Portrait of the Week: hate crimes, surprise knighthoods and flaming rickshaws

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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.