in england from tomorrow, despite the country's covid—19 alert system indicating high levels of transmission. we are reasonably confident that the steps that we had taken and will be taking on monday are manageable, but we have to all continue to play our pa rt we have to all continue to play our part in that. after 10 weeks at home, more than 2 million people in england and wales who've been shielding during lockdown are told they can go outdoors. hundreds of people march to the us embassy in central london in protest over the killing of george floyd, the black man who died in police custody in america. and in the us, protests spread from minneapolis to at least 30 different cities, despite a number of curfews in place — riot police have used tear gas and rubber bullets. nasa astronauts doug hurley and bob behnken reach the international space station — onboard the spacex crew dragon capsule.

as schools in england prepare to reopen to some pupils tomorrow school governors ask ministers to drop plans for all primary pupils to return before the summer holidays. now on bbc news, as the coronavirus continues to claim lives around the world, global questions invites its international audience to put their questions to a panel of experts. hello and welcome to london for this edition of global questions with me, zeinab badawi. young people may be less likely to become seriously ill with coronavirus or to die from it, yet their futures may be ravaged by the disease. with a global recession predicted to last for years, economies are heavily in debt. jobs are becoming more scarce. education has been interrupted, and social life disrupted. that's coronavirus crisis:

a lost generation? that's coronavirus crisis: a lost generation? well, i'm now inside the bbc‘s headquarters here in central london and we are bringing you our two panellists and our questioners via video link. theyjoin us from all over the world. let me tell you who is in the hot seat this week, giving the answers. emma theofelus, she is deputy minister of information in namibia and, get this — she was only 23 years of age when she was given that post and, as part of her role, she gives daily briefings to the nation about how to prevent the spread of coronavirus. but emma has apparently just turned 24. and billiejd porter is a british film—maker and journalist

and is involved in an initiative to engage young people in politics called use your voice. she has recently been travelling around the world making documentaries, including in china. welcome to you both. remember, you too canjoin in the conversation. it's #bbcglobalquestions. let's go to our first question and it is coming from nagpur, india. it has been three months since i saw my parents and i am sad not to see them and missing my daily routines as well. it is hard for everyone, but it is a big sacrifice and really hard for young people in particular. ah, there's the rub, then! hard for young people in particular. are they really getting it worse in this coronavirus pandemic? minister, deputy minister, emma theofelus in namibia. thank you very much and thank you for the question. i do not think that the wellbeing of young people necessarily has been sacrificed in this particular

pandemic, in response to this pandemic. i think, at this point, everyone is feeling the same, young and old, and i do think that, as young people, we might have it harder because this is the prime of our lives. it is an opportunity for us to really be energetic and go out there and do things. however, with this pandemic, of course, these expected feelings of sadness and isolation. however, we do need to keep a positive, you know, outlook on issues, see what we can do to assist with fighting the pandemic. because more and more across the world, young people do make the majority of the population. and even though the virus does not affect young people as much as older people health—wise, it does affect a lot of us socially. we need to become more optimistic so we assist those that are the most vulnerable to this virus. billie jd porter, do you agree with that? that young people aren't really

getting it worse than anyone else? i mean, i think that the well—being of people from all generations has been affected. i think that the ways that the elderly and people in care homes have been hit by this is one of the most dark things we've seen since the virus took hold. i miss my friends as well. i think this has had a devastating effect on so many people's mental health. my anxiety is through the roof and i think that we all kind of collectively are going through something so unprecedented. but beyond this, i do feel that there is far too much pressure being placed on the individual, we are guilt tripping ourselves and one another for feeling this way, or if there is any flouting of the rules. in my mind, that is a very convenient distraction from the ways that politicians have failed us and what has actually placed us here. billie, i am just going to ask you, we have had questions on social

media, or points, rather. rohina, for instance, has asked, how will children adapt to life after they have just spent so much time with their parents? david said, "family bonding has grown immensely "during this lockdown period." so, i mean, that is a fairly positive point from david. but, actually, a lot of young people, teenagers in particular, are having to live in abusive households all over the world, aren't they? absolutely. i think that this is going to affect so many different people in such a different way. for me to sit here and say that i have collective or generalised advice would be irresponsible. i think that if you can reach out to communities of support online, then do that and know that we are all reacting in a normal way to an abnormal situation. deputy minister, do you want to pick up that point about a lot of young people having to live in abusive or violent households, which is a big concern? yes. in namibia, the reports do suggest

that after we had been locked down for over 35 days, there has been a spike in gender based violence cases. there has been a lot of domestic violence in homes. but also, the predatory nature of offenders online against children. so that has raised some concerns, and there has been some responses with...where they install free numbers or social workers are becoming more involved in the community to root out some of this issue. it has increased in a time where everyone is confined to their homes. some people are trapped with their abusers. thank you very much indeed for that response. now, we are going to go to an overseas student currently studying in london, and we have had a lot of questions along the lines that you have been asking from a very great number of worried students. so, fire away. what do you want to ask?

i am an international student with the financial burden of a big student loan. i feel alone with no fair chance to get experience abroad or repay my loans, or repay the loan, making me more vulnerable. do you think, will host countries and universities come to our rescue? right, billie, a lot of students worried about loans all over the world and the question there is how do they repay their loans? it is a big headache. yeah, well first of all, i want to say thank you for your question and i can't imagine what a difficult situation this is for you and i'm very sorry that you have found yourself stranded away from home at a time like this. my advice to you would be to contact your university's student union and see if they can offer any guidance or support regarding your situation specifically. there are several funds and emergency grants for those experiencing financial hardship during this time, which could also be worth looking into, but my overriding feeling

is that we need to put pressures on the powers that be to freeze student loans at this time. it is immoral to expect people to be locked indoors and for their interests to be creeping up. i am sorry that you are in this situation and i hope that you can find support through your student union. very quickly, billie, you say freeze student loans, but universities are in dire financial straits themselves, aren't they? some of them perhaps nearing collapse. very quickly on that point, that is the other side. absolutely. there needs to be some kind of government bailout. i do not think that universities should expect students who are extremely vulnerable in this situation to be shouldering the same debts that they are. all right. deputy minister, while you are answering that question on universities, let me give you some questions from social media because this affects school pupils as well. somebody says i cannot go to school and we are writing all of our exams from home. when will it be over

and when will i go back to school? i am in year ten and it is very hard for us. education is really being disrupted, isn't it, on top of the student loans issue? yes, education has become a bit more difficult with e—learning and online learning becoming a new norm with this pandemic and not many countries being ready to actually change to that new mode of learning, and to quickly adapt to it during covid—i9, that has made it a bit more difficult. however, with the resilience of learners and students all over the world and having the determination to continue their schooling, i think we can get through this. let's go now to the capital of latvia, riga. what is your question? hello. my question is what skills should young people develop to successfully overcome this crisis, both financially and mentally?

what a lot in that question there. deputy minister emma theofelus. skills to overcome the crisis financially and mentally. i think skills around communication and technology will come in handy in times such as this. but from a mental front, i would say the skill of being able to connect with human beings better. i think because of the rapid change in how technology now rules our lives, we have become disconnected to other human beings and understanding the surroundings that we live in and being more connected to those. so perhaps for mental well—being, let us go back to basics and appreciate the people around us and the things, the simple things, in nature that we can be more connected to, to be more prepared for such a pandemic in future. let mejust inject

one statistic before i come to you, billie, the united nations says one in five young people have stopped working during the coronavirus pandemic. even those who have remained in work have seen their hours greatly reduced and also big concerns for young people who are disproportionately concentrated in sectors like hospitality, who have been badly affected. what is your response to what skills young people need? i'd have to agree that obviously this pandemic has shown us that us learning to connect digitally and us learning to be able to move our workforce remote has been really, really important throughout this and i suppose one upshot, if you can call it that, of this entire crisis is that the workforce has been globalised somewhat. you have companies who said they are never going back to their office and it means that the playing

field has been widened. if there is a candidate who is in another continent who seems like they are a better fit for a role, that could mean that opportunities are opening up. in terms of us using this as an opportunity to learn skills, though, it is difficult to put pressure on yourself during this time. i think lots of people have used this as an opportunity to learn new skills, learn a new language, get to work on personal projects they have been neglecting. for other people, that isjust not realistic. when we talk about financial skills, like you say, so many people do not have the luxury of being able to think about how they are going to manage their money better or how they are going to safeguard their future financially when they don't have those earnings coming in. but i do hope that this whole thing might teach us where best to spend our money and to do it in a more mindful way. i think if there is one good thing that might come out of the

crisis it's that we are more mindful of where we spend our money. we do not need to be spending it on fast fashion, fancy restaurants or on all of this waste. thank you. let's go to our next question from coventry in the uk, what do you want to ask? hello, my question is, "why have race and class inequalities been "reproduced yet again in the fight 7" billie, what is your answer to catherine? i don't think that race and class inequalities have been reproduced. they have always been there and they have never gone away. i read a statistic that members of the bame community are four times more likely to die from the virus. they have also been subject to many more fines and penalised far more intensely by law enforcement if they have been seen to be breaking the rules about social distancing. there has been a hugely disproportionate impact on

people of colour. but these socioeconomic disparities have been sad realities long before this virus took hold and i think it is devastating that it has taken this for people to realise that. it is notjust about the risk of the virus itself, it is about the uncertainty of our future and, in a landscape where unemployment is going to be rife and it's going to be incredibly competitive, how much more likely is a white person going to be to land a job than a person of colour? these issues predate covid—19 and they will outdate covid unless the system changes. put simply, our political class as a whole is too white. it has served its own interests for too long and the only way that things will change truly is if our political class diversifies. deputy minister. i do agree that inequalities will be exacerbated. if anything, covid—i9 just came to shine a brighter light on this.

if you look before covid, the unemployment rates among young people were very high. and now with covid—i9, a lot have actually lost theirjobs. so you can only expect an increase in how many young people are unemployed. before covid, a lot of internships were not paying people. even after covid, i am sure a lot of white capitalist monopolists, especially in my country, would argue that they do not have money to pay interns, which are more likely to be young people with no experience and therefore cannot gain experience for future employment. definitely, covid—i9 came to us and these inequalities, they existed before, they will exist afterwards, they willjust become bigger. catherine, what do you want to say to our two panellists? why did you ask that question and what is your thought on the answer? firstly, i really like the answers the pannelists gave. i think they are very honest and i think it is important to ask these kind of questions that

are very difficult to answer because i believe it is crucial for governments and organisations to take an intersectional approach to looking at how working—class and people from bame backgrounds have been affected more than other people in the world. thank you very much indeed, catherine. we are now going to go to the capital of nigeria, abuja. you will forgive me if i say this, but we can just see by looking at you that you are our token member of the older generation amongst our questioners. what is your question about the impact of coronavirus on the younger generation? young people, just as has been said, are the most vulnerable. my question would be that what are governments across the world going to do to tackle the problems that face the future of young people?

what does the future portend for them? how is the government going to support them in realising their goal in life? because at the moment, you will find that young people are the ones that are the centre of this. they are not dying, but their futures are uncertain because of the disease. so what is the government going to do post—covid—i9? deputy minister of information in namibia, emma theofelus, what is your answer? thank you very much for your question. just yesterday, coincidentally, our minister of finance here tabled our budget as a country. it's a 72.8 billion namibian dollar budget. in this budget, it does entail one area that is to secure job security for everyone in the country during covid—i9. in it are all types

of interventions around tax reform, around social sectors getting more funding to ensure that education is not severely disrupted and, especially, this goes to young people, but also, more importantly, that youth entrepreneurship in the country does not take a big hit. billie, do we need targeted intervention by governments in the way that emma has been describing? absolutely, but i suppose i believe that the question shouldn't necessarily be what should the government do, but rather who should that government be? i live between the united states and the united kingdom, the two countries who have reported the most deaths from the virus and i certainly don't think that the people who have got us into this mess are going to get us out of it. i believe that has been one of the most distressing things for young people to watch. it is how this crisis has so plainly

demonstrated, just let down after let down by those in power. do you want to come back? i agree with the minister that the government needs to do a lot. i don't think that they should just be left out like that because parents who are at this point are supporting the young, parents who are the backbone of this generation, they're getting sick and dying. if they don't have support, their futures are bleak. i think the government has a cardinal role to play in the lives of the young. if you leave them, the crime rate across the world is going to soar. the earlier the government takes very decisive action, the better. thanks very much indeed. let's go to dubai. your question, please. thank you so much for all the answers we have been given. i have been concerned

about the impact after the coronavirus situation. the impacts concerning the physical, economic, social, moral and psychological on young people. it is going to have an impact on them. how are these people going to redefine themselves and is there a need to redefine themselves culturally in the mindset? how is this going to happen? a question about lifestyles being redefined and, actually, that is something we had a lot on social media about. questions about will life ever go back to how it was? gigs, pubs, cinema, theatre? young people do like to enjoy an active social life wherever they are. physical interaction, also something very important for young people. will we be able to see

our partners again? some of us do not live with them. let's go to you on that, billie jd porter. i wish i knew the answer to that question. i wish it every single day. in a word, yes, i do think our lifestyles will be redefined by this and, in a sense, i think they will be forever changed. i think that even if a vaccine is developed, how long will it take until people get widespread access to it? i do feel like we need to adapt. i see lots of people across social media talking about what they want to do when this is over. what they want to do when life goes back to normal, quote on quote. i do not know if there will be a normal. i think that the normal will be forever changed by this. i really, really hope we will be going back to festivals and parties and pubs and restaurants soon, but i am not holding out much hope for that reality anytime soon, at least. are you also a bit pessimistic, deputy minister? if i am being honest, no.

i am actually positive. perhaps many of my contacts are different. ——context is different. we have only had 22 cases in namibia. no death here. the impact of social distancing, being locked down at home, it is still the same. but i do agree with billie to say that we cannot go back to a normal. covid—i9 was a wake—up call and is a wake—up call. the way we interact as young people, of course, things we enjoyed like festivals and so on, we can still do those, should a vaccine be found, and become more creative and innovative in how we enjoy those activities. the truth is we cannot rule out that climate change is still a reality. though it has not pounced

on us like covid—i9 did, it is still something to be concerned about. much of our lifestyle did have an impact on the environment, and the way we are living, it'll have an impact on our future. so we do need to get to a new normal, a new way of doing things, because the way we were doing things was not and we do need to change. but a change for the better that can accommodate our interests and needs but also the interests of the whole world and the planet. there you are in the uk and there you are in namibia. is there anything, emma, you would like to put to billie? billie, i wish you would have more faith. this virus has a lot of impact on feelings and our view, whether it is governments, social actors, but i did think this is a time where our humanity should give everybody the benefit of the doubt. and be more positive in how

we approach issues and, hopefully, that all of us together, working together, regardless of how we want to get to the end result or product, that we are able to get through this together. so i do have my heart out to you, the us and the uk being worst hit and me having a different context. but i think that as young people, there is hope. if we can get through this particular pandemic as young people, anything that catches us in future, we who are going to be here for the next years, we can get through it together. what do you want to say to emma? i am really grateful for all of that and i think that all of your messages of strength and resilience and confidence in us bouncing back from this are very, very much needed. i realise that my kind of glass half empty attitude is a bit pessimistic, as you say, but i think your people are very lucky to have a politician like you during this time. let me ask you,

questioners, i wanted to ——you to put your thumbs up if you agree that the coronavirus pandemic has had the worst impact on the lives of young people, economically, financially, psychologically? put up your thumbs if you think that it has affected young people disproportionately. so five out of the six. the five young people asking the questions have all said that they feel a little bit pessimistic about the future. emma theofelus there in namibia and billie jd porter in the uk, you have told us, one of you is a bit more optimistic and the other is a bit more down about it.

i hope we have thrown some light on the mood of younger people all over the world. thank you've very much indeed for watching this edition of our special on coronavirus, looking at what has been described as the lockdown generation, the lost generation. remember, this is a programme that brings you the trend lines behind the headlines. from me and the rest of the global questions‘ team, thank you to our panellists, our questioners and wherever you are watching this, goodbye. hello there. may has ended on a dry, sunny, very warm note across the board and indeed the first few days ofjune are warm and sunny for many of us but we will start to see some changes taking place in our weather around the middle part of this new week. a fine end to the day and overnight it will be dry with clear skies, bit of low cloud and sea fog rolling into eastern scotland, north—east england.

temperatures falling to lows of 7 to maybe 13 degrees in the south. monday morning starts dry and sunny for all of us, a bit of low cloud clearing away from coastal areas. some fairweather cloud bubbling up through the day and we could see an isolated, heavy shower developed across scotland and northern ireland. but another very warm day on the cards, particularly further west that you are. eastern coastal areas a little bit fresher. now we start to see a few changes taking place across the north of the uk on tuesday. this cold front sinks southwards to bring outbreaks of rain to the northern half of scotland and the cooling northerly wind setting in. but elsewhere across the country another dry, sunny, very warm one in the south. much cooler across northern scotland.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the government has defended the easing of lockdown measures in england from tomorrow despite the country's covid—i9 alert system indicating high levels of transmission. we are reasonably confident that the steps that we've taken and will be taking on monday are manageable, but we have to all continue to play our part in that. after ten weeks at home, more than 2 million people in england and wales who've been shielding during lockdown are told they can go outdoors. protests in the us over the killing of george floyd spread from minneapolis to at least 30

different cities despite a number