American teenager Cooper Lutkenhaus produced a stunning performance to hold off Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi in the men’s 800m at the Diamond League meeting in Norway.

The 17-year-old crossed the line in a personal best of one minute and 42.08 seconds to edge out the Kenyan by one hundredth of a second in Oslo, despite Wanyonyi recording his fastest time of the season (1:42.09).

Lutkenhaus was unbeaten in his five previous 800m finals this year, having claimed gold at the World Indoor Championships and become the Diamond League’s youngest ever winner on his debut in Stockholm last weekend.

“This boy [Lutkenhaus] is in a good shape,” said the 21-year-old Wanyonyi, who missed the event in Sweden following the birth of his first child.

“Can you believe that as an Olympic champion, you are trying to knock down a 17-year-old boy?

“I started the race in front and after 600m to go, I tried to see who is coming to push me. Then I saw him passing me so then I tried to respond. But my target today was to run my season best, to improve.”

British sprinter Amy Hunt placed second in the women’s 100m in 10.99 seconds, with St Lucia’s Olympic champion Julien Alfred taking victory in a time of 10.76.

Amber Anning was fourth in the women’s 400m as Norway’s Henriette Jaeger enjoyed success, while her fellow Briton, Jake Wightman, finished fifth in the Dream Mile behind Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot.

There was Ethiopian dominance in the women’s 3,000m race, with Freweyni Hailu, Likina Amebaw, Senayet Getachew and Hawi Abera occupying the top four positions.

Hailu recorded the fastest time in the world this year, crossing the line in 8:24.22, while GB pair Megan Keith and Innes Fitzgerald finished seventh and ninth respectively.

In the final event of the evening, home favourite Karsten Warholm’s time of 47.40 was only enough to earn the Swede second place behind Brazilian rival Alison dos Santos (46.89) in the men’s 400m hurdles.

[BBC Sports]

An enormous whale graveyard around 1,200km (745 miles) long has been discovered in the south-eastern Indian Ocean.

The site, which is 7km (four miles) deep, has been found in the Diamantina fracture zone, a range on the sea floor of ridges and trenches.

But it is the age of the remains – some from 5.3 million years ago – that has prompted huge excitement in the scientific community.

The underwater necropolis, which was discovered by a team of researchers from China, Italy and New Zealand, is teeming with organisms and species that “may be new to science”, according to journal Nature.

One of the study’s authors Xiaotong Peng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said: “Discovering a necropolis of this scale was completely unexpected.

“The size of distribution, the depth and the age range were far beyond anything we had imagined.”

During 32 dives to the site, explorers collected samples from 485 whale-fossil sites and active whale falls, and found a treasure trove of remains, including one extinct whale’s skeleton.

The beaked Pterocetus benguelae, which is 5.3 million years old, was discovered to be one of the fossilised skulls in the graves.

A five-metre long Antarctic minke whale’s carcass was the largest discovery made.

A new species which the team has called Pterocetus diamantinae, after the site, was also uncovered.

Jellyfish, worms and crustaceans are among the community of creatures living off the huge spread of carcasses.

“Peng and colleagues’ encounter with a vast fossil graveyard is a truly unique discovery,” Stephen J Godfrey of the Calvert Marine Museum wrote in Nature.

“Although the site has limited accessibility, it seems likely to hold many other exciting finds, and it will no doubt inspire more submersible dives in similar environments.

“Peng and colleagues’ paper reminded me of a trailer for the first in a series of epic movies. I hope that there will be many more of these blockbusters to come.”

[BBC]

bb

President Donald Trump has said on Wednesday that the US will hit Iran “hard” , after the two sides exchanged strikes overnight.

“We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office.

Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian said in a post on X following Trump’s briefing that Iran “will stand firm against any pressure or threat”.

US Central Command (Centcom) said on Wednesday night that forces had begun launching strikes at 17:15 Eastern Time (22:15 BST) against “multiple targets” in Iran.

It added in a post on X that the strikes were “in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression”.

The US also launched strikes on Iran on Tuesday after Trump said Iran had downed a US Army helicopter.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it responded with strikes on US bases in the region.

Trump reiterated a call for Iran to “sign a deal” during his briefing on Wednesday, while US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters later that day that bombs would be “dropping on key facilities in Iran”.

Tuesday’s US strikes on Iran targeted Iranian defence systems, ground control stations and radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz, Centcom said.

Iranian state media said US strikes had hit two reservoirs in the area, leaving thousands of people in the southern port town of Sirik without access to drinking water for 12 hours.

Iran’s IRGC said it had launched strikes on 21 targets at American bases in the region, one in Bahrain and the other in Jordan, while Kuwait’s army said it was also intercepting an attack.

Reuters cited a US official on Wednesday as saying nearly all of the Iranian missiles and drones launched at US bases in the Middle East in response were intercepted, with no reported casualties.

On Tuesday, Centcom described its strikes on Iran as “a proportional response” for the Apache helicopter downing on Monday.

Trump previously said on Truth Social that the helicopter had been “shot down” as it was patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. Fox News quoted Trump on Wednesday as saying that an Iranian drone had hit the helicopter without exploding as it flew “very low” .

The two crew members survived and were rescued by an American sea drone.