World

A jury in Sacramento, California, has ordered city authorities to pay $33.3 million (£25.6 million) to a former physics student who suffered a serious brain injury when a 30-foot dead tree branch fell on him while he was jogging through a city park. Michael Flynn, then 28, was jogging along a public walking path around…

Forests are more than stretches of trees for the Indigenous peoples and local communities who have lived among them for generations. They provide food, shelter and livelihoods, while also carrying cultural traditions and ancestral ties to the land. Yet securing legal rights to these territories remains a challenge in many parts of the world, even…

Residents of two landmark 1960s housing estates in south London may finally be able to remain in their homes after more than 12 years of uncertainty. Lambeth Council has proposed removing Central Hill in Crystal Palace and Cressingham Gardens beside Brockwell Park from its demolition and redevelopment programme, choosing instead to retain, repair and improve…

Rachel Watkyn secured £60,000 from Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis on Dragons’ Den in exchange for a 40% stake in Tiny Box Company, after entering the programme with no previous experience of running a business. Founded in 2007, the company grew from her difficulty finding ethically produced packaging for her jewellery business into what she…

Australia has brought the critically endangered smoky mouse back to a forest area in New South Wales where it had not been seen since the 1990s. Nearly 50 individuals were released into the Nungatta Feral Predator-Free Area in South East Forest National Park. The reintroduction marks the first return of a threatened species to the…

Andrew Allen (left) and Thomas Thermidor (right). Image: Doug Haslam/Boston Arts Academy Foundation. A Boston school custodian’s decision to donate a kidney to a stranger helped give his colleague’s younger brother a second chance at life. Andrew Allen, 53, worked night shifts at Boston Arts Academy, where he became friends with geometry teacher Tom Thermidor….

Representative Image (AI-generated) A Missouri couple who bought land without road access secured a legal route through their neighbour’s property, but a dispute over who would own that road led to an appeal. On August 26, 2026, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, reversed a ruling that would have transferred ownership of the road…

Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni introduces tougher protest laws, including teen detentions, parental liability for damage and up to five years in jail for rioters Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has approved tougher security measures targeting protest-related violence, including prison terms of up to five years, fines of up to €20,000 and financial liability for…

Australian designer Xavier Earls has developed Bush Cradle, a modular wildlife habitat system made from hempcrete tiles that mimic natural shelters such as tree hollows, fallen logs and rocky crevices. The system is designed to help conservationists create customised refuges for native animals facing habitat loss. Its four interlocking tile designs can be assembled into…

A 1907 masterpiece by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, looted from a Dutch-Jewish family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, sold at a London auction earlier this week for £31.56 million (about $42 million, including fees), The New York Times reported. The painting, Das bunte Leben (The Colorful Life), was returned to the family’s heirs…