Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith has been named in the five-strong shortlist for the 2018 IAAF Female Athlete of the Year award.

The triple European champion is joined by fellow sprinter Shaunae Miller-Uibo from the Bahamas.

Belgian heptathlete Nafissatou Thiam, Colombian triple jumper Caterine Ibarguen and steeplechaser Beatrice Chepkoech from Kenya complete the list.

The award will be presented on 4 December in Monaco.

In August, the 22-year-old became the first British woman to win triple European Championship gold, claiming the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay titles in Berlin.

She also won 4x100m gold at the Commonwealth Games and bronze in the 200m – a race won by Miller-Uibo.

Motorola’s Moto Z3 has plenty of mods to adapt your phone into your ideal device. With a super AMOLED screen and a sleek glass and metal build, this phone sure is easy on the eyes. One of the biggest draw backs of this phone is the button placement, which is all over the place. Seriously, who needs a fingerprint reader on the side of a phone? If you can get past the average functional features, this phone might be your perfect match. Alix Aspe has all of the details on mods, battery life, and other capabilities on this week’s episode of Power Up.

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Football legend Paul Gascoigne has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman on a train from York to Durham.

The former England midfielder was arrested at Durham station on 20 August.

British Transport Police said the 51-year-old has now been charged with one count of sexual assault by touching and will appear at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court on 11 December.

Gazza shot to international fame during the 1990 World Cup.

After leaving his hometown club Newcastle United in 1988, he enjoyed success at Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio and Rangers.

A spokeswoman for British Transport Police said: “Paul Gascoigne… was charged via postal requisition with one count of sexual assault by touching, contrary to Section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

“The charge relates to an incident on board a train on 20 August this year.”

Indie bookshops are often great places for book lovers to browse for hidden gems. Some gems, though, remain hidden for a pretty long time before anyone picks them up and gives them a home.

Broadhurst’s Bookshop, an independent bookshop in the English town of Southport, just sold such a gem after having kept it on their shelves for nearly 28 years. 

The tweet announcing the sale currently has 134,000 likes. 

It wasn’t exactly a current title that went off the shelf after nearly three decades. The book in question was a children’s book about the first Norman King of England, William the Conqueror.

The bookseller was clearly very pleased when the title finally got picked up from the shelf. 

The viral tweet from Broadhurst’s Bookshop inspired other booksellers to tweet about that one book in their store that lives there for years without being sold. 

The Larger Moths of Warwickshire sounds like a hoot, though. 

This one’s perhaps not such a surprise:

Never throw out a book, guys. Well, maybe that Piers Morgan one. 

The bans on Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft could be reduced by Cricket Australia (CA).

Smith and Warner were suspended for 12 months and Bancroft for nine for ball-tampering in South Africa in March.

An independent review commissioned by CA found the body to be “arrogant and controlling” and partly to blame.

The Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) said the review was grounds to have the punishment lifted and CA could make a decision by the end of the week.

According to its news website, the CA board will discuss the situation in a phone call early this week.

Smith, captain at the time, and Warner, his vice-captain, are eight months into one-year bans, while Bancroft, who carried out the cheating in South Africa, will be eligible to return in December.

“These contrite men have suffered enough. Let them play,” said Greg Dyer, head of the players’ union, in October.

Australia have struggled since the trio were banned. They lost a one-day series in England 5-0, a two-match Test series against Pakistan 1-0 and were beaten 3-0 by the same opponents in a T20 contest.

They have also lost a one-day series against South Africa 2-1 and host India across all formats of the game this winter on home soil, starting with a Twenty20 match in Brisbane on Wednesday.

Great, even everyday postage items are no longer safe. 

In the latest episode of Doctor Who, bubble wrap, which you’ve likely popped with copious amounts of glee, has been rendered a fearsome, transparent temptation of doom. 

In the sixth episode of Series 11 “Kerblam!,” the Doctor, Graham, Yaz, and Ryan visit the warehouse of Kerblam, the galaxy’s largest retailer (and a subtle dig at Amazon).

Without giving too much away, this is what bubble wrap from Kerblam can do to you:

People lost their minds over this terrible, poppable new threat.

Others remembered that it’s not the first time bubble wrap has appeared in Doctor Who, throwing back to a 1975 episode “The Ark in Space,” starring the Fourth Doctor Tom Baker.

Georgia was born as an independent post-Soviet republic just four years after me, so in a sense, we grew up together. We both had to learn everything from scratch, make painful mistakes and navigate the legacy of Soviet rule.

Nowhere is that legacy more visible than in the buildings and monuments the Soviets left behind. Almost 30 years after Georgia gained independence, they squat on the hillsides of our towns and cities as if awaiting the return of their Soviet masters.

“One of the means to show the power of the state has always been architecture, be it pyramids or baroque palaces,” Georgian architect and urban planner, Irakli Zhvania, told me. “It was always the means to show your own people how powerful you are, to show them that they are small, they are little and they should be afraid of the state.”

Decades have passed since that era, and that empire does not exist any more. So why should my generation, which has absolutely no mental connection with the Soviet ideology, live in its shadow? Should we not get rid of Soviet-era architecture, these symbols of oppression? 

I was surprised to find out during the production of my Al Jazeera Correspondent film, The Soviet Scar, that these questions are infuriating for some people in my country.

‘A lot of freedom but no bread to eat’

Yuri Mechitov is a renowned Georgian photographer who was roughly my age during Georgia’s push for independence. In 1989, he took the iconic black and white photograph of a Georgian woman defiantly holding a black flag in the hours after Soviet forces cracked down on peaceful protesters in Tbilisi.

Mechitov said that my generation has been “brainwashed” by the West while his generation has little to show for helping bring down the Soviet Union.

“The Soviet Union was, of course, our home, even if it was a closed country. You couldn’t easily buy jeans or new LPs and we regarded that as a problem at the time, but now it seems silly. We ruined the country for a chewing gum,” he said, referring to the shortages of non-essential goods that anti-Soviet protesters were fed up with. “Now I have a lot of freedom, but no bread to eat.”

As part of the generation that grew up with Georgian independence, my schoolteachers frequently extolled the virtues of our glorious ancient past and its free spirit – but all I could see around me was a nation that had been living in a kind of box for 70 years.

They are just buildings. Even the buildings in human history which keep the memory of tragedy, they are monuments and they are kept. If we go around the world and start to demolish everything that was built during [the time of] some tyrant, we are going to erase half of our history and half of the monuments.

Irakli Zhvania, Georgian architect

‘Generations were raised in these buildings’

For me, Soviet-era architecture is a throwback to Soviet authoritarianism.

Most of all, it’s the blocks. Row after row. Street after street. The ugly, utilitarian housing blocks that families like mine were forced to live in are a painful reminder of the way lives were destroyed – including the one of my great great grandfather who was purged for no reason.

Families whose properties had been confiscated were assigned to the blocks by profession or religious affiliation to keep a ready concentration of workers around industrial areas but also to more easily monitor and collect information on specific groups.

“This was a very good tool [for the state] to be very well informed about a certain community. A very good source of information and control … You could hear what your neighbour is talking about behind a wall, who is visiting whom, what they are doing and so on,” explained architect Irakli Zhvania, who leads the Ugly Walk in Tbilisi.

Several years older than me, Zhvania had experienced the last breaths of the Soviet system first hand and started the walks as a way of remembering the history of Soviet rule through architecture.

For many of Mechitov’s as well as Zhvania’s generation, the demolition of Soviet residence blocks and monuments would be unthinkable.

“Generations were raised in these buildings. It is part of their lives and it is part of their collective memory,” Zhvania said.

He also believes that we should not be angry at buildings for the nature of the regime that commissioned them, pointing to the architectural value of some of the Soviet-era structures.

“First of all, they are just buildings. Even the buildings in human history which keep the memory of tragedy, they are monuments, and they are kept,” he said. “If we go around the world and start to demolish everything that was built during [the time of] some tyrant, we are going to erase half of our history and half of the monuments.”

Zhvania’s comments made me look at the legacy of Soviet architecture in a different way, and made me think of the abandoned Archeology Museum built in Tbilisi in 1988.

It was built by two Georgian architects, Shota Kavlashvili and Shota Bostanashvili, and is a unique piece of architecture. It would be a shame to demolish it just because it was built during the period of the Soviet occupation.

Another Soviet-era building that should be preserved was designed by architects Giorgi Chakhava and Zurab Jalaghania. Built in 1975, it used to house the Ministry of Highway Construction in Tbilisi. 

I still believe that many of the structures left over from Soviet times – especially the ones built during the era of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – no longer serve us and should be taken down.

But in the end, we – the Georgian people – should have an honest discussion about the past and decide how to deal with our country’s Soviet legacy, which I call “the Soviet scar”.

England scrum-half Danny Care has been dropped for Saturday’s match against Australia at Twickenham.

Centre Alex Lozowski and number eight Zach Mercer have also been left out of head coach Eddie Jones’ 28-man squad for the final autumn fixture.

Northampton’s Piers Francis has been included, as has Manu Tuilagi.

Tuilagi has yet to feature this autumn because of injury, but England are hopeful he will be available to face the Wallabies.

England have two wins from their previous three autumn fixtures, with victories over South Africa and Japan coming either side of a 16-15 defeat by world champions New Zealand.

England squad to face Australia:

Forwards: Charlie Ewels, Jamie George, Dylan Hartley, Alec Hepburn, Ted Hill, Nathan Hughes, Maro Itoje, Courtney Lawes, Ben Moon, Brad Shields, Kyle Sinckler, Elliott Stooke, Sam Underhill, Harry Williams, Mark Wilson.

Backs: Chris Ashton, Joe Cokanasiga, Elliot Daly, Owen Farrell, George Ford, Piers Francis, Jonny May, Jack Nowell, Henry Slade, Ben Te’o, Manu Tuilagi, Richard Wigglesworth, Ben Youngs.

If you thought John Oliver was going to pick a lighter topic to round off his most recent series, you’d be wrong.

Yep: the latest issue up for discussion is the fairly unnerving global trend of countries electing authoritarian leaders to power — from Vladimir Putin’s ongoing reign in Russia to Brazil’s recent appointment of the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro.

In the clip above, Oliver breaks down exactly what makes an “authoritarian” leader — from projecting strength and demonising enemies to the dismantling of institutions.

And guess who it all comes back to in the end? Yep, Trump.

“The world is dabbling with something very dangerous right now, and America needs to be careful,” concludes Oliver. “And look, I know democracy can be, often by design, frustrating. Checks and balances can be irritating and slow, and might not deliver the outcome you wanted. 

“But removing them opens the door to something much worse.”

Formula 3 driver Sophia Florsch had an “angel on her shoulder” to survive her high-speed crash at the Macau Grand Prix, says her team principal.

German Florsch, 17, fractured her spine after losing control of her car, which flew through the air before smashing into a fence and photographers’ bunker.

“It was nearly a rocket. Surviving was incredible,” said Frits van Amersfoort, the owner of Van Amersfoort Racing.

“We reckon she was travelling at 276km/h (171.6mph) at the time.”

Florsch posted on social media on Sunday to say she will have surgery on her broken vertebrae on Monday.

She hit the back of Jehan Daruvala’s car on lap four and then launched over the inside kerb into the car of Sho Tsuboi. That impact catapulted her car over the barrier and into an area occupied by marshals and photographers.

Van Amersfoot described the 20 minutes that followed as “one of the worst of my life”.

“We got some information from social media while we were waiting at the door of race control, but when you look at those images it is heartbreaking so we were thinking of the worst,” the Dutchman told BBC Radio 5 live.

“It took quite a long time before the race control could say anything about the health of Sophia – everyone can imagine that’s not a nice thing to have.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this. I haven’t seen all accidents in motorsport but this was surely one of the worst I’ve ever seen.

“We were lucky that she was flying because she went over a barrier. If she had hit the barrier it would have gone a lot worse.”

Jean Todt, the president of motorsport’s governing body the FIA, has said Sunday’s crash – which came a year after British motorcyclist Daniel Hegarty became the eighth rider to be killed on the circuit since 1973 – will be investigated.

“The FIA is mobilised to help those involved and analyse what happened,” he posted on social media. “We will monitor the situation and make the necessary conclusions.”

Japanese driver Tsuboi was taken to hospital with back pain, while race organisers said two photographers and a marshal were also taken to hospital.

Photographer Minami Hiroyuki was taken in with concussion, while marshal Chan Cha In suffered a fractured facial bone and lacerations. The other photographer, Chan Weng Wang, had a liver laceration.

The race in China was immediately red-flagged before restarting an hour later.