U.C. Berkeley Gives Names of Students and Faculty to Government for Antisemitism Probe
© Marlena Sloss for The New York Times
© Marlena Sloss for The New York Times
Updates from Tokyo as the championships get under way
Reuters – Evan Dunfee of Canada and Spanish defending champion Maria Perez prevailed in suffocating Tokyo humidity to win the first gold medals of the 20th World Athletics Championships in the 35-km walks on Saturday.
Dunfee, the pain of the gruelling effort in tough conditions etched on his face, crossed the line at the National Stadium in two hours, 28 minutes and 22 seconds to claim his first global title.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP
© Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP
© Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP
News and buildup to the day’s football action
Scottish Premiership
“Oh matchday live, how could you?” thunders says Simon McMahon. “You forgot about about Dundee United’s trip to Easter Road to face Hibs at 5.45pm, so please, allow me. United manager Jim Goodwin this week signed a new deal, and Ivan Dolcek, one of this summer’s 14 new faces at Tannadice, was named Scottish Premiership Player of the Month for August. Add in the fact that our last game was a 2-0 schooling of Dundee at Dens and it’s easy to see why there’s a lot of positivity from United fans at the moment.
© Composite: Guardian Design
© Composite: Guardian Design
© Composite: Guardian Design
The Priestdaddy author on quitting social media, Maga conspiracies and how her second novel grew out of a period of post-Covid mania
There is a thing Patricia Lockwood does whenever she spots a priest while walking through an airport. The 43-year-old grew up as one of five children of a Catholic priest in the American midwest, an eccentric upbringing documented, famously, in Priestdaddy, her hit memoir of 2017, and a wellspring of comic material that just keeps giving. Priests in the wild amuse and comfort her, a reminder of home and the superiority that comes with niche expertise. “I was recently at St Louis airport and saw a priest,” she says, “high church, not Catholic, because of the width of the collar; that’s the thing they never get right in TV shows. And I gave him a look that was a little bit too intimate. A little bit like: I know.” Sometimes, as she’s passing, she’ll whisper, “encyclical”.
This is Lockwood: elfin, fast-talking, determinedly idiosyncratic, with the uniform irony of a writer who came up through social media and for whom life online is a primary subject. If Priestdaddy documented her unconventional upbringing in more or less conventional comic style, her novels and poems since then have worked in more fragmentary modes that mimic the disjointed experience of processing information in bite-size non sequiturs. In 2021, Lockwood published her first novel, No One Is Talking About This, in which she wrote of the disorienting grief at the death of her infant niece from a rare genetic disorder. In her new novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, she returns to the theme, eliding that grief with her descent into a Covid-induced mania, a terrifying experience leavened with very good jokes. A danger of Lockwood’s writing is that it traps her in a persona that makes sincerity – any statement not hedged and flattened by sarcasm – almost impossible. But Lockwood, it seems to me, has a bouncy energy closer to an Elizabeth Gilbert than a Lauren Oyler or an Ottessa Moshfegh, say, so that no matter how glib her one-liners, you tend to come away from reading her with a general feeling of warmth.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Anna Ottum
© Photograph: Anna Ottum
© Photograph: Anna Ottum
Portugal star will hand Gianni Infantino the perfect publicity coup if he does play in America for the first time in more than 10 years, having already begun cosying up to Donald Trump
Is it still safe to stage the World Cup in the United States? After more headline evidence this week of the extreme nature of American gun violence, some may conclude that the answer is no. Nine months out from the opening game, it is now almost impossible to ignore this. But believe it or not statistics suggest more than 300 people will have been shot in America last Wednesday alone.
The same number will also be shot on Friday, Saturday, every day next week, and every day of World Cup year. On average 127 of these unnamed, largely non-famous people not called things such as the superstar influencer Charlie Kirk will die each day. Within this, youth gun deaths will be both alarmingly high and a register of social injustice: a disproportionate 46% of all young people shot will be black.
Continue reading...© Illustration: Matthew Green
© Illustration: Matthew Green
© Illustration: Matthew Green
Sarah Hunter and Lou Meadows pinpoint when it all clicked for Red Roses ahead of their World Cup quarter-final
Earning the right to win each game may be the Red Roses’ mantra at this Rugby World Cup but making history on home soil is the goal Sarah Hunter and Lou Meadows are working to orchestrate. England’s assistant coaches describe themselves as complementary, bringing diverse experience that creates a “good blend” alongside the forwards coach, Louis Deacon, and the head coach, John Mitchell, with the Red Roses unbeaten under the New Zealander’s tenure.
In a hotel meeting room on the outskirts of Bristol as England enter the business end of the tournament, Hunter and Meadows explain how the coaching setup offers “different lenses” for tactics and planning. The duo have brought a sharp, strategic edge to the hosts’ defence and attack and for 40 minutes they range over a series of topics, including picking in which game this England side have come closest to perfection.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Steve Bardens/RFU/The RFU Collection/Getty Images
© Photograph: Steve Bardens/RFU/The RFU Collection/Getty Images
© Photograph: Steve Bardens/RFU/The RFU Collection/Getty Images
Find a course at one of the top universities in the country. Our league tables rank them all subject by subject, as well as by student satisfaction, staff numbers, spending and career prospects
Continue reading...© Illustration: Na Li/The Guardian
© Illustration: Na Li/The Guardian
© Illustration: Na Li/The Guardian
Fast-finishing Australia lose 28-26 to Argentina in Sydney
Joe Schmidt’s side pay price for conceding 13 penalties
With their backs to the wall again after an error strewn hour had left them 18 points behind, the Wallabies looked forlornly to the Allianz Stadium grandstands and saw Rugby Australia boss Phil Waugh sitting with John Howard. Surely this was the omen they needed to emulate the former Prime Minister’s famous “Lazarus with a triple-bypass” comeback.
Joe Schmidt’s side have a reputation for rising from the ashes with last-gasp victories. They beat England in November with a last-play roll of the dice and they shocked Argentina last week with a try in overtime. Today, in another rousing fightback before 41,912 in Sydney, they clawed their way back to trail 28-26 with seconds left on the clock.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Jason McCawley/Getty Images
© Photograph: Jason McCawley/Getty Images
© Photograph: Jason McCawley/Getty Images
Two-time major winner records highest PGA Tour Champions hole score
US golfer finds water seven times on par-5 12th at Sanford International
John Daly made it into the PGA Tour Champions record book Friday for the wrong reason. The two-time major champion took a 19 on the par-5 12th hole at the Sanford International.
Daly also broke his personal record by one shot, after he took an 18 on the par-5 sixth hole in the 1998 Bay Hill Invitational when he hit 3-wood into the water six straight times.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Steven Garcia/Getty Images
© Photograph: Steven Garcia/Getty Images
© Photograph: Steven Garcia/Getty Images
Educational bodies from Europe to South America are boycotting Israeli institutions, though Universities UK said it did not support the action
A growing number of universities, academic institutions and scholarly bodies around the world are cutting links with Israeli academia amid claims that it is complicit in the Israeli government’s actions towards Palestinians.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 63,000 people have been killed in the territory – the majority of them civilians – with the true toll likely far higher. UN-backed experts have confirmed parts of Gaza, much of which has been reduced to rubble, are now in a “man-made” famine.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
Here in metal-mad Finland, I see the 50-year-old genre is still in rude health – and helping people see the light in dark times
Mike Watson is a media and art theorist and educator born in the UK and based in Finland
In June, I travelled to Helsinki to see Iron Maiden. I live in Finland and so know well that the country is heavy metal mad. It boasts more metal bands per capita than any other country in the world. Metal has long been the nation’s unofficial flagship cultural pursuit, with bands (called things such as Nightwish, Apocalyptica and Amorphis) acting as ambassadors where few other cultural figures have broken through abroad. But I still wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
The gig was preceded by a gathering of the “Crazy Finns” – a ragbag of Finnish Maiden fanatics who have followed the band on tour for two decades. The fan group celebrated their 20th anniversary with a concert pre-party featuring Dennis Stratton, who played on the band’s self-titled debut in 1980. As Stratton performed an acoustic version of Prowler, backed by local musician Henri Seger, the tears started to flow – predominantly from the men in the audience. At this point I realised one of the main reasons for metal’s popularity in a country where the inhabitants are famously emotionally restrained – it offers a rare outlet for collective expression. I won’t forget the sight of these macho, taciturn Finnish men united in their tears and their denims, the instantly recognisable uniform of the metal fanbase worldwide.
Mike Watson is a media and art theorist and educator based in Finland. He is the author of Hungry Ghosts in the Machine: Digital Capitalism and the Search for Self. He is co-editing a compendium of essays What’s Left of Metal? with David Burke
Continue reading...© Photograph: Imago/Alamy
© Photograph: Imago/Alamy
© Photograph: Imago/Alamy
Researchers say social media myths drive ‘nocebo effect’ of side-effects that are real but psychological in origin
Social media misinformation about the contraceptive pill is encouraging women to view it so negatively that many give it up, a study has found.
Researchers have identified myths spread on TikTok and other social media platforms as a key driver of users suffering side-effects that are real but psychological in origin. It is called the “nocebo effect”, the opposite of the better-known placebo effect.
An expectation at the outset that the pill will be harmful.
Low confidence in how medicines are developed.
A belief that medicines are overused and harmful.
A belief that they are sensitive to medicines.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Areeya Yodplob/Alamy
© Photograph: Areeya Yodplob/Alamy
© Photograph: Areeya Yodplob/Alamy
Exclusive: A third of those polled do not tell bosses about use of tools and half think AI threatens the social structure
It is the work shortcut that dare not speak its name. A third of people do not tell their bosses about their use of AI tools amid fears their ability will be questioned if they do.
Research for the Guardian has revealed that only 13% of UK adults openly discuss their use of AI with senior staff at work and close to half think of it as a tool to help people who are not very good at their jobs to get by.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days
Continue reading...© Composite: Guardian Design / The Guardian
© Composite: Guardian Design / The Guardian
© Composite: Guardian Design / The Guardian
Israeli strikes on Gaza, air alerts in Kyiv, the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, and Carlos Alcaraz’s victory at the US Open: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing
© Photograph: Svet Jacqueline/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Svet Jacqueline/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Svet Jacqueline/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
DNA analysis of endemic specimens in museums finds 79% of ant populations in Pacific archipelago are shrinking
Island-dwelling insects have not been spared the ravages of humanity that have pushed so many of their invertebrate kin into freefall around the world, new research on Fijian ant populations has found.
Hundreds of thousands of insect species have been lost over the past 150 years and it is believed the world is now losing between 1% and 2.5% a year of its remaining insect biomass – a decline so steep that many entomologists say we are living through an “insect apocalypse”. Yet long-term data for individual insect populations is sparse and patchy.
Continue reading...© Photograph: Peter Ginter
© Photograph: Peter Ginter
© Photograph: Peter Ginter
US calls Russia’s Polish airspace violations ‘alarming’
© Sputnik
More than 33,000 people in the UK are living with myeloma - a type of incurable blood cancer that causes bone pain
© Terry Harper
© Nigel French/PA
Wife of rock star said that fans’ messages have given her more ‘comfort than you know’
© PA
As wars are increasingly fought with the use of unmanned drones piloted from miles away, Taz Ali looks at what other weapons will shape the conflicts to come
© MoD