West Ham stadium stance could block London’s World Athletics Championships bid, warns Coe
Sebastian Coe has warned that London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships could be scuppered by West Ham’s refusal to allow their stadium to be used in September.World Athletics has made it clear to bidding cities, which the Guardian understands also includes Rome, Munich and Nairobi as well as a mooted Indian city, that the world championships should be the grand finale to the athletics season.However West Ham are so far refusing to vacate their stadium for around three weeks in September, despite the London bid having the strong backing of the government and the mayor’s office.“It’s really difficult for me because I have a view, but I have to be scrupulously neutral, because London is clearly not the only bid out there,” said Lord Coe.“All I would say is that I would hope that there is a recognition that outside the Olympic Games and the World Cup, this is the third-largest sporting gathering in a four-year cycle.
“I do ask cities to try to accommodate us.There has to be a recognition that it’s a big global sport.This is not a gimme to anyone.”This month West Ham told the Daily Mail that it had a “contractual right ensuring West Ham United games take priority during the football season” and has so far shown no indication of budging.The fear in track and field circles is that, as a result, the club is holding London’s bid to ransom – for now at least.
Asked whether West Ham should be more welcoming to athletics, given it received one of the bargains of the century when it got the London 2012 Olympic Stadium almost for free, Coe replied: “I’ve sat on the board of one Premier League club, and I’m very close to another one, and I think they would have been pretty satisfied with that deal,”Coe also downplayed the chances of the 2029 World Athletics Championships being staged earlier in the summer so that it missed the start of the football season,“I can’t speculate about that,” he said,“That would then be a council judgment,We have a pretty clear, stated position that we want our world championships to finish as the conclusion of a season.
“Why did we do that? Well, the reason is that, for a lot of our fans, it was confusing,They didn’t quite know why somebody would come out of a world championships or an Olympic Games and then go: ‘OK, I know they won whatever it is, in the world championships, and then four days later they’re in the Diamond League final,’“And particularly when you have a very cluttered sporting calendar across winter and summer sports, we just felt we needed to do everything just to make our sport a little more understandable,”The initial deadline for bids for both the 2029 and 2031 world championships is 3 April, although final submissions are not required until 5 August,The announcement of the winning cities will be made in September.
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The estate of late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been ordered to pay £920m to the technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) two years after he died in a superyacht disaster.The ruling by London’s high court said the estate was liable to pay the sum as compensation, costs and interest for HP’s acquisition of Lynch’s firm Autonomy, after a UK legal ruling in 2022 that he duped the US firm into paying £8.2bn for his software firm Autonomy.The deceased entrepreneur’s estate has been estimated to be worth about £500m, so the damages could leave it bankrupt.Lynch and six others, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died in August 2024 on a trip with friends and family celebrating his acquittal on US fraud charges relating to HP’s $11bn takeover of Autonomy in 2011
Energy price shock and interest rate rises could cause ‘pronounced’ UK recession, economist warns – as it happened
Britain’s economy could be dragged into recession by the end of this year by high energy prices and interest rate hikes, economists at Morgan Stanley have warned.Following this morning’s data showing a slowdown in private sector growth this month and a surge in input costs (see 9.41am), Morgan Stanley economist Bruna Skarica has warned that the energy price shock is likely to prompt the Bank of England to raise interest rates, which would hurt growth.Skarica points out that oil prices have risen by around 40% since January, with natural gas contracts up by around 80%, prompted the financial markets to predict the BoE will raise rates this year.Skarica told clients:double quotation markShould these financial conditions and commodity prices be sustained in the coming months, we would be calling for a pronounced UK recession at the turn of the year
Divide between Silicon Valley and ordinary people grows ever larger
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. This week in tech, we discuss a moment of divergence between Silicon Valley and everyday people; deep cuts at Meta to maximize spending on AI; writers caught using AI; and the frightening, fiery crashes of the Tesla Cybertruck.Nvidia hosted a conference last week where it emphasized AI agents – semi-autonomous chatbots that can perform digital tasks for you – as the next frontier in tech. The company announced a toolkit for agents, including NemoClaw, an AI agent software suite for businesses
Amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online surged in 2025
The amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online rose by 14% last year, with the majority of videos showing the most extreme type of content, according to a safety watchdog.The Internet Watch Foundation said it identified 8,029 AI-made images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in 2025. It added that there had been a more than 260-fold increase in videos.The IWF said 65% of the 3,443 videos were classified as category A, the term for the most severe material under UK law. The corresponding figure for non-AI videos was 43%, said the watchdog, showing that the technology was being used to create more violent content
World Snooker Championship to remain at Crucible until at least 2045 with revamp
Barry Hearn concedes he has let his heart rule his head for the first time in his career after striking a remarkable new long-term deal to keep snooker’s world championship at the Crucible Theatre – before hinting that his son Eddie was among those who were against the decision.The tournament has been played at the 980-seat venue in Sheffield since 1977, and it will remain there until at least 2045 with an option to extend to 2050 after World Snooker Tour and Sheffield city council agreed a contract to ensure snooker’s most prestigious event will stay at its spiritual home.As part of the agreement, the Crucible will undergo a renovation after the 2028 tournament, with the venue securing £45m of government investment that Hearn admitted was decisive in keeping snooker in Sheffield. An extra 500 seats will be installed at the theatre, taking capacity to 1500.It is a striking and notable agreement for the sport, not least because Hearn himself had made loud noises in recent years about the need for a completely rebuilt Crucible with at least 3,000 seats if the world championship was to remain in Sheffield amid interest from places such as Saudi Arabia and China
West Ham stadium stance could block London’s World Athletics Championships bid, warns Coe
Sebastian Coe has warned that London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships could be scuppered by West Ham’s refusal to allow their stadium to be used in September.World Athletics has made it clear to bidding cities, which the Guardian understands also includes Rome, Munich and Nairobi as well as a mooted Indian city, that the world championships should be the grand finale to the athletics season.However West Ham are so far refusing to vacate their stadium for around three weeks in September, despite the London bid having the strong backing of the government and the mayor’s office.“It’s really difficult for me because I have a view, but I have to be scrupulously neutral, because London is clearly not the only bid out there,” said Lord Coe. “All I would say is that I would hope that there is a recognition that outside the Olympic Games and the World Cup, this is the third-largest sporting gathering in a four-year cycle
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