What happens if two of the country’s largest airlines combine? It may not be a hypothetical, as American Airlines and United Airlines have reportedly discussed merging into one company. But experts say this move is likely to face antitrust scrutiny, and many are concerned about what a merger could do to airfares in a market already seeing rising prices.

What did the commentators say?

United CEO Scott Kirby has allegedly spoken with Trump administration officials about getting clearance for a merger. If United and American were to combine, it would “create an unprecedented concentration of power in the commercial aviation industry,” said CNN. The joint company would “control roughly 40% of U.S. capacity when the available seats are adjusted for miles flown.” This has aviation analysts worried about a potential monopoly.

The “idea that we would have one airline responsible for four out of 10 flights every day is beyond horrific,” William McGee, an aviation and travel fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, said to CNN. But airline consolidation has long been a part of the aviation business, and the White House “has shown a warmth toward mergers in the industry,” said CNBC. Combining companies “allows carriers to better control capacity.” Consolidation could also create a lifeline for American, which has fallen behind United and Delta as it “struggled to capitalize on higher-spending customers who are driving major airlines’ revenue in recent years.”

The potential merger may create a problem for customers, with the “main concern” being “higher fares,” said MarketWatch. Fares have already been climbing due to fuel shortages from the war in Iran, and “your next plane ticket and the pile of unused miles sitting in your account could both take a beating” if United and American joined, said Money Talks News. The two airlines “overlap heavily in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington,” which means customers should “expect higher fares on a lot of the routes you actually fly.”

When it comes to the less-traveled routes, airline consolidation means “secondary hubs tend to get thinned out,” said Money Talks News. It would put “pressure on cities like Philadelphia, Phoenix and Charlotte — places where American currently runs big operations,” and locals would “pay for it in both schedule choices and ticket prices.” People who take advantage of frequent flier miles may especially lose out, as “when airlines merge, the combining loyalty programs almost always end up repricing awards — upward.”

What next?

The details of the new proposed company are not yet clear. Any deal would “invite extraordinary scrutiny from regulators, labor unions and consumer advocates,” said Reuters. Prior governments have stopped smaller mergers in the past; the Biden administration “blocked JetBlue’s attempt to acquire Spirit Airlines, arguing it would eliminate ‌a low-cost ⁠competitor.”

The talks are also coming at a time when the Trump administration is “concerned about affordability issues,” and such a deal would “reduce choices and give the airlines more pricing power,” antitrust ⁠lawyer Andre Barlow told Reuters. “I would think this would get a rigorous review.”

Airlines are feeling the strain of swelling oil prices resulting from the Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz. To deal with higher operating costs, many companies are making changes that shift the burden to consumers, including higher baggage fees, more fuel surcharges and canceled routes.

How are higher gas costs affecting airlines?

Airlines and their customers across the U.S. are being impacted but especially those based in four major hubs: Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New York City. In these locations, the average price for a gallon of jet fuel is currently $4.25, according to the aviation trade association Airlines for America. On Feb. 27, the day before the war in Iran started, the average price was only $2.50. Airlines are also “facing an increase in the amount of fuel their aircraft use because of extra miles required to avoid flying over the conflict zone,” said The Guardian.

Fuel is already an expensive cost for aviators and is “generally airlines’ largest expense after labor,” said Quartz. Airlines are feeling the pressure as a result. If prices were to stay at their current level, it would mean an “extra $11 billion in annual expense just for jet fuel,” said United CEO Scott Kirby in a memo to employees. For “perspective, in United’s best year ever, we made less than $5 billion.”

How are airlines adapting?

Many are adding “extra fees and surcharges onto already rising ticket prices” to “recoup costs as the war in Iran causes fuel costs to surge,” said The New York Times. Luggage is one common area where airlines are bumping up the price. Delta and Southwest announced they would “start charging $10 more to check a bag on U.S. domestic flights,” days after United and JetBlue said the same.

The company with the most notable baggage changes may be American. The airline said it would “raise the fee by $10 each for the first and the second checked bag for travelers booking domestic and short-haul international flights,” said The Detroit News. The company also “increased the cost of a third checked bag by $50 to $200” for fliers and additionally announced an upcoming $5 increase on checked bags for passengers flying economy.

Some airlines are also including pricing for the fuel itself. Canada’s second-largest airline, WestJet, announced it would “add fuel surcharges of up to 60 Canadian dollars, or about $43, to some flights,” said the Times. Air Canada unveiled surcharges of 50 Canadian dollars to certain warm-weather destinations. For passengers, the decisions from airlines resulted in “rising fares and fees, fewer flight options and difficult decisions about whether a trip is worth the cost,” said The Associated Press.

Airlines are also cutting the number of places they go. Several Asian airlines have stated they would “cut flights to mitigate fuel shortages and mounting costs,” said Business Insider. Ryanair, Europe’s largest carrier, is also “considering reducing routes,” while Lufthansa could ground up to 40 planes. Air New Zealand will “cut about 5% of its flights, or about 1,100, at the start of May,” and in the U.S., United and Delta are both cutting routes.

As the world creeps toward peak travel season, industry leaders are taking notice of the fuel shortages. ACI Europe, an association representing airports in the European Union, notes these shortages could “hit within three weeks, disrupting summer travel and ‘significantly’ harming the European economy,” said CNBC. For people who still want to fly, experts say “flexibility and careful planning can help offset these costs,” said the AP, and “fare-tracking sites can alert travelers to price changes.”

What happened

An Air Canada regional jet landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport Sunday night crashed into a fire truck, killing the pilot and copilot, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said. The Federal Aviation Administration shut down all flights at the airport until 2 p.m. local time Monday to facilitate the investigation of the collision. Of the 72 passengers and crew aboard the flight from Montreal, 41 were hospitalized and 31 have since been released, Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia said at a press conference.

Who said what

Air Canada Express Flight 8646, operated by Jazz Aviation, struck a rescue and firefighting truck that was “responding to a separate incident” shortly before midnight, LaGuardia said in a statement. Photos of the scene showed “severe damage to the front of the aircraft, with cables and debris hanging from a mangled cockpit,” and the “damaged emergency vehicle” on its side nearby, The Associated Press said.

The plane was “going about 130 miles per hour just before it hit the fire truck,” CNN said, citing data from Flightradar24. Air traffic control had granted the truck permission to cross the runway to a United flight that had reported an odor making flight attendants ill, then seconds later urgently ordered the truck to stop, according to audio from the tower. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating the incident.

What next?

LaGuardia is a “critical hub for the busy Northeast corridor,” with “nearly 900 departures and arrivals each day,” The New York Times said. More than 400 flights were canceled Monday, “compounding delays at an airport already under strain” from TSA worker shortages.

The war in Iran has caused airlines “their biggest test since the Covid-19 pandemic”, said The New York Times.

Air traffic has been “paralysed” and more than 52,000 flights to and from the Middle East have been cancelled since the war began – that is “more than half of all flights planned in the region”.

“Costs are adding up” and tourism in the region has “effectively ground to a halt”. For Emirates and the other Gulf airlines, who “have the highest profit margins in the industry”, continued disruption could take a “substantial” financial and reputational toll.

‘Scrambling’ for alternatives

Since the first missiles were launched, air traffic controllers have been “shepherding passenger jets through safer but congested airspace on the edge of the war”, said the BBC. On a normal day, each individual controller would be responsible for around six aircraft “in their area at a time”. But in times of war it can easily be “double that”.

Shifts would normally be around “45-60 minutes long with 20-30 minutes off” but during times of conflict “they will likely only do a 20-minute stint and then break for the same length of time”. In times such as these, more controllers are brought in to manage the volume and “rotated more frequently to ensure they don’t become overwhelmed”.

Airlines “have been scrambling to find alternatives” to normal routes through Iranian airspace, and the effects are “rippling across the region”, said The New York Times. “Tens of thousands of flights” have been cancelled since war broke out, and the total numbers in the Gulf remain “well below normal levels”.

Airspace restrictions have become an “increasingly common challenge for airlines navigating a world shaped by geopolitical conflict”. The Russian invasion of Ukraine had a similar effect: the “Siberian corridor” over Russia used to be a “relatively direct connection” between Europe and Asia but is has become a “patchwork of workarounds”. Likewise, the airspace over Iran, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Qatar is now “largely devoid of commercial planes”. The war in the Middle East is “further fragmenting a once efficient and finely tuned global aviation network”.

As “established east-west routes are narrowing, the skies over Central Asia matter more than they did before”, said The Times of Central Asia. Countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are “not immune to the crisis” and cannot match the “far larger networks” and “deeper fleets” of other Gulf hubs.

But they can provide “overflight planning, air traffic management, and route resilience rather than headline passenger numbers”. Their “aviation systems clearly now carry far greater strategic and economic importance than they did only a few years ago”. Governments in the region have acknowledged the “strategic value of their territory for rail, road, and trade corridors”, but the disruption caused by the war in Iran has “added aviation to that argument”.

‘Ballooning cost’

The war in Iran has “exposed the fragility of modern travel”, said Bloomberg. As flight paths become “increasingly narrow”, airlines’ “long-term growth plans” have been thrown into “disarray”.

Diversions add many hours to flights so planes must carry more fuel, which is “an expensive burden in light of the spike in energy costs”. With shipping channels through the Strait of Hormuz “effectively shut”, the markets have been “driving up prices of crude and products like diesel and jet fuel”.

This will inevitably affect consumers. Carriers may “hike fares” and add “fuel surcharges to cover the ballooning cost”. Equally, airlines and other large energy consumers could begin to “panic buy oil derivatives contracts” to “shield them from wild price swings”.

In the longer term, continued instability could also change flight culture, with safety concerns “likely to remain front of mind for many travellers” for the foreseeable future. Higher inflation around the world could mean demand to fly is “reshaped”, even “spurring passengers to rethink long-haul trips” and “favour cheaper holidays closer to home”.

The Shetland Islands are famed for their remote beauty but for locals this comes at a cost. Now campaigners are pushing for the island’s ageing ferries to be replaced with undersea tunnels.

“The ferry service has served our islands very well but that’s a 20th-century form of transport,” Alice Mathewson, from North Yell Development Council, told The Guardian. “In the 21st century the answer is: dig a hole. Scotland has to drag itself into the 21st century.”

Short journey can take hours

Shetland is connected by a fleet of 12 ferries that make around 70,000 sailings a year to nine islands carrying about 750,000 passengers. The council says many of these vessels are operating beyond their intended working life and that ferries are a significant contributor to local carbon emissions.

A journey of a few miles can take hours, provided the ferries run at all given bad weather, common in the North Atlantic, mean sailings are often cancelled.

“For time-pressed islanders, care workers and businesses, it adds delays, stress and costs,” said The Guardian. The social consequences of relying on ferries are also “significant”, because they drive “depopulation and isolation”.

Cut journey times by up to 80%

The answer to Shetland’s problems may lie 230 miles to the northwest. Between 2002 and 2022, a £360 million project connected the Faroe Islands through a series of undersea tunnels. Boasting what is thought to be the world’s first submarine roundabout, the road network has cut journey times by up to 80%, been credited with helping to revitalise the territory’s economy and contributed to net immigration over the past decade. Funded largely by borrowing, the costs are being recouped by tolls that start at £2 for residents.

With Shetland’s “unreliable” ferry service “holding the Scottish islands back”, it is hardly surprising its residents “are contemplating building a tunnel system of their own”, said The Times. Earlier this month a delegation of Scottish MPs visited the Faroe Islands to see if such a scheme could be replicated on Shetland.

‘Steeped in Scandinavian engineering’

A campaign by residents on Yell and Unst, the most northerly of Shetland’s islands and backed by the local Lib Dem MP, Alistair Carmichael, is “credited with forcing tunnels and bridges firmly on to the political agenda”, said The Guardian.

Last year, the group commissioned and funded geological surveys and engaged advisers “steeped in Scandinavian tunnel engineering” to try to “prove their economic, social and financial value”.

A report on Shetland Islands Council’s inter-island connectivity programme published last summer proposed four undersea tunnels be taken forward for consideration. There are “no cost estimates at this stage”, said Shetland News, though it would be expected to run into the hundreds of millions.

“Three major European tunnelling contractors” were appointed in December “to undertake the next phase of work on proposals to replace some Shetland ferry routes with fixed links”, said New Civil Engineering. They will “assess” the “test case” that is under way at the Yell Sound crossing, one of the busiest inter‑island routes. Councillors are expected to consider the next stage in summer 2026, when preferred options for each of eight island routes in the programme will be selected.

“I have always said the most difficult tunnel to be built would be the first one,” said Carmichael. “Once you’ve proven the concept, you won’t have to make the case [for others]. Communities will be banging on your door.”

Following pilot schemes in several US cities last year, Uber has launched a women-only service across the country.

The new feature on the Uber app – which gives women the choice to request trips with female drivers – is designed to help them “feel more confident” both in the passengers seats and behind the wheel.

Safety concerns

Uber and rival company Lyft have “faced criticism over their safety records” for years, said The Associated Press. The ride-hailing apps have had “thousands of reports of sexual assaults from passengers and drivers”, with many female users losing trust in the service.

In February, Uber was ordered to pay $8.5 million (£6.2 million) to a woman who said she was raped by one of its drivers in Arizona three years ago. The plaintiff claimed Uber had “been aware of a wave of sexual assaults committed by its drivers but had not taken basic action to improve safety”, said the BBC. A jury deliberated for two days before finding Uber was responsible for the driver’s behaviour – “a ruling that could influence the outcome of thousands of other cases against the company”.

Uber intends to appeal against the verdict, claiming the incident had not been foreseeable as the driver had a high user rating on the app and no criminal record. It maintains its drivers are contractors not employees and therefore it should not be liable for their conduct.

According to the company’s latest safety report, the number of sexual assaults reported during US rides has dropped from 5,981 from 2017-18 to 2,717 from 2022-23 – which Uber says represents 0.0001% of rides across the country.

Sex discrimination?

The new service lets women request a female driver when they order a trip or reserve a trip with a female driver in advance. Women can also toggle on the preference in their settings to increase the likelihood of being matched with a female driver in the area, and opt for another ride if they end up waiting too long. Those with a teen account can also use the service.

According to Uber, around a fifth of its drivers in the US are female – a figure that varies by city. Like passengers, female drivers have the option of changing their preferences to request female riders. The programme was piloted in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit last summer before spreading to 26 cities in November. It is now available for female drivers in 40 countries, and for riders in seven countries, including Portugal and Saudi Arabia.

The roll-out is going ahead despite an ongoing court case in California brought by two Uber drivers who argue the policy is discriminatory against men and violates the state’s Unruh Act, which prohibits sex discrimination by businesses. The case claims that the new feature “gives its minority female drivers access to the entire pool of passengers, while leaving its majority male drivers to compete for a smaller pool of passengers”, said The Guardian. It also argues the policy “reinforces the gender stereotype that men are more dangerous than women”. Uber disputed that Unruh had been violated and said its “women preferences” feature served a “public policy interest in enhancing safety”.

“I take Uber rides at all times of day and night,” said Lakshmi Varanasi on Business Insider. There’s a “wide grey area between assault and a perfectly uneventful Uber ride”. The women-only driver option could give both riders and drivers more “control” over uncomfortable situations. “I, for one, will try this out.”

People looking to spend tons of money on a car will soon have a more eco-friendly option, as a variety of luxury auto companies are developing electric vehicles. High-end automakers are taking different paths to market: Companies like Ferrari are all-in on EVs; others have a more muted approach. As the jostling continues, there are concerns that the luxury car market might be the wrong platform for EVs.

What luxury companies are making EVs?

Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche are all experimenting with EV development. Ferrari has been pushing ahead at a rapid pace. The company “doesn’t have an EV on the market yet, but its first model, called Luce, is expected to be open for orders later this spring,” said CNBC. Still, there are hurdles ahead for the iconic Italian brand.

For starters, electric cars can go extremely fast just like gas-powered Ferraris, but “much of what makes an internal combustion Ferrari compelling is missing,” Karl Brauer, an executive analyst for iSeeCars, said to CNBC. People purchase Ferraris for the “way it stirs a person’s senses: the look of it, the sound and feel of the engine and the smell of the exhaust.” Experts say many of these experiences may not exist in an electric Ferrari.

Though Ferrari’s plans are in motion, the same cannot be said for Lamborghini, which has “pulled the plug on plans” for its EV in the “face of collapsing demand among its well-heeled customers,” said The Times. Instead, the company will debut a hybrid model. It admits this is a demand issue. The “acceptance curve” for EVs in Lamborghini’s market is “flattening and close to zero,” Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann said to the Times.

What does the market say?

Others in the auto industry have also noted the demand problem raised by Lamborghini executives. For “many years, many of the electric vehicles that Americans bought were luxury models, like the Tesla Model S, the GMC Hummer and the Porsche Taycan,” said The New York Times. All of these vehicles sell for more than $80,000, while Lamborghinis and Ferraris routinely sell for six figures (the Ferrari Luce EV is expected to cost at least $500,000).

Geopolitical factors, particularly tariffs implemented by President Donald Trump, are also being considered. Mercedes-Benz “had been selling electric versions of its luxury sedans and SUVs in the United States but recently said it would stop importing them,” said the Times. Volkswagen has similarly “slowed production of the ID.Buzz, an upscale electric van that’s made in Germany.” Many automakers have seen the “largest losses from luxury models. Now fewer sales will mean smaller losses.”

While luxury brands may be struggling with EVs, the “picture is very different for worldwide EV sales for brands not on the high-end,” said Wired, as this vehicle market is booming. It could also be that luxury buyers simply don’t want electric cars. For “luxury brands, which operate lower volumes and higher R&D costs,” said Philip Nothard, Cox Automotive’s insight director, to Wired, the industry’s challenges are “even more pronounced.”

Britain’s roads have been described as a “number-plate wild west”, as one in 15 cars uses ghost number-plates to avoid detection, said The Telegraph.

The illegal plates are being offered by “dodgy sellers” who can set up “with no questions asked”, according to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Transport Safety.

Security threat

A ghost number-plate appears completely normal to the human eye but has been modified so it can’t be detected properly by the infrared technology used in automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR) and other roadside camera systems.

Some ghost plates use reflective sprays that create a bright glare when viewed through an ANPR camera, others apply clear coatings designed to blur or warp the letters and numbers. Sometimes, the characters themselves are subtly altered – for example, changing a “B” into an “8” – which bamboozles the recognition software used by the cameras.

The plates are being used by taxi drivers and motorists keen to “avoid detection for speeding penalties, parking fines and low-level criminality”, said The Telegraph. They’re increasingly popular among “grooming gangs, drug traffickers and organised crime groups”.

They could also “pose a security threat”, according to experts, because “would-be terrorists” could use them to “bypass surveillance systems around airports, train stations and iconic buildings”.

Cottage industry

A trading standards team that investigated ghost plates in Rochdale was surprised to discover there were more than 600 suppliers in the city. “We nearly fell off our chairs”, said a spokesperson. “We were finding people making them in the back bedroom, in the shed, in the garden,” they told The Telegraph.

Ghost number-plates, sometimes known as stealth plates, are now as “widespread” as cloned number-plates, where criminals copy a “legitimate” vehicle’s registration on to a stolen car to “hide its identity”, said The Telegraph.

There are 34,455 suppliers in the UK providing registration plates – four times the number of petrol stations. In December, the All-Party Parliamentary Group said it wants the number of licensed sellers “significantly” reduced by bringing in higher standards and a more expansive annual fee. Currently, criminals can “set themselves up as number-plate sellers with no questions asked”, said committee member Sarah Coombes MP.

The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, said that the "widespread abuse of number-plates" must be dealt with. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, which maintains records of nearly 53 million drivers and more than 47 million vehicles, insisted that a review of number-plate standards is ongoing with the target of banning designs that evade ANPR.

From this month, Transport for London will roll out infra-red cameras to detect illegal number-plates on licensed taxis and private hire vehicles. If licensed drivers are found to have illegal plates on multiple occasions they could lose their licences, said Taxi Point.

At least 39 people have died following a high-speed collision between two trains near Córdoba in southern Spain. Around 400 people were on the trains and more than 120 required treatment from the emergency services.

The death toll is “not yet final”, said Spanish transport minister Óscar Puente, who has launched an investigation into the cause of the “extremely strange” incident.

This is Spain’s worst train crash since 2013, when a high-speed derailment in Galicia, northwest Spain, left 80 people dead and 140 others injured.

What happened?

At around 7.39pm local time on Sunday, a high-speed Iryo train from Málaga to Madrid derailed near Adamuz, near Córdoba. Carriage six, seven and eight – which contained “about 50 people”, said El País – landed on the adjacent tracks and was then hit by a train from Madrid on its way to Huelva.

The Iryo train “was not travelling at such a high speed”, though it has “not yet been determined how fast it was going”, and was able to brake following the initial derailment. The second train, an Alvia, was travelling at “200 kilometres per hour [125mph] parallel to the Iryo train at that moment”, then derailed and fell down a “five or six metres high” embankment.

Members of Spain’s civil guard and civil defence “worked on site throughout the night”, and the Spanish Red Cross set up a help centre in the nearby town of Adamuz, said Euronews. Initial photos and videos showed “twisted train cars lying on their sides under floodlights” as emergency services tried to help survivors.

Why did it happen?

The official cause is “not yet known”, said the BBC. “An investigation is not expected to determine what happened for at least a month.”

This was an “extremely strange” incident, said Puente. It occurred on a “straight stretch of track”, the train was “relatively new” and the track had been “recently renovated”, so it is difficult to say with any certainty what the causes might have been, said La Vanguardia. Iryo confirmed that its train, manufactured in 2022, underwent an inspection as recently as 15 January.

The stretch of track where the crash took place “recently received an investment of more than 700 million euros (£608 million) for renovations which were completed in May”, said The Telegraph.

What are the authorities doing next?

Forty-three people – 39 adults and four children – remain in hospital, with 13 of them in intensive care, said the BBC.

Renfe – Spain’s national state-owned railway company – believes it will take “more than four days to resume service between Madrid and Andalusia”, said Spanish newspaper ABC. Spain has the largest high-speed rail network in Europe, second only globally to China, with almost 2,000 miles of track.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has cancelled his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos because of the train crash, said Sky News. “Today is a night of deep pain for our country owing to the tragic rail accident in Adamuz,” he said on X. “No words can alleviate such great suffering, but I want them to know that the whole country is by their side in this tough moment.”

King Felipe is expected to visit the accident site tomorrow, said Sky News. Attending a funeral in Greece, the family has confirmed they would return “as soon as possible”.

The main concern for Zimbabwe’s driving instructors is not teaching the highway code to their students but making sure they “survive some of the world’s deadliest roads”, said The Associated Press.

In 2024, the country recorded more than 2,000 deaths from road traffic accidents and more than 10,000 injuries, according to the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe. Africa as a whole has the “world’s highest fatality rate at 26.6 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a global average of about 18”, said AP. And Zimbabwe has one of the highest rates – nearly 30 deaths per 100,000 people – within Africa.

‘Pothole-riddled reality’

Zimbabwe was once known for “orderly traffic and well kept roads” but its network has “deteriorated since the 2000s”. A series of economic crises has taken its toll on road infrastructure, while “weakened” enforcement of maintenance has led to “traffic chaos”.

Despite attempts to bolster police presence on the roads, “dangerous driving remains deeply entrenched”. Transport minister Felix Mhona told the country’s Senate that over 90% of road accidents are attributable to human error, said The Herald.

Deaths, injuries and damage from road traffic accidents constitute a “devastating and predictable public health disaster”. Such is the scale of the problem that motorists have been “holding prayers at blackspots”, looking for “divine intervention to tame the carnage” and to ward off “avenging spirits”, said News Day.

When Nigerian newspaper Vanguard recently placed Zimbabwe in the top 10 of the best road networks in Africa, “many Zimbabweans laughed in disbelief”, said Tendai Ruben Mbofana in The Zimbabwean. Road users are used to a “pothole-riddled reality” caused by “years of underfunding, corruption, weak maintenance cultures, and political mismanagement”. In some places, the deterioration has been so marked that roads are left “resembling post-conflict zones”.

‘Strikingly inadequate’ enforcement

To promote road safety, Zimbabwean police have begun using body cameras and breathalysers, and want a “review of the driver licensing system”, said AP. This would include improvements to training programmes, public information campaigns to raise awareness of reckless driving, and tougher enforcement, including deducting points for more driving offences.

The Zimbabwean government is targeting tourist routes for improvement, hoping the investment will “deliver a key economic benefit” for the country and its struggling economy, said Global Highways. One example is the road linking Beitbridge, on the South African border, with Bulawayo and the ever-popular Victoria Falls. The Zimbabwe Transport Ministry has, however, “exceeded its planned budget”, meaning “there are concerns as to how future works will be funded”.

“While road rehabilitation is a positive step, it cannot solve the problem alone,” said The Herald. The government has shown it can take hardline legislative stances – such as its recent strategy to tackle drug trafficking and substance abuse – and it is essential that the same “model of commitment and resource intensity” is “replicated” in the road safety sector.

New road safety policies have been introduced but their enforcement is “strikingly inadequate”. Inconsistent action by the authorities has led to drivers and passengers feeling “empowered to flout safety rules without fear of consequence”.

Hundreds of thousands of learner drivers across the UK are still waiting to book their driving tests – and chances are, they’ll now be waiting even longer.

The public spending watchdog has said that the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) will not be able to honour its commitment to reduce waiting times to seven weeks by the end of this year.

Plans to improve efficiency, including by introducing a new booking system before 2030, are “unlikely to contribute to any significant reduction in waiting times in the next 12 months”, said the National Audit Office. Its report highlights the DVSA’s failure to address central problems, including a flagging workforce and “abuse” of the online test booking system by bots, said the Financial Times.

How big is the backlog?

Waiting times for driving tests were “significantly worsened by Covid restrictions”, with 1.1 million tests missed in the 2020/21 financial year, said The Independent. Though some progress has been made since, “an estimated 360,000 of these tests remain unbooked”.

In September, the average waiting time for a driving test stood at 22 weeks. The DVSA pledged to cut it to seven weeks by the end of this year, but the NAO has said that target is not likely to be reached before November 2027.

The DVSA attributed the long waiting times to “increased demand and people booking tests much earlier than before”, said the BBC.

How did it get so bad?

The “huge waiting times” for tests took shape during the pandemic, “when test centres were shuttered and driving instructors were unable to work” and the number of drivers waiting “quadrupled”, said This is Money. Since then, the only “significant dip” in demand was between October 2023 and March 2024, when the DVSA “temporarily deployed all eligible staff from other roles to act as examiners” in an effort to address the backlog.

The DVSA’s online test booking service has also been inundated with bots. They quickly book up tests on behalf of third parties, who then inflate prices before reselling the slots to learners. While a typical driving test costs learners £62 on weekdays and £75 at the weekend or during evenings, some of these third parties charge up to £500 for a pre-booked slot, according to letter from a group of MPs to the government.

And, though it has conducted nearly 20 recruitment campaigns since February 2021, the DVSA has only been able to recruit 83 examiners – far short of its goal of 400. The NAO has said uncompetitive pay and personal safety concerns, with hundreds of assaults on examiners reported over the last year, have only added to the delays.

What is being done about it?

To address workforce concerns, “driving examiners will be offered a ‘retention payment’ of £5,000 from next year to try and keep them in the role”, said the BBC.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has also announced that only learners – not their instructors or other third parties – will be able to book tests on the DVSA platform. Learners will be limited in the amount of times they can move or change their test, and will also be limited in distance – they won’t be able to alter a booked test’s location to a different town or city, for example, a practice associated with reselling. Alexander has said these measures will help ensure learner drivers aren’t “exploited” by bots.

It’s “squeaky bum time” as the rail industry prepares to put a new timetable live across Britain this weekend.

After “billions of pounds of investment” and “years of engineering works”, Sunday will be the “moment of truth” for the new system, said The Guardian. But a ghost from the past is haunting the sector.

What is planned?

LNER, the main inter-city train operator from London to Scotland, will add 60,000 extra seats a week, cut the fastest journey time from London to Edinburgh to just over four hours, and to Leeds to just over two. There will also be six trains an hour out of King’s Cross, up from five.

There will be more trains running north of Newcastle, between Nottingham and Lincoln, and from Middlesbrough. There will also be a new hourly fast service between Leeds and Sheffield.

Rail passengers are being reminded to check their journeys ahead of the imminent timetable changes.

Why are people worried?

It’s “squeaky bum time”, said industry expert Tony Miles, because the new timetable is “pushing everything to the limits of perfection”. An industry insider said there have been some “heroic assumptions about performance”.

But with the timetable “so long in the planning”, and “key operators under direct state control”, the “anxiety owes more to lingering trauma” from the last time the timetable was shaken up to this extent.

What happened then?

On 20 May 2018, a new timetable was introduced that was the “largest revision in living memory”, with changes to 46% of train times, said Rail Technology Magazine.

But it “plunged” passengers in two parts of the country into “weeks of disruption and suffering”. This was because there were "well-intentioned but counterproductive late adjustments” to the plan that “introduced unmanageable risks” as timetables “slipped” and the process became “overwhelmed”.

It was “the most chaotic, fundamental and humiliating failure it has been my misfortune to witness in 40 years as a rail journalist”, Nigel Harris, editor of trade magazine Rail, told The Guardian.

The “spectre” of 2018 “looms large”, said The Guardian. The railway “still bears the scars” from when “no one pulled the alarm cord” before that “similarly sweeping timetable change”.

Seven years ago, the railway was “unprepared and ill-equipped” to “deliver the new services”. It was “grim” for the industry and “worse for passengers”, with “widespread cancellations and delays over a calamitous few weeks”. There followed a “full review of the whole industry”, which itself led to the changes that are due to be introduced on Sunday.

More than 30,000 people in France have signed a petition calling for women-only train carriages, after a young woman recounted her attempted rape on a Paris commuter train. The petition has “provoked angry debate” in France, a society that’s “long viewed sex-segregated spaces as an affront to its – at least theoretical – ideal of equality”, said The Times.

In the UK, a similar petition calls on Transport for London and Sadiq Khan to make the same change on the Tube and London Overground. In under a month, it has surpassed the 10,000 signatures needed to trigger a formal government response.

But introducing women-only carriages would “unwind a century of progress”, said Emma Schubart in The Telegraph. “The petitioners are right about the problem. They’re wrong about the solution.”

‘Failing half the city’

I have had “negative experiences at the hands of men on public transport and so have a lot of my close girl mates”, said “Love Island” star Georgia Harrison in The Mirror. Women-only carriages “shouldn’t be looked at negatively, like women having to segregate themselves”. If I’m going home late at night and I’m on my own, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t have” that option.

With violence and sexual offences against women on public transport rising – more than 900 sexual offences were reported on Transport for London’s services in the first half of this year alone – it is undeniable that the captial’s transport system is “failing half the city”, said Schubart in The Telegraph. But introducing women-only carriages “dodges the root cause” – it “tells offenders nothing needs to change” and punishes victims instead of potential perpetrators.

“Women should not have to take action to prevent sexual assault,” said feminist campaigner Julie Bindel in The Spectator in 2022. Instead, “men should be stopped from doing so”. If “we put the emphasis on women’s behaviour, rather than the attitudes that underpin such crimes, nothing will change”.

‘Entrench backward norms’

Cities like Tokyo, Mumbai and Rio already have women-only carriages in place but the results are “hardly reassuring”, said Schubart. In Rio, for example harassment declined in the women-only spaces but not on the rest of the network, a recent study showed. Worse, the change seemed to “entrench backwards norms”, with women who chose to ride in mixed cars seen as “sexually open or inviting”.

If Sadiq Khan wants London to mirror what other cities have done to combat sexual violence and harassment, he should “copy the serious bits. That means visible staff and patrols, faster response, better lighting and CCTV” and better reporting. “If the goal is to make women feel safe on the Tube, the way to do it is to make predators feel very unsafe.”

I recently “interviewed women about their experiences on trains and it made for some grim conversations”, said HuffPost’s Rachel Moss. I learned what measures would make them feel safer: “more staff, more station lighting, and more robust education for men. Not one expressed a desire to be penned into a separate carriage.”

Ultimately, if you aren’t addressing the “systems of oppression and inequality that fuel the warped beliefs of perpetrators”, you’re not fixing the issue; “you’re just pushing it further down the track”.

The government is to look into the design of cars and growing use of new LED headlights, which drivers argue is making it harder to navigate roads at night.

Four out of five drivers (82%) are concerned about being dazzled by vehicle headlights with the arrival of darker evenings after the clocks have gone back, according to new research from motoring organisation the RAC.

“Unfortunately, for a lot of drivers, the annual onset of darker evenings coincides with another unwelcome arrival – that of overly bright headlights that they believe make driving more difficult due to dazzle and discomfort,” said RAC senior policy officer Rod Dennis.

Have they actually got brighter?

The RAC attributes the increased brightness to modern bi-xenon or LED bulbs, which are becoming more common in new vehicles.

The beam from LED headlights is “whiter, more focused and brighter than the more diffuse light from halogen lamps fitted in older cars”, said the BBC.

Other factors causing problems for drivers include badly aligned headlights and the higher position of SUV lights.

Is it dangerous?

At best, headlight glare can make driving “uncomfortable and more difficult”, said the RAC, “but the consequences can be more severe”.

Half of drivers surveyed said they had been temporarily blinded, while more than a third said they felt less safe driving because of bright headlights on other vehicles. Others reported tiredness, headaches and even migraines.

The problem is worse for older people, whose eyes take longer to recover from glare. Between the ages of 15 and 65 recovery time increases from two to nine seconds, said the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents on its Older Drivers website. A 2018 study published in the Frontiers in Psychology journal also found that headlight glare particularly affected people with cataracts.

In all, dazzling headlights are cited as a factor in between 200 and 300 accidents in the UK each year, said the House of Lords Library, but there is no evidence that brighter lights are causing more collisions than previously.

What can be done?

As the problem has grown more pronounced in recent years, the RAC has joined with other road safety bodies including the College of Optometrists and IAM RoadSmart to campaign for the causes of headlight glare to be investigated.

A Westminster Hall debate on the issue is to be held today, with a government-commissioned report led by consultancy TRL expected to be published in the coming weeks.

The Department for Transport said the findings will help “to better understand the causes and impact of glare, which will inform new measures in the upcoming Road Safety Strategy”.

Alongside this, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has “stepped up surveillance to intercept the sale of illegal retrofit headlamp bulbs”, with anyone caught facing a fine of up to £1,000.

Drivers can also help to minimise the impact of brighter headlights. The College of Optometrists recommends you ensure that your windscreen, and glasses if worn, are clean, avoid looking straight ahead but focus on the edge of the road, and do not wear night sunglasses sold for night-driving, as they reduce overall light, not glare.

While headlight glare is a problem that “needs tackling”, said the RAC, it is “important to remember that brighter headlights can give drivers a better view of the road ahead – so there’s a balance to be struck”.

What happened

A Navy fighter jet and helicopter based off the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other Sunday afternoon, the U.S. Pacific Fleet said on social media. President Donald Trump Monday said “bad fuel” could be to blame for the “very unusual” dual crashes.

Who said what

The MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter and F/A-18F Super Hornet jet were on separate “routine operations” when they went down, the Navy said, and all five crew members involved “are safe and in stable condition.” Trump told reporters traveling with him to Japan on Air Force One that he did not think foul play was involved. “They think it might be bad fuel,” he said. “We’re gonna find out. Nothing to hide.”

The F/A-18 was “at least the fourth of the $60 million fighter jets the Navy has lost this year,” CNN said. The other three were destroyed in a “series of mishaps” involving another aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman, The Associated Press said. Two F/A fighter jets “went overboard” into the Red Sea while the third was “mistakenly shot down” by the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg. The half-century-old USS Nimitz is traveling to its home port in Washington state before being decommissioned next year.

What next?

Sunday’s incidents are “under investigation,” the Navy said. Results from the military’s investigations into the USS Truman’s mishaps “have yet to be released,” said the AP.

Cruises remain one of the most popular choices for an easy and cost-efficient vacation, but data shows that there is a drawback: Crime rates aboard cruise ships are continuing to rise and have reached an almost two-year high in 2025. Crime on these floating cities isn’t a new phenomenon, but experts say it is important to remain vigilant as statistics increase.

How bad is crime on cruise ships?

Crime has always been a problem on cruise ships due to the large number of people confined onboard, with sexual assaults and rapes being particularly common. But the issue seems to have reached new heights this year. From January to March 2025, there were 48 crimes on cruise ships reported to the FBI, according to data from the Department of Transportation. This marks the highest three-month period of crimes reported on cruise ships since April to June 2023, when the FBI counted 55 incidents. The United States’ three biggest cruise companies, Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian, had 12, nine and five incidents reported, respectively.

Of the reported incidents, at least 23 “were reported rapes, 10 were sexual assaults and seven were assaults, which all reportedly happened on cruise ships,” said Fox 9. Other violent crimes also take place on ships and not only those operating in the United States. In May 2025, a “57-year-old man was arrested and bailed on suspicion of murder and a 60-year-old was arrested and bailed on suspicion of manslaughter” on the Malta-registered MSC Virtuosa, said The Independent.

Disney Cruise Lines has been dealing with a particular influx of sexual crimes, according to reports. In the past five years, Disney “has gone from having between one and three sexual assault allegations on its cruises to reporting 15 assaults in 2023 and 18 assaults in 2024,” said Newsweek. As with all other ship incidents, the “crimes documented by the DOT are alleged and based on ship reporting, and do not reflect the outcome of any law enforcement investigation.”

How can you stay safe?

Experts say it often comes down to standard safety measures. Cruise ships are “generally safe environments, but as with anywhere, it’s smart to take some common-sense precautions,” cruise content creator Jenni Fielding said to The Independent. Despite what the “headlines might suggest, cruising remains one of the safest ways to travel.”

If you are on a cruise ship, you should “lock your cabin door at night, avoid leaving drinks unattended and never go into someone’s stateroom alone,” Fielding told The Independent. If walking to your stateroom or cabin alone, you should also be “mindful of who is around in the corridor.” Beyond this, all cruises will “have a security officer and a team of people responsible for the safety and security of passengers and crew” that you can go to in an emergency, said Forbes.

And while crime rates on ships may be rising, cruises remain “one of the safest vacation options in the world, with rates of serious crimes that are exceedingly lower than those on land due to multiple layers of security and the nature of cruising,” Charles Sylvia, the vice president of industry and trade relations for Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), said to industry outlet TravelPulse. Almost all cruise lines “have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to criminal behavior, and allegations of major crimes on cruise ships are extremely rare.”

While air travel remains the safest mode of transportation by a significant margin, there might be something happening on airplanes that could cause you a literal headache. Toxic fumes from jet airliners can sometimes leak into the cabin and cause significant health problems for passengers, according to a new investigation from The Wall Street Journal. The fumes have reportedly been found in the cabin of almost every modern airplane model, and there are indications that both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and airplane manufacturers have long known about the problem.

How do toxic fumes get on airplanes?

There have been thousands of “fume events reported to the Federal Aviation Administration since 2010, in which toxic fumes from a jet’s engines leak unfiltered into the cockpit or cabin,” said the Journal’s investigation. This is due to a design element on planes called “bleed air.” While half of the oxygen on planes is recirculated into the cabin through filters, the other half is “pulled from outside via the aircraft’s engines,” which can bring unwanted oil fumes into the cabin if the seals keeping the oil out fail.

These fumes “have led to emergency landings, sickened passengers and affected pilots’ vision and reaction times midflight,” said the Journal. The majority of these fumes “consist of carbon monoxide and unspecified quantities of neurotoxins, aren’t toxic and have mild to no symptoms,” said The Hill. Continued exposure, however, such as what is experienced by pilots and flight attendants, could “lead to more severe side effects.”

The bleed air design has been “featured in almost every modern commercial jetliner except Boeing’s 787,” said the Journal. But the fume reports are “largely driven by Airbus A320s, which are used by the three largest U.S. airlines,” said NewsNation. A 2015 FAA report said the annual rate of fume incidents was about 33 per 1 million aircraft flights; the Journal reported this rate was significantly higher in 2024 at 108 incidents per 1 million flights.

What can these fumes cause?

While the fumes don’t often cause major problems, they sometimes lead to significant health consequences. Flight attendant Florence Chesson was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and “permanent damage to her peripheral nervous system” from fume exposure, said the Journal. The effects on her brain were “akin to a chemical concussion and ‘extraordinarily similar’ to those of a National Football League linebacker after a brutal hit,” Chesson’s doctor told the Journal.

“The most common problems I see are general nervous system problems,” Dr. Robert Harrison, an occupational medicine specialist at the University of California San Francisco, told CBS News. If a person breathes the tainted air into their lungs, it “circulates around, and then it gets into their brain and can affect the other parts of the nervous system.”

What have officials said?

The FAA maintains that fumes rarely leak into airplane cabins. In “rare instances, mechanical issues such as failures of an engine oil seal or recirculation fan bearings can cause fumes to enter the cabin,” the agency told CBS News in a statement. The FAA “investigates the causes and makes sure they're fixed before the aircraft returns to service.”

Flight manufacturers and airlines have provided similar remarks. Airbus’ aircraft are “designed and manufactured according to all relevant and applicable airworthiness requirements,” an Airbus spokesperson said to People. Airbus is “committed to continuously enhancing our products, working closely with operators and regulators to ensure the best possible cabin environment for passengers and crew.”

Google Maps is available in more than 250 countries, so it may surprise some people to learn that a modern tech-obsessed nation like South Korea isn't on that list. Google Maps has long been shunned by the Asian country, and the app has never fully worked there. South Korean officials say this is due to national security concerns over geographic data, which has led the country to push back against efforts to integrate with Google Maps. But many South Koreans and tourists feel the time has come to let Google in.

'Decades-long struggle'

Many South Korean officials are wary of making Google Maps fully accessible in the country. At the "heart of this issue lies a set of map data owned by the South Korean government," which Google says it "needs to create a comprehensive map of the country," said CNN. Google has repeatedly "asked South Korea to export that data," and authorities have repeatedly "refused, citing national security concerns."

This "decades-long struggle began over geopolitical tensions" in 2008, when Google Maps "labeled some Korean locations by their Japanese names," said Soyun Ahn, an assistant professor of communications at Boston College, to CNN. Since then, South Korea has been reluctant to allow Google Maps access to its data, even though "most overseas platforms have no such issue operating, including other Google products like Gmail and YouTube."

The "opposition to Google's request is fierce," and national security experts also "warn that approving the request could set a precedent for other foreign companies, particularly from China," said The Guardian. The government "must listen to industry concerns," said Kim Seok-jong, the chair of the Korean Association of Spatial Information, Surveying and Mapping, to the outlet.

Many defense experts say providing Google the maps would "hand adversaries a precision targeting aid," said The Diplomat. They often cite Ukraine's 2022 experience: When Google Earth "refreshed satellite tiles, bloggers scraped the imagery and geolocated newly built military facilities, forcing Kyiv to ask Google to blur sensitive areas after the fact."

'Major inconveniences to foreign tourists'

Others say the time has come for Google to gain a seat at the South Korean map table. This may ring especially true for tourists who must find alternative navigation apps.

It's "tiring because you need to download three apps, then juggle three to find a way to where you want to go," Taiwanese traveler Eric Weng said to CNN. And many tourists "often struggle to navigate with Google Maps due to the limited information and languages supported" on the South Korea version of the app, said TechCrunch.

Google claims the "lack of data restricts its Google Maps services in Korea, causing major inconveniences to foreign tourists," said Reuters. The company also pushes back against issues regarding national security, claiming there are "no security concerns about its mapping data on South Korea" and that the data is "publicly available and used by a number of companies."

The South Korean government is "under stronger pressure this time amid escalating trade pressure from the Donald Trump administration," said The Korea Times. U.S. officials have cited the map issue as "one of the major trade barriers with Korea," with South Koreans "taking a cautious approach to trade matters involving the world's largest economy."

Helsinki has been hailed as the road safety capital of the world, after city officials revealed there has not been a single traffic-related fatality in the past year.

While road deaths have declined by an average of 3% across EU countries, according to recent European Commission figures, "they are still commonplace in metropolitan areas", said Politico. So, "to go a full year without one is a remarkable feat for most cities – let alone a European capital".

'Vision Zero'

The achievement is the culmination of years of work to reduce and then eliminate road deaths in Finland. The country adopted a "Vision Zero" traffic safety strategy in the early 2000s, guided by a set of principles and policies that, said The Guardian in 2020, "shifts responsibility for crashes from road users to the designers of the road system". If there is a crash, "it is up to authorities to ensure that it does not happen again".

Helsinki's traffic fatalities have been declining ever since. It recorded zero pedestrian fatalities in 2019, with the city's last fatal traffic accident occurring in early July 2024. Traffic-related injuries in the capital have also plummeted from 727 in 2023 to 14 in 2024.

For context, there were a total of 20,418 deaths on EU roads in 2023, with two countries, Lithuania and Latvia, registering an strong increase (33% and 26% respectively), according to a European Transport Safety Council report.

'A handful of small changes'

Helsinki's success does not come "from any one major policy shift but from a handful of small changes" that add up to "meaningful impact" said MSM. By focusing on safer people, safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds and better post-crash care, the aim is to create "multiple layers of protection, so if one fails, the others will create a safety net to lessen the impact of a crash", said Forbes

More than half the city's streets now have a speed limit of 30 kph (less than 20 mph), a decision driven by data showing the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car's speed of impact from 40 kph to to 30 kph, said Politico.

And "street design has also played a key role", said Finnish news outlet YLE. "Pedestrian and cycling infrastructure has been significantly upgraded" and "more traffic cameras and automated enforcement systems have been introduced". In many areas, "roads have been narrowed and trees have been planted with the deliberate goal of making drivers move more cautiously", said Politico.

Other measures include "improving the traffic skills of different road users", said Forbes, as well as increasing motorcycle and moped helmet-wearing rates to nearly 100%, and "allowing the police to make random alcohol and drug tests". Finland is also the only country in Europe to conduct an in-depth investigation into every single fatal collision.

The European Transport Safety Council has recognised the country's carefully co-ordinated progress in road safety. "In Finland, they say, 'Vahinko ei tule kello kaulassa'," said ETSC director Antonio Avenoso. This "roughly translates as: 'Accidents don't come with a bell around their neck'".

Drivers over 70 could be banned from the road if they fail compulsory eye tests as part of "radical" reforms of motoring laws in England and Wales, said the BBC.

The proposal is part of the biggest shake-up to the UK's driving laws "for decades", said Alex Davies-Jones, the justice minister.

What are the new proposals?

Under the government's new road safety strategy, due to be published in the autumn, eye tests would become compulsory for the over-70s when they renew their driving licence every three years.

The drink-drive limit is expected to be lowered from 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath to 22 micrograms, which would match the laws in Scotland. Police may also be allowed to bring prosecutions for drug-driving on the basis of roadside saliva tests rather than blood tests, as at present.

Tougher seatbelt rules may include penalty points for drivers if their passengers fail to wear a seatbelt, and there could also be stiffer penalties for uninsured drivers.

Why are they being suggested now?

Last year, 1,633 people were killed and almost 28,000 seriously injured in traffic incidents, according to data from the Department for Transport (DfT). Ministers have concluded that the current safety messaging is not working, so it's time to act. "In no other circumstance would we accept 1,600 people dying, with thousands more seriously injured, costing the NHS more than £2 billion per year," a government source told the BBC.

At an inquest into four deaths caused by drivers with poor eyesight, James Adeley, the senior coroner for Lancashire, described the UK's licensing system as the "laxest in Europe" when it came to eyesight testing. The UK is one of only three European countries that relies on drivers self-reporting conditions affecting their vision to the DVLA, and the only one in which drivers could avoid mandatory re-testing for "as much as 53 years".

Would the changes make roads safer?

Sub-par vision is a significant factor in many road accidents. In 2023 defective eyesight was a factor in 252 road collision incidents and six deaths, according to the DfT. And the number of drivers with dangerously poor vision could be as high as 720,650, said the Driving Instructors Association, citing a survey carried out last year. Of the 3,010 individuals tested, 50 were unable to read a numberplate 20 metres away, a failure rate of 1.7%.

In the case of lowering the alcohol limit, the impact is not "clear-cut", said Auto Express. In the decade since the drink-drive limit was reduced in Scotland, the number of accidents hasn't fallen. A study by Jonathan James, from the University of Bath, and Marco Francesconi, from the University of Essex, found that "stricter limits alone" may not be enough to reduce drink-driving accidents unless they're matched by "effective enforcement".

Edmund King, president of the AA, said that some of the most successful reforms in countries like Australia and Canada focused on restricting newly licensed young drivers, said The Times. Banning young motorists from transporting peer-age passengers for six months has been shown to cut death and serious injury by between 20% and 40%. In the UK, similar success would translate to at least 58 deaths and 934 serious injuries being prevented annually.

While King believes the new measures will "modernise our approach to saving lives", the failure to address dangers posed by the youngest as well as the oldest motorists remains "a major oversight", said The Independent.

Here we go again, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. Last week, Heathrow Airport unveiled its latest expansion plans. Labour first backed the third runway in 2009, six years after it had been proposed in a White Paper, and the Tories "voted it through Parliament in 2018".

Legal challenges, and then reduced passenger numbers during the pandemic, "applied the brakes" to the project; but now the operator is back with detailed plans, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves has signalled strong support for the proposals – which would include a £12 billion terminal, and a £21 billion, 3,500-metre runway built over a diverted section of the M25 at the northwest of the airport.

The plans drew a muted public response, said Andrew Gilligan in The i Paper. That's not because campaigners are now relaxed about "increases in noise and pollution for up to 10 million people", rises in CO2 emissions, or the demolition of at least 700 homes. No, it's because "informed people" on all sides reckon the proposals are a "fantasy".

Maybe so, but Reeves is taking them very seriously, said the Daily Mail. She has said the runway is "essential" to her plan for growth, and wants it to be operational within a decade. We must hope she gets her way. Britain's failure to expand Heathrow is a national "humiliation": in the 22 years that we've been "huffing and puffing" over this runway, China has built 100 airports.

The benefits of expansion are clear, said The Times: it would allow an extra 276,000 flights a year; and, according to Reeves, could create 100,000 jobs. Granted, there would be costs. But Heathrow is one of the world's busiest two-runway airport and needs a third to compete with other hubs. "Building it must be a national priority."

"Yet there are good reasons Britain has been failing to build this landing strip," said Alistair Osborne in the same paper, and many questions about these latest plans remain unanswered. Can an already debt-laden Heathrow afford the project? Who'd pay for the public transport upgrades required to ferry 66 million extra passengers a year to and from the airport? Is it really feasible, as Heathrow's boss claims, to divert the M25 into a tunnel without causing huge disruptions?

And is this expansion worth it, "when for a total £8 billion, you could add capacity for 100 million passengers at Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, London City and Manchester, with far less hassle"? Maybe these issues can be overcome, and maybe official "net zero" targets won't scupper the proposal either. But for now, the third runway still "looks a long way from takeoff."

What happened

A Bangladesh Air Force fighter jet on a routine training mission experienced a mechanical failure and crashed into the Milestone School and College campus in the nation's capital city of Dhaka Monday. The crash, and the resulting blaze, killed at least 27 people, 25 of whom were children.

Some of the victims' bodies were charred "beyond recognition," The Associated Press said. One teacher rescued more than 20 students and later died from her injuries.

Who said what

The pilot made "every effort" to divert the plane to a "more sparsely inhabited location," the military said. This is the "deadliest plane crash in the Bangladeshi capital in recent memory," AP said. And it comes as neighboring India is "still grappling" with last month's Air India crash that killed 260 people and was the "world's worst aviation disaster in a decade," said Reuters. The losses from this accident are "irreparable," said Muhammad Yunus, the leader of Bangladesh's interim government.

What next?

The air force and the government vowed to investigate the crash. In the meantime, dozens of people remain hospitalized with burns, and worried family members are searching for their missing relatives. Today has been declared a national day of mourning.

As the media reports a "surge" in the "dangerous crossings" of migrants, I'm "seeing an invasion of a different sort", said veteran actor Joan Collins in The Spectator: the rental bikes that "litter our pavements".

I've been "almost run over twice" by Lime bikes and I've also tripped over discarded cycles "on the streets of Belgravia". Their riders "seem to care not for road rules, pedestrians, safety, or anyone but themselves".

Take them away

I was hit by a Lime bike and "my knees ate gravel, my side was rammed by a metal basket", my palms only just stopped me from "faceplanting the ground". It "hurt. A lot", said Maddy Mussen in London's The Standard.

Now there are so many of them; "that mass of green scares me", and there have been many "issues". The e-bikes "end up littered on the streets" which is a "real issue for blind and visually impaired people who trip over them", and people "regularly" ride them while drunk.

Lots of riders also wear "AirPods or headphones" so "not only are Limes super-silent, but everyone's walking around with ears full of cotton wool". We're "not ready yet" so until we learn to "use the Limes safely", perhaps they "need to be taken away".

Despite their semi-silent operation, the bikes do cause a noise problem – to the "ire" of many Londoners: the "piercing and persistent" alarm of stolen Lime bikes, which sounds like a "half-bothered fire alarm you accidentally set off", is "everywhere", said Sammy Gecsoyler in The Guardian.

Stop whining

But fans of the rental e-bikes insist that they're a convenient and money-saving mode of transport.

So perhaps we should "stop whining" about them, writes George Hill on Road.cc, because "let's be honest, they're brilliant". I recently took one across London for a journey that would have cost me £20 and 20 minutes in a taxi each way, or 25 minutes by tube, but on a Lime bike, I did it in 12 minutes. It "cost me about three quid" and I arrived without being "sweaty" or "poor".

For many older people they're a "godsend", said Matt Sinha in The i Paper, and their "rapid acceleration gives me a buzz". Wherever you live, thanks to a Lime bike you are "part of the scene" with a "different take on your surroundings".

Also, "touch your mental brakes" on "that thought about poorly parked bikes" because for all the "teens or revellers" who push over a stack of Lime bikes, or people who "create potential obstacles", I can "set an example" by "finding a space" and "stacking one correctly".

So "why not give a Lime bike a spin"? Not only are they "mood enhancers", but they're also affordable, good for the environment and easily available.

The deadly crash of Air India Flight 171 last week has centered renewed scrutiny on the airplane's manufacturer, Boeing, and this time it's the 787 Dreamliner in investigators' sights. The accident, which killed over 270 people, was the first fatal crash for the Dreamliner since the model began flying in 2011.

Experts had previously raised concerns about safety issues for the Dreamliner, and the crash comes just weeks after Boeing agreed to a multi-billion-dollar payout related to another one of its faulty aircraft, the 737 Max. Now, the Dreamliner's troubles may begin to overshadow the Max's issues.

More problems for Boeing

Worries about the Dreamliner are not entirely new, as the "planes have been the subject of heightened scrutiny after whistleblowers raised concerns about manufacturing and quality issues going back many years," said The New York Times. Despite these concerns, the plane had never been involved in a fatal crash in the 14 years it has been flying, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

The cause of the Air India crash remains unclear, and "multiple factors, including bird strikes, pilot error, manufacturing defects or inadequate maintenance, can play a role in aviation accidents," said the Times. Determining the cause of the accident could take "months or years." Boeing "stands ready to support the investigation led by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau," said Boeing President and CEO Kelly Ortberg in a statement.

But this is only the latest in a string of issues for Boeing, which has faced public ire over safety incidents in recent years. Just weeks before the Air India crash, Boeing "agreed to pay $1.1 billion in a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice to avoid prosecution over the two crashes that together killed 346 people" on 737 Max jets, said The Guardian.

Recent problems with the Dreamliner have also drawn attention. American Airlines decided to ground a "new premium-heavy Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner due to serious maintenance problems," the aviation news site Simple Flying reported two days before the Air India crash. Another Dreamliner that was "identical to the one that crashed in India made four emergency landings in less than a month earlier this year," said The Telegraph.

New questions

The Dreamliner debacle "comes at a critical moment for the hobbled American icon, which has been buffeted by a succession of crises in recent years, losing billions of dollars due to plane groundings and production delays," said The Wall Street Journal. The Air India crash will likely "raise fresh questions about Boeing just as it begins to emerge from the fallout of a high-profile incident early last year when a door plug on a recently delivered 737 Max fell off during a flight."

Boeing employees have "observed shortcuts taken by Boeing" during assembly of the Dreamliner, "resulting in drilling debris left in interfaces and deformation of composite material," one Boeing engineer told CBS News. The engineer also claimed to have witnessed issues with other models. While this was the first fatal crash involving the Dreamliner, the plane has been "involved in previous investigations."

The Air India crash was also critically timed for Boeing on the business side, as it occurred "days before the opening of the Paris Air Show, a major aviation expo where Boeing and European rival Airbus will showcase their aircraft and battle for jet orders from airline customers," said The Associated Press. Boeing has already been dealing with significant losses in recent years, having "posted a 2024 loss of $11.8 billion," said CBS, bringing its total losses to over $35 billion since 2019.

What happened

A London-bound Air India flight crashed into a residential area of Ahmedabad seconds after takeoff yesterday, killing 241 or 242 passengers and crew and more than two dozen people on the ground, including at least five medical students in a hostel hit by the plane.

The only surviving passenger, British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, told medics he was thrown from the plane as it split in two. It was the first fatal crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the deadliest aviation disaster in India since 1996.

Who said what

About "30 seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed," Ramesh told the Hindustan Times. "When I got up there were bodies all around me." His brother told Sky News that Ramesh "video-called my dad and said, 'Our plane crashed — I have no idea how I got outside, or how I survived.'" Most of the people on the flight were Indian nationals, but 52 British passengers, seven Portuguese and one Canadian also died in the crash.

What next?

Outside experts speculated, based on CCTV footage, that the plane may have lost altitude and crashed due to a bird strike, "extremely rare double engine failure," improperly set flaps or heat-related lift issues, the BBC said. "Early hypotheses often are ruled out during lengthy, technical crash investigations," The New York Times said.

"Robotaxis" are coming to the streets of London but no one's quite sure if people will hail self-driving cabs as an exciting transport innovation or view them with customary British scepticism.

Uber will partner with UK tech firm Wayve to launch a small number of driverless taxis and shuttle services in the capital next year – after trials beginning in the spring. "Our vision is to make autonomy a safe and reliable option" for everyone, Andrew Macdonald, Uber's president and chief operating officer, told the Financial Times. "This trial in London brings that future closer to reality."

Self-driving vehicles have become a familiar sight in some parts of the US and China but this robotaxi pilot, without safety drivers, will be a first for Britain. The "future of transport is arriving", said Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander. Driverless cars could "bring jobs, investment and the opportunity for the UK to be among the world leaders in new technology".

'Fully autonomous tech'

Tests on autonomous vehicles have already been taking place in the UK for "more than a decade", said The Guardian but, until now, only on vehicles that "needed a safety driver" on board, "ready to take over the controls". A successful pilot of this new "fully autonomous tech" next year could "put the UK in a leading position", and herald a "fuller rollout" across the country in 2027.

For Uber, the commercial advantages of deploying taxis that don't need a driver are obvious. For the government, there's hope of a boost to the economy and an aim to provide "better accessibility" to car services for older people and people with disabilities, as well as people who "live in places with limited transport options", said Carwow. Widespread adoption of (electric) driverless cars could also "reduce emissions" and, if ride-sharing models take off, "ease congestion".

But to reach that point will be a "slow process", said the BBC. Getting a driverless car system up and running requires "people, money and process"; it's "quite a labour-intensive process to roll out this technology", Sven Beiker, a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business and CEO of automotive consultancy Mobility, told the broadcaster. People "need to drive them over and over again" on the streets where they'll be deployed, and avoid "running into major accidents".

'Living in fantasy land'

The whole project could yet be "held up by safety concerns", said the BBC. Google-owned robotaxi firm Waymo, which operates in America, sometimes in partnership with Wayve, says its safety record in the US "is superior to that of human drivers". However, there "there have been hiccups", said The Times, including the case of one man who was "trapped in a disturbed vehicle as it performed loops of an airport car park".

Safety incidents have also seen other would-be self-driving innovators abandon their plans. General Motors jettisoned development of its autonomous Cruise service last year, some months after one of its vehicles hit and seriously injured a pedestrian. The company attributed the decision to "the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business".

And then there's customer uncertainty to contend with. Brits are "among the most sceptical in the world when it comes to having AI in vehicles", according to Deloitte research cited by Carwow. The UK government is actively trying to address that scepticism with "through a multi-pronged approach focused on safety, clear legal frameworks, and ongoing public education", said the car-review site.

What the effect of the advent of driverless taxis will be on London's black-cab and Uber drivers remains "unclear", said The Guardian. But many "appeared unruffled" by the prospect – including Steve McNamara of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, who told the paper that autonomous car companies were "living in fantasy land". I am "genuinely not worried. Come back to me in 2040."

UK rail passengers will be able to take advantage of fast and reliable train Wi-Fi for the first time – provided that they are travelling on the 43-mile stretch of track between Earlsfield in south London and Basingstoke in Hampshire.

Operator South Western Railway has become "the first to introduce rail-5G Wi-Fi in Europe", said Rail Advent. So far, it's on a small scale – the new technology "requires trackside poles and antennas, which need to be installed along the route as well as on trains" – but it paves the way to ending the poor on-board connectivity that has frustrated travellers for years.

'Not true Wi-Fi at all'

Train Wi-Fi is the "bane of every commuter's existence", said The i Paper. Too many of us have opened our laptop to catch up on important tasks, "only to find that the onboard Wi-Fi connection is patchy or barely working at all". And it's not a service-specific issue – only half of all UK travellers surveyed by watchdog Transport Focus in July 2024 said they were satisfied with internet reliability.

Part of the reason train Wi-Fi proves so unreliable is that "it's not true Wi-Fi at all", said The i Paper. It relies on mobile data signal channelled through SIM cards fixed to the train. The problem is that these mobile internet connections aren't "ubiquitous across the whole country", and just 69% of rural Britain is covered by the main four mobile networks, and areas with fewer masts provide a weaker connection. Train services also tend to cap usage.

Another problem is that "if you were trying to design a system uniquely made to try and limit the spread of Wi-Fi signal, you couldn't do much better than a modern UK train carriage". Their construction materials block electromagnetic signals like Wi-Fi, and crowded trains mean those signals are even more obstructed before they finally reach our laptops or smartphones – where they must be shared between dozens, or hundreds, of passengers.

'Momentum has now swung' towards connectivity

The solution to tiresome train Wi-Fi is more mobile towers, because "the faster you travel, the harder the handover from one tower to another", said the Financial Times. Installing more 5G masts helps to bridge the gaps. From these, the mobile connection could be converted to Wi-Fi via antennas on the roofs of trains. Alternatively, mobile operators could "build out their 4G and 5G networks along railway lines" so passengers could use that service rather than relying on on-board Wi-Fi.

In 2023, transport officials "briefly looked into scrapping free Wi-Fi on trains", arguing that passengers prioritised value for money. But "momentum has now swung towards more connectivity". South Western Railway's new service is a start, but is "only available along 43.5 miles (70km) of track, which express trains take just 30 minutes to pass along", said The Telegraph. Outside that stretch, "passengers will have to use the existing provision, which relies on mobile phone masts away from the railways".

"But be careful what you wish for," said the Financial Times. "Imagine a world in which train passengers (especially the most self-important ones) could seamlessly log into their Zoom calls, or stream short videos without headphones." Many of us would "go from complaining that the Wi-Fi doesn't work to complaining that it does".

Aviation experts across the U.S. are warning that hackers could create a new risk for fliers: The system used on airplanes to warn pilots of impending collisions is vulnerable to attack. This announcement adds a new element to an aviation industry that has had a slew of recent problems, including the fatal crash in Washington, D.C., earlier this year and a series of blackouts at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport.

The system in question has long been used to avoid collisions in the skies and is standard on modern airplanes. But this new vulnerability has some pilots worried.

What is this system?

The Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) is required on all U.S. passenger airplanes and "alerts pilots when two aircraft come dangerously close to each other," said The New York Times. If the two airplanes come within a certain proximity, TCAS "will alert pilots to a possible crash by instructing them to redirect their aircraft, either by climbing or descending."

The system is not perfect, as evidenced by the mid-air crash in Washington, D.C., in January, which "sparked urgent concerns about air traffic safety" and made people question if TCAS "failed to warn the pilots of the jetliner in time," said Newsweek. Nonetheless, TCAS is a key safety feature, as the system "has been in use for decades and experts say it has significantly reduced collisions," said the Times.

How vulnerable is the system?

If hackers were to gain access to an airplane's TCAS, the "successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to manipulate safety systems and cause a denial-of-service condition," said the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Hackers may be able to generate "spoofed location data" that could "lead to the appearance of fake aircraft on displays and potentially trigger undesired" TCAS warnings.

There are several unconfirmed instances in which this may have already happened. During one notable event on March 1, "more than a dozen planes inbound for Reagan [National Airport] experienced" TCAS warnings, said Intelligencer. As the planes flew closer to the airport, several "audio alarms unexpectedly went off: 'Traffic, traffic!' or 'Descend, descend!'" But the "flight crews realized that nothing was there. Visibility was good." This wasn't unprecedented, as "civil aviation around the world has experienced a growing number of similarly troubling incidents."

The "half-dozen airliners who received the alerts in short succession reacted as they had been trained to do: They followed the computer-generated commands that told them to climb or dive," said The Telegraph. Pilots are worried that the TCAS which "falsely told those pilots that a collision was imminent was not only deliberately spoofed," but that "malicious people around the world" may have been responsible.

The idea of a TCAS hack "scares the shit out of me," one pilot told The Telegraph. Still, not everyone feels that a hack is all that likely. In prior years, pilots "would often see things like miscalibrated transponders on a light aircraft, misreporting and then broadcasting the wrong data and causing weird alerts," Ken Munro, a member of the cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners, said to the outlet. It is nevertheless "technically possible" for TCAS to be hacked, Munro said, as others have admitted. Pilots "know these attacks exist, but we don't know what would happen if they occurred," said Matt Smith, who performed a TCAS study for the U.K.'s Oxford University.

Most Britons believe people who play loud music and videos on public transport should be fined as patience with "headphone dodgers" appears to be running increasingly thin.

A YouGov poll of 6,815 Britons found that 62% of us "strongly support" or "somewhat support" the proposal for stricter measures put forward by the Liberal Democrats. In a separate survey of more than 2,000 UK adults, conducted by Savanta, 38% of respondents had come across fellow travellers playing music out loud on their phones.

'Phenomenally rude'

Such headphone dodgers may not be the "biggest problem" with public transport, said James Hanson in The Spectator, but they're the "thin end of an increasingly large wedge". It's not the "noise itself" that's an irritation but rather the "lack of common courtesy". As a nation, we "used to pride ourselves" on politeness, but now we have to "suffer the daily indignity" of a "full-volume rendition" of some "muppet's" playlist.

As an annoyance, it has been going on a while. Playing anything without headphones is a way of acknowledging that your enjoyment is more important than "anyone else's feelings", said Rebecca Reid in The i Paper in 2023. It's "an act of aural aggression" and one of the "truly morally indefensible" things someone can do.

Worse, it is "not a few lone wolves", wrote George Chesterton in London's The Standard, it's a "cultural phenomenon" and "phenomenally rude", as well as the "surest sign yet" that we are heading for a "post-apocalyptic cursed earth".

'Pure cowardice'

This sort of behaviour used to be "rare", wrote Adrian Chiles in The Guardian. If anyone was "watching or listening to something", they'd use headphones and if a "bit of tinny noise" were to "leak out" occasionally that was really "as bad as things got".

So what's changed? Do the culprits think it's acceptable or do they know it's "unacceptable" and don't care? Is it a "giant two-fingered gesture" that wordlessly poses the question: "I know this is out of order, but what are you going to do to stop me"?

It's "hard to pinpoint a date" when it became "socially acceptable", wrote Stephen Bleach in The Times 12 months ago, but in the past couple of years, many of us have seen "this kind of heedless noise pollution" become more and more "normalised". In response, the majority go for the "classic British tactic" of the "passive-aggressive hard stare" that achieves nothing. We could put our "inaction" down to "innate reserve" but "I suspect that most of us know, deep down", it's "pure cowardice".

Ministers have finally given the green light to the Lower Thames Crossing, ending years of delays and false starts.

The scheme, which will connect Kent and Essex, has become a "symbol of Britain's sclerotic planning system", said the Financial Times (FT).

What is it?

Described by National Highways as "the most significant road project in a generation", the 14.5-mile road and tunnel project linking Essex and Kent is "aimed at reducing congestion on the Dartford Crossing by nearly doubling road capacity across the Thames east of London", said The Independent.

This will include two 2.6-mile tunnels under the Thames, which would be "the UK's longest road tunnels".

One official said the project would be a "key strategic route" for drivers, freight and logistics, improving connectivity between southern England and the Midlands and unlocking regional economic growth.

What's the hold-up been?

Tuesday's announcement by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was "16 years in the making, with the project first mooted in 2009", said the BBC.

More than £1.2 billion has already been spent on planning, consultations, traffic modelling, environmental assessments, legal and advisory fees and land purchases, despite construction not yet having started.

The FT said the planning document for the project "runs to 359,070 pages, equivalent to nearly 300 times the complete works of William Shakespeare".

Originally costed at between £5.3 billion and £6.8 billion when it was first agreed in 2017, it is currently forecast to cost around £10 billion. Barring any further hold-ups, work on the tunnel is expected to begin next year and it is scheduled to open in 2032.

Why is it controversial?

The Lower Thames Crossing "has seen many controversies along its now 20-year lifespan", said New Civil Engineer.

Last October, residents of Thurrock, Essex, told the BBC the plans have been "looming" over them for years, leaving them unable to sell their homes and move.

Thurrock Council leader John Kent said the proposals "would do nothing to improve congestion locally or regionally and would add little capacity to the national strategic road network".

He added that the tunnels would, however, "cut Thurrock in two, severing communities, bring huge amounts of pollution to the borough, but bring no discernible benefits for local people".

The project has also faced a number of "legal threats" from environmental groups, The i Paper reported. "Conservationists claim several developments that are central to the Government's growth agenda" – including the Lower Thames Crossing – "do not take into consideration new laws designed to improve England’s protected national park and landscapes."

National Highways has promised to build "the UK's greenest ever road", but environmental groups have "raised concerns over the destruction of ancient woodlands and habitats for wildlife".

There has also been fierce debate about how the project will be funded, with the government "yet to decide what method of private finance to use", said the FT.

A proposal to have a "regulated asset base" model – in which private investors would collect road toll revenues to pay back their investments over the life of the projects – is "favoured by the Treasury, according to people with knowledge of the discussions".

This option – which would require nearly £2 billion of taxpayer funding to attract £6.3 billion of private investment – would cost the Treasury £200 million more in upfront costs than if the government paid for the scheme directly, according to a recent National Highways document.

'Airport theory' is the increasingly popular trend of arriving at an airport close to flight departure times. It is "shaking up air travel" after gaining "tens of millions of views on TikTok", said Newsweek.

Airlines have warned against the tactic but many social media users are promoting it because it "limits passengers' wasted time by streamlining the airport experience".

'Poor time management skills'

TikTok has been flooded with videos of people trying out airport theory. Several creators have recorded themselves "navigating airports and clearing security with just minutes to spare", said Mail Online.

Travellers have been getting mixed results. Lexi Smith managed to clear security in five minutes even after she was "randomly selected for an additional security screening" and was able to get on her flight "20 minutes after arriving at LAX". However, things didn't go so well for Jenny Kurtz, who followed the popular trend "just to find terminal screens flashing 'flight closed' at the Chicago-gate".

The discrepancy in results elicited mixed reactions from users across the globe, with some people "fully embracing" it while others are calling it a "reckless attempt to justify poor time management skills".

'Steer clear of this practice'

The rise of 'airport theory' content coincided with a 645% increase in Google searches for “I missed my flight” in the past month, said the New York Post.

Testing the theory is a "risk people should not take", said the Daily Express. With Easter around the corner, peak travel season is fast approaching and travel experts have warned airline passengers to "steer clear of this practice at all costs" to avoid ruining their holiday.

In fact, passengers are being urged to book fast-track boarding services as it can "cut down the time spent in queues and provides a smoother airport experience".

What happened

Southwest Airlines said Tuesday it will start charging most passengers for checked baggage, ending a longtime free-luggage policy that the company had touted as an important differentiator as recently as last fall. The new policy, which follows other quirks recently discarded by the idiosyncratic airline, applies to flights booked starting May 28.

Who said what

Southwest has "struggled recently and is under pressure from activist investors," The Associated Press said, and the budget airline is "betting that the added bag fees will outweigh the loss of business from travelers who look closely at the costs on top of ticket prices." Southwest is "playing a dangerous game," Thrifty Traveler executive editor Kyle Potter said to The Washington Post, lamenting "the end of an era" and of "maybe the single most popular policy in the entire U.S. airline industry."

Passengers loved Southwest's "quirks and perks," including its "'Hunger Games' open seating policy," never-expiring flight credits, "flight attendant jokes" and "especially the free checked bags," Hannah Sampson said at the Post. Now "much of that is about to be gone." That's "what happens when a hedge fund takes over," aviation journalist Benét J. Wilson said to the outlet. "They dismantle everything that made Southwest special. And it's going to be just another legacy airline."

What next?

Southwest was one of several airlines that "flashed an early-warning signal" Tuesday, "suggesting that consumers and businesses were starting to get nervous amid wider economic and political uncertainty," The New York Times said. But while shares of United, American and Delta fell, Southwest's stock closed up more than 9%.

What happened

A container ship hauling toxic chemicals collided with a tanker carrying jet fuel for the U.S. military off the northeast coast of England Monday, causing multiple explosions. The crews of both vessels abandoned ship, and Britain's coast guard said 36 sailors were safely taken ashore. The owner of the cargo ship, the Solong, said one crew member was missing.

Who said what

The U.S.-flagged tanker Stena Immaculate was carrying Jet-A1 fuel for the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command, a military spokesperson and the ship's U.S. operator, Crowley Logistics, told Reuters. One crew member told the BBC that the Solong, registered in Portugal and owned by German firm Ernst Russ, came out of nowhere and collided with the 600-foot Stena Immaculate at 16 knots.

"Both vessels have sustained significant damage in the impact of the collision and the subsequent fire," Ernst Russ said in a statement. Some residents reported seeing a "massive fireball" after the crash, said Martyn Boyers, CEO of the Port of Grimsby East. The Solong was carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide, a toxic chemical used in gold mining and other commercial applications, and alcohol.

What next?

The collision released jet fuel into the Humber Estuary, and "efforts to assess any environmental damage are still ongoing," the BBC said. The impact on seabirds, gray seals and fish from the jet fuel was likelier to be more immediate and of shorter duration than with a crude oil spill, Mark Hartl, a scientist at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University, said to The Washington Post. But the fuel can still be hazardous for wildlife, and the fact that it's burning "changes the complexity and chemistry," so "it's a bit early to speculate" on the final damage.

As any driver, motorcyclist or cyclist can attest, the problem of potholes is pretty bad. The RAC estimates that there are at least one million potholes on Britain's 245,800-mile road network; drive a mile along a council-controlled road in England or Wales and you'll encounter an average of six potholes.

Last year, the Asphalt Industry Alliance's annual survey of local councils found that 17% of local roads in England and Wales were in a poor condition. In January, a report by the influential Public Accounts Committee of MPs labelled the state of England's roads a "national embarrassment" that is harming the economy, and "the social well-being of communities". The annual cost of poor highways was estimated last year by the Centre for Economics and Business Research at £14.4bn, mostly in the form of lost working hours.

What causes potholes?

Some claim the term "pothole" has Roman origins: potters who couldn't afford clay would steal it from under the surface of roads, creating deep holes; however, a more prosaic etymology – the holes are pot-shaped – is more likely. Potholes are primarily caused by weather, traffic and poor maintenance. Road surfaces become more prone to cracking as they deteriorate with use. Water seeps into cracks in the surface and weakens the underlying soil. And if water freezes and thaws, it creates cracks. Traffic then stresses and breaks up the surface, and often ejects both the asphalt and the underlying soil. With its cold, wet climate and its busy roads, the UK is particularly susceptible; the trend towards heavier cars – Autocar found in 2024 that the average weight of new models had risen by nearly 400kg over seven years – is making the problem worse. The UK also has more pipes carrying gas, electricity or broadband under its roads than most countries.

Why aren't they getting fixed?

They are: in the year to March 2024, two million potholes were filled in England and Wales. But it's not happening quickly enough. The underlying issues are sadly familiar: local authorities, responsible for 98% of Britain's overall road length, have had their funding squeezed for years – it fell by 17.5% between 2009/10 and 2019/20, mostly because of cuts in central government grants, and has only partially recovered since. The average cost of fixing a pothole is about £72 in England; but it can be much higher. In theory, most councils need to act when a pothole is 40mm deep and 150mm wide, but one in eight local authorities now won't consider fixing a hole unless it's at least a foot across (about 300mm). Another problem is that, since 1991, utility companies have been able to repair roads themselves after digging them up instead of paying highway authorities to do so: this had made them more willing to dig up roads and carry out repairs on the cheap. Many councils also carry out inadequate "patch and run" repairs; a significant percentage then have to be fixed again.

And what effect is this having?

The chief concern is that potholes cause accidents, when motorists or cyclists lose control or swerve out of their way. According to a widely quoted estimate by the National Accident Helpline, they caused 1,766 accidents between April and June 2020. Between 2018 and 2022, an estimated 451 people were killed or seriously injured because of potholes – of whom just under half were cyclists. In Argyll and Bute, a badly affected area, police noted the poor road condition as a factor in about 33 in every 1,000 collision casualties between 2014 and 2023. The charity Cycling UK says that up to 15% of the cyclists it helps after they've been injured in a crash had had an accident attributable to road defects.

What other problems do they cause?

The AA attended more than 643,318 breakdowns caused by potholes or similar road defects in 2024: mostly damaged tyres, wheels, steering or suspension. This represented a slight improvement on 2023, when there were 647,690, but was still its third-worst year on record. Between 2018 and 2024, the UK's drivers spent £9.5bn on repairing pothole damage, according to Kwik Fit. And costs have risen sharply: the RAC estimates that the average repair bill for a family car is now £460. Bad roads also add an estimated 1.3 billion hours of journey time annually. In 2023, local authorities spent about £824,000 on compensation and a further £166,000 on legal costs fighting claims for pothole damage. (It is difficult to win such claims: the authority has to have been specifically alerted to the pothole. Even so, councils such as Surrey and Essex are paying out thousands of claims every year.)

What is being done about it?

Politicians have been promising for years to fix potholes, which are a well-known bugbear for voters. In 2020, as chancellor, Rishi Sunak vowed to fill in 50 million holes over five years in England. Nevertheless, the problem has endured. In December, Labour allocated £1.6bn for repairs, enough to fix seven million potholes: three-quarters will go upfront to local councils; the rest will be held back until they can provide evidence of it being well spent.

Will things improve?

Not immediately. The Asphalt Industry Alliance thinks fixing the problem would cost not £1.6bn, but £16bn. The bad news is that Britain's roads are ageing: about 107,000 miles of roads in England and Wales (some 53% of the network) will reach the end of their structural lives within the next 15 years. There are hopes that innovation, not just money, might help the situation: AI is being used to identify road problems; Swansea University is developing a road surface that heals when it cracks; JCB now manufactures a "pothole killer" that can fix holes in eight minutes, about four times faster than a traditional "pothole gang". But despite the promises of improvements, there will almost certainly be bumps in the road ahead.

A national obsession

Britons have long been preoccupied by potholes: the line "four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire", in The Beatles' 1967 song "A Day in the Life", came about because John Lennon read an article about the terrible state of the town's roads. But over the past decade, the subject has become something of an obsession, perhaps not surprisingly, when 68% of people in the UK commute by car. The AA, British Cycling and other organisations now mark National Pothole Day every 15 January. Last year, The Daily Telegraph started a national campaign on the issue. Pothole activists and vigilantes have appeared, either mending potholes themselves or pushing for action: Mark Morrell, a retired Northamptonshire man known as "Mr Pothole", claims that his 11-year campaign led to 10,000 road repairs before he stopped last year. Others have tried humour: a Manchester road artist who calls himself Wanksy shames local councils into action by drawing huge penises around potholes.

The RAC has issued a handy spotter's guide to types of pothole, such as the "Great British Pothole" (also known as "the Classic"); the "Iron Maiden", which forms next to a manhole cover; or the "Alcatraz", so called because it's so big that you cannot escape it.

What happened

A Delta Air Lines regional jet from Minneapolis flipped upside-down while landing at Toronto's Pearson International Airport Monday afternoon, its tail and one wing shorn off. At least 18 of the 80 people aboard were injured, three of them seriously though none with life-threatening injuries, Delta said.

Who said what

It is unclear what caused the Bombardier CRJ-900 to flip over, though "conditions at the time were harsh," The Washington Post said, with wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour drifting snow. But the "runway was dry and there was no cross-wind conditions" when rescue crews reached the burning plane a few minutes after the crash, said Toronto Pearson Fire Chief Todd Aitken.

The plane's final descent appeared normal, but "the second that the wheels hit the ground, then everything happened," passenger Pete Koukov told The New York Times. "I unbuckled pretty fast and kind of lowered myself to the floor, which was the ceiling," and "people were panicking." The incident was the latest in a "string of plane crashes in recent weeks" that have "stirred fear among fliers and the aviation community," The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is leading the investigation of the crash, with assistance from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

Increased penalty fines for fare dodging are working as an "effective deterrent", according to the London mayor.

However, Tories on the London Assembly said Sadiq Khan and his team are "in denial" about "the scale of the issue", despite them putting up fines for not paying to travel on Transport for London services from £80 to £100 last year.

More than double TFL target

Between April 2023 and March 2024, fare evasion across the TfL network stood at an estimated 3.8% of all journeys, said the mayor. The rate came down to 3.4% in the months following the penalty increase.

But the mayor's critics point out that fare evasion across the network is still "more than double" TfL's target of below 1.5%, said Southwark News, and some Londoners are losing patience with fare evaders.

If you wait by the barriers at "literally any" Tube station at rush hour in London, said James Hanson in The Spectator, "within 60 seconds" you're "likely" to see at least half a dozen young men "barge their way through the barriers without a care in the world". No one is "shocked" and the "hapless high-viz clad" TfL staff are "powerless to stop" the offenders.

Not just an economic decision

A study of Santiago’s public transport found that fare dodgers could be categorised into four groups: those who view non-payment as a form of protest, those who evade fares when they believe the risk of being caught is low, accidental evaders and ambivalent evaders who sometimes pay but don't always see the point of it.

A "surprising insight" from research is that fare evasion isn't only an economic decision, but "a social one, too", said The Independent. When passengers "perceive the system as unfair" due to unreliable service, high fares or a lack of investment, then fare evasion rises.

Studies have also found that when fare dodging behaviour is normalised within a city or demographic, it "spreads like contagion".

Meanwhile, when a trial in Queensland reduced fares to just 50 cents (about 25p), the Australian state’s early data showed a 27% drop in fare evasion fines, which suggests that cheaper public transport "could reduce fare evasion".

That data "aligns" with the idea that fare evasion is, "at least partially", a "rational economic decision", and when the price is lower, the "incentive to evade diminishes" – but does not "completely disappear".

Is greater surveillance the answer?

C2C, a London commuter train service that serves Essex, is "fighting back", said London's The Standard. By boosting the number of revenue protection officers and using more than 2,000 CCTV cameras, it issued more than 8,000 fines and recovered more than £470,000 in 2024. Some long-term evaders were ordered to repay nearly £10,000.

Tories on the London Assembly said the mayor's team will only be able to make serious progress in tackling fare dodging on TfL with support from police officers. Hanson, in The Spectator, supports this idea, suggesting that two police officers are "stationed by the barriers at every major tube station in the capital".

A small prototype jet has broken the sound barrier, making it a possible successor to Concorde more than two decades after the iconic aircraft disappeared from our skies.

The test flight might have come "years later than expected and lasted just 12 minutes", said The European, but it could herald the return of supersonic travel, halving some commercial journey times.

What happened to Concorde?

The era of supersonic commercial flying "came to an abrupt end" in 2003 with the retirement of Concorde, said the Financial Times. The revolutionary aircraft's high fuel consumption made it "extremely expensive" to operate and its "loud noise" limited it to only transatlantic routes.

The entire fleet was grounded following a fatal crash in July 2000 and then the wider slump that followed the 9/11 attacks the following year proved to be "the final straw" for Concorde, which was officially retired.

How fast can it go?

The scaled-down prototype, nicknamed the "Baby Boom", broke the sound barrier for the first time during a test flight over the Mojave Desert in California in late January. The small jet, officially called XB-1, reached an altitude of 35,000 feet before accelerating to Mach 1.1 (844mph) – "10% faster than the speed of sound", said Sky News.

Boom Supersonic, the Colorado-based company that made the jet, hailed its test flights as a major milestone towards the return of supersonic air travel. Founder and CEO Blake Scholl said he hopes now to "bring the benefits of supersonic flight to everyone", predicting that the market for supersonic passenger jets could be "easily over 1,000 aircraft".

When might it carry passengers?

The XB-1 is a small prototype. It's 63 feet long, which is about one-third the size of Overture, the supersonic commercial airliner the company hopes to make. Overture is intended to seat between 64 and 80 passengers and travel at speeds of up to Mach 1.7.

That could allow the aircraft to "halve some flight times", said the Financial Times, making trips between London and Miami in just under five hours. Designed to fly more than 600 routes around the world, it's already been pre-ordered 130 times by industry giants such as American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines.

It would be built using new materials such as carbon fibre and would be more fuel-efficient than Concorde, said Scholl. Its engines would also be able to use sustainable aviation fuel. Boom Supersonic hopes to begin carrying passengers on Overture as early as 2029 and expects to charge around $5,000 for a seat.

A spate of plane crashes in recent months has shaken the public's faith in the safety of air travel.

The crash of a small medical plane in Philadelphia on Sunday, which killed seven people and injured at least 19 more, followed a mid-air collision of a plane and helicopter in Washington DC that claimed the lives of 67 just four days before. Beyond America, there were alarming, high-profile crashes in December in Kazakhstan and South Korea.

Are there more air accidents now?

Despite these recent incidents, commercial planes are still one of the safest modes of travel. Between 2018 and 2022, the fatality rate on commercial aircraft was just one per 13.7 million passenger boardings, according to data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cited by France 24.

Plane deaths are, in fact, rarer now than they were between 2008 and 2017, when there was roughly one death for every 7.9 million boardings. In 2024, despite several notable crashes, the overall global accident rate remained low, at approximately 1.3 per one million flights.

What are the main causes of air accidents?

Human error accounts for "up to 80% of aviation accidents", said Euronews, according to research by the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Academy in Florida. Pilot mistakes contributed to 53% of cases, while mechanical failures were responsible for 21% of accidents. Not surprisingly, a study by plane-maker Airbus found that take-off and landing are the most dangerous moments of any flight.

How risky is flying?

Flying is far safer than driving. Since January 2009, five people have died in accidents on scheduled commercial flights in the United States. By comparison, an average of more than 100 people a day died on America’s roads and highways between 2003 and 2022, said CNN.

"When you arrive at the airport and step aboard the pressurised tube, that's the safest part of your trip. You were more at risk driving to the airport," aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse told CNN.

Technological advancements, strict regulations and thorough accident investigations have much improved aviation safety over the years. But some believe there is a risk of "overconfidence" in the system. "We continue to try to downplay everything and talk about how safe the system is," Ed Pierson, director of the Foundation for Aviation Safety, told CNN. "That's not the right mindset. That's the mindset that gets people killed."

There are "no survivors" after an American Airlines jet carrying 64 people collided in mid-air with a military helicopter carrying three soldiers in Washington DC last night: the first fatal US air crash since 2009.

Experts are struggling to make sense of how one of the world's most sophisticated airspace control systems was unable to prevent the tragedy. "These sorts of things don't happen in the United States any more," Geoffrey Thomas, an aviation consultant, told the BBC. It's "perplexing".

What did the commentators say?

The collision took place in "some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world", three miles south of the White House, said The Guardian.

But the airspace is also very busy, with "debates over congestion" and "concerns at near-miss crashes" in recent years, said The New York Times.

It's "not unusual" for military helicopters to be so close to commercial planes, former RAF pilot George Bacon told the BBC. But military pilots "can choose to fly where they want", while civilian planes have to follow fixed flight paths. That means the onus was on the helicopter to avoid the plane.

Moments before the crash, an air traffic controller could be heard asking the Black Hawk helicopter if it had the jet "in sight", according to audio obtained by CNN. Other audio captures the helicopter pilot confirming that it had seen the aircraft. But "less than 13 seconds later", there were "audible gasps", apparently from the control tower, "at the moment of the crash". What happened in between is "a mystery".

President Donald Trump said the crash "should have been prevented". "Why didn't the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane?" he posted on his TruthSocial account. "NOT GOOD!!!"

What next?

Pete Hegseth, recently sworn in as Trump's defense secretary, posted on social media that an investigation had been "launched immediately" by the army and the defense department.

At least 28 bodies have been recovered from the Potomac River so far.

"We don't believe there are any survivors," the Washington DC fire chief said.

Norway has cemented its reign as a leader in electric vehicle purchases with nine out of 10 new cars sold in Norway last year being powered by electricity.

The Scandinavian nation is "leagues ahead" in the “electric car race", said Quartz, and has "become the poster child" for the transition to EVs, said DW.

Green and robust

As far back as the 1990s, Norway set out to manufacture EVs and, although "early attempts" had "limited commercial success", they "fostered public awareness and acceptance of electromobility", said the outlet.

Norway's "remarkable commitment" to fighting climate change has been "driven by strong government policies, robust infrastructure, and a supportive public". Its "wealth and size" played a part in its "EV success" – it has a population of 5.5 million and is one of the world's richest nations, thanks to substantial oil and gas reserves, ironically.

Norway "penalises" petrol and diesel cars with "high taxes", said Reuters, and exempts EVs from import and value-added taxes to "make them more attractive", although "some levies" were reintroduced in 2023. EVs have been exempt from road tolls and parking fees and were allowed to use bus lanes in and around the capital, Oslo.

The approach has worked because it has been "consistent over time" and maintained by governments of "various political persuasion", said the outlet, in contrast to other countries where "someone puts tax incentives or exemptions and then they pull back again," said Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian EV association.

Offering incentives, rather than banning petrol and diesel cars, has also helped, said the outlet, and another advantage is that Norway "does not have an automaker lobby". Norway's power grid is "one of the greenest and most robust in the world", said DW, and usually produces a "surplus of energy", which helped ease the home charging of EVs.

Ambitious goal

Norway has set a target for all cars sold to be zero-emission vehicles by the end of 2025, a milestone that would put it a decade ahead of the European Union, of which it is not a member.

But "reaching that ambitious goal" will "likely be a difficult task", said Quartz. Øyvind Solberg Thorsen, from the Norwegian Road Federation, said that "the figures and the increase in share show that the last few percentages" to meet the 2025 target may be "difficult to achieve".

While nearly all new buyers of cars in Norway have gone electric, "some hold-outs remain", noted Reuters, particularly among rental companies, which prefer to use cars that are familiar for tourists.

Ministers are considering an "HS2-light" railway line between Birmingham and Manchester as a new chapter opens in the long-running saga.

In a "rethink" of Rishi Sunak's decision to "entirely scrap" the high-speed line beyond Birmingham, the government is examining a plan which it hopes can be "delivered much more cheaply than the original scheme", said The Times.

What went wrong?

A government-commissioned study in 2006 concluded Britain needed greater rail capacity, but the delivery of the project was fraught with "incompetence and financial mismanagement" from the start, said Madeline Grant in The Telegraph. It left Britain looking "uniquely incapable of delivering major infrastructure projects".

In the original plan, trains were "going to be hurtling between 18 cities at speeds of more than 200mph", said ITV News, bringing two thirds of everyone living in northern England within two hours of central London.  

But this time last year, Sunak scrapped everything apart from the line between London and Birmingham, which was already under construction – meaning "billions of pounds" of taxpayers' money was "blown" on the project, said the BBC's "Panorama".

What is the new plan?

The new scheme would see an additional section between Birmingham and Crewe in Cheshire. Although it would be slower than HS2, it would still allow trains to travel faster than the present West Coast mainline. It would be a money-saving "HS2 light", said Business Matters.

Supporters said the new line would be up to 40% cheaper to build than the previous planned HS2 link between Birmingham and Manchester, and a government source told The Times that "realistically it is the only thing to do".

In a related development, the government has "dropped its biggest hint yet" that it will fund the HS2 line to Euston as originally planned, abandoning the previous government's money-saving plan that would see the line stop at Old Oak Common in west London, said Construction Enquirer.

What's the reaction?

The "conundrum" over HS2 "may have been solved", wrote Ben Clatworthy, transport correspondent for The Times. The government is "embracing the true reason a new line needed to be built between London and the north", which was not "speed" but "capacity".

The union for directly employed HS2 staff, TSSA, welcomed the news that the line might run to Euston, saying it is "undoubtedly the right move" and would be a "crucial win for North-South connectivity". 

The new plans could also help current disruption and overcrowding problems at Euston station, said Simon Calder, travel correspondent for The Independent. The "elephantine project intruding on the room" is the stalled HS2 on the western flank of the station. It's time to "awaken" that "zombie building site", and "get on with it".

A senior government source told Business Matters that "there is a realisation in government that what they've got at the moment is a complete dog's breakfast" and that "something needs to be done".

The London mayor said "urgent action" is needed to regenerate Oxford Street as he announced a new plan for the West End's famous high street.

Oxford Street was "once the jewel in the crown" of Britain's retail sector, said Sadiq Khan, and he is resurrecting a previously rejected plan to pedestrianise part of the street.

Antidote to gaudy US candy shops

MPs and retailers alike have long "sought to breathe new life" into a street whose "renown and cultural position on the most expensive side of the Monopoly board has long been at odds with a down-at-heel reality", said The Guardian.

The way people move around the street has often been at the heart of the conversation. During the 1960s there was a plan to "carry shoppers via a travelator" and in the 1970s there was a plan for a "track carrying cars on air cushions" but both ideas "failed to take off".

More recently, Oxford Street has been "blighted" by an "influx of gaudy US candy shops, vape vendors and empty store fronts", said the Daily Mail. "Rising crime, the Covid-19 pandemic and online shopping" were blamed for its "shocking demise".

This summer, hopes emerged that a "series of new businesses" could "signal a change and return the world renowned road to its former glory".

An easy win

Khan hopes to keep that momentum going with his new plan. "Almost a century after horse and carts were banned in an attempt to end slow moving traffic" a big change is planned, said The Guardian.

A 0.7-mile stretch would be pedestrianised between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch, with the prospect of further changes east, towards Tottenham Court Road. The project is expected to cost around £150 million and Khan hopes that "local businesses, private funders and new revenue streams could foot the bill", said the BBC.

"All the evidence suggests a pedestrianised street, a well-designed street is safer, is greener, is healthier," Khan told Marie Claire. It would entice customers back, attract better retailers and leave fewer vacant stores, a "win win win".

Pedestrian panacea or problem?

Oxford Street's "spiralling tawdriness" is a "miserable advert" for London, said James Innes-Smith in The Spectator. The "candy stores and tourist tat 'luggage' emporiums, the gang fights and phone snatchers are an embarrassment". So "something has to change" and once traffic has been removed, the street's "astonishingly varied architecture will finally come into its own".

But "the Oxford Street of our youth is never coming back", said Hannah Ewens on the i news site. London rents are "excruciatingly high" and if government support "isn't there", the street will "continue to be lined with businesses that contribute absolutely zero to both tourists and those living in London".

The move "will not be the panacea for shoppers on foot" that Khan imagines, said Paul Clements in The Independent. The "masterplan" is "guaranteed to infuriate black cabbies" and means the "elderly shopper or busy mum" will no longer be able to "hop on a double-decker outside John Lewis or hail a cab outside Selfridges".

The Labour head of Westminster Council said the plan could increase crime and make it a target for terrorists, said LBC. "A pedestrianised scheme poses a different set of challenges for hostile vehicle mitigation" than one that retains traffic, in "order to keep shoppers safe from terrorism", said Adam Hug.

There has also been pushback from Conservatives, who blocked Khan's previous attempt to pedestrianise part of the street in 2018. Now, they say the plan will be unpopular and that Khan is "forcing things through", said the BBC.

America's love affair with super-sized trucks and SUVs has a downside: The giant vehicles can be a menace to pedestrians, who have died in ever-greater numbers in recent years. That may change.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is proposing new rules designed to "reduce the number of pedestrians killed and seriously injured" on American roadways, NPR said. The number of pedestrians killed in vehicle accidents has risen by 75% since 2009. The reasons for that rise are "complicated," but surely include the "growing size and weight of vehicles." Another factor? Design. Those big vehicles with "higher front ends and blunt profiles" are 45% more likely to cause fatalities than smaller cars and trucks.

The proposed rules will require auto companies to test their vehicles on crash test dummies that "simulate children and adults," said The Associated Press. That testing is expected to reveal "blind spots for drivers" in vehicles that have grown in "size and hood height" over recent years. The aim is to save lives. "We have a crisis of roadway deaths," said one official, "and it's even worse among vulnerable road users like pedestrians." 

What did the commentators say?

Cars are safer than ever "for the people inside of them," Collin Woodard said at Jalopnik. That's not the case for people outside vehicles. Federal regulators have known "for over a decade" that action was needed to protect pedestrians and now it's finally happening. The proposed rules would apply to all American-made vehicles under 10,000 pounds, but "it's no secret that the Escalades and F-150s of the world are the primary targets." The rising number of pedestrian deaths makes the United States an "outlier" — in other developed countries road deaths "have been dropping instead of increasing." The rules could still be watered down, "but this is still a huge step in the right direction."

Giant passenger vehicles in America are "too much of a good thing," said The Economist. Carmakers say they're giving buyers "what they want" by increasing the size of vehicles, but the rising death rate of pedestrians is too high a price to pay for "roomier interiors and more powerful engines." Analyses show a vehicle's weight is a "critical factor" in the survivability of vehicle crashes, and that just makes sense. Despite all the safety features available on American vehicles today, "the laws of physics are cruel." Bottom line: "Reining in the heaviest vehicles would save lives."

What next?

Big trucks and SUVs "could look very different in the near future," said The Street. It's not just safety rules that will prompt the change: Automakers are also pushing — in fits and starts — to transition from gas-guzzling engines to electric vehicles, and the sheer size of many popular vehicles is an obstacle to that shift. "We have to start to get back in love with smaller vehicles," Ford CEO Jim Farley said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. 

If implemented, The Verge said, the rules could save 67 lives a year. That may just be the start. Europe has "gone much further to protect pedestrians" by enacting rules that prevent some of the largest American passenger vehicles from being sold on the market. The new rules are a "step in the right direction," said Cathy Chase, the president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. "But it still falls behind what Europe has successfully done."

A rise in drunken disorder on flights and at airports has led Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary to call for a two drinks per passenger limit at airport bars.

Photos of the "airport pint" have long been an Instagram staple but "booze-fuelled violence" has "surged this summer", said The Telegraph, leading to a conversation about the wisdom and safety of airport boozing.

'Powder and tablets'

Most passengers "show up an hour before departure" said O'Leary, which is "sufficient for two drinks", but if the flight is "delayed by two or three hours you can't be guzzling five, six, eight, ten pints of beer".

He added that "as long as they can stand up and shuffle", passengers "will get through" boarding and "then when the plane takes off, we see the misbehaviour".

"We don’t want to begrudge people having a drink", he said, "but we don't allow people to drink-drive", yet "we keep putting them up in aircraft at 33,000 feet".

In the past, most drunk passengers fell asleep on the plane, he said, but now, thanks to "powder and tablets", they stay awake, leading to an increase in assaults on cabin crew and confrontations between passengers.

It's "certainly a growing problem", former British Airways pilot Nick Eades, the world's longest-serving Boeing 747 captain, told the broadsheet.

Previously, passengers "would dress up and put a shirt and tie on" for air travel, but now, "flights are so cheap" and "all the airports want to do is get you into the bar and encourage you to drink excessively".

The boss of Turkish-German budget airline SunExpress, Max Kownatzki, told TTG that British travellers are "more high-spend, more hedonistic" after holidaymakers on a flight out of the UK drank the entire stock of booze for a four-hour flight to Turkey in the space of just 25 minutes.

A new YouGov poll of 6,771 British adults found that 62% said they strongly, or tend to, support a two alcoholic drink per passenger limit at airport bars, reported Business Traveller, but some have responded to O'Leary's campaign with cynicism.

'Lairy minority'

Wetherspoons founder Sir Tim Martin told The Times that he's "had no complaints about our pubs from the airport authorities or airlines that I'm aware of in recent years".

Suggesting hypocrisy on the part of the Ryanair boss, Martin pointed out that "years ago" his chain "stopped selling 'shooters' at airports, as well as 'double-up' offers", while O'Leary's airline still "offers a discount on Irish whiskey if a double is ordered".

No one "would ever be so cynical as to note that a limit on consumption in the airport might drive up sales elsewhere", wrote corporate comms professional Gavin Devine on X, but O'Leary's campaign "would be so much more compelling if it was combined with halting sales of booze on board his planes".

"At its best", wrote Sean Thomas in The Telegraph, drinking in airports is "one of the great pleasures of travel". Airports are "crowded, stressful, labyrinthine, bureaucratic" and "full of screaming babies or passengers with 98 items of oversized luggage".

The best way to "de-stress from all this" is "a drink, and maybe four drinks, not two". A "lairy minority" might exist, but airports shouldn't "ruin the fun of the many because of the sins of the few".

Is it "still safe to fly"? That's the alarming question asked by one newspaper as it reported that 2024 has already been "one of the worst for air travel that anyone can remember".

But just how dangerous is air travel and what has caused this year to be so bad?

'Horror comics'

This year "has been one of the worst for air accidents that anyone can remember", said The Sunday Times. It got off to a tragic start in January when Japan Airlines flight 516 collided with a De Havilland coastguard plane as it landed in Toyko, killing five people.

Within days, a panel blew out on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, "leaving a gaping hole in the cabin" and "terrified passengers breathing through oxygen masks". These two incidents saw "aviation safety thrown into the spotlight", said Euractiv. Months later, the front windscreen of an Austrian Airlines Airbus A320 flying from Mallorca to Vienna was shattered and most of the nose cone was torn off.

Turbulence has been a major issue in 2024, with serious injuries being caused and the first death on a large commercial airliner since 1997. In May, a Boeing 777 hit "some of the worst turbulence that Singapore Airlines pilots have experienced", said The Sunday Times. A passenger died of a heart attack and more than 40 suffered skull, brain, spinal or bone injuries.

Then, earlier this month, all 62 passengers and crew died when the Voepass ATR 72-500 turboprop they were travelling in crashed in Brazil after the plane "corkscrewed down 17,000ft in just one minute".

Meanwhile, airline bosses told the newspaper there has been an increase in "horror comics" – the internal air safety reports that pilots have to file if they encounter serious turbulence or other safety issues on a flight.

All of this is making passengers more anxious. In June, the analytics company Quantum Metric found that one in five travellers aged 18-54 now checks the aircraft type when buying an air ticket and one in four plans to take fewer flights this year due to safety concerns.

'Catastrophic combination'

So what's gone wrong? Aviation is "being assailed on two fronts" – a "nosedive" at Boeing and "increasing turbulence", said The Sunday Times.

"Poorly made aircraft" are an issue, and a series of Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes were caused by a "catastrophic combination of corner-cutting, poor risk assessment and a calculated failure to inform airlines, pilots and regulators about changes to flight control software on the new jet that went into service in 2017".

Tim Clark, president of Emirates, the world's largest international carrier, said it is a "fact of life" that there has been "an uptick in clear air turbulence in the last year or two". Clear air turbulence is the most dangerous kind because pilots cannot see or predict it. Writing for The Irish Times, Paula Gahan said that after a decade as a cabin crew member, she had "little doubt" that turbulence is "getting worse" – and scientists support this.

Paul Williams, professor of atmospheric science at Reading University, told The Sunday Times that climate change is to blame, because rising air temperatures are disrupting the speed and flow of jet streams. But Nick Careen, head of operations, safety and security at IATA, the aviation industry’s trade body, said: "We certainly can't put a finger on saying this is all environmentally driven" and "there needs to be more study".

A Harvard University study from 2017 found that the odds that a plane you are flying on will crash are one in 1.2 million and the odds of dying in a crash are one in 11 million. To put these figures in context, your chances of dying in a car accident are one in 5,000.

What happened

The Canadian government ordered the country's two main freight railroads and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union into binding arbitration, forcing an end to a 17-hour shutdown. The railroads, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern (CPKC), had locked out 10,000 union engineers, conductors and dispatchers at midnight amid an impasse in labor contract negotiations.

Who said what

A "prolonged shutdown could have brought severe economic repercussions" for Canada's "export-driven economy," The New York Times said. Roughly half of Canada's exports, mostly to the U.S., may have come to a halt, snarling supply chains and harming "several sectors of Canada's economy, including agriculture, mining, forestry, oil and manufacturing."

"We gave negotiations every possible opportunity to succeed," said Steve MacKinnon, Canada's labor minister. But "impacts of the current impasse are being borne by all Canadians," and the government has a "responsibility to ensure industrial peace." Teamsters Canada Rail Conference President Paul Boucher said his union is "deeply disappointed by this shameful decision," adding Canadian National and CPKC "manufactured this crisis" and "took the country hostage." The railways, which had asked the government for binding arbitration and been rejected, praised the decision.

What next?

MacKinnon said he expected the trains to start moving again "within days." 

The government has been accused of prioritising unions over pensioners after it announced a £100 million pay deal with train drivers.

Pensioners are "being deprived of the winter fuel allowance, taxpayers are facing tax hikes and passengers are facing higher fares", Helen Whately, the shadow transport secretary, told The Times – "all as a result of this government's choice to put the unions first".

Transport

The government believes that the pay deal with train drivers' union Aslef – worth about £9,000 to the average member – is "ultimately better value" for taxpayers than allowing strikes that have cost the railways £850 million in lost revenue to "drag on", said The Times.

Drivers at London North Eastern Railway (LNER) still intend to carry out a series of strikes in September, October and November, but this is a "separate" action relating to a "breakdown in industrial relations" with the operator, said the BBC.

The government deal could have a "knock-on effect" with other rail unions, which have made clear they expect to be offered the same terms given to train drivers, said The Times. Negotiations will resume this week with the RMT union, which represents workers such as guards, station staff and signallers.

Elsewhere, 650 passport control staff will strike at Heathrow airport from 31 August to 3 September, raising the prospect of "misery" for travellers flying over the last weekend of the summer holidays, said The Telegraph. Border Force employees are said to be "unhappy with changes to rosters and shift patterns".

Doctors and nurses

Last month, the new government announced a deal with junior doctors for a 22% pay rise to end industrial action, following negotiations between the health secretary, Wes Streeting, and BMA leaders. But the Daily Express claimed that "rotating and newly qualified" junior doctors plan to launch more pay strikes next April.

Senior doctors in England ended their pay dispute with the government this April, when consultants belonging to two major trade unions backed a deal that saw some receive a pay increase of nearly 20% for the financial year 2023-24.

Meanwhile, thousands of nurses in the RCN union have until September to vote on whether to accept the government's proposed 5.5% pay award. It would be a "mistake" to accept it, said Socialist Worker, because such a "marginal gain will do nothing to improve the recruitment crisis, short staffing and overwork that nurses endure now".

Teachers

Teaching unions said that more school strikes in England are "now unlikely" after they welcomed the government's offer of a 5.5% pay rise from September. The offer, which is being funded by an additional £1.2 billion from the government, is a "welcome step in the right direction", the National Education Union told the BBC.

The calmer rhetoric came after Britain's biggest teaching union had earlier warned Keir Starmer that strikes are almost "inevitable" unless the government agreed to pay rises.

Local government

"Two of the three unions representing local government workers have rejected this year's pay offer and are considering strike action," said the Local Government Chronicle.

After ministers promised other public sector workers pay rises, the Local Government Association told the LGC that it will "continue to make the case" for additional funding to enable higher pay for local government staff.

A ballot on further strike action will open on 4 September and close on 16 October.

Rubbish collection 

Unions have suspended planned strike action by waste workers in Scotland after a new pay offer from council leaders. The proposed deal would usher in a 3.6% increase for all grades of staff, with a rise of £1,292 for the lowest paid, equivalent to 5.63%.

Edinburgh breathed a sigh of relief at the news as the city "faced a repeat" of strikes seen during the Edinburgh Festival in 2022, said The Guardian. Then there were "mounds of uncollected bin bags, overflowing recycling bins and unsightly food-covered pavements".

But bin workers in Birmingham could go on strike if the council goes ahead with plans to cut their roles and pay by thousands of pounds a year, said Birmingham Live. The restructuring plans would "downgrade" the role of the city's 150 waste recycling and collection officers, cutting their pay by an average of £8,000 per year.

The number of fatalities caused by drunk drivers in the UK has reached its highest level since 2009.

The latest figures from the Department for Transport (DfT) showed there were an estimated 300 deaths in Great Britain in 2022 caused by collisions in which at least one driver was over the alcohol limit. 

The data "worryingly shows a dangerous upward trend for the second year running", said William Porter, from the road safety charity IAM RoadSmart.

The background

The 1967 Road Safety Act outlawed driving a vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration of more than 80mg per 100ml of blood – a limit that remains in place today in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The limit is 50mg in Scotland, following a tightening of laws by the devolved government in Edinburgh in 2014.

The UK's first TV advert about drink-driving aired on 7 November 1964 as part of the then newly launched THINK! campaign. The clip was "fairly relaxed" and had "none of the shock tactics, car-crash carnage, gory drama" associated with modern drink-driving ads, said the BBC in 2014, on the 50th anniversary of the ad's release.

Back then, the idea of "one for the road" was widely accepted, said the broadcaster. It was the "social norm" for "pub-going folk to drink and drive", said Gerard Hastings, professor of social marketing at Stirling University. People would "boast about getting away with it", he said. "There was definitely a sense of bravado."

The latest

Five decades on, drink-driving is "viewed largely as morally abhorrent", Hastings said.

Awareness campaigns have helped to change the public's attitude towards drink-driving. On the 50th anniversary of the THINK! campaign in 2014, a survey of 2,000 people in the UK found that 91% agreed drink-drinking was unacceptable, and 92% said they would be ashamed to be caught behind the wheel over the legal alcohol limit. 

But the latest DfT data indicates that the number of deaths caused by drink-driving incidents is "back to a similar rate" to the late 1980s, said the RAC's spokesperson, Rod Dennis. 

From 2012 to 2022, drink-drive fatalities rose 32% to 300 a year, according to the DfT. Drink-driving accounted for 18% of all road deaths or casualties in 2022, with an estimated 6,800 people injured or killed in a dangerous road incident where at least one driver was above the alcohol limit.

The UK appears to be "bucking the general long-term trend" for safer roads and more responsible driving, said The Guardian. But fatalities are "significantly down on historical highs", said the BBC. "Drink-driving casualties of all severities has 'steadily decreased' over the past decade." 

The reaction

The overall number of deaths is now far lower than the final decades of the 20th century, as is the case in many other countries. Still, it's "abundantly clear", said the RAC's Dennis, that a "hard core of people, especially men, continue to put the lives of all road users at risk by choosing to get behind the wheel after consuming too much alcohol".

Drivers "need to be prevented from being able to drink and drive in the first place", he said. There's a "good case" to be made for introducing "alcolocks", which would not allow drivers to start their car without taking a breathalyser test.

Alcolocks, or alcohol interlock systems, are automatic systems that require the driver to blow into a breathalyser fitted inside their car. They "can be adjusted to kick in at different limits", said The Independent, but they "generally mean the vehicle can only be started if no alcohol is detected".

Drink-driving is "selfish and dangerous", said the DfT. There are "strict enforcement and tough penalties in place for those who chose to put lives risk". Penalties for drink-driving include six months' imprisonment, a fine of up to £2,500 and a possible driving ban. Drink-driving also significantly increases a car owner's insurance costs. 

The AA's president, Edmund King, said it was "a tragedy" that drink-drive fatalities are "still so high". He has called for "more cops in cars to act as a visual deterrent and more campaigns to show the utter carnage caused by drivers' actions". 

Porter, from IAM RoadSmart, said the government should "give serious consideration to reducing the drink-drive limit".

What happened

Delta Air Lines canceled more than 800 flights on Monday, struggling to recover from a worldwide technology outage even as most other airlines and affected companies largely resumed normal operations. The outage started Friday when cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike released a faulty update for Microsoft Windows devices, sparking global mayhem at airlines, hospitals, logistics companies and other institutions. Delta was hit especially hard, canceling more than 5,500 flights total.

Who said what

It will be "another couple of days" before "the worst is clearly behind us," Delta CEO Ed Bastian said to employees Monday. "Today will be a better day than yesterday, and hopefully Tuesday and Wednesday will be that much better again."

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he told Bastian on Sunday that his agency had received "hundreds of complaints" about Delta and made clear "we will hold them to all applicable passenger protections," including refunds for customers who want them.

What next?

The chairs of the House Homeland Security Committee and its cybersecurity subcommittee told CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on Monday to prepare to testify and "detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking" to "ensure that it does not happen again."

Radical changes to air travel are expected after a British passenger died of a heart attack when a Singapore Airlines flight from Heathrow to Singapore hit severe turbulence last month.

 Experts say climate change will increase turbulence in the decades ahead and The Times "terrified" airline bosses are already taking steps that could make air travel a more restrictive and expensive experience.

Is turbulence getting worse?

Writing for the Irish Times, Paula Gahan said that after a decade as a cabin crew member, she had "little doubt" that turbulence is "getting worse" – and scientists support this.

In a 2023 research paper, Isabel Smith, a turbulence expert at the University of Reading's Department of Meteorology, said that "clear-air turbulence will increase over time as a result of climate change", reported The Telegraph.

Smith explained that because "the upper atmosphere is warming faster in the tropics" than in "the polar regions", this greater difference in temperature between low and high latitudes "increases wind shear in the jet streams", which "enhances the formation of turbulent patches of air".

University of Chicago researchers concluded that wind speeds, which are behind clean air turbulence, will rise by 2% for every degree celsius of global warming, reported the Times of India.

How will this change air travel?

Fatalities caused by turbulence are unusual and it is usually just an annoying or unnerving experience. While turbulence has occasionally caused aeroplanes to crash, most of those tragedies happened several decades ago before modern safety analysis techniques made flying safer.

But a former White House official died due to "severe turbulence" on a private business jet last year while flying between New Hampshire and Virginia, and three passengers on a Hawaiian Airlines service to Sydney were hospitalised after the flight experienced severe turbulence.

In the aftermath of the recent incident, Singapore Airlines announced it will take a "more cautious approach to managing turbulence". The carrier will suspend the hot drink service when the seatbelt sign is on and meal services will be paused during bumpy conditions. Cabin crew will be told to return to their seats and secure their seatbelts during these times.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union, which represents more than 50,000 flight attendants in the US, is lobbying for a ban on children under the age of two travelling on a parent's lap.

"We've seen [planes] go through turbulence recently and drop 4,000 feet in a split second," a spokesperson for the union told the Washington Post, and "the G-forces are not something even the most loving mother or father can guard against and hold their child", because that is "just physically impossible".

Passengers "may also notice the seatbelt light illuminated for longer periods than before", said The Telegraph, because more sophisticated in-flight weather monitoring systems mean pilots are able to share information about flying conditions with nearby planes. Passengers are being warned to "take their seats pre-emptively, rather than reactively when turbulence hits" and one retired pilot suggested that passengers should keep their seatbelts fastened at all times.

Another change on the horizon is that pilots might begin to reroute to avoid rocky jet streams, meaning "longer flights and more fuel", coming at a "greater cost for the passenger".

Finally, Anton Radchenko of Airadvisor said that because "most people are unaware of what exactly turbulence is and panic when it happens", airlines should "dedicate a five-minute slot (in addition to in-flight safety demonstration) to educating passengers on turbulence before the flight takes off".

A senior aviation source told The Times that airline bosses are "terrified" by the Singapore event. "They know they could be next", so there's a concerted effort in the industry now to adapt, and [safety] briefings are going to be at the heart of it".