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So far it has banned all conventional cars built before 1997 from entering the city centre on weekdays between 8am and 8pm. Diesels registered before 2001 are also prohibited. Drivers breaching the bans face heavy fines.

Individuals can now claim benefits worth up to €600 (£522), to help them buy a bike, obtain a public transport pass, or join a car sharing scheme - but only if they agree to scrap their cars or motorbikes. Small businesses can claim up to €9,000 towards the cost of an electric truck or bus.

The city has, however, suffered one major setback. Its showpiece Vélib cycle hire scheme - which has been copied by cities around the world since its launch in 2007 - has run into trouble.

"When considering whether to exercise the authority granted by this section, the Secretary of Transportation shall take into consideration the air transportation needs of small and remote communities and the need to maintain well-functioning health care and pharmaceutical supply chains, including for medical devices and supplies," the draft bill says.

Lawmakers also want to make sure they understand future vulnerabilities in the supply chain. As part of the National Academies study, the bill asks researchers to examine whether the US is vulnerable to critical drug and device shortages because so many materials are manufactured outside of the United States. And the bill gives waivers for the use of certain kinds of respirators during a health crisis.

Consider a slice of Florida’s seniors, ages 65 to 74, who have been eligible for vaccination for four months. Almost all seniors in the state’s wealthiest county, St. Johns, have been vaccinated. (The numbers may be inflated because of seasonal residents, or snowbirds, who aren’t necessarily counted as part of the county’s population but are still counted among people getting vaccinated there.) But the first county west of St. Johns is one of the state’s poorest: Putnam, where the median annual income is about $35,000. Only half of the county’s residents ages 65 to 74 have been vaccinated.

The reasons are myriad: The state’s rollout has been deeply reliant on tech savviness and reliable transportation to secure and then get to vaccination appointments, said Dr. Frederick Anderson, who runs a community health clinic at Florida International University’s medical school. Additionally, some of the current vaccines are difficult to store and transport, which makes vaccine rollout easier in population hubs, which tend to be wealthier.

When eligibility is expanded in other states, vaccinations are expected to surge among the wealthiest Americans and lag among the poorest.

“The rural counties are lagging slightly behind what we would expect,” said Dave Jeppesen, the director of Idaho’s health department, in a news conference Wednesday.

Nationally, many conservatives — men in particular — have said in multiple polls that they do not wish to be vaccinated. In some of Idaho’s more conservative counties, senior vaccination rates are below 40 percent.

If that's the case, it will take more than just opening up eligibility to get the country to levels of vaccination that can reach herd immunity — when roughly 70 percent of people are vaccinated, making it too difficult for the virus to spread.

All told, CO2 emissions from fossil fuels dropped by 2.6 billion metric tons in 2020, a 7 percent reduction from 2019, driven in large part by transportation declines.

Third-quarter revenues for Carnival Corporation, the industry’s biggest player, showed a year-to-year decline of 99.5 percent — to $31 million in 2020, down from $6.5 billion in 2019.

Prosecutors say Andries, 35, breached lightly-protected barriers outside the Capitol and entered the building through a broken window. Video footage shows him facing off with police inside the Crypt, in the basement of the complex, getting "within inches" of officers but not physically engaging with them, prosecutors said.

He has pleaded not guilty to five federal crimes: entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct, violent entry into the Capitol, impeding passage through the Capitol and unlawful demonstration at the Capitol.

The Justice Department did not seek his detention and a federal judge released him shortly after his arrest last month. He isn't charged with any violent crimes, and the five counts against him are misdemeanors.

Veterans are disproportionately represented among the nearly 300 people facing charges in connection with the Capitol attack. At least 29 current and former servicemembers have been charged so far, and several are allegedly part of extremist groups, according to a CNN analysis of Pentagon records and court documents.

The moves are a "welcome step" and go part of the way to addressing structural divides in the housing market that have developed over decades, said Michael Neal, senior research associate at the Urban Institute. He would also like to see downpayment assistance, particularly for the historically disadvantaged.

though it could take years to have an impact. His goal is to increase the share of contracts going to them by 50% by 2026.

Create a $10 billion Community Revitalization Fund: The fund would target economically under-served areas and support community-led civic infrastructure projects that develop neighborhood amenities, revitalize vacant land and buildings, spark new local economic activity, provide services, promote civic engagement and build community wealth.

Invest in transportation infrastructure: The President wants to establish grants totaling $15 billion that would target neighborhoods where people have been cut off from jobs, schools and businesses because of previous transportation investments. The funding would support planning, removing or retrofitting infrastructure that creates barriers to communities.

Increase affordable housing: Biden is calling for the creation of a Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit to attract private investment in the development and rehabilitation of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income buyers and owners.

Expand housing choices: The President is asking lawmakers to establish a $5 billion grant program for jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate land-use and zoning barriers to producing affordable housing and that expand housing choices for people with low or moderate incomes.

Invest $31 billion to support minority-owned small businesses: Biden wants to provide $30 billion to the Small Business Administration to increase access to capital for the smallest companies, develop new loan products to support small manufacturers and businesses that invest in clean energy and launch a Small Business Investment Corporation to make early stage equity investments, placing a priority on small firms owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. It would also establish a $1 billion grant program through the Minority Business Development Agency aimed at helping minority-owned manufacturers access private capital.

Colston, born to a wealthy merchant family in Bristol, rose to prominence through his role in the Royal African Company (RAC) during the Atlantic slave trade. He helped facilitate the transportation of tens of thousands of people from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean, mainly to work the sugar plantations in the Caribbean and Virginia. The company branded the people it transported as slaves -- including children -- with its RAC initials on their chests.

After it was pulled down, Colston's effigy -- which had stood in the city since 1895 -- was briefly replaced with a life-sized sculpture created by British artist Marc Quinn. His statue depicted a black woman with her fist raised in a Black Power salute. At the time, Quinn said in a press statement that he was "committed to reflecting what I see,

As the artist did not receive permission from authorities to erect the statue, it was removed by Bristol City Council the following day.

The question of how to deal with historical monuments depicting colonial figures such as slave traders has been a subject of debate in many countries in recent years, with calls for their removal intensifying amid global protests over the death of George Floyd last year.

Mr. Biden pushed back on Monday, saying that after years of calling for infrastructure spending that included power lines, internet cables and other programs beyond transportation, Republicans had narrowed their definition to exclude key components of his plan.

Behind the political fight is a deep, nuanced and evolving economic literature on the subject. It boils down to this: The economy has changed, and so has the definition of infrastructure.

Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, is working on a project on infrastructure for the National Bureau of Economic Research that receives funding from the Transportation Department.

“Infrastructure is something the president has decided is a centrist American thing,” he said, so the administration took a range of priorities and grouped them under that “big tent.”

“Much of what it is in the American Jobs Act is really social spending, not productivity-enhancing infrastructure of any kind,” R. Glenn Hubbard, an economics professor at Columbia Business School and a longtime Republican adviser, said in an email.

“I couldn’t be going to work if I had to take care of my parents,” said Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “How is that not infrastructure?”

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has called the Biden plan a “Trojan horse. It’s called infrastructure. But inside the Trojan horse is going to be more borrowed money and massive tax increases.”

Likewise, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the proposal “redefines infrastructure” to include things like work force development.

The economy has evolved since the 1950s: Manufacturers used to employ about a third of the work force but now count for just 8.5 percent of jobs in the United States.

“Washington has an attention span of several weeks, and this debate is a century old,” he said. These days, he added, it is about digital access instead of clean water and power.

Some economists who define infrastructure more narrowly said that just because policies were not considered infrastructure did not mean they were not worth pursuing.

Interestingly, the ancient Greek word for China is “Seres,” which literally means “the land of silk.”

Historians now prefer the term “Silk Routes,” which more accurately reflects the fact that there was more than one thoroughfare.

The Silk Road routes included a large network of strategically located trading posts, markets and thoroughfares designed to streamline the transport, exchange, distribution and storage of goods.

Silk Road routes also led to ports on the Persian Gulf, where goods were then transported up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Although it’s been nearly 600 years since the Silk Road has been used for international trade, the routes had a lasting impact on commerce, culture and history that resonates even today.

Commodities such as paper and gunpowder, both invented by the Chinese during the Han Dynasty, had obvious and lasting impacts on culture and history in the West. They were also among the most-traded items between the East and West.

paper’s arrival in Europe fostered significant industrial change, with the written word becoming a key form of mass communication for the first time.

Similarly, techniques for making glass migrated eastward to China from the Islamic world.

The Silk Road routes also opened up means of passage for explorers seeking to better understand the culture and geography of the Far East.

Venetian explorer Marco Polo famously used the Silk Road to travel from Italy to China, which was then under the control of the Mongolian Empire, where they arrived in 1275.

His journeys across the Silk Road became the basis for his book, "The Travels of Marco Polo," which gave Europeans a better understanding of Asian commerce and culture.

"to further the Administration's policy of strengthening the economic consequences to the Cuban regime for its ongoing repression of the Cuban people and its support for Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela."

"In an effort to punish Cuba's unbreakable rebelliousness, imperialism takes aim at regular flight service to various Cuban cities," de Cossio tweeted. "They don't care if they impact family contacts, the limited means of Cubans in both countries or unjust inconveniences."

An icon of the Industrial Revolution broke onto the scene in the early 1700s, when Thomas Newcomen designed the prototype for the first modern steam engine. Called the “atmospheric steam engine,” Newcomen’s invention was originally applied to power the machines used to pump water out of mine shafts. 

Just as steam engines needed coal, steam power allowed miners to go deeper and extract more of this relatively cheap energy source. The demand for coal skyrocketed throughout the Industrial Revolution and beyond, as it would be needed to run not only the factories used to produce manufactured goods, but also the railroads and steamships used for transporting them.

In the early 1800s, Richard Trevithick debuted a steam-powered locomotive, and in 1830 similar locomotives started transporting freight (and passengers) between the industrial hubs of Manchester and Liverpool. By that time, steam-powered boats and ships were already in wide use, carrying goods along Britain’s rivers and canals as well as across the Atlantic.

The latter part of the Industrial Revolution also saw key advances in communication methods, as people increasingly saw the need to communicate efficiently over long distances. In 1837, British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented the first commercial telegraphy system, even as Samuel Morse and other inventors worked on their own versions in the United States. Cooke and Wheatstone’s system would be used for railroad signalling, as the speed of the new trains had created a need for more sophisticated means of communication.

Though many people in Britain had begun moving to the cities from rural areas before the Industrial Revolution, this process accelerated dramatically with industrialization, as the rise of large factories turned smaller towns into major cities over the span of decades. This rapid urbanization brought significant challenges, as overcrowded cities suffered from pollution, inadequate sanitation and a lack of clean drinking water.

The beginning of industrialization in the United States is usually pegged to the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793 by the recent English immigrant Samuel Slater. Slater had worked at one of the mills opened by Richard Arkwright (inventor of the water frame) mills, and despite laws prohibiting the emigration of textile workers, he brought Arkwright’s designs across the Atlantic. He later built several other cotton mills in New England, and became known as the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution.”

By the end of the 19th century, with the so-called Second Industrial Revolution underway, the United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an increasingly urbanized one, with all the attendant problems. By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation.

At the airport, Morris checked with other airlines and was told they had not added weight limits for wheelchairs.

Morris filed a complaint with American Airlines and quickly got back a written response: "The wheelchair could not be loaded on the aircraft due to the weight limitations and the passenger could not leave the wheelchair behind, so he was denied boarding for the flight."

Morris says he could not find the policy on American's website but a representative he spoke to on the phone said the new weight limit began in June.

In 2018, the federal government started requiring an airline to report every time it damaged or lost a wheelchair. It turned out that was happening about 25 to 30 times a day — at least, before air travel fell during the coronavirus.

To Morris, that didn't make sense.

The aircraft hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is that the airline has made a decision to exclude me."

The weight of a power wheelchair varies and is determined by components including batteries, motors, seating and systems that allow a wheelchair to tilt — which helps someone who can't move avoid painful skin ulcers — and other components.

A federal law, the Air Carrier Access Act, says an airline cannot refuse to take a passenger on the basis of his disability.

Kenneth Shiotani, an attorney with the National Disability Rights Network, looked through the Department of Transportation's regulations around that act and said he believes a weight limit on wheelchairs violates the act.

An airline can limit a wheelchair, based on size, if it doesn't fit through a plane's cargo doors. Morris lists those cargo door sizes on his website, Wheelchair Travel, so travelers can know in advance whether they need to modify a chair or use a different one before a flight. He knew, for instance, that the door on the Canadair Regional Jet model he was flying has a cargo door 33 inches high, large enough to take his wheelchair.

That travel is often essential, says Lee Page of the Paralyzed Veterans of America. "He needs to get there for job opportunities, or get there because of family emergency or get there because he's got a health appointment," Page says. "And in some cases, the only way to get to that destination might be that flight."

After NPR asked American Airlines about the limit, the airline's spokesperson said the restriction would remain in place. But she said the airline had offered Morris an "apology" and an accommodation: Next time, American said it would take the batteries off his wheelchair. That might get the chair under the 300-pound weight limit.

On Wednesday, Morris got to fly again.

(4) a new organization of work known as the factory system, which entailed increased division of labour and specialization of function, (5) important developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio, and (6) the increasing application of science to industry.

(1) agricultural improvements that made possible the provision of food for a larger nonagricultural population, (2) economic changes that resulted in a wider distribution of wealth, the decline of land as a source of wealth in the face of rising industrial production, and increased international trade,

(3) political changes reflecting the shift in economic power, as well as new state policies corresponding to the needs of an industrialized society, (4) sweeping social changes, including the growth of cities, the development of working-class movements, and the emergence of new patterns of authority, and (5) cultural transformations of a broad order. Workers acquired new and distinctive skills, and their relation to their tasks shifted; instead of being craftsmen working with hand tools,

or Belgium. While B

ritain was establishing its industrial leadership, France was immersed in its Revolution, and the uncertain political situation discouraged large investments in industrial innovations.

Chakrabarti is among a group of urbanists who’ve been calling attention to a less-discussed problem with cars. Automobiles are not just dangerous and bad for the environment, they are also profoundly wasteful of the land around us: Cars take up way too much physical space to transport too few people. It’s geometry.

In most American cities, wherever you look, you will see a landscape constructed primarily for the movement and storage of automobiles, not the enjoyment of people: endless wide boulevards and freeways for cars to move swiftly; each road lined with parking spaces for cars at rest; retail establishments ringed with spots for cars; houses built around garages for cars; and a gas station, for cars to feed, on every other corner.

In the most car-dependent cities, the amount of space devoted to automobiles reaches truly ridiculous levels. In Los Angeles, for instance, land for parking exceeds the entire land area of Manhattan, enough space to house almost a million more people at Los Angeles’s prevailing density.

in the most populated cities, physical space is just about the most precious resource there is. The land value of Manhattan alone is estimated to top $1.7 trillion. Why are we giving so much of it to cars?

rian paths for people to avoid intense overcrowding — transit might be no less safe than cars, in terms of the risk of the spread of disease. In all other measures of safety, transit is far safer than cars.

The amount of space devoted to cars in Manhattan is not just wasteful, but, in a deeper sense, unfair to the millions of New Yorkers who have no need for cars.

More than half of the city’s households do not own a car, and of those who do, most do not use them for commuting. Of the 1.6 million commuters who come into Manhattan every weekday (or, who did, before the virus), more than 80 percent make the trip via public transit, mostly trains and buses. Only around 12 percent of daily commuters get to the island by car.

New York’s drivers are essentially being given enormous tracts of land for their own pleasure and convenience. To add the overall misery of the situation, though, even the drivers are not especially happy about the whole deal, because despite all the roadway they’ve been given, they’re still stuck in gridlock.

cars are not just greedy for physical space, they’re insatiable. There is even a term for the phenomenon: “induced demand,” which holds that the more land you give to cars, the more attractive driving becomes, leading to more traffic, leading to more roads — an unwinnable cycle that ends with every inch of our cities paved under parking lot.

Even if you’re a committed daily driver, “it’s in your best interest for walking, biking and public transit to be as attractive as possible for everyone else — because that means you’re going to be able to drive easier.”

PAU’s plan bears this out. Banning private cars on Manhattan would reduce traffic by as much as 20 percent on routes that start and end within New York’s other boroughs — that is, in places where cars would still be allowed

Under PAU’s plan, road traffic in a car-free Manhattan would fall by about 60 percent. The absence of cars would allow pedestrians, buses and bikes to race across New York at unheard-of speeds. Today, a bus trip from uptown to downtown — for instance, from Harlem to City Hall — takes an hour and 48 minutes. With the sort of rapid bus system PAU imagines, and without cars in the way, the same trek would take 35 minutes.

They carried hundreds of handmade signs and called out the names of Floyd and others in the UK like Mark Duggan who had died at the hands of police or were victims of racial injustice such as the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Frankie Clarence, 28, one of the organisers of the protest, said: “I feel we are now in a period where voices don’t need to be voiceless anymore.” He was one of many who highlighted the case of Belly the black transport worker who died of coronavirus after being spat at at a train station

The demonstrator added: “The British Transport Police said any assault to staff would be prosecuted, fined, and arrested. After hearing the news of Belly Mujinga we found injustice and no action had been taken on her behalf. These guys are contradicting their words and there’s thus injustice not just in the US, but the UK. It’s literally everywhere in the world.”

United said it looks forward to resuming passenger service between the United States and China “when the regulatory environment allows us to do so.”

China “remains unable” to say when it will revise its rules “to allow U.S. carriers to reinstate scheduled passenger flights,” a formal order signed by the Transportation Department’s top aviation official Joel Szabat said.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Chinese carriers are flying no more than one scheduled round-trip flight a week to the United States but also have flown a significant number of additional charter flights, often to help Chinese students return home.

That’s because the pandemic actually has created different political realities. The coronavirus has hit dense, racially diverse Democratic urban strongholds like New York much harder than sparsely populated rural areas, which lean strongly to the G.O.P.

That divergent impact — with help from the president and his acolytes — is feeding a dangerous partisan split about the nature of the virus itself.

The virus’s economic effects will only create further inequality and division. Google, Facebook, Amazon and other behemoths will not only survive, they look poised to emerge stronger than ever.

Worst of all, it’s possible that the pain of this crisis might not fully register in broad economic indicators , especially if, as happened after the 2008 recession, we see a long, slow recovery that benefits mainly the wealthy.

: The virus-induced recession could further destroy the news industry and dramatically reduce the number of working journalists in the country, our last defense against misinformation.

activists have lately been finding success in pushing to build more housing in restrictive regions like the San Francisco Bay Area. The virus may put such reforms on ice

consider the grim future of public transportation after the pandemic: Will people just get back in their cars, driving everywhere they go?

the United States has failed to make the best of our most recent national calamities. The 9/11 attacks pushed us into needless quagmires in the Middle East. The 2008 recession deepened inequality.