West Ham urged to show ‘heart and soul’ over London 2029 World Athletics bid
The head of the London Marathon has urged West Ham to show more “heart and soul” amid fears they could scupper Britain’s chances of hosting the 2029 World Athletics Championships.While London’s bid is seen as the favourite, it has hit a major stumbling block with West Ham refusing to give up their stadium for around two weeks in September 2029 because the football season will be under way.Hugh Brasher, who is part of the London 2029 bid team, admitted that the situation was further complicated by the Hammers facing relegation and the departure of the club’s vice chair, Karren Brady.“Football is an interesting, very tribal, sport,” said Brasher.“Money talks.
But sometimes people look at their heart, they look at their soul, and that’s the purpose.”Brasher then cited the words of his father, Chris, when he came up with the idea of the London Marathon in an Observer article nearly 50 years ago.“My father’s final words in the article in 1979 said: ‘London had the course, but did it have the heart and the soul to welcome the world?’ I would ask West Ham, do they have the heart and the soul to open the stadium?’Brasher said that he expected talks with West Ham to take place in June, although he conceded that if they went down to the Championship it would have an impact.“It becomes more complicated,” he said.“There are more games.
That makes a difference.But it’s an Olympic stadium.It’s an amazing stadium.We believe that we can fill it.As an Olympic legacy, that’s all part of the bigger picture here.
So, yeah, it’s complicated.Business and life are complicated.”Rome, Munich, Nairobi as well as an Indian city are also in contention for the Championships.Final submissions from bidding cities are required by early August, with a decision made in September.Brasher is the latest senior athletics figure to urge West Ham to see the wider picture after Keely Hodgkinson told the club that “the GB team will bring back more medals to that stadium than West Ham have seen in their entire history” if it was staged in London in 2029.
However Brasher struck a more conciliatory tone as he stressed that he was hopeful of finding a way of getting West Ham on board.“I’m a really positive person,” added Brasher.“So I really, really hope and believe there is a way through.“We have a government and mayor that is behind this bid.The general public is behind this bid, and we have athletes behind it, and we have a legacy that we believe we can deliver.
And so therefore should we be able to find a way? Yes, we should.“We’ve put together a great bid.It’s not our decision.That’s World Athletics’ decision.Yes, we have to get through West Ham.
I believe we can,”
Europe’s smaller airports ‘under threat’ if fuel shortages cause many cancellations
Europe’s smaller airports may not survive if jet fuel shortages triggered by the Middle East crisis lead to widespread route cancellations, the industry’s trade body has warned.Although airlines insist there are currently no supply problems within the normal four- to six-week horizon, the US-Israel war on Iran and the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz have doubled the price of jet fuel, prompting some carriers to cancel flights.The Airports Council of Europe said regional airports were the most exposed and faced an “existential threat” if airlines cut capacity and raised fares, as demand on their routes was generally more price-sensitive – demonstrated when Lufthansa axed 20,000 summer flights operated by its regional subsidiary, CityLine.Olivier Jankovec, the director general of ACI Europe, said that smaller regional airports had still not recovered since the Covid pandemic, with traffic still 30% below 2019 levels, while larger ones had bounced back to growth.He said: “The current levels of jet fuel prices and the prospect of a new cost of living crisis mean that many regional airports across our continent are likely to face both a supply and demand shock
Barclays cuts back risky lending after £228m hit from UK mortgage firm MFS
Barclays is pulling back from lending to risky borrowers, as its chief executive warned of increasing numbers of fraud cases and the bank took a £228m hit from the failure of a mortgage lender.The mortgage lender Market Financial Solutions (MFS) collapsed in February amid allegations of fraud, and the UK’s financial regulator has since launched an investigation into the scandal.Barclays provided banking services to MFS and said the £228m hit had pushed total credit impairment charges to £823m in the first three months of 2026, up from £643m a year earlier.Last year the British bank reported a £110m loss over the US sub-prime auto lender Tricolor, which collapsed amid fraud allegations.The chief executive, CS Venkatakrishnan, said: “This [alleged] fraud, as with the one in Tricolor, indicates to us the importance of strong financial controls at borrowers and the difficulty ex-ante of identifying fraud
‘They’re supposed to be handmade’: zine creators fight to resist AI influence
The self-published zine has long been central to cultural revolutions, from queer activism to Black feminism and the riot grrrl punk movement, producing titles such as Sniffin’ Glue and Sweet-Thang along the way. But now the traditionally analogue art form faces a new shift: artificial intelligence.AI may seem incompatible with the these cult DIY booklets, but some creatives, designers and artists have begun to experiment with the technology, causing alarm in parts of the underground publishing world. It has been their Dylan-goes-electric moment.“AI is eliminating a lot of people’s ability to think critically for themselves,” says Rachel Goldfinger, a Philadelphia-based video editor and illustrator who has published an anti-AI zine
MacBook Pro M5 review: serious power, still long battery life
Apple’s Macs have been on a roll this year with the brand new budget MacBook Neo and a faster MacBook Air M5, but now it’s time for its workhorse MacBook Pro to be upgraded with the fastest, most powerful M-series chips.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The latest MacBook Pro comes in two screen sizes and a large range of chip and configuration options
‘Like cutting the head off a hydra’: how Mary Cain exposed Nike’s disgraced coaching team
“As someone who has lost touch with reality, I like to hold a firm grasp on it now,” Mary Cain says while we walk through a palm-tree spotted campus in California.She’s telling me why she insisted she write her own memoir, This is Not About Running, without ceding the narrative to a ghostwriter, as happens with many athletes. “My story is so complicated … there are so many bad actors that I think it forces the reader to embrace nuance, and I don’t think you see that very often.”At 29, Mary Cain is a decade removed from her experience as the United States’ highest hope for a middle-distance track star since Mary Decker smashed women’s world records up and down the stat sheet in the 1970s and 80s.Cain set four different national high school records as a teen, and as a 17-year old made the world championships in the 1500m, finishing 10th in a field of pros
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As Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe crossed the line to complete his world-record London Marathon sprint on Sunday the BBC’s commentator Steve Cram almost swallowed his microphone. “Absolutely incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that. What a finish.” Running 26
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