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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Feminism exposed the ubiquity of child abuse, rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence – and helped fight that culture
I was there. I kept the receipts. I remember how normalized the sexual exploitation of teenage girls and even tweens by adult men was, how it showed up in movies, in the tales of rock stars and “baby groupies”, in counterculture and mainstream culture, how normalized rape, exploitation, grooming, objectification, commodification was.
The last Woody Allen movie I ever saw was Manhattan, in which he cast himself as more or less himself, a dweeb in his mid-40s, dating a high school student played by Mariel Hemingway. She was my age, 17, and I was only too familiar with creeps, and the movie creeped me out, even though it was only long afterward that I read that she said he was at the time pressuring her to get sexually involved with him in real life.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology
I was afraid to be near people for two-and-a-half years, but then I got a chance to meet the band I loved – and the experience changed everything
I have always had a degree of health anxiety, but when Covid hit, it really spiked. At home with the family, I made sure we washed all our food and even then I didn’t feel safe eating it. I would bring in the post and then be worried about touching the front door. I’d shower for ages, trying to wash the virus away.
I’m a journalist, so before the anxiety set in I was a pretty outgoing and adaptable person. But from the start of lockdown until September 2022, I didn’t go anywhere indoors other than home or the hospital. I didn’t even walk down a street for a year and a half, for fear of passing too close to someone.
In this week’s newsletter: Live performances offering authentic human connection are drawing crowds to the stage, as AI-driven drivel worms its way into other creative industries
Last year, more than 37 million people settled their behinds into the red-velvet upholstery, plastic chairs or wooden “I’ll only tolerate this because it’s the Globe” benches of a theatre. West End attendance has reportedly grown by 11% and regional audiences have increased by 4% since 2019 – pretty impressive amid a cost of living crisis and after a pandemic that had us all locked in our houses.
The increase in attendance can be chalked up to all sorts of reasons: the post-Covid return of tourists to the UK, schemes offering more reasonably priced tickets, and big films such as Wicked leaving people wondering what that Defying Gravity note sounds like live. But I’d throw another contender into the mix: the rise of AI.
As coming-of-age drama nears its end, part of its appeal is nostalgia for the noughties shows viewers grew up with
It was billed as a show for teenagers, but you would be hard pressed to find a millennial woman who has not watched – and become mildly obsessed with – The Summer I Turned Pretty.
The coming-of-age drama, based on Jenny Han’s novel trilogy of the same name, has quietly grown into a global phenomenon for Prime Video. The first two episodes of its third and final season drew 25 million viewers, triple the audience of its debut.
My novel explores the consequences of extreme longevity. Meanwhile, Putin and Xi are pondering immortality in real life
I was in bed scrolling on my phone when I read the headline: Hot mic catches Xi and Putin discussing organ transplants and immortality. It took me a long time to get to sleep after that. Not yet, I thought. I pride myself on my prescience, but I wasn’t ready for the future I had imagined to arrive so soon.
Since 2017, I’ve been thinking about the implications of longevity research, sketching out possible futures – the shifts in society, the complications and subcultures. This year I published the result of my thought experiment, Who Wants to Live Forever, a speculative literary novel. It follows Yuki and Sam, a couple at a crossroads at the same time that a new drug, called Yareta – which extends the human lifespan by 200 years and preserves youth – becomes available. Sam takes it, Yuki doesn’t, and the novel follows the fallout as the world changes around them. The story ends in 2039. Naively, considering the billions being poured into longevity research by the likes of Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos and Bryan Johnson (subject of this year’s Netflix documentary Don’t Die), I thought that was how long it might take for my fiction to become reality.
From Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers to rollers, tunnellers and dwellers, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 Which German state sent its own team to the 1952 Olympics? 2 Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece is what story-telling genre’s all-time bestseller? 3 Which halogen is widely used as an antiseptic? 4 Which band was formed by Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers? 5 What type of beetles are categorised as rollers, tunnellers or dwellers? 6 Who sits on the Woolsack? 7 Nicknamed the “big hoose”, what is Scotland’s largest prison? 8 Who appeared in both film versions of West Side Story? What links:
9 Australia; Canada; Eastern Caribbean; Jamaica; New Zealand; US? 10 Northern; southern; Masai; reticulated? 11 Dorothy Ashby; Alice Coltrane; Brandee Younger; Amanda Whiting? 12 Korea, 1945; Vietnam, 1954; Aldi supermarket, 1960? 13 John Hannah; Ken Stott; Richard Rankin? 14 Castello; Cannaregio; Dorsoduro; San Marco; San Polo; Santa Croce? 15 Awesome (Nile civilisation); Vicious (Norse raiders); Terrible (1485-1603); Gorgeous (1714-1830)?
Erika Kirk, the widow of rightwing activist and provocateur Charlie Kirk, said in a statement Friday evening that her late husband’s message and mission will be “stronger, bolder, louder and greater than ever” and that her “cries will echo around the world like a battle cry”.
“I loved knowing one of his mottos was ‘never surrender’,” she said of her late husband. “We’ll never surrender.”
As Swiss glaciers melt at an ever-faster rate, new species move in and flourish, but entire ecosystems and an alpine culture can be lost
• Photographs by Nicholas JR White
From the slopes behind the village of Ernen, it is possible to see the gouge where the Fiesch glacier once tumbled towards the valley in the Bernese Alps. The curved finger of ice, rumpled like tissue, cuts between high buttresses of granite and gneiss. Now it has melted out of sight.
People here once feared the monstrous ice streams, describing them as devils, but now they dread their disappearance. Like other glaciers in the Alps and globally, the Fiesch is melting at ever-increasing rates. More than ice is lost when the giants disappear: cultures, societies and entire ecosystems are braided around the glaciers.
The Aletsch glacier viewed from Moosfluh, looking towards the Olmenhorn and Eggishorn peaks
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