Raucous crowd and sprint stars give World Athletics Championships explosive start
There was a moment on the opening night of these World Athletics Championships when the bottled up frustration of missing out on a full-fat Tokyo Olympics – with crowds and fun and unbridled joy – suddenly seemed to be unleashed.It came at the end of a thrilling women’s 10,000m, a roar that could have been heard on Mount Fuji, and a vast outpouring of appreciation and pride.At the front of the pack, four contenders were whittled down to two before the Olympic and world champion Beatrice Chebet took off with the Italian Nadia Battocletti in pursuit.It was like watching Wile E.Coyote chasing Roadrunner.
And while Chebet held on after a final kilometre run in a staggering 2min 38sec, the sellout crowd’s eyes were also on the home favourite Ririka Hironaka, who exceeded expectations by finishing in sixth barely 30 second back.Japanese crowds quiet? Not on this evidence.And they were soon roaring again as the giant American Ryan Crouser, whose injured elbow has left him unable to throw much this year, launched the shot put high and far in the fifth round to retain his world title.The night ended with the American 4x400m mixed relay team winning gold at a canter.It will, you imagine, be the first of many.
The British team could only finish fifth.Sunday will bring more drama.Within seven minutes the finals of the women’s and men’s 100m will be run.It promises to be fast and furious.Oblique Seville, one of the favourites for the men’s 100m, made a start so shocking that the stadium commentator Geoff Wightman suggested that he “came out of the blocks like he was towing a caravan”.
Yet he still qualified by running 9.93sec.Sign up to The RecapThe best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s actionafter newsletter promotionSeville’s Jamaican compatriot, Kishane Thompson, ran 9.95 while appearing to jog the final 30m.He is the favourite for Sunday’s final.
And while the reigning Olympic and world champion Noah Lyles matched that time in his heat, he had to work a lot harder.In the women’s 100m, the Olympic 100m champion Julien Alfred looked insanely comfortable as she strolled home in 10.93, the quickest time in the heats.
Snapchat allows drug dealers to operate openly on platform, finds Danish study
Snapchat has been accused by a Danish research organisation of leaving an “overwhelming number” of drug dealers to openly operate on Snapchat, making it easy for children to buy substances including cocaine, opioids and MDMA.The social media platform has said it proactively uses technology to filter out profiles selling drugs. However, research by Digitalt Ansvar (Digital Accountability), a Danish research organisation that promotes responsible digital development, has found evidence of a failure to moderate drug-related language in usernames. It also accused Snapchat of failing to respond adequately to reports of profiles openly selling drugs.Researchers used profiles of 13-year-olds and found a multitude of people selling drugs on Snapchat under usernames featuring keywords such as “coke”, “weed” and “molly”
Skip Apple’s new iPhone – five tips to make your old phone feel new again
On Tuesday, Apple announced the iPhone 17 series with the usual spate of new features, including a thinner design, improved displays and a camera with 4x optical zoom. If you’ve been getting frustrated with your old phone, or just tired of it, the lithe new model may look exactly like the device you need to launch your budding photographic career, reconnect with long-lost friends and maybe even save your life in an emergency.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
How to Save the Internet by Nick Clegg review – spinning Silicon Valley
Nick Clegg chooses difficult jobs. He was the UK’s deputy prime minister from 2010 to 2015, a position from which he was surely pulled in multiple directions as he attempted to bridge the divide between David Cameron’s Conservatives and his own Liberal Democrats. A few years later he chose another challenging role, serving as Meta’s vice-president and then president of global affairs from 2018 until January 2025, where he was responsible for bridging the very different worlds of Silicon Valley and Washington DC (as well as other governments). How to Save the Internet is Clegg’s report on how he handled that Herculean task, along with his ideas for how to make the relationships between tech companies and regulators more cooperative and effective in the future.The main threat that Clegg addresses in the book is not one caused by the internet; it is the threat to the internet from those who would regulate it
Apple debuts thinner, $999 iPhone Air at ‘awe-dropping’ annual product event
Apple debuted its latest iPhone on Tuesday, trumpeting the smartphone’s slimmest design yet. The device, named the iPhone Air, is one of several upgrades the company unveiled at its annual product showcase, promoted with the title “awe-dropping”. The event kicked off at 10am PT with the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, speaking in front of its Cupertino headquarters.“Design is at the core of everything we do,” Cook said. The CEO touted the company’s thin iPhone, which sports a width of 5
How Google dodged a major breakup – and why OpenAI is to thank for it
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you as I finish the audiobook version of Don DeLillo’s White Noise, which I can’t say I found compelling.In tech – artificial intelligence is having its day in court with an 11th-hour appearance in Google’s landmark antitrust trial and Anthropic’s major settlement with book authors.Google dodged a catastrophic breakup, and it has its biggest competitor to thank for that, according to the judge who could have forced the tech giant to sell off Chrome, the most popular web browser in the world, and perhaps Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system.Amit Mehta, who ruled in 2024 that Google had built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the internet search business, said last week that he would not force the most drastic remedy on the tech giant
The women in love with AI companions: ‘I vowed to my chatbot that I wouldn’t leave him’
Experts are concerned about people emotionally depending on AI, but these women say their digital companions are misunderstoodThe Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.A young tattoo artist on a hiking trip in the Rocky Mountains cozies up by the campfire, as her boyfriend Solin describes the constellations twinkling above them: the spidery limbs of Hercules, the blue-white sheen of Vega.The Guardian’s journalism is independent
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