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The Hate Crime and Public Order Act came into effect in Scotland, making it a crime to communicate or behave in a manner ‘that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive’, with the intention of stirring up hatred based on age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. The Scottish government offered online training to 500 Police Scotland ‘Hate Crime Champions’. The author J.K. Rowling named ten people who call themselves women that she called men. Police Scotland said complaints had been received about her, but that but no action would be taken. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said: ‘We should not be criminalising people saying common sense things about biological sex.’ A private member’s bill to legalise medically assisted suicide was introduced in the Scottish parliament.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson resigned as leader of the Democratic Unionist party in Northern Ireland after being charged with historical sexual offences of rape and other sexual crimes, which he denies. He was replaced by his deputy Gavin Robinson as interim leader. A flurry of knighthoods from a clear sky went to Mohamed Mansour, who has given £5 million to the Conservative party (for services to business, charity and politics); the MPs Philip Davies and Mark Spencer, with Tracey Crouch and Harriett Baldwin being made dames; Demis Hassabis, the founder of the artificial intelligence company DeepMind; Ted Sarandos, the co-chief of Netflix (as an American given an honorary knighthood); Christopher Nolan, the film director, with his wife Emma Thomas, the film producer, made a dame. Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, was appointed director of the British Museum.

Pouria Zeraati, host of a programme on the Persian-language TV channel Iran International, was repeatedly stabbed by two people as he left his house in south-west London; three suspects had left Britain, the police said. The Army allowed officers and men to grow beards. The number of cross-Channel migrants in small boats this year rose to 5,435, the highest ever for the same period; 442 arrived on Easter Sunday alone. A mob of 300 teenagers, many in school uniform, rampaged through a Milton Keynes shopping centre. A bicycle rickshaw exploded into flames outside Buckingham Palace.

Abroad

Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, said that if Ukraine was defeated by Russia, nobody in Europe could feel safe. Russia had captured 195 square miles of Ukrainian territory since October, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Ukraine was reported to have destroyed 20 Russian tanks and armoured vehicles out of 48 in a convoy near Avdiivka. Ukraine said it had made a drone attack on a Russian drone-assembly plant at Yelabuga in Tatarstan, 800 miles from its border. Russia used its veto in the UN Security Council to block the renewal of a panel of UN experts that has monitored sanctions against North Korea for 14 years. An earthquake of magnitude 7.7 hit Taiwan.

Seven people, three of them British ex-servicemen, working for World Central Kitchen, a food-aid charity, were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza. Israel withdrew from the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after a two-week raid, during which it said it had killed 200 terrorists; most of the complex was left in ruins. Israeli planes destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing a senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and six others. Israel launched air strikes against Hezbollah arms stores in the Aleppo countryside; 36 Syrian servicemen and six Hezbollah fighters were reported killed.

In the Turkish local elections, the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) beat the ruling AKP of President Erdogan in Istanbul and Ankara, securing 38 per cent of the vote overall, against the AKP’s 35 per cent. At least 29 people died in a fire at the Masquerade nightclub in Istanbul. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced in New York to 25 years for fraud. Donald Trump posted a $175 million bond in his New York civil fraud case, pending an appeal. The destruction of the harbour bridge at Baltimore by a container ship last week could cost insurers £2.3 billion, the chief executive of Lloyd’s said. Six people are now known to have died in the accident. China is to remove 200 per cent tariffs on Australian wine imposed in 2020.                                                 CSH