Constitution Hill falls again as Golden Ace storms to Fighting Fifth Hurdle win
Golden Ace, the reigning champion over hurdles, but dismissed in the betting as a 22-1 outsider, won a dramatic Fighting Fifth Hurdle here on Saturday.Constitution Hill, the 2023 Champion Hurdle winner, suffered a third fall in four starts at the second while The New Lion fell when leading the field two out.Golden Ace, the only mare in the race, then held off the challenge of Anzadam to claim the spoils.The result was a vindication for the willingness of Jeremy Scott, Golden Ace’s trainer, to take on the best hurdlers with his seven-year-old.It was a near facsimile of her win in a similarly dramatic Champion Hurdle in March, when Constitution Hill was again an early faller and State Man came down when clear at the last.
The focus in the run-up to the race, seen as one of the strongest runnings of the Fighting Fifth in the its 56-year history, had focused entirely on Constitution Hill, The New Lion and Anzadam,They were all quoted at single-figure odds for next year’s Champion Hurdle as the five runners went to post,Constitution Hill arrived with his lifeless display in the Boodles Champion Hurdle at Punchestown in May still a raw memory for his fans and backers,Having travelled smoothly enough to the third-last, the favourite had simply folded without raising even a hint of a challenge,The sense was of a racehorse that wanted to be do anything but race.
After two crashing falls in the space of a few weeks, first in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham and then in the Liverpool Hurdle at Aintree, it was an understandable reaction, but the mental scars of a fall can endure long after a horse is physically back to full fitness.The question, then, as Constitution Hill set foot on a track for the first time since Punchestown, was whether the long summer break had been enough to reset his competitive edge.It did not take long to get an answer.Constitution Hill jumped the first well, but at the second, he put down as if unsure of what he was trying to do, clipped the hurdle and crashed out.Carlisle 12.
15 Drop Kick 12.45 Junker D’Allier 1.15 The Burren Man 1.45 Great Notions 2.15 Saligo Bay 2.
48 Azof Des Mottes 3,23 Kilnesare Flight Leicester 12,55 Lucy The Wire 1,25 Stardrop 1,55 Home Made Hero (nb) 2.
25 Woodland Park (nap) 3.00 There Runs Mary 3.32 Highbury HillFor his younger rivals, the stakes were different.The New Lion and Anzadam arrived at Newcastle with unbeaten records, after five and four starts respectively, but also with time very much on their side.The New Lion was dropping back to the minimum two-mile trip for the first time over hurdles, having won two Grade Ones at two-and-a-half miles in his novice season.
The five-year-old Anzadam, the youngest in the field, was a prime candidate to fill the gap in Willie Mullins’s hurdling team after State Man was ruled out for the season by injury.Constitution Hill and The New Lion were apparently uninjured after their falls, while the Champion Hurdle betting was swiftly re-arranged.Lossiemouth is now the 2-1 favourite (from 3-1) with William Hill, with The New Lion unchanged at 7-2 and Constitution Hill out to 10-1 from 9-2.Anzadam is a 10-1 chance (from 6-1) while Golden Ace is 14-1 (from 25-1) for a repeat success.
Small changes to ‘for you’ feed on X can rapidly increase political polarisation
Small changes to the tone of posts fed to users of X can increase feelings of political polarisation as much in a week as would have historically taken at least three years, research has found.A groundbreaking experiment to gauge the potency of Elon Musk’s social platform to increase political division found that when posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity were boosted, even barely perceptibly, in the feeds of Democrat and Republican supporters there was a large change in their unfavourable feelings towards the other side.The degree of increased division – known as “affective polarisation” – achieved in one week by the changes the academics made to X users’ feeds was as great as would have on average taken three years between 1978 and 2020.Most of the more than 1,000 users who took part in the experiment during the 2024 US presidential election did not notice that the tone of their feed had been changed.The campaign was marked by divisive viral posts on X, including a fake image of Kamala Harris cosying up to Jeffrey Epstein at a gala and an AI-generated image posted by Musk of Kamala Harris dressed as a communist dictator that had 84m views
Foreign interference or opportunistic grifting: why are so many pro-Trump X accounts based in Asia?
When X rolled out a new feature revealing the locations of popular accounts, the company was acting to boost transparency and clamp down on disinformation. The result, however, has been a circular firing squad of recriminations, as users turn on each other enraged by the revelation that dozens of popular “America first” and pro-Trump accounts originated overseas.The new feature was enabled over the weekend by X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, who called it the first step in “securing the integrity of the global town square.” Since then many high-engagement accounts that post incessantly about US politics have been “unmasked” by fellow users.An Ivanka Trump fan account that posts about illegal immigration to the US was shown to be based in Nigeria
London councils enact emergency plans after three hit by cyber-attack
Three London councils have reported a cyber-attack, prompting the rollout of emergency plans and the involvement of the National Crime Agency (NCA) as they investigate whether any data has been compromised.The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), and Westminster city council, which share some IT infrastructure, said a number of systems had been affected across both authorities, including phone lines. The councils shut down several computerised systems as a precaution to limit further possible damage.The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham had also reported an attack. Together the three authorities provide services for more than half a million Londoners
European parliament calls for social media ban on under-16s
Children under 16 should be banned from using social media unless their parents decide otherwise, the European parliament says.MEPs passed a resolution on age restrictions on Wednesday by a large majority. Although not legally binding, it raises pressure for European legislation amid growing alarm about the mental health risks to children of unfettered internet access.The European Commission, which is responsible for initiating EU law, is already studying Australia’s world-first social-media ban for under-16s, which is due to take effect next month.In a speech in September, the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, said she would watch the implementation of Australia’s policy
ChatGPT firm blames boy’s suicide on ‘misuse’ of its technology
The maker of ChatGPT has said the suicide of a 16-year-old was down to his “misuse” of its system and was “not caused” by the chatbot.The comments came in OpenAI’s response to a lawsuit filed against the San Francisco company and its chief executive, Sam Altman, by the family of California teenager Adam Raine.Raine killed himself in April after extensive conversations and “months of encouragement from ChatGPT”, the family’s lawyer has said.The lawsuit alleges the teenager discussed a method of suicide with ChatGPT on several occasions, that it guided him on whether a suggested method would work, offered to help him write a suicide note to his parents and that the version of the technology he used was “rushed to market … despite clear safety issues”.According to filings at the superior court of the state of California on Tuesday, OpenAI said that “to the extent that any ‘cause’ can be attributed to this tragic event” Raine’s “injuries and harm were caused or contributed to, directly and proximately, in whole or in part, by [his] misuse, unauthorised use, unintended use, unforeseeable use, and/or improper use of ChatGPT”
Europe loosens reins on AI – and US takes them off
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you from an American grocery store, where I’m planning my Thanksgiving pies.In tech, the European Union is deregulating artificial intelligence; the United States is going even further. The AI bubble has not popped, thanks to Nvidia’s astronomical quarterly earnings, but fears persist. And Meta has avoided a breakup for a similar reason as Google
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