this is bbc news. the headlines: a former police officer in the us state of georgia has been charged with murdering rayshard brooks, the african—american man shot twice in the back as he fled two white officers in atlanta. garrett rolfe has been sacked from the force. he faces ten other charges. after nearly two months with no coronavirus infections, the chinese capital is under another lockdown. restrictions on movements have been reintroduced in beijing to try to contain a new outbreak which emerged a week ago. in a new book, donald trump's former national security adviser claims the president tried to get china's leader to help secure his re—election. john bolton also claims mr trump told xi jinping it was the right thing to do for china to detain about a million uighur muslims and other minorities in camps in xinjiang for punishment and indoctrination. the white house is trying to stop publication of the book. the killing of george floyd

by police in minneapolis has been a prime factor in encouraging more people around the world to try to understand the racism and consistent injustice suffered by black people over the centuries. in the uk, there are calls to rethink the teaching of black history in schools, and make it more relevant and extensive. our correspondent celestina olulode considers the arguments for a new approach. these are some of the black people that helped build this country, but many have never been taught about their contribution. at the moment in england, black history doesn't have to be taught in schools. people have been demanding change for years, but in recent weeks, there have been fresh calls for an overhaul. i think one of the ways in which slavery and colonialism is taught in school continues to centre whiteness, as an ideology and as a supremacy, while omitting and denigrating black people. in the kind of multicultural society that we live in, you know, never have we lived in more divisive times. so the need to have a curriculum

that's reflective of kind of everybody‘s different experiences is probably more paramount than it's ever been. part of the coursework that you do, you need to find primary sources... teachers do have flexibility to design their history lesson plans, but for some schools, like this, learning black history is mandatory. when i hear about and see positive black role models in history, it's very inspiring, because it takes a lot of resilience and a lot of patience to really push for things that you truly believe in. when you look at history, a lot of civilisations were living perfectly before britain sort of came in and imposed their way of living. here, pupils learn about topics like this throughout the year, notjust during black history month. you know, history departments across the country are the ones that should be definitely leading on this. there's a real demand out there from teachers for continual professional development, so teacher training. so for example, when it comes to holocaust education, there's lots of amazing resources and training out there,

and it would be wonderful to see that when it comes to black history, when it comes to teaching the empire. we do not want the first sort of black history that is taught in school to start with slavery. we make sure that we are teaching the students about african kingdoms. the government declined an interview, but in a statement said... but the debate isn't just about schools. some university students say that what they're taught is too centred around the colonial perspective, something ifelt when i went to access archives at oxford university. when i was a student studying colonialism and its impact on africa, i was advised to come to this place here, rhodes house, because that is where the records were kept. and i remember feeling uncomfortable, because the very place i'd been told to do the research was named after a coloniser. and it is these experiences that can affect students profoundly. it's still hard for me,

till this day, to be able to place my identity within the british kind of context. i don't see people that look like myself being reflected in these curriculums, being reflected in these historical narratives. so i think it has contributed to doubt, and a lot of fear. not for the first time, britain is being asked to look in the mirror and question its true history. will the outcome be different this time? celestina olulode, bbc news. now on bbc news, coronavirus: your stories, with philippa thomas. welcome to coronavirus: your stories, a programme about how covid—i9 is changing the lives of people around the world. i'm philippa thomas.

this week, we're looking at live music and the virus, about how live music has the power to help some of the most vulnerable, and how, as an art form, live music making has itself been hit hard by the lockdown. now, whether it's live—streamed concerts or neighbours singing together from their balconies, we've seen communities all over the world turn to music during this crisis. at the same time, the future of professional music is in question. we'll hear about the damage done by the global lockdown from the founder of an outstanding orchestra for black and minority ethnic musicians, an ensemble that is now also feeling the pain from the latest examples of racial injustice. but we'll start with the ways in which music is helping people to cope, especially those who already had reason to feel vulnerable or lonely even before the pandemic, individuals dealing with isolation,

disability or dementia. from toronto in canada, we'rejoined by krista samborsky, who is a care home director who has designated her music therapists as essential workers. and from wellington in new zealand, christine o'sullivan has multiple sclerosis, and she can talk about the power of singing during lockdown. along with ms, i realised i was vulnerable, and didn't really want to put myself in danger of getting coronavirus. i was diagnosed with secondary progressive ms in 2005, and the symptoms have gradually progressed over the years, mainly mobility, fatigue, lack of strength, and others. and over the years, as it's progressed, things were changing, and i was no longer able to do the things i used to be able to do, leading a fairly active life.

and i realised i couldn't control the change itself, but i started thinking maybe i could take charge of the changes that were happening, and focus on what i could do to try and be happy, fit and healthy. sojust trying to manage it, trying to take charge of this change, rather than being out of control, really. just helping me to get back in it. have you been able to share that kind of advice with people who might have been a bit panicky about going into lockdown, what you're saying about "control what you can"? yep, very much. i've got quite a few friends who were quite concerned when lockdown was coming about how they're going to cope, and i said, look, youjust have to accept it. you really can't do much about it. krista, at 147 elder street, you have to look after a large group of residents who have dementia. it is particularly difficult. what did you think when news

of the pandemic arrived, and you realised lockdown was going to happen? when i first heard about the severity of the pandemic, and that we were headed in the direction of lockdown, i think my first thought was i hope that we can weather this storm, and come out the other side unscathed. i was so fearful of the thought that we may lose some of our residents to covid. and i guess you had to make phone calls to family members who were used to coming in and out, to say, look, you can't be here. absolutely. at 147 elder street, we really support family relationships, and we encourage family to visit and be a part of our community. and on the day where myself and my ceo had to make phone calls to family members informing them that they're no longer able to come

visit their loved ones, was an extremely difficult day for me. ijust wanted to continue to promote their familial relationships, because i knew that this would be difficult for them, but also for our residents. so i tried to come up with as many strategies as i could, how throughout lockdown i could promote their relationships. and one was through facetime, facetime phone calls, and another way was promoting whatever in—person relationships i could still maintain, like with my music therapists. and anna, i heard you say, "here comes the birds." 0h, did i? you did, and i liked that. so we're going to sing, "here comes the birds". 0h, 0k. # here comes the birds...

we'll hear, from both of you now, what you have done. because christine in new zealand, i know your choirs, particularly the global ms choir, have been important in getting you through this. yes, singing has been a really important part of my life, towards my well—being, and i was concerned that we wouldn't be able to get singing. and so the singing actually gives me strength. it helps me connect with my community. it's helped me connect with friends, with people, and just the enjoyment of actually going out and being with others, and just... you forget about disability when you're singing, and just — you're there. i belong to this community singing group, and i'm also involved very much in the... i initiated something called sing ms on world ms day, and that has helped me connect with people, and just stepping out and getting into things. christine, we're going to share with our audience just a little

of what happened for the global ms choir day, when you all pre—recorded, i think, but all your voices were brought together in this arrangement, and it was arranged by mark de—lisser. # for it won't be long till i'm going to need somebody to lean on. # you can call on me, brother, when you need a hand... lean on me, and christine, what was it like in that moment, when that came together? oh, that was just magic. we all on zoom just started moving to the music, and it was just magic. and mark was such a gentle choir director. he'd encourage us all to really get into it. and there were people from all over the world, 33 countries, involved in that. so that was part of connecting not

just in new zealand with singers, but with singers all around the world. and it was — just watching everyone‘s faces when they were doing it and hearing it for the first time was magic. krista, if we're talking about the magic of music, i know, as a trained art therapist, you know something about how music actually reaches into the brain, deep into the brain. yes, so i am a registered dance movement therapist, and being a part of the creative arts therapies, we know that music is stored in a deeper part of the brain. so, when individuals with dementia engage with music therapy, they're actually accessing a deeper part of the brain, that often isn't affected by dementia. so this is why we see individuals with dementia being able to sing full songs. we see them be able to recite lyrics and engage in rhythm and tempo, when perhaps in the other parts of daily living, they may not be able to do simple tasks that they once were able to do.

so music therapy really is such a wonderful tool at unlocking the individual with dementia, and allowing them to access memories that are a little bit deeper in their brain. what have you witnessed during lockdown between your music therapists and some of your residents? what kind of moments could you share with us? mm—hm, so at 147 elder street, music therapy, art therapy, dance therapy, they're a very big part of our model. so our residents have already been exposed to this therapeutic relationship, but what i witnessed throughout this time of covid is that these relationships became deeper, and allow the residents to truly express whatever feelings of loneliness, of isolation, of being scared, that they were going through. even though we tried our best to create and promote still a sense

of community, we still had to physically distance our residents, which is something that they're not used to, and i witnessed through the music therapy relationships how residents who had asked simply why, why is this going on, they were able to express themselves and really allow themselves to engage in some creativity and some agency through the music therapy sessions, be it in group, in small group, or in one—to—one. and they were really magical moments. and christine, just a final thought from you about vulnerability at a time of pandemic. has it been difficult to get to grips with the way the world has changed? yes, very much so. you see — i see so much on the news, and hearing and talking to people, and on facebook.

it has changed in a scary way. i am also hopeful, because i'm very optimistic, i am hopeful that it's going to bring about some change. because a lot of other things have happened as well as covid, coronavirus, and i'm optimistic that there is going to be suddenly a different kind of world. our prime minister talks about how we need to be kind to each other, and i am hopeful that we mightjust have a rare bit of softening, in terms of how we support each other — and yes, just being kinder. krista, what does that mean to you? i love what christine said about supporting each other and being kind, and i think that music and all the creative arts therapies is a wonderful way that we can believe again to start supporting each other again in a safe way.

i do think that we all are vulnerable, right now, no matter what labels we are carrying and i think that all the arts allow a tool, to be used as a tool, for a way to reach out to each other and start supporting each other. krista samborsky in canada and christine sullivan in new zealand, on the power of music for them during lockdown. next we're going to look at those for whom making music is a livelihood. if you are a musician, if you're playing in small venues, on festival stages, or in grand concert halls, well, that source of income pretty much dried up with the global lockdown and it is a world that's not going to be easy to bring back. so next we are looking at an exceptional ensemble of black and minority ethnic players. the chineke!orchestra. here is a glimpse of their last live concert before lockdown. .. music playing.

professional double bassist chi—chi nwanoku created the chineke!foundation and orchestra in 2015 to champion diversity and change in classical music. and the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown has meant real personal pain. it made a real difference to her and her musicians. chi—chi, i would like to start by asking you about that, the impact of the lockdown. gosh, it had devastating impact, to be honest, and at a variety of levels. depending on how established you are and how much you depend

on living from one day to the next on your livelihood or whether you are still a full—time student, for example. it has been fairly devastating, and notjust devastating inasmuch as how it hits the pocket butjust the sheer nature of our work and what it is that drives us to want to be involved in the classical music industry is the whole aspect of what we do and that is performing to an audience. here i am in my music room and i can play for hours in here and, of course, it is nice to a certain degree, but i need to have my colleagues around me and just hearing that little clip of the last concert that we played at the end of the february, it sort of brought a lump to my throat, actually, because it is that interaction, that communing with each other as colleagues, and then with the live audience out there. it's...it‘s, um, yeah,

we miss everyone. we miss each other. you are a musical leader, you're also a mentor. presumably you're talking day by day to people who would love to be together as an orchestra. are they feeling not only the musical loss but the economic fallout? i think most musicians are freelance and most have been able to take advantage of the government 80% scheme. i'm one of those ones, unfortunately, that fall into the cracks so zero for me. no concert equals zero income but luckily there is going to be some recompense for those who qualify. it's. . . it's funny because, i always say, quite often when people say to me, because i've come from a working—class background and the sort of background i came from, the things that you know

when you grow up and become an adult and go into an industry, go to the music college, go to the university, whatever, you start to learn these things, that apparently i grew up poor but i never felt as though i was poor and i know that was largely to do with the incredible family support i had, we all had amongst us, but also because i had music and i always felt rich because i had music. and so people suffer or experience that sort of fallout in a number of different ways and i think i am particularly resilient. some of our orchestra have had to move house, they have been thrown out by their live—in landlords and landladies, because they do not want somebody coming in and out of the house in case they're bringing back coronavirus. and so we have had all sorts of fallouts, which have been incredibly testing and trying.

the way i immediately responded, myself personally, i am one of these people that, when i am given a challenge or told i cannot do something, and i think, but why? there must be a way that we can do something, that we can play music together and i have created three partnerships — one with the sphinx orchestra, coming out of america, detroit, the home base of sphinx, and then two collaborations for ourjunior orchestra — one with marin alsop‘s orchkids, which is in baltimore, and then gustavo dudamel‘s youth orchestra, that's based in los angeles, the yola. and so ourjuniors are all in conversation with each other and giving each other support, talking about their experiences, and the juniors are planning on playing something together which is going to be fantastic. and this professional orchestra, we have already done — we have called it music across the ocean — we have done an

incredible performance of the very piece that you played at the top of the show, well, we have done it with half of sphinx orchestra and half of the chineke! just finding ways — thank goodness we have got digital because we can put things together and do things as a community, as a musical community. and that serves our audiences and i insisted that everybody got paid for recording their own parts at home. so we're finding ways to create projects to pay people. because, just the chineke!orchestra itself, between the shutdown, lockdown and october, the chineke! orchestra has lost something in the region of £350,000 worth of payments. chi—chi, i hear you talk about community, and i want to raise another kind of community, because we are also in another kind of crisis around police brutality and racial injustice, that is going to affect everyone in the orchestra and the foundation?

completely and utterly. i think we were speaking before that, philippa, but the intensity has doubled, tripled, quadrupled. the sheer amount of stories, more stories that are coming out because we have had zoom meetings, we have a chineke!orchestra zoom meeting tomorrow, and we had a zoom meeting last week with our audience, and it is extraordinary hearing the pain and the experiences of some of my colleagues, that we don't even talk about these things amongst ourselves normally because we come together to make music but, all of the micro aggressions and micro racist experiences that every single one of us have and have to navigate 365 days of the year, it is something that i realised we are such a strong

people because we have had to manage all of this since the day we were born and yet we go forward with such generosity and such an urge to want to communicate with everybody, notjust our black and minority ethnic audiences, and one of the things that i hope is going to really come across now is the fact that... ..it is not necessarily ourjob to fix this. we. . .we have, for example, with creating the chineke!foundation, we are putting, it is a spotlight, it is a showcase to demonstrate the immense talent, and ability that we have amongst our art community which i was led to believe that we did not exist,

that i was the only one, or there was just one or two people, which is completely not true. and i had a meeting with someone at the carnegie hall, actually, a year or so ago, who was saying it's incredible the work you are doing, chi—chi, because it really is showing what all the possibilities are, broadening the dimensions of our industry, but you should not be having to do this work, we, white people, are the ones who should be doing this work. you did not create this division, this situation, and one of the things that i will repeat is, this whole thing about racism, racism is not a black issue, racism is a white issue that has an adverse effect on black people, so we need to know that our white brothers and sisters are really awake to this now and we are waiting with open arms to embrace the things that we've

always wanted to part of. to embrace the things that we've always wanted to be part of. we have been left out of things, or had to continually prove more than most people that we, why we deserve to have a seat at the table. i have had friends contacting me saying, chi—chi, i'm absolutely devastated because we have been friends all our lives, haven't we, and you know i am not a racist but i am horrified at understanding how my whiteness has benefited me in my life as opposed to all those hoops you had to jump through, chi—chi. chi—chi nwanoku ending this edition on live music in pandemic times. i'm philippa thomas. thank you forjoining me for this week's edition of coronavirus: your stories. hello there. it's been a very thundery week so far across the country, thanks to the warmth and the humidity. and the next few days also looks like

we'll see more downpours. now, wednesday we saw some pretty intense thunderstorms across parts of england. this lightning strike was captured on one this lightning strike was captured by one of our weather watchers in leicestershire there. we also had some slow—moving downpours which gave rise to lots of rainfall fall in a short space of time, giving rise to some surface water flooding. some subtle changes to thursday morning. we've got an area of more persistent rain which has been moving out to the near continent, and will push in to the midlands and south east england to start thursday morning. it will be a muggy start for most, and we'll have further low cloud, mist and murk across the north sea coast. now, as we move through the course of today, it looks like that area of rain, some heavy bursts in it, will tend to move its way into north, into northern england, parts of wales. much of scotland and northern ireland should see a fine day with some sunshine, bar the odd heavy shower towards the south. but it is southern wales and into central and southern england into the afternoon where we could see these further slow—moving, thundery downpours developing. these could be really heavy, again, give rise to some flash flooding,

and a lot of rainfall in a short space of time. now, it is going to be another warm and muggy day for most. temperatures reaching highs of 21 or 22 degrees, but always cooler along the north sea coast. so these thunderstorms across the south of the country, through the afternoon, could cause some issues — stay tuned to your local radio, and to the latest weather forecast. as we move through thursday night, it looks like the thunderstorms will ease across the south. that rain will push its way westwards, into parts of scotland and northern ireland, by the end of the night, and they will have quite a bit of low cloud, mist and murk across the northern and eastern areas, so another muggy night to come. friday, quite a messy picture. it looks like we'll start off with that rain across the west, a lot of cloud around, but sunshine will break through into the afternoon and that will spark off some heavy thundery downpours, this time central northern and eastern areas perhaps look more favoured. again, it is going to be another warm and muggy day for most. then we see some big changes into the weekend. we lose the humidity and the thunderstorms into the continent, and this area of low pressure

will sweep in to bring stronger winds across the board, also a band of rain which will move through saturday night into sunday. so, windier, fresher conditions this weekend, with some rain at times. there will also be some sunshine too.

this is bbc news. welcome if you are watching here in the uk, on pbs in america, or around the globe. i'm mike embley. our top stories: as coronavirus cases rise again in china, we visit the wet markets blamed by some as the original source, and consider the latest theories. rayshard brooks shot in the back as he fled police in atlanta, georgia. the officer who killed him is charged with murder and ten other offences. the possible sentences for a felony murder conviction would be life, life without parole, or the death penalty. in exclusive analysis, we reveal the real global death toll from coronavirus is now over 500,000. a bombshell allegation from president trump's former national security adviser.