Denmark gave the world co-housing in the 1970s
Co-housing began in Denmark in the mid-1970s. At Lilac Grove in Leeds, 20 private homes share a garden and a common house where residents eat twice a week.
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News.
Every news in the edition.
Clay and sandy soil fail a garden in opposite ways
Clay holds water but packs hard, and sand drains fast but feeds little. Sarah Raven suggests persicaria for clay, and nepeta and thyme for sand.
Chile's building code: crack, tilt, but never fall
Chile's code lets a building crack or tilt in a magnitude 9.0 quake, but never collapse. That and regular drills kept an 8.3 quake's toll low in 2015.
Your PlayStation pad's circle means yes. Teiyu Goto chose it
Teiyu Goto gave the 1994 PlayStation pad grips and four symbols. The triangle meant viewpoint, the square a menu, and the circle and X yes and no.
America's first space station began as a spare rocket stage
NASA built Skylab from a leftover Saturn upper stage for three crews. About 63 seconds into launch, its shield tore away and took a solar array with it.
Wax against dye: how batik keeps colour off the cloth
In batik, hot wax blocks the dye from the cloth, and wax that is not hot enough lets dye bleed under it. Each new layer of wax guards the colours below.
Selling a share you don't own starts with borrowing it
A short seller borrows a share, sells it, and hopes to buy it back cheaper. The lender earns interest on the cash and can recall the share at any time.
Antarctic bases lean on diesel when the polar sun goes
Antarctic bases fall back on diesel in winter. Belgium's small Princess Elisabeth station runs on wind and sun, and a 9-kilowatt turbine ran Halley unstaffed.
How Russia's shadow fleet slips past Western oil sanctions
Russia's shadow fleet changes names and flags, and coastal states can do little beyond 12 miles out. Sweden can only radio tankers. Britain has boarded one.
De Gaulle was the hard-liners' hope. He let Algeria go
France called Algeria an integral part of the nation and fought from 1954 to keep it. The FLN won in 1962 by diplomacy, once de Gaulle negotiated peace.
The trouble with ice on a wing
Even thin frost on a wing cuts lift and adds weight. Crews melt it with heated orange glycol, then add a thicker green fluid to stop new ice forming.
Advaita Vedanta holds that your self and reality are one
The Indian school holds that the self, atman, is brahman. Maya makes the one reality look like many, and grasping this ends the cycle of rebirth.
Beijing promised Hong Kong 50 years of its own way of life
Britain says China seriously breached the 1984 treaty by removing bookseller Lee Po in 2015. Beijing says one country, two systems could outlast 2047.
Leaning on credit ratings may have deepened the crisis
Bank of England economists say mechanical reliance on ratings lay beneath the financial crisis. Standard & Poor's calls a rating one input to a decision.
UK MPs shut the door on Black Rod. Speakers say it isn't defiance
MPs shut the door on Black Rod at the State Opening. Most read it as defiance, but Speakers have ruled it lets the Commons establish who is knocking.
Australia's 1975 dismissal and the palace letters
Sir John Kerr sacked Gough Whitlam in 1975. Letters released in 2020 show the palace told him a week earlier that the reserve powers still existed.
Five dead as Amazon cargo jet overruns Miami runway
A Boeing 767 freighter flying for Amazon ran off a Miami runway on 2026-09-06, killing five. The NTSB has published a preliminary report on the landing.
France's PACS gives some marriage benefits and ends by letter
A PACS is France's civil partnership, open to couples of any kind. In 2016 France recorded 184,000 PACS and 225,000 marriages.
Canadian airlines owe delay compensation if the fault is theirs
Canada's Air Passenger Protection Regulations let you claim when a delay the airline caused makes you arrive 3 hours late. You have 1 year to claim.
Galloping Gertie sent bridge engineers into the wind tunnel
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge fell in a moderate wind in 1940. The inquiry told engineers to test suspension bridge models in wind tunnels.
Can Japan's Ainu language outlive its last native speakers?
Ainu had about 15,000 speakers in 1870 and 350 by 1917. Japanese policy nearly ended it. Laws, classes, radio and now AI are trying to bring it back.
Haiti's restavek children work for their keep, not a wage
A restavek in Haiti is a child sent by poor parents to live with another household, where they fetch water, clean and mind children instead of school.
UK pets and Brexit: a new certificate for every EU trip
Since Brexit, taking a dog, cat or ferret from Great Britain to the EU needs an animal health certificate for each trip, at around £100 to £150 a time.
New York rewrote factory fire safety after the Triangle fire
A locked stairwell door trapped ninth-floor workers in New York's 1911 Triangle fire, and the state answered with 38 new safety laws.