Will Renwick set to complete three-week, 500-mile journey across Wales – after nearly giving up on day twoHe has survived injury, isolation and an awful lot of drenching, bone-chilling rain, and now Will Renwick is on the point of completing an extraordinary run across Wales, taking in 189 mountain peaks.Unsupported, carrying his tent and everything else on his back, the 31-year-old will have run north to south, covering more than 500 miles, and in the process raised thousands of pounds for the charity Mind Over Mountains, which promotes the benefits of spending time in the great outdoors. Continue reading...

Push will be performed in Boortmeerbeek, where Simon Gronowski fled to safety, nine days before his 90th birthdayThe 90th birthday of Simon Gronowski, who at the age of 11 escaped a train destined for Auschwitz thanks to three Belgian resistance fighters, is being honoured with the staging of an opera inspired by his story near the rail tracks where he fled the Nazis eight decades ago.Sitting alongside Gronowski during Sunday’s performance in Boortmeerbeek, a village north-east of Brussels, will be the sculptor Koenraad Tinel, whose elder brother was the Flemish SS guard who ordered him and his mother, Chana, on to the train on 19 April 1943. Chana did not escape from the transport and was killed in the gas chambers on arrival at the death camp. Continue reading...

After scoring a No 1 in lockdown, the post-punk band’s singer Joe Talbot reflects on writing about car crashes, substance abuse and Rishi Sunak on their new albumTowards the end of Idles’ upcoming fourth album, Crawler, lead singer Joe Talbot comes to a euphoric realisation. “In spite of it all,” the 37-year-old howls, “life is beautiful.”It’s an apt conclusion for a band who have endured personal tragedy and childhood trauma, and in just four years cemented their status as the face of British post-punk. Their debut album, Brutalism, burst forth with Talbot raging about rape culture (“Sexual violence doesn’t start and end with rape / It starts in our books and behind our school gates,” he shouts on fan favourite Mother), NHS funding and white privilege. Its follow-up Joy As an Act of Resistance swiped at toxic masculinity via similarly seething anthems and catapulted its creators to No 5 in the UK album chart. Last year’s Ultra Mono, a more diversified flurry of synths, pianos and hummed vocals, did even better, finding its way to No 1. Continue reading...

Dress in ‘monoclo’, says artist Pascal Anson, and you’ll rethink your relationship with clothes for ever. Jess Cartner-Morley gives it a go

The manager of the Ontario store noticed the carroty crustacean was being ‘picked on’ and took it to the Toronto aquariumAn extremely rare orange lobster was rescued from certain death – and the humiliation of spending its final days in a grocery store tank – after the manager noticed it was being “picked on” by the other lobsters.“Obviously it stood out. It’s not every day you see a lobster that looks like it’s pre-cooked walking around,” said Niki Lundquist, whose husband manages the grocery store in Ontario’s Durham region. Continue reading...

Virginia Raggi hasn’t solved waste issues while far-right candidate advocates restoring fascist saluteElio Perugini can’t remember the last time he had a decent night’s sleep. “It’s a disaster, the noise just doesn’t stop,” he said. “I hardly sleep any more. The worst of it is on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.”Sleepless nights have become the norm for many in Trastevere, a neighbourhood in central Rome once treasured for its charm and old-world feel, but now known for its rowdy nightlife, petty crime, piles of rubbish and graffiti-scarred walls. Continue reading...

Victoria’s premier Daniel Andrews has announced a further easing of restrictions as the state reaches its 80% first-dose vaccination target. Here’s what you need to know about schools, travel, childcare and work

Demonstrators who took part in rally that hastened end of Brazil’s dictatorship hope for similar show of force this weekendNearly 40 years have passed since downtown Rio was overrun with what one awestruck reporter declared “the greatest and most fantastical popular demonstration of all time”.It was 10 April 1984, the twilight of Brazil’s two-decade dictatorship, and more than a million dissenters from across the political spectrum had hit the streets with a deafening and unified call for change. Continue reading...

Victoria’s case numbers are delayed:No clue if this is a good sign or not. Here’s hoping. Continue reading...

Pair aged 44 and 53 bring total number of arrests to nine in relation to the shooting in Derry in 2019Detectives investigating the murder of the journalist Lyra McKee in Derry have arrested two more men.The men, aged 44 and 53, were detained on Friday morning under the Terrorism Act and taken to the serious crime suite at Musgrave police station in Belfast for interview. Continue reading...

Marriage with non-royal Kei Komuro to take place against backdrop of scandal, tabloid intrusion and public disapprovalWhen they announced their unofficial engagement four years ago, they were cast as a perfect match: the young princess and the clean-cut trainee lawyer, for whom she was prepared to sacrifice her imperial status.Now the sound of wedding bells is within earshot, after the Imperial Household Agency announced on Friday that Princess Mako, the niece of Japan’s emperor, would marry her non-royal fiance, Kei Komuro, on 26 October. Continue reading...

NHS app needed to enter nightclubs, large events and for overseas travel, but users complain it does not work

Prime minister announces plans to allow vaccinated passengers into Australia with a pre-flight Covid test and one week of home quarantine

World’s second biggest economy is grappling with power cuts that have affected industrial outputChina’s central government officials have ordered the top state-owned energy companies to secure fuel supplies for winter at all costs as the country battles a power crisis that threatens to hit growth in the world’s second biggest economy.The vice-premier, Han Zheng, has told energy companies to make sure there is enough fuel to keep the country running and made it clear that Beijing would not tolerate blackouts, according to a report by Bloomberg. Continue reading...

People with the condition can face being seen as ‘cursed’ in the east African country, says Martin Senkubuge, whose art aims to make them proud of their skinIt was a confrontation with a female Michael Jackson fan that first drew Martin Senkubuge’s attention to the skin condition vitiligo.Senkubuge, a Ugandan artist, was describing his tattoo of the musician to the woman at an art exhibition in Kampala in 2019, when he accused the pop star of bleaching his skin. Continue reading...

Women in refuges have been sent home to their abusers or to prison since the Taliban takeover. Those in the few shelters still open fear what lies aheadZari was seven years old when her parents died, forcing her to move in with her uncle. But when he died four years later, his two widows beat Zari and forced her to work long hours weaving carpets. During her teenage years, Zari tried to kill herself.After her suicide attempt, Zari, now 28, moved into a shelter for abused women. For the past eight years she has held on to the belief that things would get better. She made friends and learned to sew clothes, eventually teaching others to do the same. Continue reading...

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...