Alex Turner meets some of the amateur detectorists stalking the fields of the UK searching for buried historyIn July 2009, Terry Herbert of the Bloxwich Research and Metal Detecting club picked up a signal with his metal detector; the signal for what we now know to be the Staffordshire hoard. The find of almost 4,600 pieces of gold and silver was the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever discovered. .Without the army of dedicated hobbyists that stalk the fields of the UK, much of our history would remain secret, buried and forgotten beneath our feet. Since the success of the BBC comedy Detectorists, more people have taken to metal detecting than ever before.Cameron Jones, a young metal detectorist who ‘fell in love’ with detecting after a metal-detecting rally was held on the land of his dad’s farm. Continue reading...

Archie White was a keen teenage artist, but gave it up for five decades as a solicitor. Now he is starting a new student charity and painting furiouslyArchie White says he would like to retire, but I’m not sure I believe him. This summer he made headlines when he graduated with a fine art degree from East Sussex College. He was 96 years and 56 days old – a few months short of setting a new world record for the oldest graduate.Graduation was only the beginning. “I’m pretty busy all the time,” he says. A former solicitor, he still does consultancy work on the side and is “painting furiously to meet the demands of studios”. On top of that, he is in the process of co-founding a charity, GradAid, with East Sussex College.Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?

With his final turn as James Bond in No Time to Die filling cinemas, the actor takes questions from readers and fellow actors about the role, from being smacked around his nether regions to getting over his fear of heightsMost movie stars look tiny up close. Action lads especially. You can’t stop thinking: Vin Diesel is dinky! Statham’s a titch! Am I actually taller than Fassbender?Daniel Craig is different. He doesn’t loom, but he is bulky. Stonehenge legs, whacking hands, just right for killing a man or mending a washing machine. Continue reading...

Inquiry finds 21 men accused of sex abuse, including rape, worked for World Health Organization during Democratic Republic of the Congo’s 2018 Ebola crisisSurvivors of sexual abuse by World Health Organization aid workers during the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak in 2018 should receive “substantive” reparations, the co-chair of an independent inquiry into the scandal has said.Julienne Lusenge, a prominent Congolese human rights activist, said it was “essential” that the UN’s global health body drew up a workable plan for reparations to respond to the “real needs” of women and girls who became victims of abuse. Continue reading...

Vera Baird calls for greater resources and urgency after sentencing of Sarah Everard’s killerPolice forces should be compelled to deal with violence against women and girls with the same level of resources, expertise and urgency as terrorism or organised crime, the victims commissioner for England and Wales has said.After Sarah Everard’s killer was given a full-life sentence on Thursday, campaigners said there was increasing frustration and the time for action was now. Continue reading...

Former vice minister of security Sun Lijun accused of extreme ‘political ambition’ and leading a corrupt and extravagant lifeA former senior Chinese official has been accused of a raft of corruption offences, expelled from the Communist party and put on trial, in the latest case in a purge led by leader Xi Jinping.After a 17-month investigation, China’s top anti-corruption bodies announced the case against the former vice minister of state security Sun Lijun had been sent to prosecutors, state media reported. Continue reading...

Fleet of luxury cars, purchased for the 2018 Apec summit in a move that prompted widespread outrage, has been put up for saleA fleet of Maserati cars, bought by the Papua New Guinean government for the 2018 Apec leaders’ summit in a move that prompted widespread outrage, has been put up for discounted sale.Finance minister, John Pundari, admitted the purchase of the luxury vehicles was a “terrible mistake”, according to the Post Courier, as he announced the vehicles will be put on the market for a discount price of K400,000 (AU$158,000). Continue reading...

Frontrunners to succeed president Rodrigo Duterte in May vote include his daughter and Ferdinand Marcos’s son, with boxing star Manny Pacquia also in mixThe Philippines’ election season has kicked off with TV celebrities, political scions and at least one inmate expected to be among thousands of candidates vying for posts from president to town councillor.A week-long registration process launches a typically noisy and deadly seven months of campaigning for more than 18,000 positions – but the raging pandemic and economic misery caused by harsh lockdowns could dampen the party atmosphere. Continue reading...

Irresponsible statements are fuel for those who falsely believe their rights have been taken awayWhen former prime minister John Key referred to New Zealand as a “smug hermit kingdom” in his widely disseminated op-ed, I thought it was pushing it a bit, but not completely off the mark – we closed our borders to outsiders, after all. What I didn’t expect was for him to start calling the government’s response “North Korean”. This isn’t just lazy rhetoric, it’s obviously wrong.This is what North Korea’s been through: it closed its borders at the beginning of 2020, before most of the world put itself into lockdown. It stopped all shipments in and out of the country, including China, which is its largest trading partner and aid donor. Fishing in its surrounding waters and even salt harvesting was halted, for fear Covid may be transmitted that way. Foreign diplomatic staff left on one-way tickets: one group of Russians took a hand-powered rail cart out of the country. Continue reading...

Kim Jong-un appears not to have attended test, which was overseen by a central committee memberNorth Korea has fired a newly developed anti-aircraft missile, the official KCNA news agency has reported, in the latest in its recent series of weapons tests.The test on Thursday, conducted by the Academy of Defence Science, a military weapons developer, was aimed at confirming the practical functionality of the missile’s launcher, radar, comprehensive battle command vehicle and combat performance, KCNA said. Continue reading...

Volcano on La Palma has been steadily spewing molten rock into the sea, enlarging the size of the islandLava from the volcano in Spain’s Canary Islands that began cascading into the ocean two days ago has already covered an area bigger than 25 football pitches.By late Thursday, the newly wrought peninsula on La Palma had doubled in size to 20 hectares (50 acres) since the morning, according to the Volcanic Institute of the Canaries (Involcan). Continue reading...

Mali’s military leaders under pressure to pull back from suspected agreement with Wagner GroupThe UK has joined a mounting international campaign of pressure on Mali’s military leaders to step back from a suspected deal with a Russian mercenary company, amid fears that the agreement will further complicate insecurity in the region.

Friday: Age, disadvantage and reduced access are mixing together to create a perfect Covid cocktail. Plus: four children reveal which bird they are voting forGood morning. The disparity in vaccination rates between the poor and wealthy, Indigenous and non-Indigenous has been laid bare. The Australian hospitality industry is trying to lure staff from the UK. And something has to be done about patchy mobile coverage in the bush, as well as the house price boom.Some of Victoria’s lowest socioeconomic areas are still lagging behind on Covid vaccination rates as the wealthiest surge ahead, creating a stark divide. Prof Mark Stoove from the Burnet Institute said age, disadvantage and access were mixing together to create a perfect Covid cocktail. “The weakest part of our response we’ve found constantly to be health literacy, access to testing and vaccines, casualised workforces,” he said. Continue reading...

Last year 15,444 cases of domestic violence were reported but only 250 people were prosecuted and 100 convicted. Victims deserve betterA woman is beaten every 30 seconds in Papua New Guinea, and more than 1.5 million people experience gender-based violence in the country each year.On 3 September in Mt Hagen, one of the country’s largest cities, three men were released from prison after being accused of murdering a 31-year-old woman, Imelda Tupi Tiamanda. One of the men was her husband. Continue reading...

Details of indecent exposure claims emerge as ex-Met officer Wayne Couzens is given whole-life sentencePolice have accepted they may have had enough information to identify Wayne Couzens as a threat to women before he raped and killed Sarah Everard.Couzens was handed a rare whole-life sentence on Thursday, meaning he will spend the rest of his life in jail. The judge said his crimes were as serious as a terrorist atrocity because he abused his powers as a police officer. Continue reading...

The woman at the centre of a human rights claim against police gives her response to the rulingIt is 10 years since I first sat down with a group of eight women to discuss bringing an assault case against the Metropolitan police. We were reeling from the discoveries that men we had loved never existed. I was tricked into a relationship with a man I knew as Mark Stone, who turned out to be a police spy, Mark Kennedy. The Met had sent serving officers into our lives to deceive us into sexual relationships and to spy on our political campaigns.It quickly emerged that those relationships, which had at first felt like personal betrayals, were in fact part of a systematic practice, spanning decades, of police officers deceiving women into sex and targeting leftwing political organisations in order to undermine dissent. Continue reading...

Mohammad Zaman Khadimi was forced to make an impossible choice as he fled the Taliban for sanctuary in Australia. Assistant news editor Shelley Hepworth recommends this profile by Ben Doherty about Khadimi, a young Hazara man who walked out of class one morning and into a world entirely changed

As pressure to reduce Australia’s emissions to net zero by 2050 increases, there has been a slight shift in language from the Morrison government on its climate targets. But as the PM points to a roadmap for reduced emissions, Morrison must appease his Coalition counterparts. Lenore Taylor and Adam Morton speak to Gabrielle Jackson about the shifting politics of climate action

Nine arrests in Netherlands over gang said to be linked to at least 15 bombings on German cash machinesDutch and German police have broken up a criminal gang involved in making video tutorials on how to bomb cash machines after one of its members blew himself up in the process.One suspect was killed and another was badly hurt in the Dutch city of Utrecht when a trial run went wrong at an illegal “training centre” for explosives attacks on ATMs, Europol said. Continue reading...

Struggle between cartels to control smuggling routes leads to third – and deadliest – prison riot this yearA bitter struggle between rival Mexican cartels to control cocaine trafficking routes in Ecuador has erupted in a day of bloodshed inside a high-security prison which left 116 inmates dead. Many of the victims were butchered with chainsaws or beheaded with machetes.As security forces battled to retake the Litoral penitentiary in the coastal city of Guayaquil on Wednesday, scores of bodies were found dumped in bathrooms and corridors, piled and burned in courtyards, or even stuffed into air ducts. Continue reading...

With its shocking developments, is Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond a slap in the face for 007 fans? Will it be an asterisk in the canon or change the franchise for ever?

Neighbours launched him, and since then the star of Memento and Zone 414 has seized his Hollywood roles with a unique intensity. He talks about death, drugs, being a dad and divorceAt the start of this century, Guy Pearce was sitting pretty. He had shaken off the frothy soap bubbles of Neighbours, where he was one of the show’s original batch of pin-ups, along with Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, and was proving himself a versatile film actor – first as a sharp-clawed drag artist in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, then as a clench-jawed cop in LA Confidential.Awaiting release was the existential thriller Memento, directed by a promising up-and-comer named Christopher Nolan. First, though, he heard whispers that Kenneth Turan, the film critic of the LA Times, had been singing his praises in a review of the military courtroom drama Rules of Engagement. Continue reading...

Roman Dobrokhotov, founder of the Insider, who worked on high-profile cases has been placed on a wanted listRussian authorities are seeking to detain a prominent investigative journalist, in another sign of increased government pressure on independent media, opposition supporters and human rights activists.Roman Dobrokhotov, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Insider news site is being investigated on charges of “illegally” crossing the border, and has been placed on a wanted list as part of the investigation, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday. Continue reading...

Singer held up her dirty and torn bag as evidence on Instagram: ‘They’ve destroyed everything’Shakira said two wild boars attacked her in a Barcelona park and destroyed her bag.In an Instagram story post, the singer held up her dirty and torn bag as evidence, which she said boars tried to carry off into the woods. Continue reading...

Irmgard Furchner, charged with aiding and abetting murder of thousands, detained several hours after abscondingA 96-year-old woman who worked as a secretary for a Nazi concentration camp commandant has been caught several hours after she absconded from her care home and missed the start of her trial in northern Germany.Irmgard Furchner, who was 18 when she started work at Stutthof camp on the Baltic coast in Nazi-occupied Poland, was due to stand trial on Thursday on charges of aiding and abetting the murder of thousands of prisoners. Continue reading...

Inspectors say force has failed to address ‘significant delays’ in handling of serious crimesInspectors have issued an unprecedented warning about public safety in Greater Manchester after finding serious failings in the region’s police force – four years after the alarm was first raised.The inspector of constabulary said he was deeply concerned that Greater Manchester police (GMP) was failing vulnerable victims of crime, with some waiting days or weeks for a response. Continue reading...

The UN must urgently appoint a special rapporteur on climate change and human rights to galvanise action on the biggest threat to fundamental freedomsClimate breakdown is making a mockery of human rights.Start with the most fundamental right of all: the right to life, liberty and security. Two million people have died as a result of a five-fold increase in weather-related disasters in our lifetimes. And given that 90% of these deaths have occurred in developing countries, which have contributed the least to global heating, the climate crisis is also making a mockery of the notion that we are all born equal – as the UN Declaration of Human Rights and numerous national constitutions assert. Continue reading...

China’s surveillance machine has grown with the aid of Chinese and international technology companies. But few have faced repercussionsAbdusalam Muhammad recalls local police interrogating him and his family in their home of Yakan in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region as early as 1995. At the time, his family was deeply involved with the local mosque. His father was the imam, and his grandfather was the mosque’s secretary. As for Muhammad, he said he prayed five times a day, was a “non-smoker” and a “well-behaved man”.

Many private schools may not reopen after staff laid off during lockdown say they will not return to the professionThe last message Mary Namitala received from the private school in which she taught was in March last year, the day all schools in Uganda were ordered close due to Covid-19. The message read: “No more payments until when schools open.”“My husband and I decided to leave our rented house in town and shifted to the village, to our unfinished house. We could not afford to continue paying rent,” says Namitala, from her home in Bombo in central Uganda, about 20 miles north of the capital Kampala. Continue reading...

The Māori who have been screwed by the system are once again being silenced and ignoredSorry means you don’t do it again. So goes a phrase used by Aboriginal protesters in Australia in recent years.The phrase references the national apology in 2008 by prime minister Kevin Rudd to Aboriginal peoples for the Stolen Generations, the thousands of children who were taken from their families. Continue reading...

Channel island’s government rejected third of French boats and ordered them out of its waters within 30 daysJersey’s government is bracing itself for a blockade of its main port by angry fishers and France said it would look at “retaliation measures” after a third of French boats applying to fish in the Channel island’s waters were turned down.The French maritime minister, Annick Girardin, said France and the EU would work on potential responses over the next two weeks unless the UK was able to resolve the dispute quickly. Continue reading...

Sentencing hearing told that Met officer ‘hunted for a female to rape’, as footage shows him staging a false arrest of his victimWayne Couzens used his police warrant card and handcuffs to lure Sarah Everard off the street before strangling her with his police belt and burning her body, depriving her family of the chance to say a final goodbye, a court has heard.Video footage released on Wednesday showed Couzens, then a serving Metropolitan police officer, staging a false arrest of Everard as she returned from a friend’s house in south London in March during a period of coronavirus lockdown measures. Continue reading...

Backlash after Mexican president bizarrely claims movement had been formed to oppose his administrationMexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has picked yet another fight with the country’s burgeoning feminist movement, saying it only started “two years ago” and bizarrely claiming it had been formed to oppose his administration.Asked on Wednesday about a march in Mexico City for International Safe Abortion Day, the president spoke conspiratorially of the women’s movement, alleging it had become “conservative” – a term he uses to deride his critics. Continue reading...

Southwark Playhouse, London

Group of whistleblowing doctors gave 10,000-page dossier to investigators last month with allegations against Prevent SeniorOne of Brazil’s biggest healthcare providers has been accused of covering up coronavirus deaths, pressuring doctors to prescribe ineffective treatments, and testing unproven drugs on elderly patients as part of ideologically-charged efforts to help the Brazilian government resist a Covid lockdown.Related: Trump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism Continue reading...

Vaccination rates are rising in much of south-east Asia and the Pacific after recent outbreaks, but some of the largest countries are falling behind

Navy chief Tony Radakin and SAS general Sir Patrick Sanders are frontrunners for the positionBoris Johnson has interviewed five candidates to head Britain’s armed forces, with navy chief Adm Tony Radakin and the general responsible for the SAS, Sir Patrick Sanders, frontrunners for the job.Defence sources said the prime minister had been advised to pick a new military leader with “operational experience” to replace the outgoing Gen Sir Nick Carter, whose credibility was damaged by the chaotic exit from Afghanistan. Continue reading...

Ex-model will be treated at the Priory before being sentenced in December following collision near Sussex homeKatie Price faces a possible prison sentence after pleading guilty to drink-driving and admitting taking drugs after a crash near her home in Sussex.She will be treated at the drug rehabilitation clinic the Priory before being sentenced in December. Continue reading...

Turkey’s president wants to shore up the truce because it has been ruptured repeatedly in the last 18 monthsTurkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian president Vladimir Putin have held face-to-face talks for the first time since the pandemic in which they discussed the future of the last pocket of Syria outside regime control.The leaders met in Russia’s Black Sea resort town of Sochi for Wednesday’s summit, Erdoğan sought to shore up a March 2020 ceasefire deal which ended a bruising assault by Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies on Turkish-backed fighters in north-west Syria. The fighting last year brought Ankara and Moscow close to direct confrontation and threatened Turkey – which is already home to around four million Syrians – with a new wave of refugees. Continue reading...

The world’s top coal consumer implements power rationing as supplies dwindle ahead of winterChina has told railway companies and local authorities to expedite vital coal supplies to utilities as the world’s second largest economy grapples with extensive power cuts that have crippled industrial output in key regions.As many as 20 provinces are believed to be experiencing the crisis to some degree, with factories temporarily shuttered or working on short hours. Shopkeepers were left to light their stores by candles, and there were reports of mobile networks failing after a three-day outage hit three north-eastern provinces. Continue reading...

Cardiff pays tribute to woman who became a model for best practice in equality and multicultural educationShe was a pioneer and a rule-breaker, an educator, community leader and race relations campaigner who met Nelson Mandela and rubbed shoulders with royalty – but always had time to call out the bingo numbers at a local event or sign a passport photo.In bright sunshine on Wednesday, a choir from the school Betty Campbell led with distinction sang her favourite song, Something Inside So Strong, as a huge bronze monument to her was unveiled in a Cardiff city centre square. Continue reading...

Taliban deny Morteza Samadi, 21, has been sentenced to death but family concerned for his safety after he was detained while covering women’s protests in HeratFears are growing for a photojournalist who has been detained by the Taliban for more than three weeks after being arrested while covering the women’s protests in Herat.Morteza Samadi, 21, a freelance photographer, was one of several journalists who were arrested at street protests at the beginning of September. All were quickly released except Morteza, whose whereabouts is not known. Some of those detained in Kabul have alleged they were badly beaten and tortured. Continue reading...

Bloc accuses Lukashenko of incentivising migrants to cross Belarus’s border with the EU

Spain brought Catholicism, civilisation and freedom to Americas, says Isabel Díaz AyusoThe rightwing president of the Madrid region has taken issue with the pope’s recent apology for the church’s “very painful errors” in Mexico, and said Spanish conquistadors brought Catholicism, civilisation and freedom to Latin America.Isabel Díaz Ayuso, touted as a possible future leader of Spain’s conservative People’s party, has a history of provocative pronouncements. Continue reading...

Latest updates: Labour leader addresses delegates for first time in person and says Labour will strengthen legal protections for victims of crime

We’d like to hear from UK employers and employees what the end of the furlough scheme will mean for their jobs and businessesThe government’s furlough scheme, introduced in April 2020, will end on 30 September.We’re interested to hear from employees still currently on furlough how they might be affected, as well as from employers. Continue reading...

‘Discriminatory’ banning of I Am Samuel, about a gay man’s struggles with his sexuality, criticised by activists and producersActivists and film producers have criticised a decision by the Kenya Film Classification Board to ban a documentary that tells the story of a Kenyan man struggling with his sexuality.They said banning the 52-minute film, I Am Samuel, amounted to “discrimination and persecution” of LGBTQ+ people. Continue reading...

We are raiding the Audio Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.This week, from 2017: After police failed to solve his son’s murder, Francisco Holgado infiltrated the local criminal underworld in pursuit of those responsible. He became a national hero – but at what cost? By Matthew Bremner Continue reading...