For the first time in his life, Wes is enjoying keeping secrets – though he did admit he isn’t ‘keen on fighting a war’

When Andy Burnham announced his first cabinet in July, few would have had Wes Streeting marked down as a likely defence secretary. Not even Wes. And no one is more bullish about Wes’s life chances than Wes. It just didn’t seem a natural fit. Defence secretaries tend to be more the unsmiling types who operate in the shadows. Politicians like John Healey, with the pallor of someone who has spent too long in underground bunkers with military chief of staffs. People who slide in and out of rooms without making a fuss.

Wes has always been someone who likes to be noticed. Enjoys the theatre of Westminster. The first to arrive at a party and the last to leave. A natural gossip. “Psst – you’ll never guess what Zelenskyy just said to Trump.”

Russian meddling probably didn’t affect the referendum result – but the Kremlin’s motives for wanting to undermine the EU still matter

Russian territorial aggression against Ukraine didn’t feature much in the Brexit referendum campaign. It made headlines briefly when Boris Johnson blamed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea on the European Union.

According to the Vote Leave frontman, Vladimir Putin’s land grab was a consequence of Brussels making foreign policy “on the hoof” and having “pretensions to running a defence policy”.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

At first the idea of mercy was something that helped me through the ordeal. But would real forgiveness be a form of Stockholm syndrome?

I knew Mohamed Tahlil as a gentle pirate who oversaw a team of guards during the first months of my life as a hostage in 2012. I had travelled to Somalia to report on the outbreak of modern piracy off the coast. On the 10th day, along a dusty road near Galkayo, in the centre of the country, I was kidnapped by pirates. For the next two and a half years, I was a hostage.

I spent most of my time on a thin, sweat-soaked foam mattress on the floor of a dusty room. The dim concrete prison houses changed, but the filth and the circumstances didn’t. Sometimes my captors moved me into the Somali savannah – where we camped in the open and slept on the ground – and for a six-month stretch, I was held on a hijacked tuna vessel, where I joined 28 fishers from east Asia who had been captured about three weeks before I was placed on board. (They had captured me on land, but they were a pirate gang, organised to capture ships at sea.) In each location, pirate guards would sit around with AK-47s and listen to the radio, or else chew khat, a narcotic plant.

Should you look for French seams or overlocking? Is dry-clean only a red flag? And how do you spot quality when shopping online? We asked the pros

• How to make your leather last a lifetime

Take a look at the outfit you’re wearing now: how many times have you worn each item? And how long have you had them? Just over 10 years ago, Eco-Age founder Livia Firth and journalist Lucy Siegle launched the 30 wears challenge to encourage people to buy clothes they would wear at least 30 times.

The 30 wears challenge is a great concept. As a journalist interested in sustainable fashion, I’ve enjoyed applying this rule for years and found the goal can often be surpassed, but with one proviso: clothing must be chosen carefully. The goal is only realistic if garments are of good enough quality to stand up to repeated wear. So, how do you know if your clothes really are well made? Does it mean you have to spend a fortune on them? Do you need to know the difference between a French seam and an overlock seam? And how can we judge clothing quality before buying if we are, like 37% of Britons, getting most of our clothes online? I spoke to experts to find out.

I was seduced by creators hawking passive income hustles. Like the language used in MLMs, it seemed too good to be true

A very specific kind of content began taking over my social media feeds at the end of last year.

I had just finished a short-term contract and returned, with some reluctance, to the financial masochism of freelancing. As I mourned the end of steady paychecks and paid days off – as well as finally having enough money for regular haircuts – I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the glow of the screen.

The pioneering computer scientist on why Trump is using ‘superintelligence’ wrong, whether AI could wipe out humanity – and how our biggest challenge will be accepting we’re not the only intelligent beings

Donald Trump is a “corrupt, senile felon” whose fixation on the term superintelligence proves he knows nothing about AI, said Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather” of the technology, in a wide-ranging interview where he doubled down on recent warnings that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity and scoffed at claims the industry could regulate itself.

The pioneering computer scientist, whose work helped lay the foundations of modern AI, has since become one of the technology’s most vocal critics. His latest remarks come after a tumultuous month during which a growing list of senior AI scientists and researchers have joined Hinton in ringing the alarm about how the technology he helped create could ultimately escape human control, sparking an industry crisis, the hasty assembly of congressional meetings and a rare global consensus that something must be done.

Move from anti-immigration or anti-Muslim views to violence is ‘most marked trend’ in spy agency’s caseload over last year

Extremists with anti-migrant opinions are becoming increasingly likely to consider carrying out terrorist attacks against immigration centres and asylum hotels in the UK, the head of MI5 has warned.

Ken McCallum said a shift from radicalised rightwing sentiment to violence was “the most marked trend” in the spy agency’s caseload over the past year, contributing to a rise in the overall UK terror threat level.

William Chapman was pronounced dead at scene on Saturday after scaling fence and entering enclosure

A man killed by a tiger at a zoo in South Yorkshire has been named locally as William Chapman.

Chapman scaled the fence and entered the enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster on Saturday afternoon. Witnesses described seeing Chapman, who has not been officially named by police, walking up to a 200kg male Siberian tiger, named Altai, which attacked him.

More than 50 families call for investigation into how Vincent Chan was allowed to return to job after inquiry by nursery

The parents of the victims of paedophile nursery worker Vincent Chan have reacted with fury to the news that he was cleared to return to work after “significant concerns” were raised by the parent of a young girl.

As first revealed in the Guardian, Chan was reported to his employer, the nursery chain Bright Horizons, by a concerned parent in 2021.

• Playoff semi-final second leg: England 5-0 Greece (agg 8-1)

• Goalscorers: Russo 3 75, James 16 34, Stanway 30

A mercurial Lauren James scored two and provided an assist in a thrilling four-goal first 45 minutes against Greece, as England put themselves two games away from securing their place at the World Cup.

James’s double was matched by Alessia Russo, who scored either side of the break, and her Arsenal ­teammate Georgia Stanway was also on the scoresheet, with the Lionesses setting up a playoff final against Ukraine in November and December. It was a clinical and slick statement from England, albeit against a team they should bypass with ease.