If a TV show about Washington DC politics featured a plotline in which a secretary of defence thought to be reckless and chaotic ordered an antique globe moved to his office, only for it to be badly damaged in the process, viewers would switch off in droves. It would simply seem far too implausible.
And yet, according to reporting in the , that’s exactly what has happened to Pete Hegseth in the Pentagon. Hegseth loves to hark back to an imagined era in which the US military was populated solely by alpha male “warfighters”, all clean-shaven and ruggedly good-looking, not worrying themselves about details like DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), strategy or planning.
MI5 monitored Nye Bevan for more than 20 years, records show
Anuerin “Nye” Bevan – feted for founding the NHS – was subject to monitoring by MI5 for more than two decades, according to newly released official files.
What you need to know
Papers released to the National Archives show Bevan first came to the attention of the Security Service in the 1930s amid concern about his links with prominent communists.
The monitoring continued even after he became a minister in the post-war Labour government when he drove through the creation of the NHS.
5 min read
What do the files tell us?
- The files start from 1933, four years after Bevan became MP for Ebbw Vale in South Wales.
- At the time, he was notorious as a staunch critic of Labour prime minister Ramsay MacDonald.
- Bevan met many high-profile left-wing leaders from trade unionists to communists.
- This meant his name commonly appeared in intercepted letters and tapped conversations.
A closer look at the files
- He strongly opposed the government’s handling of the Second World War, which attracted particular MI5 attention.
- MI5 deemed it “sufficiently serious” in May 1949 when Bevan was associated with communist Wilfred McCartney – a serial offender of the Official Secrets Act.
- Prime minister Clement Atlee was informed of Bevan’s maintained relationships with the Communist Party of Great Britain.
3 min read
Bevan was ‘never a spy’
It was previously thought that Bevan was the subject of Security Service surveillance during WW2. This significant set of documents confirms that it was the case for the best part of three decades. What is revealed is that Nye was never a spy but someone who was true to his country and believed in democratic socialism to transform Britain for the better.
NICK THOMAS-SYMONDS, Labour mp and historian
What is PHP – and why did it spark a global cyber security scramble?
A total of 32 government services are offline and four are partially unavailable amid the , a minister has said in the House of Lords.
Organisations around the world have been scrambling to fix a critical security flaw in the programming language PHP.
What is PHP?
- Developed in the 90s to serve dynamic web pages, PHP still powers lots of platforms today, including Wikipedia, online shops and WordPress.
- According to cyber security firm Wiz, which helped uncover the critical vulnerabilities this week, PHP powers 70 per cent of the world’s websites.
The vulnerability
- A group of cyber security researchers disclosed two vulnerabilities within PHP this week, which they warned could upend sites across the internet.
The alert disrupted services globally, from gaming platforms to government portals and online forums.
The impact on the UK
- As of 12pm on Wednesday, 32 UK government services were offline and four were partially unavailable, a minister said in the House of Lords.
- The security of next week’s Government Budget has not been compromised by the flaw.
- A spokeswoman added that it is not “standard practice” to provide a list of government services that are affected.
What happens now?
- Organisations have been warned that Russian state actors or organised criminals could exploit the flaws again.
4 min read
Gusts of 70-80mph in exposed coastal areas and high ground are possible.
The Met Office has announced the second named storm of the year, with Storm Boelo to bring strong winds and heavy rain to parts of Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England on Saturday and Sunday.
What you need to know
- Storm Boelo is expected to mostly affect northern parts of the country over the weekend.
- Strongest winds will be across Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England on Saturday.
- Boelo’s arrival comes less than 48 hours after the announcement of the first named storm, Austen, which is set to impact on Friday.
- When Boelo hits, it will bring “impactful winds” to northern parts on Saturday night and through Sunday, the Met Office warned.
3 min read
What to expect
Gusts of 70-80mph in exposed coastal areas and high ground are possible, with 50-60mph gusts more widely. The strong winds will be accompanied by heavy rain, making for an impactful weekend of weather. Severe weather warnings and forecast detail will continue to develop, so people should keep up to date with the forecast.
Chris Bulmer, Met Office Deputy Chief Forecaster
The weather warnings for Storm Austen already in place
All the ways Trump’s man in Moscow debased the US in front of Putin
Sat at a big round table in a gilded chair in St Petersburg on Wednesday, face-to-face with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, US envoy Steve Witkoff had the eyes of the world on him. Would this be the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine? Would he push for peace?
‘All Putin’s Christmases come at once’
One reporter described it instead as “all Putin’s Christmases come at once”. Matthew Sussex, a national security expert at Australia’s Deakin University, warned not to view it as a game of geopolitical poker. Witkoff was “playing tiddlywinks”, he said. A promise to resume trilateral talks would probably amount to nothing.
What Witkoff said to Putin
You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian, you are a humanitarian also, sir. And I salute that. I commend you, and I thank you again.
Witkoff said to Putin, early in the public portion of the talks before they began in earnest behind closed doors
What was he referring to?
- He was referring to Russia’s release earlier that day of Stephen Hubbard, a retired US schoolteacher imprisoned in Russia.
- This is not the first time Witkoff has been effusive in his praise of Putin.
- When he met Putin in September he told the Russian leader that just before the meeting they “were all talking about when we retire, we’ll have all these incredible stories…and yours will be right at the top of it all”.
3 min read
How did Trump react?
Calling Putin a “humanitarian” was such a reach that even Donald Trump tried to qualify it later, saying: “Well, I guess you could say [it] for that particular purpose, for the purpose of allowing a man who was thinking he was going to be in prison for life, out, but you know, I wouldn’t say anything one way or the other, you know?”
Other Republicans found it harder to swallow.
It’s official – Glee will return to our screens
At last month’s series 13 premiere, director Ryan Murphy revealed he’d written an for a Glee reboot.
It’s been 11 years since the final episode of the musical-comedy-drama aired but now “Gleeks” have something to believe in as reported that Disney+ and Hulu officially picked up a revival of the iconic show.
I just finished the script an hour ago, so, we have a script. Brad, Ian, and I, who wrote all the first two seasons, have written something. I’ve been in touch with around 10 of the original cast members.
murphy in an interview with entertainment tonight
Who is coming back for the reboot?
Ryan Murphy seemingly confirmed that 10 of the original cast members are “enthusiastic” about reprising their roles – who are they?
Sources revealed to that Lea Michele, who played Rachel Berry, is “in”. Heather Morris confirmed in an Instagram post that Brittany Pierce “is alive and well” and back for more”. Chord Overstreet, who played Sam Evans, seemingly announced his return on X: “Reunited and it feels so good!”
What will it be about?
Will it pick up from where the series ended in 2015? Or will it fast-forward a decade?
As of the series finale, it left off as:
- Mr Shue becomes the principal of the up-and-coming performing arts school, McKinley High, and names its auditorium in Finn’s honour.
- Rachel wins a Tony Award, marries Jesse St James and becomes a surrogate mother to Blaine.
- Mercedes pursues a career in pop music and ultimately ends up as an opening act for Beyoncé.
A cultural phenomenon
How popular was Glee?
10 million
The chaotic six-series-long drama attracted an average audience of 10 million viewers a week, transforming stars like Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff as household names.
207
Known for its ballads, the show landed 207 covers on the Billboard Hot 100 alongside winning six Emmys and four Golden Globes during its run.
Blood tests could identify men most at risk of prostate cancer
Researchers at Oxford University have discovered signs in men’s blood that could protect those most at risk of the disease.
Here is everything you need to know.
What you need to know
This latest research will help predict which men will develop the cancer most aggressively and hopes that doctors will soon be able to screen for it in hospitals.
- It found that 12 proteins in the blood were linked to a future diagnosis of the cancer – sometimes appearing as late as 15 years.
The expert view
Prostate cancer is not one disease. By measuring thousands of proteins in blood collected years before diagnosis, we can investigate how men who develop aggressive cancer differ from men who do not. We hope this will improve how we assess risk in the future.
Dr Zhe Huang, a postdoctoral epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health
How does this research change current practices?
- The research found that the immune system may be keeping early cancerous stages in check before diagnosis.
- It opens avenues to identify the processes that drive aggressive forms of prostate cancer.
- It could help implement a national screening programme, which does not currently exist in the UK.
- It could help prevent unnecessary biopsies and treatments for slow-growing tumours.
- While these proteins do not always equate to cancer, they help reveal biological changes which can lead to the increased likelihood of it.
Prostate cancer – in numbers
- 7proteins linked to aggressive cancer.
- 1,500men a year will be offered tests under the latest NHS proposals, unless they have symptoms.
- 12,000men a year die from the disease in the UK.
- 63,000men are diagnosed with the cancer annually in the UK.
To get the aesthetics of his own office in line with his vision, Hegseth reportedly requested that one of two 30-inch globes used during the Second World War by General (later president) Dwight D Eisenhower be moved especially.
Whereas usually a cherished relic of US military history such as this would be carefully moved in time by trained curators, Hegseth’s staff decided they didn’t need to bother with such niceties. How hard can it be to move a globe across a building, after all?
Evidently, it was more difficult than they anticipated. During the attempted move, “the spherical portion of the globe was detached from the metal mounting that allows it to rotate”, according to a Pentagon spokesperson making creative use of the passive voice.
Whatever mishap caused the globe to become “detached” did more damage than that: photos published by the show a deep gash in the antique globe that Hegseth had apparently so admired.
Some politicians would salvage something from the incident – perhaps even turning it into a useful lesson. Having the broken globe in your office might serve as a reminder of the follies of rushing in, or the benefits of waiting for proper advice. It could remind an inexperienced defence secretary that the world is fragile.
Sadly, Hegseth did not opt for that course of action. Once his staffers had damaged the relic – which belongs, of course, to the American people, rather than to him – they decided it shouldn’t feature in Hegseth’s office, after all.
The department initially released no information on whether or not the damage had been repaired – they later said only that it was now repaired – but the globe has presumably sat for months until someone let slip what had happened to it.
When Hegseth’s tenure at the Department of Defence – renamed by him and Donald Trump as the Department of War – is over, the damage to Eisenhower’s globe is unlikely to be anywhere near the top of the list of things that he’s broken.
But it will be an awfully useful shorthand for a politician who has done an awful lot of damage in very little time. Hegseth’s chaotic tenure has seen an unprecedented politicisation of the senior ranks of the military, with many senior generals forced out of their posts, and the widespread denial of promotions for talented career officers unlucky enough to have been born female or black.
Hegseth has also proven much better at rushing the US military into situations than he has at getting them out of them – or fixing the damage he has caused along the way. He was among the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of the US war against Iran, and is said to be agitating for a renewal of bombing once the midterms are over.
That war has contributed considerably to Trump’s unpopularity, through mounting energy and diesel costs, leading to widespread inflation. At least 20 US soldiers are dead, and hundreds more injured – while thousands of Iranians have been killed.
US sailors spent months past their usual deployments stuck in the arena. The uneasy peace of the Middle East has been ignited into a shooting war that is disrupting regional alliances and global trade, and no one has a clue how it will end.
Eisenhower’s smashed globe might mean even more than that, though. The world order that Trump and Hegseth have so enthusiastically demolished – one based on rules, international institutions and measured diplomacy – was one built by Eisenhower and his political opposites in the aftermath of a devastating world war.
Hegseth has been one of the chief architects of tearing up and disrespecting everything Eisenhower fought for and stood for, in the name of the “Donroe Doctrine” – a Trump-flavoured idea of a 19th-century foreign policy doctrine based little more than a nostalgic idea of imperial spheres of power, and a weak pun.
The “Secretary of War” has spent all of his time in office tearing up the legacy of men like General Eisenhower. So, perhaps, it is particularly fitting that his staff shattered his antique globe, too. It could even be argued that breaking it has, at least, saved it from the dishonour of being used by Hegseth as a prop.