Two women on a mission to rescue 10 dogs died after a minibus, two trucks and a van collided in Romania.

Allison Condon, 61, and Rachael Harvey-Purkiss, 41, were in a minibus driving along the DN6, near the village of Vălișoara, Thursday morning.

The vehicle went on the wrong side of the road and crashed head-on into a lorry, injuring the 60-year-old driver, according to Romanian news outlet Informat.ro.

The lorry hit another HGV, trapping the minibus, before another van crashed into the pile-up.

Rachael, from Essex, and Allison, from Northamptonshire, died at the scene just after 11am. Eight of the 10 dogs also died.

The women were in western Romania to take the dogs to France for the UK-based Homeward Bound, which helps street dogs in Turkey.

Allison’s daughter, Sammie Condon, said on Facebook that she has received an ‘incredible outpouring of support’ from well-wishers.

‘This wasn’t supposed to happen…I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact it did and we still don’t know why or how just yet,’ she wrote.

‘This was supposed to be a beautiful adventure that brought dogs to the life they dreamed of. Then we were going to go home, carry on with our lives and try to build a better one

‘And all of it is gone.’

Sammie added that at least one dog survived the crash and is with a Romanian rescue shelter.

‘We cannot take away their grief’

Claire Dalton, the founder of Homeward Bound, said on social media that she is ‘heartbroken’.

An admin of the organisation’s Facebook group said Allison and Rachael’s hearts were ‘full of nothing but love and care for animals’.

‘Today we’re grieving in a way I can’t explain to you,’ they said, describing them as ‘two beautiful rare diamonds’.

More than £23,000 has been raised for Allison and Rachael’s families to cover the costs of flights, vet bills and supporting the remaining dogs.

‘We cannot take away their grief. But together, we can help ease the financial burden that has fallen on them so suddenly,’ the fundraiser says.

The Foreign Office is aware of the incident and in touch with the local authorities.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said a crew from Acomb was called to The Green, in Green Hammerton, at 9.56am today (Sunday, September 27).

The stack measured 20 metres by 30 metres and crews needed assistance from a water bowser from Tadcaster.

A service spokesperson said: “Crews used a 45mm hose and ground monitor to extinguish the fire.”

Thousands of homes in parts of West Sussex have water supply issues and a number of roads have flooded after what police are describing as a “significant” leak.

Roads around the Southgate Roundabout in Crawley have been closed on Sunday morning due to the burst water pipe, Sussex Police said.

Southern Water said around 9,000 customers were impacted and it was setting up bottled water stations.

A company spokesperson said: “Our teams are on site and working as quickly and safely as possible to repair the burst and restore supplies.”

The company said customers were experiencing a loss of water supply or low pressure in the following areas – Woolborough Road, Holmcroft, Southgate, Tilgate and Furnace Green.

It reported at 12:00 BST that supplies had returned to some homes.

At about 18:00, Crawley Borough councillor Duncan Crow said about 4,000 properties had seen their supplies returned.

The Southern Water spokesperson added: “Restoring water to customers as quickly as possible remains our highest priority.”

John Boulton, who is 82, and his partner are without water.

He said: “It’s pretty disgusting, really – we pay so much for the water supply.”

Boulton said he had just paid £22 for bottled water in a shop.

By WILL HALLOWELL, NEWS REPORTER and NATALIA PENZA

Published: 18:17 BST, 27 September 2026 | Updated: 18:42 BST, 27 September 2026

Founder Chloe Taylor, from Crook, said the group will welcome women of all abilities and running speeds.

Announcing the venture on social media, Chloe said creating the club was outside her comfort zone but was driven by a desire to bring local women together through fitness and friendship.

Chloe Taylor. (Image: CHLOE TAYLOR)

Chloe, 33, said: “I want to build a community for us girls to feel safe running together, especially through the darker months.

“This is about getting out, running together, meeting new people and doing something for ourselves.”

The club will hold weekly runs and weekend social events, including post-run coffee meet-ups.

Qualified run leader Chloe Taylor is also planning extra support for women new to running before they join group sessions.

The club’s first event will take place on Saturday, October 10.

Runners will meet outside The Beehive Coffee Shop & Pantry in Bishop Auckland at 8.15am before choosing a 3km or 5km route.

The run will finish at the café, where members can socialise over coffee and buy breakfasts, cakes and other treats.

Chloe said the club is about inclusion, not speed, and welcomes runners of all abilities.

She said: “This isn’t about speed, it’s about socialising and getting out running together, so don’t think you have to run at a certain pace.”

The launch event is free, but runners must register in advance.

Places are limited because of the café’s capacity.

Runners can follow the running club on Instagram and Facebook.

The Beehive is run alongside Angel Trust, with profits funding food banks, counselling and housing support for vulnerable people.

The café opened in May 2025 and supported about 1,100 people through the charity’s services during its first year.

The school is one of only two of its kind

A village green is a prized part of any village, acting as a meeting point and a place for children to play. But in one Cambridgeshire village, their green is rather something to behold, as it is one of the longest in Europe.

It’s far from being just a long stretch of grass, as Barrington’s green has a zip wire, a BMX trail, a climbing zone, playground swings, a climbing net, a slide and a rocking horse. It’s also a designated conservation area, proving its importance both locally and for visitors.

Barrington’s pretty streets are dotted with charming thatched cottages, giving it that chocolate box feeling. One of those thatched buildings is the local primary school, which is one of two remaining thatched schools in England. Barrington Church of England Primary School opened in 1838.

The school’s website states that “history and tradition are a large part of what makes our school special”. The school had previously maintained an Ofsted rating of ‘good’, since 2012, with the report describing pupils as “confident, kind and happy”. But their most recent report carried out in June 2026 rated the school as ‘needing attention’ five out of seven areas. However, the report did say that “pupils recall their learning with great confidence”.

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Barrington has only one pub, which overlooks the village green. And according to the parish council, it’s the last standing out of seven pubs that used to be here during the Victorian era. It is easy to see why this one has stayed so popular over the years. It has an average of 4.5 / 5 from 706 Google reviews.

A recent Google reviewer said: “Outstanding Sunday roast. Probably the best roast out I have ever had. Nice wine, great service and a yummy pudding. I would 100% come back here again.”

You can get from Cambridge to Barrington in around 25 minutes by car, making it an ideal rural escape from the busier city. It has everything you need for a family day out, including plenty of options on the village green to keep children entertained. For those taking public transport, the 75 bus takes you from outside Downing College in Cambridge to Slid Lane, Barrington, in just 32 minutes.

Harry Redknapp is another former Premier League boss feeling impacted by Manchester City’s guilty verdict.

He wrote in a column for The Sun: “There are so many who will feel they have a claim to have some wrongs righted should City fail in their appeal and I am one of them.

“During the period City’s charges cover, I was in charge of Spurs and locking horns with them for the Champions League spots over a long run. In back-to-back seasons, 2010/11 and 2011/12, we finished one place off qualification.

“The second time around, when City won the title with that Sergio Aguero goal on the final day, we finished fourth but STILL missed out as Chelsea won the Champions League to take our spot.

“In May 2011, a 1-0 loss to Roberto Mancini’s side saw them qualify for Europe’s biggest competition for the first time and ended our dream of getting in there ourselves.

“Who knows what would have happened if those at the Etihad had been playing by the rules like everyone else? No one can say for sure but Tottenham fans will not be alone in feeling that they were, in some way, cheated across those seasons.

“Champions League football over those two years could have changed so much for Spurs but I have no interest in the Premier League going back and deducting points from those seasons or deducting titles from City.”

When Egyptian archaeologists announced the discovery of a “lost golden city” near Luxor, Egypt, in 2021, headlines erupted around the world: Treasure. Revelation. A once-in-a-century find.

For archaeologists, however, the most notable feature was not the gold that had yet to materialise, but how quickly the story became framed as adventure. Years of survey, stratigraphic mapping and ceramic analysis barely registered.

Archaeology is one of the rare disciplines where popular culture does not simply reflect public understanding, but actively produces it. Many people encounter archaeology not through excavation reports or museum catalogues, but through a man in a fedora cracking a whip in a torchlit tomb.

In my discussions on archaeology and popular culture at the University of Tübingen, this becomes immediately clear. Students rarely arrive with expectations shaped by site reports or specialist literature – they arrive with Indiana Jones.

Archaeology as adventure

The idea of archaeology as adventure predates the discipline itself. It grew from 19th-century colonial exploration, when the past was treated less as knowledge than as loot. Ancient sites were framed as reservoirs of exotic objects to be extracted and displayed. Even earlier, in the 17th century, travellers like Cornelis de Bruyn returned from the Levant as minor celebrities.

Victorian adventure literature – most influentially H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885) – presented distant landscapes as backdrops for hidden wealth and lost civilisations. Even as archaeology became an academic discipline, it remained entangled in this narrative. Museums displayed artefacts as spectacular fragments of vanished worlds, frequently detached from their archaeological context.

Popular writing extended this logic. C.W. Ceram’s Gods, Graves and Scholars (1949) translated archaeological research into a sequence of dramatic discoveries. He invited readers to experience excavation as a series of moments of revelation. In doing so, he helped stabilise a particular narrative form: archaeology as heroic encounter with the past, driven by exceptional individuals and spectacular finds.

Cinema has amplified and standardised this. From The Mummy (1932) to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and later Tomb Raider (1996) and Assassin’s Creed (2007), archaeology became a recognisable genre defined by hidden chambers, booby traps and solitary heroism.

The persistence of the adventure narrative is not difficult to explain. Archaeology deals in inherently compelling material: objects, ruins, human remains. Popular media selects its most cinematic moments – the uncovered tomb, the deciphered inscription, the glittering artefact – and presents them as the story itself.

In the Indiana Jones films, knowledge arrives through revelation. A hidden chamber opens. A mystery resolves. The past appears to have been waiting to be discovered. But real archaeology works almost in reverse.

Beyond Hollywood

Years spent documenting crumbling walls, fragile ceramic shards and faint traces of settlement rarely produce moments of spectacle. Fieldwork often takes place under difficult conditions, in heat, dust or mud and proceeds through measurement, recording and interpretation. Knowledge constructed, not discovered, and then argued over, revised and sometimes abandoned. The adventure narrative erases this process.

The so-called “lost golden city” of Aten illustrates this tension. Announced as one of the most significant discoveries in Egypt in decades, it generated global headlines before substantial analysis had been published. The “golden” label itself remained unexplained. The revelation circulated widely; the knowledge production that followed remained slow and ongoing.

The adventure model also carries ethical implications. Questions of ownership, restitution and Indigenous heritage sit uneasily within a framework that treats artefacts as objects to be found rather than evidence embedded in living cultural and political contexts. The figure of the lone western excavator recovering lost pasts has a colonial genealogy that contemporary archaeology continues to confront.

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Returning looted artefacts will finally restore heritage to the brilliant cultures that made them

Digital platforms intensify these dynamics further. Instagram and TikTok privilege visual immediacy and reward moments of uncovering over long-term interpretive labour. Algorithmic visibility tends to favour spectacle, not process.

And yet the adventure myth is not simply an error to be corrected. To dismiss it entirely would be to misunderstand its cultural function.

Archaeology and the public imagination

Without Indiana Jones, many people would rarely think about the deep human past at all. Museum attendance, research funding and student interest are all, in part, sustained by a cultural imagination in which archaeology matters enough to be exciting.

In teaching, this dynamic is familiar. Students often arrive drawn by cinematic archaeology, but many leave engaged by something else entirely: the realisation that the most unassuming fragment of a broken pot or worn object can reshape historical understanding.

There is also a reflexive dimension to this story. Archaeologists themselves participate in constructing the narratives that circulate about their work. Press releases announcing “lost cities” or “once-in-a-century discoveries” are not authored by Hollywood. The tension between public communication and scholarly precision is internal to the discipline.

Most people will never read an excavation report. Their understanding of archaeology is shaped through stories, not technical documentation.

Indiana Jones would struggle to obtain a modern excavation permit. Most archaeological breakthroughs occur far from collapsing temples – in comparative analysis, in computational reevaluation of legacy datasets, in the slow refinement of scholarly consensus. But accuracy alone does not determine cultural influence.

The adventure myth compresses a complex, distributed and often invisible process into a narrative that can be recognised at a glance. It obscures much of what archaeology is, but it also sustains its place in public imagination.

The more difficult question is what archaeology chooses to do with the attention it generates – and what kinds of stories it tells once the door has been opened.

Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, a minister closely associated with Maduro’s authoritarian rule, called the interim president’s meeting with Trump “a great triumph of the diplomacy of peace”.

But opposition voices expressed their disapproval over the meeting, viewing it as a snub of their calls – that the US has previously endorsed – for swift elections.

Pedro Mario Burelli, a former Venezuelan state oil company executive and opposition commentator, called the two world leaders “the shameless puppet and her unscrupulous and undignified puppet-master”, adding: “Little has changed in Venezuela under Washington’s clumsy and selective oversight.”

Venezuela’s last elections, held in 2024, in which Maduro was declared the winner, were widely disputed as rigged. Opposition tallies suggested their candidate, who stood after Machado was barred from running, had won by 70% of the vote.

Despite this, the Trump administration backed Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice-president, as his successor rather than opposition leader María Corina Machado after Maduro was seized and put on trial on drug charges in January.

Analysts at the time cast this decision as the US choosing short-term stability in Venezuela until elections could be held.

Rodriguez used her UN General Assembly speech on Thursday to reiterate that there “will be elections in Venezuela”, without specifying when.

Magic Motorfest, held at Farnworth Cricket Club today (September 27), was the inaugural event organised by Farnworth-based charity Speed of Sight, which provides driving experiences for people with disabilities, including those who are blind or who have been told they will never be able to drive due to another disability, such as epilepsy.

John Galloway, co-founder of Speed of Sight, said: “Today is about several things: the community coming together to support Speed of Sight and other amazing organisations around here.

The race cars and buggies used by Speed of Sight (Image: NQ)

“We are the only charity, believe it or not, in the world that does what we do.

“We provide incredible driving experiences in real racing cars for people who have been told they will never, ever be able to drive a car.”

The festival featured around 170 cars on display, each making a donation to take part, with vehicles ranging from high-performance models to personalised designs, classic cars and a retired army vehicle.

Some of the cars at the Convoy (Image: NQ)

A convoy of cars, organised by Bolton Convoys, set off from The Southfields pub in Great Lever and made its way to the cricket club as part of the day’s festivities.

Bolton Convoys organises professional car convoys to ensure the events remain safe.

Mr Galloway explained how the charity’s work changes lives, offering a driving experience to people who may be blind, have autism, Down syndrome, brain injuries, or complex physical disabilities.

Classic cars at the festival (Image: NQ)

He said: “We hoist them into these racing cars.

“The two steering wheels are connected, and under instruction from one of our instructors, they drive the car together as a team.

“It’s a full, immersive driving experience that they have been told they would never be able to have.

RRG Toyota in Bolton made a ‘generous’ donation and attended the event (Image: NQ)

“That is truly life-changing.”

Speed of Sight offers experiences for children as young as seven, and its oldest participant so far was a 102-year-old blind World War Two veteran.

Mr Galloway said the event was designed to raise awareness of the charity’s work and connect with people in the area who may not have heard of Speed of Sight before.

He said: “People were coming up to us saying, ‘We’ve never heard of Speed of Sight.

Some of the cars at the festival (Image: NQ)

“‘You guys are amazing.’

“So I thought, ‘You know what? Why don’t we do a car festival to celebrate car enthusiasts who love cars, and get them to bring their hundreds of cars today?’”

Mr Galloway also explained how the charity wants to make the festival a yearly event and urged local businesses and people to reach out to him to take part via his email: john@speedofsight.org

The event was made possible thanks to the support of Farnworth Cricket Club and key volunteers.

An army vehicle at the festival (Image: NQ)

Mr Galloway said: “We have to thank Farnworth Cricket Club, because they were the first people to come to the table and say, ‘You know what?

“‘We love what you guys are doing. We’ll let you use the whole of the cricket fields to do what you do and advertise you.’

“Shane Molton has been a titan in helping to organise and get cars here today.

Some of the cars at the Convoy (Image: NQ)

“And also Beverly Moore—she’s been able to get all of the community together.”

The festival also featured food stalls, community group displays, and entertainment, with Bolton FM at the event.

Two car dealerships, Chery in Farnworth and RRG Toyota, also made donations to support the charity.

Mr Galloway said: “It’s about trying to support one another and hopefully have bikes, cars, and everything you could wish for.”

Speed of Sight was co-founded by Bolton-born Mike Newman, an eight-time Guinness World Record holder who was born completely blind.

High performance cars at the festival (Image: NQ)

Mr Newman has set records for the fastest speeds achieved on land, water, and in the air, including becoming the first blind person to drive solo at more than 200mph.

The charity has been based in Farnworth for nearly 14 years but operates its driving experiences at circuits outside Bolton.

Mr Galloway said: “We believe giving people with disabilities an amazing driving experience helps them change the way they see themselves, and it also helps people change their perception of disability.”