to hope it's going to get back to me. what keeps you going, when you are faced with challenges? how do you keep your chin up? when i get tired and i think i can't do it anymore, i think about my best friend. he died when i was young. he had a serious disability, and he couldn't move most of his body. i always think of him, he inspired me. i've got it easy compared to what he has.

just keep going, yeah. ladies and gentlemen, here you have it. the one and only tony giles here in the studio. it was such an amazing, inspirational story. yeah, i have dark days. not so many now. one of the main reasons i started travelling was escapism, escapism from my emotions. i can do things physically, that's easy. i run away from my emotions. i couldn't deal with relationships for a long time. because i thought an everyday relationship would end the same way as my relationship with my friend, i thought. people would go away. i thought that's what would happen with a relationship. and for a long time, it did. i realised that there's more to life. i could stop grieving. i still occasionally gets dark days.

but the way you overcome them, the way i overcome them, is, i think, when i get up tomorrow, i think, what's the next challenge? i know people love me. so that's enough. some people might say i'm on the extreme edge of travel, and the extreme edge of disabled people. i do worry sometimes, when i'm giving talks, doing interviews, am i going to put people off? am i going to make people think, wow, that's incredible, that's so out there, i couldn't do that, i couldn't possibly. i wonder if in a weird way, maybe i discourage people. i guess ijust thought i'd have to tell it and let people take from it what they will.

without people, i wouldn't be able to travel. i think it's a two—way thing. people are helping me, and i'm given something back. i show them there's an alternative way. they say, how do you travel, how can you see? why have you come to my country, you're blind. i tell them, well, i come to eat the food and meet the people and hear the music and walk on the terrain up and down the mountains. i can feel it all through my skin and my feet and that's how i see a country. the terrain around the churches on the outside is up there with some of the toughest places and terrain i have visited. i just want to be normal. it's just so frustrating. got to be strong all the time.

it's the only way i can travel, the only way i can cope. hello. yes, our weather is turning warmer this weekend. but of course we follow the rules, stay at home, and we improvise. and whatever your view on the weather outside, it'll be sunnier by sunday, and out that it'll be warmer. it'll also be windier, as well, with pollen levels heading up. the big picture shows high pressure to the east of us, low pressure approaching from atlantic, and that ahead of it

will strengthen the southerly flow. of course, that's a warm direction. so it will be a warm wind on sunday, lifting temperatures in the sunnier parts of eastern england to around 20, maybe 21 celsius. that said, though, there will be a touch of frost in places as saturday begins, cooler than this in the countryside, so some spots close to freezing. there'll be a few mist and fog patches out there, perhaps more especially towards the midlands and southern england. some rain in northern scotland will set on across the northern isles, still the odd shower in scotland and northern england, from what will be a good deal of cloud, a few bright and sunny spells. elsewhere in england and wales, there will be increasing sunshine as we go through the day. while all parts are going to be milder, it is particularly across england and wales where we will notice those temperatures into the mid—teens. but also a freshening southerly wind, a sign of things to come as we get deeper into the weekend.

0vernight and into sunday morning, although there is plenty of cloud around, enough of the wind to stop the temperature going down too fast. so we are frost—free as sunday begins, and sunday will deliver plenty of sunshine. and whilst most places will hold onto that sunshine, the further west you are, you'll see it clouding over. and we may well start to get a bit of rain later in the day, northern ireland, parts of western scotland, the far west of england and wales. some uncertainty about the timing of the arrival of any rain from the area of low pressure i showed you earlier. what is certain, though, is the winds will pick up more on sunday, gusts across western areas later in the day, near 50 mph. but it will be warmer across all parts, and particularly in that sunshine across some eastern parts of england, we could see around 21 celsius. but pollen levels will be higher, and particularly in england and wales. now, into next week, well, sunday night into monday, we will see from that area of low pressure a band of rain spread east across the uk. behind that, as it clears on monday, sunshine returns.

it'll be cooler, before temperatures head up again as the week goes on. good morning. welcome to breakfast with naga munchetty and charlie stayt. 0ur headlines today: "forget the sunshine, stay at home and save lives". police forces across the uk urge people to use their common sense and avoid all unnecessary travel this weekend. the plea comes as emotional tributes are paid to two nhs nurses who died after contracting coronavirus, both leaving behind three children. americans are told to start wearing face masks in public to stop the spread of coronavirus, but president trump says he won't be following the advice. i think wearing a face mask as