2026-10-21

October 21, 2026

Published this day

Image: BBC News

A year of knitting in Poole produced a 400-metre scarf for a theatre yeti

More than twenty people in Poole spent about a year knitting a scarf for Betty and the Yeti, a family show at Lighthouse. BBC News reports the finished knitting at 400 metres. The yeti wears it. Djennat Hadid knits with a group called the Crafty Ladies and with residents at the care home where she works. She said they stopped only because the production needed the scarf, and that the sessions are there so people can make friends and feel less alone. The show is the reason the knitting has a deadline. The company around the needles is the reason it got that long.

A ridiculous length of scarf is a standing invitation to sit down with someone and keep going.

The 400-metre length is the knitters' figure, as reported by the BBC. The performance itself is still ahead.

BBC News ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: BBC News

Kindness

A Sheerness beach cleaner kept CPR going until the ambulance arrived

Peter Jones, who cleans the beach at Sheerness, is to receive a Royal Humane Society resuscitation certificate. He was driving the seafront truck along Marine Parade when a regular visitor collapsed mid-conversation with two women. Jones started chest compressions and kept them up for about ten minutes, until paramedics took over. The man's heart restarted after three shocks from a defibrillator. He has recovered enough to ride a bike along the seafront again, and he has thanked Jones. Andrew Chapman, secretary of the society, said the two women had not known how to help, and that the compressions were a major part of bringing the man back.

Ten steady minutes from someone who happened to be driving past can be the whole difference on a promenade.

The rescue and the recovery are the society's account, as reported by the BBC. The article does not name the man or date the collapse.

BBC News ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: BBC News

Joy

A 22-year-old and a 76-year-old church friend now spend a weekend together every month

Iona Leaf was a student at the University of Gloucestershire when she noticed Judith Chapman, a church warden in Cheltenham, and started inviting herself over for tea so she could see Judith's cat. Iona is 22 and now lives in Manchester. Judith is 76. About 130 miles separate them. They still meet for a weekend each month, and they have just come back from a holiday in the Scottish Highlands. They cook, talk through ordinary life, and trade stitches: Iona crochets, and Judith has been teaching her to knit. Judith says the visits nudge her to keep walking and to show up for Pilates. This Christmas, Judith, who does not have children of her own, will spend the day with Iona's family.

A standing weekend with someone from another generation can be as ordinary, and as steadying, as tea and a knitting lesson.

How the friendship feels is Iona and Judith's account, told to the BBC. The cat who started the visits has since died.

BBC News ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: BBC News

Community

Stonehouse takes the top Britain in Bloom prize for a town-wide tree trail

Stonehouse in Gloucestershire was named overall winner of the Royal Horticultural Society's Britain in Bloom competition, after a gold in the small-town class. Judges singled out a community arboretum that counts every tree inside the town boundary, on public land or private, as one collection. Residents and volunteers have planted 49 trees. A walking trail stops at 21 of them, including a London plane on the green that came from the Bishop's Palace in Ely, with sibling trees at Sandringham and Kew. Treasurer Debbie Curtis said many of the people planting will not live to see the trees fully grown. The group's aim is 30 percent tree canopy by 2040.

A town planting for a canopy it will not see yet is leaving shade for people who are not here to thank them.

The tree and trail counts come from the local group, as reported by the BBC. The 30 percent canopy figure is a 2040 target, not a measure of cover today.

BBC News ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: University of Twente

Science

A transplanted Wadden Sea marsh lost only millimetres of ground under two-metre waves

Teams from the University of Twente, Deltares, Wageningen, NIOZ, Delft, and other labs moved intact salt marsh from the Peazemerlannen reserve on the Frisian Wadden Sea coast into the Delta Flume in Delft, a channel built to make very large artificial waves. They rebuilt more than 300 square metres of marsh and ran waves for about 29 hours, up to two metres high. After 21 hours the surface had dropped by about seven millimetres on average. Plants added a little extra calming: at 75 centimetres, 6 to 22 percent, and at two metres no more than 6 percent. Across species chosen to stand in for marshes elsewhere, about 30 percent of the plant material was lost, and at least a third of the plants were still standing. The papers are in Nature and Communications Sustainability. Where storm waves over a marsh stay near a metre, the team estimates plants can add more than 10 percent of the reduction, and in places up to 50 percent.

A marsh that holds its ground in a storm is a living edge a coast can keep, alongside the walls people build.

This was one transplanted marsh in a laboratory flume, not a storm on a living coast. The plants were damaged, and their extra help faded as the waves grew.

University of Twente ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: The Guardian

Nature

Orangutans reached more often for food they had heard paired with laughter

In a Biology Letters study, Erica Cartmill and colleagues worked with six captive orangutans at two zoos. The apes learned to search bowls for a treat hidden under moss, sawdust, or a similar filler. Just before each search, the team played either the sound of orangutans laughing at play or ordinary outdoor noise such as wind, matched to whichever filler covered the food that day. On the test day both bowls held a treat. Taken together, the apes chose the filler that had come with laughter, and four of the six showed a clear preference. Cartmill said the laughter may have left them in a better mood while they were learning which bowl was worth the search.

A better mood at the moment of learning may change what an animal later treats as the good choice, even when both bowls hold the same prize.

Six captive orangutans, not wild ones, and four of the six drove the preference. Any suggestion about human classrooms is the researchers' idea, not a result of this experiment.

The Guardian ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: Good News Network

Kindness

Visitors started a fund so an 86-year-old can move the boat he has built since 1987

Dale, 86, of Mineral Wells, Texas, has been welding a 62-foot steel boat in his front yard since 1987, with Alaska as the hoped-for end of the trip. The hull has four cabins and is described as about three-quarters finished. He can no longer do the work alone, and a steep hill sits between the boat and the road. Three visitors from England, including Laurence Benson, stopped in unannounced, listened to him talk through the project, and watched him climb a ladder onto the deck, something he had not done in years. They opened a fund for the remaining work, the machinery to get the boat down the hill, and a haul to a place it can be launched. Within days the fund had passed $41,000, from more than 1,500 people, toward a $45,000 goal. Benson has said closer to $50,000 is what it will take to reach the water.

A project that has lived in one yard for almost forty years can still move when strangers take on the last hard part.

The boat is not in the water. The size, how finished it is, and the fundraising totals are the visitors' account, as reported by Good News Network. The article gives Dale's first name only.

Good News Network ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: The 19th

Community

Pittsburgh nurses win a county vote for 12 weeks of paid leave after a baby comes home

On Tuesday night Allegheny County Council voted 11 to 4 for up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave, which The 19th calls the first policy of its kind passed at county level in the United States. Birthing and non-birthing parents would be covered in the first year after a birth, an adoption, a foster placement, or a stillbirth, with the job and health benefits held. Full-time workers need six months on the job. Part-time workers need at least 625 hours. Employers with 15 or more employees would have to offer it and pay for it themselves, rather than through a statewide insurance fund. An earlier draft had asked for 18 weeks and would have covered smaller employers. The push came from nurses at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, including neonatal nurse Jean Stone, who watches parents go back to work while a baby is still in intensive care so they can save the unpaid days for when the baby comes home. The nurses, in the middle of a union contract, started the campaign on Mother's Day with other parents and local officials. The chamber was full. One mother described a stillbirth at 41 weeks and a husband who had three weeks off and no paternity leave. Council vice president John Palmiere said the testimony moved him to vote yes.

A parent who can stay while a new baby is still in the hospital does not have to spend those days choosing between the ward and a paycheck.

The article is about the council vote and what the policy would require. It does not say anyone can take the paid weeks yet. Businesses with fewer than 15 employees are exempt, and employers, not a public fund, would pay. The 'first county-level' description is The 19th's. Pennsylvania still has no statewide paid leave program.

The 19th ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: WHYY

Spaces

Morris Plains station hangs photographs and murals where commuters already wait

WHYY reported that NJ Transit and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts are extending the TRANSITional Art Project, temporary exhibitions by New Jersey artists inside stations. The latest installment, announced Tuesday, is at Morris Plains Rail Station. The show is called Tracks Through Time: Movement, History and Human Connection. It looks at 250 years of American life through railroads and the people who ride them. On view are photographs by Beyti Barbaros, murals by Jonathan Yumi, and a three-panel mural by Catherine Thurston. NJ Transit president and CEO Kris Kolluri said in a statement that a station is where that history and an ordinary weekday meet. The project began as a pilot in 2019 at Newark Penn Station. Shows have since gone up at the Atlantic City bus and rail terminals, the Walter Rand bus terminal and light rail station in Camden, the Trenton Transit Center, New Brunswick Rail Station, and the Summit and Rahway rail stations.

A picture in a place someone already has to stand can make the wait feel a little more like a room.

WHYY's story, updated on 21 October, is about the announcement of the Morris Plains show. It does not say how long the work will stay up or how many riders have stopped to look. The list of earlier stations is the one WHYY gives.

WHYY ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: ABC News

Joy

A Port Lincoln crew lifts an exhausted kangaroo out of Boston Bay, about three kilometres from shore

ABC News reported on 21 October that a crew on Boston Bay, off Port Lincoln in South Australia, turned the boat around after skipper Ryan Smith said he thought he saw a kangaroo in the water. Diver and farmer Jake Murray said nobody believed it until they doubled back. The male kangaroo was about three kilometres offshore. The boat's sea door drops nearly to the water, so the crew could get under his arms and bring him aboard. Murray held the hind legs, which he called mighty, and said the animal was waterlogged enough to seem almost asleep in his arms. Miguel Villarroel, a diver from the Galapagos Islands who was on the boat, was seeing a kangaroo for the first time and asked if this happened often. Murray said he had seen kangaroos in the shallows and at surf beaches, never in the middle of the bay. He guessed the flat calm might have let a tide carry the animal out, and he also joked that it might have been a young one showing off. Back on the beach the kangaroo sat, then hopped away.

A tired animal asleep in someone's arms, then gone into the scrub, is a small glad ending to a strange morning.

How the kangaroo got that far out is Murray's guess, including the joke about a dare, not something the crew saw happen. ABC does not name the day of the rescue beyond "this week" as of 21 October, or say anyone checked the animal afterward. The distance is Murray's estimate of about three kilometres.

ABC News ↗· Oct 21, 2026

The edition Today's Five, then the rest of the file

This morning's file includes stories published earlier in the week. Headlines open the original article. Open the issue page.

Image: BBC News

Joy1

A year of knitting in Poole produced a 400-metre scarf for a theatre yeti

A ridiculous length of scarf is a standing invitation to sit down with someone and keep going.

The 400-metre length is the knitters' figure, as reported by the BBC. The performance itself is still ahead.

BBC News ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: BBC News

Mind & Wellbeing2

A 73-year-old is now the oldest lifeguard at the Ulverston pool

John Barstow, 73, has qualified as a lifeguard at Ulverston Leisure Centre after a week of training and a three-hour exam. He was the oldest person on the course by about forty years. The pool manager signed him up after Barstow, out for a swim, brought a training mannequin up from the bottom on the first try. He took up swimming later in life because it is gentler on injuries that now take longer to settle. He said the job is not only the swimming: someone has to whistle and keep the lane in order. He hopes the qualification shows a new skill does not have to start young.

A pool willing to train its oldest swimmer makes staying active feel like an ordinary next step.

The course, the exam, and the manager's challenge are Barstow's account, told to the BBC.

BBC News ↗· Oct 20, 2026

Image: The Guardian

Nature3

A small cash stipend in the Peruvian Amazon lined up with less forest burning

A University of Bath analysis of a two-year Cool Earth pilot followed 211 people in three Asháninka communities in Peru. Each person received six transfers of 1,032 soles, about £2 a day, with no rules on how to spend it. The researchers say nearly 90 percent of participants took up practices such as planting trees together, restoring water sources, and burning less forest. Households unable to afford nutritious food fell from 73 percent to 26 percent, and the share who left home to find work fell from 43 percent to 18 percent. The authors call it the first unconditional basic income for an Indigenous community in the Amazon. Local women's groups helped shape the project, which also offered voluntary classes on money, conservation, and climate.

People can look after a forest more readily when dinner is secure and leaving home is a choice.

The pilot covered a little over 500 hectares and did not measure trees, soil, or other projects that may have changed what people did. The figures are the study's own. Elsewhere, researchers have found that extra cash can sometimes increase clearing.

The Guardian ↗· Oct 20, 2026

Image: UCLA Health

Mind & Wellbeing4

A small UCLA trial finds a body molecule eased brain fog after breast cancer

Researchers at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report, in JCO Oncology Advances, that oxaloacetate, a molecule the body already uses to make energy, tracked with clearer thinking in a small group of breast cancer survivors. Eighteen women, about 50 on average, who were one to five years past diagnosis and still struggling to concentrate, took 500 milligrams twice a day for eight weeks. Sixteen finished. All sixteen said their cognitive symptoms improved. The group's average score on the study's main questionnaire moved from 29.1, counted as impaired, to 55.5, counted as typical. Fatigue dropped and physical functioning rose. Tests of planning and processing speed improved too. Two people stopped because of stomach side effects. No serious adverse events were reported. First author Patricia Ganz said treatments for this lingering fog are still scarce. A placebo-controlled trial is planned for late 2026.

Fog after cancer treatment can last for years, and people living with it have had very little to try.

There was no placebo group, and only sixteen people finished the eight weeks, so the study cannot show that the supplement caused the change. Most participants were also taking endocrine therapy.

UCLA Health ↗· Oct 20, 2026

Science5

For a rare form of rectal cancer, an immunotherapy may replace surgery

On Monday the FDA granted accelerated approval for dostarlimab, sold as Jemperli, used alone in adults with previously untreated stage II or III rectal cancer whose tumors are mismatch-repair deficient or microsatellite instability-high. The agency says that pattern appears in about 3 percent of locally advanced rectal cancers. In the AZUR-1 study, 154 patients received up to nine doses over six months. After a median follow-up of more than two years, almost three-quarters had not gone on to surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. An earlier Memorial Sloan Kettering study of 50 patients found no detectable cancer after the drug, and 93 percent of them were still clear at twelve months. Standard care at this stage often means chemotherapy and radiation before an operation that can change bowel, urinary, and sexual function. The drug can also turn the immune system on healthy organs. Fatigue, rash, diarrhea, and itching were each reported in at least 15 percent of patients treated for this cancer.

For a small group of patients, the chance to skip an operation that reshapes daily life is the news.

Accelerated approval, based on interim results, and only for this uncommon tumor pattern. The sponsor still has to show the benefit lasts. It does not apply to most rectal cancer.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration ↗· Oct 19, 2026

Image: BBC News

Kindness

A Sheerness beach cleaner kept CPR going until the ambulance arrived

Ten steady minutes from someone who happened to be driving past can be the whole difference on a promenade.

The rescue and the recovery are the society's account, as reported by the BBC. The article does not name the man or date the collapse.

BBC News ↗· Oct 21, 2026

Image: BBC News

Spaces

Richmond, Yorkshire, opens free bike trails after a mother's long campaign

Richmond Bike Park, graded dirt trails in fields off Green Howards Road, opened over the weekend after two and a half years of work led by Louise Raine. She started the campaign because the nearest place her three children could ride was a 45-minute trip away. North Yorkshire Council granted planning permission in August 2025. Backing came from the National Lottery, Sport England, the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, Harmony Energy, and Broadacres Housing Association. Raine said one-person local firms who gave up a day to dig mattered just as much. Organisers kept the opening quiet, and children were on the trails within minutes of the word going out. About eighteen volunteers have joined a weekly rota to inspect the paths. Coaching is planned from the spring, and a Darlington group, Future Pathways, is already bringing students.

A free loop of trails close to home gives children somewhere to ride without a drive across the county.

The park has only just opened. The inspection rota and the spring coaching are plans, not a full season of use.

BBC News ↗· Oct 20, 2026

Image: BBC News

Community

Cornwall gleaners have passed a million pounds of rescued produce to food banks

Gleaning Cornwall, a volunteer group started in 2020, says it has now passed along produce worth £1 million that would have stayed in the fields after harvest. The fruit and vegetables go, free, to 160 food banks, larders, and kitchens across the South West. The group puts the total above 460 tonnes and says the food reaches about 11,000 people a week. Founder Holly Whitelaw said transport, storage, and coordination are getting more expensive, and that the charity needs money for that backbone if the collections are to continue. Cornwall Council counts many more places handing out food aid than it did in 2015. A council study found 30 percent of children in the county living in food poverty.

Food already grown can reach a kitchen instead of rotting at the field edge, if someone has a van and a Saturday.

The £1 million, the tonnage, and the weekly reach are the charity's figures. Whitelaw says the group is short of money for transport and storage.

BBC News ↗· Oct 18, 2026