The former England footballer Paul Scholes and the actor Steve Coogan stare out from beside a fish and chip shop in Middleton, near Manchester. Looming over a mural of the pair – and the whole town – is an enormous former cotton mill that powered its economy a century ago.
The deafening looms and spindles of Warwick Mill fell silent decades ago, replaced in recent years by TikTok “urban explorers” who share videos of themselves crawling through its abandoned shell.
Communities have been invited to submit projects for a new €3.5 billion funding round, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Wednesday during a visit to the village of Sykopetra in Limassol.
Speaking at the opening of the Prophet Elias community park and mini football pitch, Christodoulides said the government would decide on projects across Cyprus worth that sum in the new period.
He urged the community council to put forward projects, alone or with neighbouring communities, so they could be approved next September.
He said the government had shown through its projects that rural and mountain areas were a priority.
He cited the 2024 decision to keep Kampos primary school open when it had only one pupil.
Many more children now attend, he said, because the school drew young parents to the village.
He said communities needed infrastructure, especially in Limassol, so that young couples could return, and that the aim was for villages to grow beyond 120 residents.
The community council’s contribution to development projects has been cut to 5 per cent.
Christodoulides said support for equipping the clinic at the community stadium should be taken for granted.
For community toilets, he asked the council to say how much was needed for studies, to be handled through the commissioner for mountainous communities.
A house renovation for an office and a thematic museum would be supported once plans were mature and permits secured.
He said the Palaichori to Sykopetra road widening, or a new link to Apliki, concerned the Nicosia district governor Constantinos Yiorkadjis, and promised to return to see whether work could proceed in phases.
3 years after unprecedented massacre, residents who lost homes, neighbors and family say Hamas's onslaught altered their worldview -- but they might not bring newfound fears and distrust to the polls
When we can’t even afford to rent or buy somewhere to live, we have to ask: did we give the financial sector too much power?
Leilani Farha is the former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing
In the summer of 2021, I visited a homeless community in a park in Toronto, Canada, and spoke to one of the residents. He was living in a tent in the shadow of brand new skyscrapers, and had been homeless for about five years. At one point he swivelled around, pointed up at a crane on the skyline, and said: “Who are they building those for? Definitely not for me.”
He was right. And he captured something experienced by ordinary people around the world: the growing conviction that the housing system is no longer tethered to their needs. What he was pointing at is not just a housing crisis. It is a crisis of democracy.
Leilani Farha is the 2026 CBC Massey lecturer. This piece is based on her new book: Housing Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home. She is the former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing and the global director of the international human rights organisation, The Shift
School looking to sell piece of open land beloved by people in Devon town to fund refurbishments
On Saturdays throughout autumn, residents of Totnes have met at a field on the banks of the River Dart to play ballgames, fly kites or simply sit on the grass and chat.
But it hasn’t just been about having fun – this has been a “play protest” aimed at trying to save a beloved piece of open land in the historic Devon market town.
Analucía Lopezrevoredo says she founded Los Angeles-based social organization Jewtina y Co to answer her longtime question: 'Where do people like me get to be whole?'
Scientists in Bolivia have identified a new species of wild feline, named Leopardus tilcayo, following genomic studies that revealed evolutionary differences from other South American tiger cats. The discovery was made in the cloud forests of the Yungas, in the department of La Paz.
The tilcayo—a name used by local communities in the region—is a small animal, similar in size to a domestic cat. It is brown in color, with rounded ears, a bushy tail, and a spotted coat. Its identification was made possible through genetic analyses conducted by a scientific team that contributed to the discovery in September.
Biologist Enzo Aliaga, a member of the research team, warned that the species faces risks that could lead to its extinction. Among the primary threats, he highlighted habitat destruction caused by gold mining, the clearing of vegetation for agriculture, and the capture of individuals to be kept as pets.
“It is imperative to protect this unique species,” Aliaga stated to the digital news outlet Erbol, noting that the feline’s habits and reproductive patterns remain unknown.
🔵 #GrupoFides | #ANF Un equipo internacional de científicos identificó en los Yungas de Bolivia una nueva especie de felino silvestre, el Leopardus tilcayo o gato tilcayo. Se trata de la primera descripción de un nuevo gato salvaje en más de un siglo, hallado a partir del… pic.twitter.com/H9TgaSzNcl
The text reads, “An international team of scientists identified in the Yungas of Bolivia a new species of wild feline, the Leopardus tilcayo or tilcayo cat. This is the first description of a new wild cat in over a century, discovered through DNA analysis and described this Thursday in the journal Current Biology.”
The specialist also raised concerns regarding the trafficking of young animals: to obtain a young tilcayo, individuals might kill the mother, while the offspring could subsequently die in captivity due to malnutrition or other diseases.
To date, experts have not determined the total population of tilcayos in the Yungas forests, nor have they fully mapped their distribution. Consequently, researchers are pushing for further studies to expand knowledge about the species and strengthen the protection of its habitat.
#FromTheSouth News Bits | Luis Montaño has temporarily assumed the role of Acting Attorney General. The official announced the news to the nation from the Public Prosecutor's Office in Santa Cruz, eastern Bolivia. pic.twitter.com/sEfVVSKKIH
The Spanish prime minister has been a lonely champion of progressive values in the EU. But the polls look ominous
When it comes to risk-taking, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has a formidable track record. In 2018, the Socialist party leader swept to power by triggering a no-confidence vote that unexpectedly ousted his centre-right predecessor Mariano Rajoy. He held on to it against the odds after calling a snap election in 2023, at a time when the popularity of his own party had plummeted and the far right was on the rise.
As he endures another rocky period in office, Mr Sánchez has once more rolled the dice. Last week, he announced a snap poll for November after his minority government was blocked from passing measures to ease Spain’s chronic housing crisis. The eviction of 87-year-old María del Carmen Abascal from her Madrid home sparked nationwide protests over soaring rents and prices. The outrage grew with news of her death last Wednesday. Mr Sánchez clearly hopes that campaigning on a national cause célèbre gives him a chance of winning a stronger progressive mandate next month.
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At Bybi in Copenhagen, a dedicated group of staff and volunteers have built a community for all centred on the production of honey – much of which is given away for nothing. Could it be replicated elsewhere?
The bees at Bybi, a collective of beekeepers in Copenhagen, live on the roof. Their home is a complex of Victorian buildings, right in the centre of the city, that looks like an idealised vision of the modern social enterprise, ennobled by the architecture of the past. It’s a place of cottage industry in concert with nature, where the marginalised are brought in from the fringes and corporations stand waiting to help, where jobs happen but a lot of the work is done by volunteers, and where – this bit is important – a lot of time is spent discussing ideas.
Oliver Maxwell, Bybi’s 48-year-old founder, encourages me to examine the buildings more closely. They were once a prison, a workhouse and a hospital; their functions today – a homeless shelter, a young offender institution and, until recently, a job centre – are not so different. Denmark’s Victorian transformation, from “agricultural backwater to industrialised agriculture”, was reflected in how they treated people, Maxwell says.
Nearly 40.9 million people in East Africa are facing hunger at crisis levels or worse, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Monday. This figure is up from the 40.5 million recorded in the previous quarter, according to the report covering the third quarter of 2026.
OCHA noted that humanitarian needs remained high during that period due to conflict, food insecurity, disease outbreaks, drought, and displacement. It also warned that high food and fuel prices, combined with funding constraints, increased the strain on vulnerable communities.
The situation could deteriorate in the coming months due to El Niño, a phenomenon linked to changes in atmospheric dynamics caused by rising Pacific Ocean temperatures. According to OCHA, experts predict the phenomenon will be significantly more intense this year than in previous years.
Among those affected, more than 208,000 are suffering from hunger at a catastrophic level—the highest tier of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—indicating a risk of famine. Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and Kenya are among the countries most affected by food insecurity.
Conflict, displacement and drought are driving an increased risk of Famine in parts of Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan.
An immediate, significant scale-up of assistance is urgently needed. Without this, catastrophic food insecurity, acute malnutrition, and… pic.twitter.com/84bqzbnUSn
— The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (@theIPCinfo) October 12, 2026
Acute malnutrition also continues to take a heavy toll on children: approximately 9.7 million children under the age of five require treatment, including 2.3 million suffering from severe acute malnutrition. The agency attributed the deterioration to factors including prolonged drought and limited food availability. In Karamoja, a sub-region of northeastern Uganda, at least 16 people died from causes linked to food shortages.
The report estimates that East Africa recorded 16.5 million internally displaced persons and 6.1 million refugees and asylum seekers during the third quarter of 2026. In Ethiopia, renewed fighting between federal forces and rebels continued to drive displacement and humanitarian needs.
Burundi and Djibouti saw new arrivals of refugees fleeing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Yemen, respectively. Regarding health, nearly 23,000 cases of cholera, 2,255 measles infections, and close to 670 cases of mpox were recorded between January and September.
The humanitarian response also faces financial constraints. OCHA expressed concern that funding cuts by the United States and other donor countries—initiated last year—pose a significant challenge. To date, only 39% of the humanitarian funding required for East Africa in 2026 has been received.
#Kenya | Kenya has confirmed its first-ever Ebola case after a citizen who traveled from the DRC died in Nairobi. Authorities are tracing contacts and passengers as the DRC battles a major outbreak across several provinces.#Ebola#DRC#teleSUREnglishpic.twitter.com/pfvEFsAMvz
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