The broadcaster and author talks maternity leave, childhood curiosity and her imaginary radio audience

At school, I was the girl who wanted to dissect sheep lungs. I had a lack of horror around gore, I’m not squeamish at all, which was helpful when it came to all those needles for IVF. I thought about being a surgeon. I also thought it would be interesting to become a fishmonger. I’m fascinated by fish – I don’t know why.

As an only child, radio was my companion. I had a little battery-operated radio at the table next to my cereal bowl.

Government plans for Pip cuts will drive up costs for local authority social care services and NHS, campaigners warn

The government’s plans to cut at least £5bn from disability benefits could end up driving more costs on to cash-strapped councils, according to campaigners and local government officials.

Last week, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall published a green paper including a package of cuts to disability benefits. Up to 1.2 million fewer people could be eligible for Pip by 2029/30 as a result of the changes, according to the Resolution Foundation thinktank, including existing claimants losing their benefits when their needs are reassessed.

In a memo on Friday, president also revoked clearances for Antony Blinken, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Letitia James

Donald Trump moved to revoke security clearances for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and a string of other top Democrats and political enemies in a presidential memo issued late on Friday.

The security clearance revocations include former secretary of state Antony Blinken, former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, former Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump for fraud, as well as Biden’s entire family. They will no longer have access to classified information – a courtesy typically offered to former presidents and some officials after they have left public service.

Large-scale analysis of UK police and education records reveals link between expulsion and violence within year

Teenagers who are permanently excluded from school are twice as likely to commit serious violence within a year of their expulsion than those who were merely suspended, a large-scale new analysis of police and education records has shown.

London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) , set up to tackle the number of teenagers dying as a result of knife crime in the capital, said the new research is the first direct evidence of “a clear link between children being excluded from school and involvement in violence”.

The state with the most radical abortion law is seeking to make an example of Maria Margarita Rojas

Texas is a fairly decent place to be an armadillo (they’re the official state small mammal) and an increasingly dire place to be a woman. In 2021, it implemented a near-total abortion ban: the most radical abortion law in the US. Now it’s going even further in its crusade to outlaw abortion. On Monday, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, announced the first criminal charges under Texas’s abortion ban. Maria Margarita Rojas, a licensed midwife, was charged with the illegal performance of an abortion and with practicing medicine without a license, according to a press release from Paxton’s office . Her employee Jose Ley was also charged.

President ordered attorney general to refer partisan lawsuits to White House and recommend sanctions against firms

Donald Trump expanded his retribution campaign against law firms on Friday night as he ordered his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to refer what she determined to be partisan lawsuits to the White House and recommend punitive actions that could cripple the firms involved.

The directives were outlined in a sweeping memo in which Trump alleged that too many law firms were filing frivolous claims designed to cause delays. It came after a week of setbacks, in which a slew of judges issued temporary injunctions blocking the implementation of Trump’s agenda.

Vatican says pontiff will come to the window of his room on Sunday to offer a greeting and blessing

Pope Francis is poised to make his first public appearance in more than five weeks, greeting people from the window of his hospital room where he is recovering from pneumonia in both lungs .

The pontiff, 88, wants to come to the window of his room at Rome’s Gemelli hospital after midday prayers on Sunday to give the greeting and blessing, the Vatican said in a ­statement today.

Strikes come as freed hostages and family members of people still held in Gaza urge Netanyahu to stop the fighting

Israeli artillery and airstrikes hit southern Lebanon on Saturday, in a fresh clash endangering the shaky truce that ended a year-long conflict against Hezbollah, as 40 survivors of Hamas captivity called on the Israeli government to halt the “endless war”.’

Three rockets fired from Lebanon towards Israel were intercepted by the Israeli air force, according to a spokesperson for the Israeli army, the first time in more than three months that groups in Lebanon have fired at Israel.

The Netflix drama isn’t just a critical smash – its tale of social media-fuelled violence to women by young boys has forced a national debate in the UK that might lead to genuine political change

When Adolescence launched on Netflix a week ago, its timing felt uncanny. This hard-hitting series about the malign influence of the online “manosphere” arrived just as news broke about a story that had been making UK headlines for nine months: that of notorious crossbow killer Kyle Clifford, who raped and murdered 25-year-old Louise Hunt last year after she ended their relationship. The latest update showed that Clifford had searched the web for Andrew Tate’s podcast mere hours before killing Hunt, her sister Hannah and mother Carol at their family home in Hertfordshire.

The show’s star and co-creator Stephen Graham was originally horrified by a spate of violent incidents across Britain in which teenage boys committed deadly knife crimes against girls. The actor said these shocking stories “hurt my heart” and asked of him: “What’s going on in our society where this kind of thing is becoming a regular occurrence?” He teamed up with screenwriter Jack Thorne – a regular collaborator who has worked with Graham on such acclaimed British dramas as This Is England, The Virtues andHelp – to create a potent drama interrogating this distressing trend. Thorne says they wanted to “look into the eye of male rage”.