Before Orange Is the New Black made her a star, Cox endured bullying, abuse, harassment and violence. She talks about the bad old days – and her fears they’re on their way back

Two days before she spoke to me, Laverne Cox had been at the premiere of a new, animated Animal Farm, in which she voices Snowball. The film is wildly controversial, for its absolutely unOrwellian, childish tone, complete with happy ending, but Cox had bigger things on her mind than film criticism.

“If we don’t wake up and don’t understand, trans people will be exterminated,” she said that day in April. “People’s rights are being taken away, people are losing their jobs, people are losing healthcare, people are being detransitioned in prison, gender-affirming care is being attacked, not just for children but also for adults. It’s never been about protecting women – it’s always been about creating a permission structure to scapegoat trans people, to dehumanise trans people, to take away our rights and to eliminate us from public life.”

As the world waited for rational outcomes from irrational players, the people being bombed were forced to adjust to the fact of terror as part of daily life

“Humans take a lot of killing,” wrote Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes. As bleak a phrase as it is, McCourt was talking about resilience, how much poverty and abuse a person can withstand and still survive. But the other side of human capacity for pain is how much can be forced upon us and normalised. It is bewildering how war – shocking and intolerable at first – quickly becomes a matter of fact. Few conflicts have demonstrated that more vividly than the war on Iran. For months it was a matter of low-grade strikes, hot and cold rhetoric, and near-conclusions to the hostilities that never came. Sharp political crisis manifested as grinding hardship and upheaval for the people.

We have a peace deal now, for that be thankful, but think what preceded it. Over the past week alone, Donald Trump had ordered strikes on Iran, and expressed a desire to take Kharg Island, which handles 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. He then prematurely declared that the US had ended the war on Iran in a “great settlement”. The markets did their customary flicker in response to the announcement of a deal, but the rest of us, not invested in oil futures, could have been forgiven for not registering a reaction to imminent peace – he had made the same promise almost 40 times. In press conferences, social media posts and interviews over the past few months, Trump had said relax, it’s almost over. Just how not over it was can be traced by the strikes and counter-strikes across the region, the closure of the strait of Hormuz, general global economic upheaval and specific Middle East destabilisation.

When the artist came home from LA, it seemed like a retirement. But it heralded an astonishing new chapter. Our critic remembers their thrilling dinners together – and the dazzling new works that arrived in his inbox every morning

It was springtime in Paris and I was floating among young green leaves and white blossom – but I was not in a park. I was on an upper floor of the Fondation Louis Vuitton delighting, wallowing in several of David Hockney’s iPad paintings of his garden in Normandy. In one room, this green oasis was shown by the light of the silvery moon: the darkened chamber was alive with shining white lunar discs, blue clouds and the shadowy fingers of tree branches.

It was early April last year and this was the opening of David Hockney 25, a blockbuster show, curated with his close involvement, covering his entire career – but with an emphasis on his work this century. What a bold and bloody-minded spectacle it was, insisting that Hockney’s later pictures of straw bales and ponds are just as good if not better than his famous early swimming pools and sexy portraits. And what a triumph! With extraordinary aplomb, Hockney made his point. You went from gazing in awe at some of his greatest early paintings, basking in their Californian and swinging London light, to suddenly standing in Yorkshire fields in the early 21st century, taking in views of emerald hedgerows and purple trees. And it all suddenly made sense.

Amid fears the wreck will be more accessible to explorers – and new species – as the climate warms, conservationists want to create the region’s first underwater protected area

The harsh temperatures, treacherous currents and shifting pack ice of the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea, which crushed and sank his ship, Endurance, in 1915, led Ernest Shackleton to describe it as the “worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.

For more than a century, the inhospitable conditions, which present a challenge even for modern icebreaker ships, helped to protect the lost wreck, which was discovered in 2022, its structure still largely intact.

With an adaptation of Night and Day hitting cinemas, the pioneering author’s work continues to inspire audiences

She’s long been admired by students of English literature, but 85 years after her death, Virginia Woolf has broken out of the seminar room to become an unexpected cultural phenomenon.

The author of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, whose innovative prose helped redefine the modern novel, is finding a new audience through a string of high-profile adaptations.

In a stark contrast to previous tournaments, and Baden-Baden in 2006 in particular, the players’ partners are set to keep a low profile while some may not travel at all

The BBC is not the only World Cup institution to have stayed at home.

As England make final preparations for their opening game of the tournament against Croatia on Wednesday, only around half of Thomas Tuchel’s squad can look forward to being reunited with their families in Dallas, with many having opted to skip the group stage.

Initial deal expected to be signed on Friday but questions remain over strait of Hormuz, Lebanon conflict and Iran’s nuclear program

• Peace deal between US and Iran announced, with strait of Hormuz expected to reopen

• Explainer: what do we know about the US-Iran peace deal?

The agreement between the United ⁠States and Iran should allow for the “immediate reopening” ⁠of the ⁠Strait ​of Hormuz, EU Commission President Ursula von ⁠der Leyen said on Monday.

“The priority now is ⁠its swift and full implementation ​by all parties,” ‌von der ‌Leyen said about the ‌announced deal.

Prime minister announces ban, saying social media is making children unhappy and unsafe

• Social media to be banned in UK for under-16s, Starmer announces

• UK parents: how do you feel about the under-16s social media ban?

Starmer acknowledges some teenagers will get round these restrictons. But that does not make the rules pointless, he says.

Will it mean that no child ever looks at social media again? No.

But look, this might shock you, but it doesn’t shock parents of teenagers; they get around other laws too.

Some technology companies want us to think that social media is unchangeable, part of an almost natural order.

But we have to resist that kind of learned helplessness. We have agency, we can change it, and we will.

‘Pointless’ reviews are wasting public money and ‘significantly harming’ the mental health of claimants, charity says

Disabled people with lifelong conditions are repeatedly being put through “pointless” benefit reassessments, contrary to official guidance, new analysis suggests.

A study by the anti-poverty charity Z2K has found that hundreds of thousands of disabled people are going through “unnecessary” personal independence payment (Pip) reviews, “wasting” public money and “significantly harming” the mental and physical health of claimants.

G7 leaders to meet in Évian-les-Bains in France later today to discuss the most pressing issues, including Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran

• Kyiv monastery set on fire in night of Russian attacks across Ukraine

• Macron frames Évian G7 agenda in hope Trump will stay for whole summit

The G7 summit will not formally kick off until later today, but the EU’s von der Leyen and Costa are meeting with the president of the Swiss Confederation Guy Parmelin now as part of the build up to the meeting.

There are more of this sort of diplomatic meetings on the sidelines of the main event: Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is hosting Japan’s prime minister Sanae Takaichi in Rome, before travelling to France later today.