The Brit award winner on being scammed by a model agency, coming to terms with sexual assault, and wrestling with impostor syndrome

Born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in 1994 and raised in Bewdley, Becky Hill is a singer and songwriter. She began making music at 14, performing in a band called Shaking Trees, before reaching the semifinals on the first series of The Voice UK. She has since had two top 10 albums and collaborated with David Guetta, Chase and Status, Joel Corry and Rudimental, and won the Brit award for best dance act in 2022 and 2023. Her latest album, Rebecca, is out on 13 November.

This was taken for a kids’ modelling agency, which we later discovered was a scam. Every stage of the process – getting pictures taken, sending them to the agency, getting them back – cost us more money. We’d wire over £100 and get nothing in return. Our family wasn’t rich, so Mum didn’t tell Dad what we were up to – he probably doesn’t even know about it to this day. As for my modelling ambitions, I never pursued it further. I was cute until the age of seven, then started to go on the turn.

It’s not clear that financial interests are driving White House policy, but they run parallel even as resistance mounts

Donald Trump’s sons, through a series of AI-linked defense and technology ventures, have picked up a $620m Pentagon loan, a Marine Corps robotics contract and an undisclosed air force drone deal in the past year. His longtime friend Michael Dell won a Pentagon contract worth nearly $9bn. And this week, as public support for artificial intelligence sinks to some of the lowest levels ever recorded, the president went to bat for the industry. .

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades,” he posted on Truth Social Monday. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers.” It was the first of many aggressively pro-AI posts he would make this week.

Fourteen years ago, Twitter was the fastest, funniest game on the web. Now I’ve been driven out by so-called ‘online activists’. The only answer is to unplug and try this instead

God, I love social media! I cannot believe my exquisite luck – to exist in a time when it was invented! Bliss it is in this dawn to be @live! If you’ve not been on Twitter yet – please join! It’s kind of like a cross between your best ever pub, and the bit on Live & Kicking where celebrities like Duran Duran were doing the phone-in, and you could ring in and talk to them. Literally! Because Duran Duran are on Twitter! Well, Simon Le Bon is. And Spandau Ballet, too! Well, Gary Kemp. And they’re really funny. During the royal wedding with Kate and William, when all the lesser royals were herded on to some shitty coaches, Kemp was horrified.

Nigel Farage’s tactics are to play up the anxiety and resentment that people feel. Labour’s job is simple: to offer hope and change

Despite the energised start Andy Burnham has made as prime minister, plenty of his party’s MPs and hardcore activists are still haunted by a familiar sense of insecurity. Underpinned by a political version of impostor syndrome, it runs deep – and, bar the odd spell of Labour optimism, it always has. So it is with the battle between Labour and Reform UK that will define an election that could arrive much sooner than some people think, and a widely held ambivalence on the left about the possibility of Nigel Farage’s party taking power. Reform is apparently in deep trouble, yet also still in with a serious chance. How come?

Investigations into the party and its leadership’s finances by both the Metropolitan police and parliament’s standards commissioner may worsen Reform’s woes. Those investigations predate the two recently announced £36m donations from the crypto tycoons Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, which themselves risk being backdatedly ruled illegal and are reportedly already being spent on 400 “field agents”. The two mega-donations symbolise two connected stories. One is about the possible buyout of our fragile democracy. The other centres on how, from much of the public’s perspective, all the allegations about Farage and his party might have already turned into an indecipherable blizzard. So, although Reform is down, it is still far from out.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

You don’t have to reveal the contents, but I’ve seen families torn apart by unexpected inheritance plans

My wife and I have three children and several grandchildren. Our will may contain some surprises for them. Is it better to reveal its contents while we are still alive, or let our beneficiaries discover them when we die?

We gave our children considerable financial help, enabling them to buy their first homes. We have also made sizeable contributions to our grandchildren’s education funds.

Economies thrown into renewed turmoil as AI debt, Iran war and soaring government bond yields fuel alarm

At the height of the summer, the mood was optimistic in the world’s financial capitals. Powered by the AI revolution, the US stock market had rallied to a fresh all-time high, as investors bet the multitrillion-dollar investment spree would overshadow the hit from the Iran war.

Now the warning lights are flashing red. As the fighting in the Middle East intensifies without clear sign of a resolution, financial markets have been thrown into renewed turmoil. A slowdown looms in the AI arms race, and tinderbox conditions in the market for government debt are fuelling alarm.

Charles lands at Heathrow with just two bags and nowhere to go as a result of Brexit and Stockholm’s hardline immigration position

Doubled over a Heathrow baggage trolley, the former British business director is sobbing uncontrollably, exhausted emotionally and physically after being deported from Sweden.

Hours earlier the 65-year-old had been marched on to a plane in Stockholm, separated from his home and his Swedish wife after a five-year battle to stay in the country after Brexit came to an end.

Action against Ofcom comes as social media companies are being accused of using courts to slow down implementation

Meta has launched a fresh legal challenge against Britain’s media regulator in the latest of a slew of actions by social media companies who are accused of using the courts to slow down implementation of the Online Safety Act.

Lawyers for the parent company of Facebook served notice during the week in an appeal against placing WhatsApp and Instagram, which are also owned by Meta, in a category that subjects them to additional duties.

Exclusive: Stark health inequalities in terms of deaths before age of 75, NHS data reveals

Adults with severe mental illness are nearly five times more likely than their peers to die from serious physical diseases before the age of 75, according to research.

The analysis of NHS data by the Rethink Mental Illness charity reveals that people with severe mental health problems die 15-20 years earlier than the wider adult population, largely due to preventable physical conditions.

Pop star has faced boycott calls since rapper Macklemore was removed from tour after shouting ‘free Palestine’ at concert

Ed Sheeran has opened a solo concert in Philadelphia with comments about Gaza, saying what is happening is “catastrophic and unjustifiable”, in his first show since his tour was plunged into turmoil.

“My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians’ lives, of children’s lives,” Sheeran said on Saturday, adding that he wanted his music and shows to be about unity and humanity, not politics.