Violence against women and girls, in all its myriad forms - physical and mental, blatant and insidious - is a global challenge. It reaches back through millennia and, lately, it has been turbo-charged by technology, which offers abusers new ways to shame, harass and monitor victims. What would it take to eradicate it?

Scotland’s first minister John Swinney wants to find out. Today, he will set out his programme for government (the Holyrood equivalent of the King’s speech), and Swinney surprised many when he pledged to put ending violence against women at the heart of his government’s ambitions for the coming year and beyond.

In other news: Nepal-Tibet rescue teams are working to reach more than 900 missing hydropower workers, thought to be trapped underground after devastating flash floods. Iran's new US sanctions campaign is expected to push many Iranians into deeper poverty as food inflation soars. The British Museum privately hosted Palantir founder Peter Thiel for a private viewing of the Bayeux tapestry. Countries are legally obliged to consider reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and address legacy racial discrimination, a UN committee has said. And a Las Vegas jury found former South Side Compton Crips gang leader Duane Keith Davis guilty of the murder of Tupac Shakur, closing the case nearly 30 years after the rapper was gunned down.