What sounds like the overwrought penultimate episode in a sci-fi series about AI doom is now our reality

On Tuesday, a former OpenAI researcher quit his job at Anthropic, warning that “neither company is acting responsibly” and that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.”

As someone who’s reported on AI risk for years, this wasn’t news to me. But the outpouring of alarm suggests a much wider public is properly confronting this ludicrous situation for the first time.

After a year of frenzied conjecture, the new hosts putting the razzle back into Strictly are Johannes Radebe, Emma Willis and Josh Widdicombe. They talk night sweats, sparkly pants – and the hilarious fake show cooked up to fool the press

Johannes Radebe, one of the three new presenters of Strictly Come Dancing, can barely contain his glee. Asked where they were when they heard they’d got the job, Radebe is quick to wind up his co-hosts. “We’ll never forget that call,” he grins. “It was a weekday afternoon and I was at home, preparing for that night’s performance of [West End musical] Kinky Boots. But go on, tell the Guardian where you two were.”

“We all got the same message, asking us to jump on a Zoom,” says Emma Willis. “We didn’t know if it was good news or bad news.” Josh Widdicombe picks up the story: “I thought, ‘Surely they wouldn’t tell me to my face if I hadn’t got it? They’d just text my agent or something.’”

It has been a huge week for Labour as Ed Miliband shifted the party’s stance on Israel by announcing sanctions on the illegal settlements in the West Bank and describing what is happening as ethnic cleansing. What is behind this shift, and will it make any difference on the ground?

You can read Kiran’s analysis on Andy Burnham’s stance here

You can read Peter’s article on the Green party internal dispute here

Please keep sending your comments and questions to Pippa and Kiran on politicsweeklyuk@theguardian.com

It has become common for people to wait in long lines for cafes, bakeries and ice-cream shops. But why? And what do the owners think?

At 9.45am on a warm Saturday in September, a queue snakes down the pavement in Notting Hill, west London. Stretching for 20 yards past office blocks, estate agents and cafes, the line is waiting peacefully for an unusual morning snack: frozen yoghurt. The purveyor is the dessert shop Yo-Chi, which opened only a fortnight ago, one of the many hospitality businesses making queueing an increasingly common part of the British dining experience.

“We wait in line for everything now,” says 23-year-old Hannan Mahamud as she stands midway down the queue with three friends. “I queued for an hour the other week for a cookie, although it wasn’t worth it. We heard about Yo-Chi through a creator on TikTok who works in an office building across the road and posts queue updates. We thought it might be a fun day out.”

Anna Sweeney Rossman was 5 when her mother, flight attendant Amy Sweeney, was killed aboard American Airlines flight 11 after helping authorities identify the hijackers

Anna Sweeney Rossman was only five years old when her mother, flight attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney, died aboard an airliner that terrorists hijacked and deliberately flew into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And for years, she said in an interview on Wednesday, Rossman’s grief primarily centered on her mother’s absence from certain milestones in her life.

She recalled how planning her 2023 wedding – particularly shopping for a dress – hit her especially hard without her mom there. And Rossman said it was as much a blow to not have her mom there for the birth of her daughters, each younger than 2, as the US prepared to mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Friday.

Since Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, there has been a 63% rise in Americans renting properties in Scotland. Politics is one reason – but there are many other surprising motivations …

Four years ago, when Tammi Gaw, a 50-year-old property adviser, moved from Washington DC to Glasgow with her Scottish partner, friends and family laughed at her. “People back home kept asking me: ‘Ha ha, why would you want to move to Scotland, where it rains all the time?’ Now those same people are asking me: ‘Hey, how do I move there?’”

They are not alone. According to data from Rightmove, 28% of inquiries from Americans about buying a home in the UK are about Scotland, a larger number than for London. And a recent survey from lettings platform Goodlord reported a 63% rise in the number of Americans renting properties in Scotland since Donald Trump’s re-election in November 2024.

Many mayors welcome power to impose tourist tax but industry warns of ‘irreparable harm’ and job losses

• UK politics live – latest updates

Holidaymakers will face a nightly levy on hotel and Airbnb-style stays across large parts of England in a move welcomed by many mayors but described as risking “irreparable harm” to the tourism industry.

Regions across England will be able to charge an uncapped “tourist tax” on overnight stays to potentially generate tens of millions of pounds that would then be spent in those areas.

Testimony from Israeli military insiders involved in surveillance and remote killings features in documentary produced by the Guardian

Testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders ​on the secret ​systems used in ​the war on Gaza​ has been revealed in a new documentary film about the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.

NAZA, a film from the Oscar-winning Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, was shown at the Venice international film festival on Thursday as the only documentary competing for its prestigious Golden Lion award.

Critics react to bid for Republican votes with incredulity and point to potential $1.2tn cost atop existing national debt

Donald Trump’s promise of a $5,000 “Trump dividend” for every US citizen if Republicans retain control of the US Congress in November’s midterm elections has sparked incredulity and accusations of bribery.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the unprecedented Republican midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump dividend.”

Iran and its proxies move closer to full control of two shipping chokepoints as regional conflict widens

Yemen’s Houthi rebels are making a concerted drive to take full control of the country’s Red Sea coast, claiming control of the key port of Mocha, in the most serious wave of fighting with the Saudi-backed government in years.

Seizure of the coast would be a strategic disaster for Saudi Arabia and the US, taking Iran and its proxies closer to full control of two chokepoints for western shipping on opposite sides of the Arabian peninsula: the Bab al-Mandeb at the southern end of the Red Sea and the strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.