Sport offered both history and high drama today, led by France’s emphatic 4-1 win over Norway as Ousmane Dembélé tore through Group I with a blistering first-half hat-trick, sealing top spot and underlining France’s status as a World Cup favorite. Norway still advanced as runners-up, while Senegal’s 5-0 demolition of Iraq kept faint knockout hopes alive through the best third-place route. The tournament’s most captivating underdog story, though, belongs to Cape Verde: a 0-0 draw with Saudi Arabia sent the island nation into the last 32, making it the smallest country ever to reach the World Cup knockout stage. Away from the pitch, a far more unsettling story unfolded in Beijing, where a small aircraft crashed into the CITIC Tower, triggering evacuations, a major emergency response, and an urgent investigation into how a plane struck the capital’s tallest skyscraper.