What happened
The number of child sexual abuse offences being committed in the UK has escalated sharply, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA). About 1,000 suspected offenders are being detained each month while the number of children placed under protection has climbed by half over the past five years. Investigators say tip-offs relating to individuals seeking to harm children have increased tenfold in a decade, with more than 33,000 intelligence reports recorded last year. Officers warn that online platforms are being used to identify and exploit victims, with livestreamed abuse reportedly available for as little as £20.

Who said what
Rob Jones, the NCA’s director general of operations, said the rise across all indicators “really worries us”, adding: “The threat is getting worse despite our best efforts.”

There is “barely concealed annoyance in UK law enforcement at the perceived lack of action by tech companies while children suffer”, said Vikram Dodd in The Guardian.

What next?
Jones said images that are already circulating, which accounts for the majority of such abuse, could be spotted by tech companies and taken down. “They could stop a lot more.”

What happened
China’s annual Spring Festival television spectacular placed robotics centre stage this year, turning the broadcast into a high-profile technology showcase. The programme, staged by the China Media Group and known as the Spring Festival Gala, drew 677 million live viewers, with billions more online interactions. Building on last year’s popular appearance by mechanical dancers, the 2026 edition featured robots performing comedy sketches, martial arts routines and choreographed numbers alongside children.

Who said what
This was an “effort to showcase its technological might to the West”, said James Titcomb in The Telegraph. China’s “growing prowess in humanoid robotics has raised security concerns”. The US think tank Rand warned last year that Beijing’s advances in the sector could lead to “dependence on Chinese robotics firms for this critical dual-use technology”.

What next?
The display wasn’t “just for fun”, said Richard Spencer in The Times. The importance of the gala, annually the most-watched show in the world, “is such that the companies behind the robots paid tens of millions of yuan for the chance to show off their wares”.  E-commerce platform JD.com said online searches for robots had jumped 300% within two hours of the broadcast.

In an Olympic event as fast as downhill skiing or speed skating, the margin between winners and losers can be measured by thousandths of a second.

Careers are “forever altered by that tiny difference”, said NBC News. There is a “baseline expectation” that “every result must be perfect”. And that is “determined by the most important team at the Olympics you don’t know about”: the timekeepers.

Swiss watchmaker Omega has been the official timekeeper of every Olympic event for nearly 100 years. It was initially chosen for the role at the 1932 Los Angeles games because it was the only watch brand capable of providing accurate timing to the nearest tenth of a second.

The company dispatched one “intrepid watchmaker” from its Swiss headquarters with 30 high-precision stopwatches in his suitcase, said The Times. “Each night he would take the stopwatches back to his hotel room and recalibrate them before handing them back to race officials the next morning.”

The intervening years have, of course, seen “extraordinary technical developments”. Omega arrived in Paris for the 2024 Summer Games with “the most advanced tech it has ever delivered”: 350 tonnes of equipment, including 200km of cables, hundreds of scoreboards and 550 professional timekeepers.

Yet despite all the tech, the final call is still human. Even today an operator looks at a monitor with footage from the finish line cameras and “manually places a cursor where the athlete crosses the finish”, said NBC News.