1. Police tried to tase Ahmaud Arbery in 2017 incident, video shows
‘Police attempted to use a Taser on Ahmaud Arbery, the slain Georgia jogger, after questioning why he was sitting alone in his car in a park one morning in November 2017, according to records and a police video obtained by the Guardian.’
2. King pairs: a short history of the greatest indignity in cricket
‘The natural assumption would be that most of the king pairs came in the early years, before the Great War, when bowlers such as Fred “The Demon” Spofforth and SF Barnes were allowed to bowl on damp clay at scantily padded aristos with little incentive for self-improvement. Yet only the first four were in Test cricket’s cretaceous period: two for England, two for South Africa.’
3. Kaiser Chiefs: how we made I Predict a Riot
‘I remember seeing one guy punch someone from behind. It was horrible. He was puffing his chest out, and a policeman instantly handcuffed him. There’d be girls with no shoes on, so there’s that line: “If it wasn’t for chip fat they’d be frozen.” I don’t think Leeds nightlife is like that any more, although to be honest I haven’t been out in the city centre at two in the morning for about 10 years.’
4. Aymen Tahar’s football odyssey from Sheffield United to Steaua Bucharest
“It was a culture shock as I had never left home. The snow was so bad when I arrived, and I was just thinking: ‘What have I got myself into? Where have I come?’ I spent three years at Gaz Metan but the first three months were really difficult. I came home and didn’t know if I wanted to go back. After 10 days at home, I realised it wasn’t so bad, as they had given me my chance to play as a professional.”
5. Saturday Night Live: the 10 best sketches from the 45th season
‘The most highly anticipated episode of Saturday Night Live in years saw Eddie Murphy’s first time hosting in over three decades. He kicked things off with a new installment of Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood, in which we find the titular children’s show host still up to his old ways, even as the world around him has changed.’
6. My favourite game: Michael Owen inspires Liverpool to FA Cup glory
‘Arsenal dominated throughout, which made it a frustrating watch for large periods, but it did have everything as a game: numerous goal-line clearances; a goal conceded because of a horrific goalkeeping mistake; a strong handball shout; and a two-goal swing to win the game. The artist? Owen, of course’
7. Lilly Wachowski rounds on Ivanka Trump and Elon Musk over Matrix tweets
‘Film-maker Lilly Wachowski has responded to Elon Musk and Ivanka Trump after the pair bantered on social media using a phrase from the Wachowskis’ hit 1999 film, The Matrix.’
8. Nick Hancock says he is ‘appalled’ at himself for mocking Luke Chadwick
‘Nick Hancock says he is “appalled” at himself after the former Manchester United player Luke Chadwick opened up on the torment the broadcaster’s TV show caused him. Hancock was a former host of the BBC panel show They Think It’s All Over, which Chadwick has said he used to “dread”.’
9. ‘We marked an era’ – 60 years on from when Real won 7-3 at Hampden
‘The reaction was furious, the quality mesmerising. Within nine minutes, Madrid had equalised, within 12 they were in front and they weren’t going to stop there. WR Taylor wrote in the Guardian: “Puskas had a shot kicked off the line. The writing was on the wall with a vengeance. It merely remained to be seen how the execution would be carried out …”’
10. War in Libya: how did it start, who is involved and what happens next?
‘Forces allied to Libya’s UN-backed prime minister have seized a key airbase from the renegade general Khalifa Haftar, dealing a huge strategic blow to the warlord’s year-long campaign to capture the capital. Foreign powers – notably Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Russia – are increasingly active in this new chapter of the war, leading to fears of another drawn-out proxy conflict similar to Syria.’
How we create the antidote
Every day we measure not only how many people click on individual stories but also how long they spend reading them. This list is created by comparing the attention time with the length of each article, to come up with a ranking for the stories people read most deeply.
