What happened
A migrant boat bound for Britain caught fire in the Channel, prompting a large-scale rescue effort involving French and British crews. A total of 173 people were brought safely ashore at Boulogne-sur-Mer, with 11 treated for minor injuries. An Egyptian man has been detained as prosecutors investigate the crossing.

Who said what
Border Security Minister Anna Turley said the incident highlighted the risks created by people-smuggling networks.

Meanwhile, about 4% of migrants arriving in Dover on small boats are being sent back under the government’s “one in, one out” agreement with France, according to Home Office figures published yesterday. The statistics came “exactly a year since the scheme with France began”, said Simon Jones and Tanya Gupta on the BBC, and revealed that 1,087 people had been returned to France as part of the programme. More than 27,900 migrants arrived in the UK over the same period.

What next?
Andy Burnham has promised tougher action against smuggling gangs, while Britain and France are already spending hundreds of millions of pounds on measures intended to reduce the number of crossings.

What happened
Plans to expand Gatwick Airport will proceed after campaigners lost their bid to take a legal challenge against the government to the Court of Appeal. Communities Against Gatwick Noise Emissions (CAGNE) took action against the Department for Transport, claiming that the government had not properly assessed the climate impact of proposals for a second full-time runway. The group also argued that there was no need for the expansion at Gatwick given its proximity to Heathrow. But the High Court dismissed the challenge in June. Last month CAGNE asked the Court of Appeal to let it contest the ruling.

Who said what
Each of the grounds of appeal is “unarguable”, concluded Lord Justice Holgate and Lord Justice Dove. “Neither appeal has a real prospect of success.” There are “no other compelling reasons for either appeal to be heard”. They said the ruling in June was “detailed and thorough”.

“This is a major milestone for Gatwick and for local communities, with expansion unlocking investment and creating thousands of new jobs,” said Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander.

What next?
The £2.2 billion expansion will include turning the airport’s emergency runway into a full-time second runway that will accommodate about 100,000 more flights a year from 2030.

This year’s Tour de France Femmes has been rocked by allegations that some riders are artificially exaggerating their bust size in order to gain an aerodynamic advantage.

Several women’s World Tour teams have raised concerns that cyclists riding for rival outfits are padding their sports bras to give them a boost in time trials, according to leading Dutch cycling news site WielerFlits.

The practice of “chest fairing” – also known as “bra boosting” or “bra doping” – involves increasing the surface area of the chest to change the airflow around the torso.

An optimised chest fairing can reduce drag by as much as 3.6%, which could gain a time trial cyclist at least 0.78 seconds every kilometre, according to research published in the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics in 2024. “You won’t gain tens of seconds,” said study lead Bert Blocken, an aerodynamics expert at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. But over a 20- to 30-km time trial “it could save enough seconds to make the difference”.

On Monday the UCI – cycling’s governing body – took the unusual step of issuing a warning that the Tour de France Femmes race jury overseeing the final checks for yesterday’s stage 4 time trial would pay “particular attention” to clothing and accessories that “could modify riders’ morphology”.

But “confusion remains as to what exactly” the jury was tasked with looking for, said Cycling Weekly. “I don’t see how they are going to police this in future,” Koen de Kort, head of technical and innovation at professional cycling team Lidl-Trek, told The Athletic. He described sports bras as a “grey area” and wondered “how can you define how much padding a woman needs”?