What happened
A memorial gathering near Middlesbrough descended into a heated dispute as mourners came together to remember the five young men killed in the A66 crash on Saturday. About 200 people assembled in South Bank, where balloons were released and flares lit up the evening sky. But the atmosphere was unsettled, as masked youths on scooters, quad bikes and off-road motorcycles raced around the site.

Who said what
The gathering exposed anger over how the young victims have been portrayed following the crash, which also claimed the lives of two police officers. A female attendee in her 20s said the young men were being denigrated in the media. She told the MailOnline that one of the young men in the crash, Jakub Matusiak, 23 “was a lovely, caring lad and he’s somebody’s son and somebody’s brother, he’s not some scumbag who should just be written off and forgotten”.

But “social media may be causing carnage on our streets”, said The Telegraph’s editorial board. “Young men seeking thrills often fail to foresee the consequences of what they are doing, thinking themselves to be invulnerable.”

What next?
Further memorial events are expected to be held this week. A separate fundraising appeal for the two officers has now passed £700,000, while police continue investigating the circumstances surrounding the crash.

Since the crash, nine men and three women, aged between 19 and 61, have been detained, with some of them suspected of “participating in the activities of an organised crime group”, drug dealing and possessing firearms, according to Cleveland Police.

What happened
Graduate job vacancies in the UK have fallen to their lowest level since they started being tracked a decade ago.

Jobs website Adzuna said it had just 8,383 graduate vacancies listed last month, down from 15,397 at the same point last year. That means that from a peak of more than 55,000 graduate posts in 2017, vacancies have plummeted 85%.

Who said what
Andrew Hunter, the co-founder of Adzuna, said the figures showed that “employers still haven’t found a reason to open up hiring” for recent graduates.

Graduates “are facing the worst job market on record as vacancies evaporate under pressure from tax and technology”, according to The Telegraph. Employers are using AI to do more and more of the entry-level work, while Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill told MPs this year that the National Insurance and minimum wage rises had resulted in a “particular effect on young people”.

What next?
The figure comes as “262,820 people prepare to go to university in September, a record high that underlines the tough conditions facing graduates entering the job market”, said The Guardian.

Mark Walter promised a bright future when he bought the Los Angeles Lakers last year. That future has already passed. Walter flipped the team to new owners this month, netting a reported $2.5 billion profit. Dollar signs have always dominated the big leagues of US sport, but team ownership is increasingly reserved for corporations, private equity and super-rich investors. Where does that leave fans?

Jerry Buss and his children ran the Lakers as the “NBA’s version of a mom-and-pop shop” for decades before last year’s sale to Walter, said Benjamin Wilhelm and Samuel Agini in the Financial Times. The days when a local businessman would buy and run a team as a sort of community trust are over. Instead, the “shock sale” of the Lakers demonstrates how pro teams are “no longer treated as vanity assets, but legitimate investment vehicles”.

Team owners are “flush and want to be even flusher”, said Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News. The “sure thing” profits from ownership come in part because those like Walter and the New York Knicks’ James Dolan “charge vulgar amounts for tickets” from the fans who keep the enterprise going. Many of the Knicks faithful could not afford tickets to Madison Square Garden during the team’s recent championship run. Fans pay “through the nose” while team owners keep winning big money “whether their teams win or not”.

The Lakers sale is “exactly why we need publicly owned sports teams”, said Dave Zirin at The Nation. Team owners have long had “zero regard” for the communities where their franchises “have taken root”. But the franchises belonged to these communities “spiritually, psychologically and personally” long before they became “just another asset” in private equity portfolios. When sports billionaires buy our teams, they are “buying our joy”.