The government's response has been largely cosmetic. Authorities deployed truck-mounted "smog guns" and "smog towers" that scientists widely regard as ineffective, and a cloud seeding trial in October failed outright. A senior environment minister told Parliament in December that no conclusive data linked pollution to lung disease -- a claim doctors sharply disputed. The government cut pollution control spending by 16% in the latest federal budget. Almost 1.7 million deaths were attributable to air pollution in India in 2019, according to the Lancet. A 2023 World Bank report estimated the crisis shaves 0.56 percentage point off annual GDP growth.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The standing ovation from the Macclesfield fans at full time was deserved. Their side may have lost 1-0 on the night, their dream FA Cup run coming to an end just when a lucrative trip to West Ham’s London Stadium in the fifth round had veered into sight, but pride was the overriding emotion.
Ultimately it had taken an unfortunate own goal from Sam Heathcote, a PE teacher plying his trade as a part-time footballer in the National League North, to nudge Premier League Brentford into the fifth round. For 70 minutes Macclesfield had proven a match for their illustrious visitors and they ended their cup campaign with a 2-2 aggregate scoreline against Premier League teams after the historic win over Crystal Palace in the third round. No wonder fans were shouting support and patting players’ backs after the final whistle.
Continue reading...American was competing in her fifth Olympics
Ties Bonnie Blair for US women’s medal record
It took her five Olympics, but she finally got there: USA’s Elana Meyers Taylor won gold in the monobob on Monday, capping a long and brilliant career.
The 41-year-old competed in her first Olympics at Vancouver 2010, and since then she has won three silver medals and two bronze across two events, the monobob and the two-woman bobsleigh. Her victory at the Milano Cortina Games came down to the final run of the competition with Laura Nolte competing to best Meyers Taylor’s time of 3min 57.93 sec. But the German could not respond and Meyers Taylor became America’s oldest-ever female Winter Olympic champion.
Continue reading...Northampton coaches eased post-Lions burden
England back played 34 games last season
England’s Tommy Freeman has revealed the extent of his mental struggles after the victorious British & Irish Lions tour of Australia at the end of a season when he exceeded the player welfare limits for the number of appearances.
Freeman played in 34 games last season – 19 for Northampton, nine for England and six for the Lions – and has spoken of a “built-up anxiety” as a result of the workload. The mandated limit is 30, but players were given dispensation for the Lions tour on the proviso they were allowed five weeks off on returning from Australia and missed the first two rounds of the 2025-26 season.
Continue reading...Rayo had to prepare at Getafe’s place and play at Leganés’s stadium. But they still managed to upset Atlético Madrid
One day in November, the coach of Rayo Vallecano decided that was it: he was out. The captain in whom he finds strength had reached a similar conclusion long ago, handing in his armband as an act of protest and dignity. Two Fridays ago, the squad signed a statement saying they couldn’t carry on like this. And last Friday, the fans who’ve been through it all before decided they too would walk away. Yet 48 hours later, after another week that proved them right, resisting everything, there they were still, celebrating another implausible success, another day when they had stuck it to The Man. If not, admittedly, the man they’d like to stick it to.
Actually, ‘there’? Not all of them were in the same place, even if that was a way of showing they were in this together. Because Rayo fans were out on the streets of the self-styled independent republic of Vallecas with their banners and scarves and songs on Sunday, while their team and coach were 10km south, playing in a different city. With their training ground unusable and their home home ground declared to be so too, they had to prepare at Getafe’s place and play at Leganés’s stadium. Where, in front of 9,000 empty seats, and kicking off in the relegation zone, they only went and beat Atlético Madrid 3-0, three days after Diego’s Simeone’s side had battered Barcelona 4-0.
Continue reading...In honor of this important anniversary, I downloaded the original Flash SWF file from Internet Archive, played it using Ruffle in a full-screen window, and replaced the audio with the original MP3 of "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" by The Laziest Men on Mars. So this is probably the highest fidelity encoding possible, without going back to the original forum GIFs.
Make your time.
WOLFSBURG (ANP/DPA) - Het Duitse autoconcern Volkswagen wil met een nieuw besparingsprogramma de kosten met zo'n 60 miljard euro terugdringen, veel meer dan tot nu toe was voorzien. Dat meldt zakenblad Manager Magazin op basis van ingewijden. Hiermee moeten de kosten tegen 2028 met 20 procent dalen.
Aanleiding voor de ingreep zijn tegenvallende verkopen in China en de Amerikaanse invoerheffingen. Hierdoor zijn eerdere besparingsmaatregelen onvoldoende. Volgens het zakenblad worden fabriekssluitingen niet uitgesloten, evenmin als verdere banenreducties bovenop de al aangekondigde 35.000 arbeidsplaatsen. Een woordvoerder van VW wil niet ingaan op de kwestie en verwijst naar de al lopende besparingsprogramma's bij alle merken.
VW-topman Oliver Blume geeft tijdens de jaarlijkse persconferentie op 10 maart een tussentijdse update over de situatie. De voorzitter van de ondernemingsraad, Daniela Cavallo, benadrukte dat fabrieksluitingen en gedwongen ontslagen "uitdrukkelijk zijn uitgesloten" in een deal die met het management is gesloten.
