340 European Cities Restrict Usage of Cars
Cities in Europe "are dramatically scaling back their relationship with the car," reports the Washington Post:
They are removing parking spaces and creating dedicated bike lanes. They are installing cameras at the perimeter of urban centers and either charging the most-polluting vehicles or preventing them from entering. Some are going so far as to put entire neighborhoods off-limits to vehicles. In Norway, Oslo promotes "car-free livability." Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo touts the "end of car dependence." And while those ideas might sound radical to car-loving Americans, they are fast becoming the norm across the Atlantic, where 340 European cities and towns — home to more than 150 million people — have implemented some kind of restrictions on personal car usage...
[V]irtually every major European city is imposing some kind of rule. Milan has a system similar to New York's, charging for access to the city core — while entirely banning older, highly polluting vehicles. London charges vehicles that don't meet emissions standards, in what it calls the "largest clean-air zone in the world." The programs are not just the purview of liberal Western Europe: Warsaw, Poland, and Sofia, Bulgaria, recently adopted similar schemes. Even little Italian villages have added vehicle restrictions to reinforce their historic feel. And the Netherlands just broke ground on a 12,000-person neighborhood that will be entirely car-free. The neighborhood, known as Merwede, will be connected by public transport to Utrecht, a medium-size city that — perhaps no surprise — has a low-emissions zone of its own...
Perhaps the most elaborate and transformative effort has come in Paris, where Anne Hidalgo was elected mayor in 2014. Since then, Paris has banned the most-polluting vehicles from the city, eliminated 50,000 parking spaces and added hundreds of miles of bike lanes. It turned a bank of the Seine from a busy artery into a pedestrian zone, and closed off the famed Rue de Rivoli to traffic... Journeys by car in Paris have dropped by about 45 percent since 1990. The city has now become a source for striking before-and-after photos: of clogged streets that have transitioned into tree-lined areas where people can walk and play.
In London government officials say inhalable particular matter has fallen, according to the article, while combustion-produced nitrogen dioxide "is 53% lower than it would have been without the restrictions."
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Sadio Mane, 32, welcomes first child with his wife Aisha Tamba, 19, after they tied the knot last year - as he dedicates goal to his baby daughter
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Ofsted gets 'first religious school leader in its history' as education watchdog announces its new chairman
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Urgent search for phony 'Bitcoin billionaire' wanted in all 50 states after he convinced pal to pay $50K bond
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Family of Idaho murders victim speak out after 911 call release: 'This isn't a Hollywood script... it is painful'
Reacting to the call, Kaylee's father Steve said the family listened to it before it was released and that it didn't give him any clarity.
Drunk mom leaves nine-day-old and one-year-old babies at home to go on all-night bar bender
Sandra Henriquez, 32, left her nine-day-old baby and toddler sister home alone to get drunk at a bar in Muncie, Indiana, then crashed into a pole and ended up in jail.
Elon Musk Says SpaceX's First Mission to Mars Will Launch Next Year
"SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said his Starship rocket will head to Mars by the end of next year," writes the BBC, "as the company investigates several recent explosions in flight tests."
Human landings could begin as early as 2029 if initial missions go well, though "2031 was more likely", he added in a post on his social media platform X...
The billionaire said in 2020 that he remained confident that his company would land humans on Mars six years later. In 2024, he said he would launch the first Starships to Mars in 2026, with plans to send crewed flights in four years.
Musk has said that the coming Mars mission would carry the Tesla humanoid robot "Optimus", which was shown to the public last year.
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Laughing Aussie lover of American wombat woman is unmasked - as grisly new images emerge from her hunting trips Down Under
The American tourist who manhandled a baby wombat and enraged the world before fleeing Australia - has been living a quiet country life with her Australian lover.
Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May 'set to return for brand new Grand Tour' - and the release date has already been confirmed
The original series followed the trio on a worldwide mission to meet different car manufacturers and has been on air since 2016, following their departure from Top Gear.
FLOURISHING AFTER 50: I helped pay off my husband's mortgage - but his will could leave my homeless
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Donald Trump reveals he has ordered 'decisive and powerful' military action against Houthi terrorists in Yemen - as air strikes hit the capital Sanaa
The US President confirmed that he had ordered the military to launch a series of air strikes, promising to use 'lethal force' until Houthi rebels cease attacks on a shipping corridor.
The winning Windsor: Kate celebrates as England enjoy emphatic Six Nations rugby triumph over Wales side who were cheered on by her husband William
Kate, 43, patron of the Rugby Football Union, and Prince William, 42, who has been patron of the Welsh Rugby Union since 2016, were both in attendance at the highly anticipated rugby game.
Is Our Universe Trapped Inside a Black Hole?
"Is everything we see around us is sealed within a black hole?" asks Space.com.
Because here's the thing. The $10 billion James Webb Space telescope (in operation since 2022) "has found that the vast majority of deep space and, thus the early galaxies it has so far observed, are rotating in the same direction. While around two-thirds of galaxies spin clockwise, the other third rotates counter-clockwise."
In a random universe, scientists would expect to find 50% of galaxies rotating one way, while the other 50% rotate the other way. This new research suggests there is a preferred direction for galactic rotation... "It is still not clear what causes this to happen, but there are two primary possible explanations," team leader Lior Shamir, associate professor of computer science at the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering, said in a statement. "One explanation is that the universe was born rotating.
"That explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology, which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole.
"But if the universe was indeed born rotating, it means that the existing theories about the cosmos are incomplete." Black hole cosmology, also known as "Schwarzschild cosmology," suggests that our observable universe might be the interior of a black hole itself within a larger parent universe. The idea was first introduced by theoretical physicist Raj Kumar Pathria and by mathematician I. J. Good. It presents the idea that the "Schwarzchild radius," better known as the "event horizon," (the boundary from within which nothing can escape a black hole, not even light) is also the horizon of the visible universe.
The article cites a theory by Polish theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven that ultimately black holes don't compress indefinitely into a singularity. "The matter instead reaches a state of finite, extremely large density, stops collapsing, undergoes a bounce like a compressed spring, and starts rapidly expanding," Poplawski explained to Space.com...
The scientist continued by adding that rapid recoil after such a big bounce could be what has led to our expanding universe, an event we now refer to as the Big Bang... "I think that the simplest explanation of the rotating universe is the universe was born in a rotating black hole."
Team leader Shamir offers another theory: that we just need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe. (Which could also explain the difference in the expansion rates in the universe "and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself.")
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Why villagers in town that will have more asylum seekers than residents have been SILENCED
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Sickening moment Fernando Tatis Jr. is struck in the head by 95mph fastball
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Watch shocking moment furious tennis star Iga Swiatek smashes the ball at a ball kid before losing to teenage sensation Mirra Andreeva at Indian Wells
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Only around one in 200 criminals are sent to prison, new figures reveal - and some with 50 convictions have been spared prison 50,000 times since 2017
It is estimated that around 13 million crimes were committed in the year to September 2023 but only 71,000 jail sentences were given by judges or magistrates - the equivalent to 0.5 per cent.
Missing student Sudiksha Konanki's dress and flip flops are found sprawled on beach lounger
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The pretty Essex countryside pub so famous it has a roundabout named after it
Before the roundabout was built the road was notorious for accidents
I noticed odd symptom when I was eating bacon and sausage sandwich - now I've been told I have cancer with just 12 months to live
Des Longstaff, 39, was tucking into the sandwich at work when part of the snack became lodged in his oesophagus. He has since been diagnosed with oesophageal adenocarcinoma.