In her work as an online safety campaigner, the baroness and Bridget Jones director has seen things she can never unsee – and she’s furious at the tech overlords doing nothing to stop the abuse

Through the open windows behind Beeban Kidron drifts the unmistakable sound of children playing. Her north ­London office is sandwiched between a school and a nursery, and the occasional playground shriek functions as an aural reminder of what we’re here to discuss: the safety and happiness of young people, growing up in an age of screens.

Though our conversation takes some dark turns, only once does the film director turned crossbench peer and online safety campaigner for children lose her composure. “I have seen a lot of things I’d rather not see,” she says, slowly. “But the worst thing was not the most extreme. It was watching a child’s face as she realised that the person who she thought was her friend wasn’t her friend; that the sex acts she’d been doing weren’t for her friend; and that there may have been other people in the room.

From dynamite debuts to must-read memoirs and magical children’s fiction, here’s our selection of this year’s hottest holiday reads

• Leading authors Mark Haddon, Samantha Harvey, Zadie Smith select their favourites

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The country is ready to blow away decades of dashed hopes and celebrate, with marching bands and all-night parties

Scotland is leaning into one of its most treasured traditions: embracing the hope and anxiety of a football World Cup, with a healthy dose of self-deprecating style.

There are brash new tartans, an Edinburgh bar offering free Irn-Bru-infused “fiery ginger” beers for patrons with red hair, a collaboration between Scottish whisky firms and a Brazilian distiller, and all-night parties in nightclubs repurposed as fanzones.

He pushed landscape painting into the stratosphere, demolished one-point perspective, invented the Los Angeles look, embraced iPads, created dazzling stage sets for theatre and opera …

David Hockney didn’t just appear out of nowhere like some fully formed artistic wunderkind. His work was a synthesis of so much that came before and was happening around him. He took the ideas of minimalism and abstraction, fused them with the traditions of portraiture, and filtered it all through the innovations in pop and conceptualism that were going on in the 1960s. He was heavily indebted to a lot of other artists, but he synthesised all those influences into something so simple, immediate, digestible and approachable that it became something new.

The philanthropist always saw Epstein for who he really was – despite his meetings with her then husband Bill Gates. Now carving out a life on her own terms, she explains why she’s focused on the fight for women’s health

Melinda French Gates has entered a new phase of life, and it is “beautiful”, she says. It is five years since her painful, public divorce from the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and two years since she stepped down from their charity, the Gates Foundation, to focus her full attention on Pivotal, the philanthropic organisation she founded in 2015 to promote women’s empowerment. Her three children have all left home, she goes by “Nonna” to her two granddaughters, and as an empty nester she finds herself in the strange position of having time on her hands.

She has started visiting her local independent bookshop more often, chatting to the staff about what she should read next; when she finishes work at five, she often texts a friend to meet for a walk, and they go exploring new neighbourhoods of Seattle, decaf coffees in hand. She no longer runs daily but insists on a morning stroll to enjoy the natural beauty of her adoptive home town, Lake Washington glittering in late-spring light. This morning, she saw a blue heron, she says, sounding almost boastful.

Claims of two-tier policing and uncontrolled immigration may not be borne out by the facts, but that has not stopped them being played up for political ends

As the people of Glengormley, on the northern edge of Belfast, tidied up and prepared for more violence in the midst of what has been described as a modern-day pogrom, a court 500 miles away in Southampton, on the south coast of England, started to deal with its own outbreak of thuggery.

The trigger for this week’s riots in the Northern Irish capital had been the image of a black assailant who appeared to be stabbing and slashing his supine white victim in the face and neck while shouting in Arabic. The suspect was later revealed to be a refugee from Sudan.

Exclusive: Greater Manchester mayor ‘serious’ about taking over ‘essentials of life’ if he becomes PM, a move critics say could cost taxpayer billions

A decade-long project to bring water and energy into public control will lie at the heart of Andy Burnham’s agenda should he become prime minister, according to sources close to the Greater Manchester mayor.

Several close allies of Burnham have said he wants to take over broad swathes of UK utilities in an effort to improve performance and potentially reduce bills for consumers.

Excoriating article under Caroline Dinenage’s name remains on ConservativeHome website

It was a crisis that toppled a BBC director general and his head of news. After contentious accusations of bias by a former external adviser, Michael Prescott, both Tim Davie and Deborah Turness quit the corporation.

At the height of the media storm that ensued last November, the corporation was struck by another blow. A key figure in scrutinising the BBC – the chair of the Commons culture, media and sport committee – delivered an equally damning verdict.

Company said US government believes safeguards can be bypassed and product used to identify software vulnerabilities

Anthropic said it will “abruptly disable” its most advanced AI models for all users after the US government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns.

The company received the export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, without being given specific details of the national security concern, Anthropic said in a statement.

⚽️ Latest news and discussion as tournament continues
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⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Wallchart | Mail Will

Looking for some extra reading? Jacob Steinberg and David Hytner have delved into the making of Declan Rice, England’s midfield powerhouse, whose performances could feasibly be the difference between success and failure at this tournament.

An optimistic prediction for Scotland here. While Haiti thrashing New Zealand 4-0 raised a few worried eyebrows, it should be noted that they lost 2-1 to Peru three days later. It’s always hard to judge a team by their warm-up matches given the wholesale changes, and Haiti do have some danger men like Duckens Nazon and Sunderland’s Wilson Isidor, but Steve Clarke’s side are still favourites.