Early to bed and early to rise

The Japanese government has launched a campaign encouraging people to go to bed and get up early. The Morning Challenge campaign, unveiled by the Environment Ministry, is based on the premise that swapping late night electricity for an extra hour of morning sunlight could significantly cut the nation's carbon footprint. A typical family can reduce its carbon dioxide footprint by 85kg a year if everyone goes to bed and gets up one hour earlier. It is the latest initiative tackling climate change to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25 per cent from 1990 levels within the next decade.

Im-mobile house

A man makes his car his permanent home when it breaks down in the middle of te Arabian Desert.
Saad al-Qahtani was driving in the western Saudi desert between Mecca and Jeddah one day 18 years ago when his beloved Chevrolet Suburban broke down. He couldn’t fix it, so he did the next best thing: he stayed there and made it his home. The 61-year-old man’s parents and sisters had all passed away by that time, according to the Saudi Gazette on Saturday. He had lost his security guard job for health reasons, tried cattle ranching but the livestock all went missing, so he began driving on odd jobs in the area until the fateful day when the huge SUV gave in. Instead of calling a mechanic, he decided to make it his permanent home.


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Cleanliness is next to evilness

Excessive cleanliness in modern homes has led to a steep rise in allergies, a new report indicated. The conditions have become increasingly widespread in developed countries with hay fever, eczema, hives and asthma on the rise. The study, by Guy Delespesse, a professor at the University of Montreal Faculty of Medicine, linked the trend to the sterile environment created by the cleaning habits. “The more sterile the environment a child lives in, the higher the risk he or she will develop allergies or an immune problem in their lifetime,” says Prof Delespesse.

Low fat house

Skinniest house in Britain up for sale at £550,000 At just 66 inches wide, this house has been dubbed the `skinniest home in Britain', but its price is anything but small at more than half a million pounds. Estate agents are using the property's unusual size as its selling point, and have put it on the market at £549,950. The house on Goldhawk Road in Shepherd's Bush, west London, has five levels -a lower ground, ground, first, second and third floor, with 1,000 sq ft of space. It looks set to record a good price as a shortage of stock across London and low interest rates continue to drive prices up. The advertised price is £61,450 more than what it was sold for three years ago.