Shamed pop star Gary Glitter finally left Bangkok tonight and is heading for London, the Foreign Office said.

Every Wednesday for the past ten years, 81-year-old Thelma Percy has travelled from her home in Bognor Regis to the Haslar Immigration and Removal Centre in Gosport to spend time with the thousands of asylum seekers that pass through the centre’s ominous green gates.

Craig Pickering is nothing if not honest, so it was hardly surprising that he brushed aside all well-meaning attempts from his team-mates to take joint responsibility for the dropped baton that put an end to Britain's defence of the 4x100m relay title almost as soon as it had begun here on a night of heats which, bizzarely, saw 11 countries come to grief.

Usain Bolt was at it again yesterday, striking another 'bow and arrow' pose as he stood on the top step of the rostrum in the Beijing National Stadium at the men's 200m medal ceremony. The crowd loved it.

Before settling into his starting blocks for the Olympic 400m final in the Beijing National Stadium yesterday, LaShawn Merritt blew a kiss and pointed up towards the smog-free sky. He was about to honour the memory of his late brother, and also answer a prayer for American sprinting – if the 400m race qualifies as a sprint, that is.

There were joyful, flag-trailing laps of honour after the highest quality triple jump the world has ever seen.

Amateur photographers have long mourned the lack of decent software for stitching their images together to make the kind of panoramas beloved of glossy publications everywhere, and today Microsoft might just have answered their prayers with new site photosynth.net.

"We’re going to hell!," shouts a Japanese fisherman as he boards a factory ship bound for freezing waters off Russia.