Transport for London (TfL) has extended supplier Capita's two road user charging contracts at a potential cost of £912 million including VAT after delaying the start of a combined replacement by two years. TfL announced it was directly awarding the contract extensions to Capita on June 11, saying this was required given the time it will take to buy and implement a replacement support service for its road user charging schemes. These comprise the congestion charge, Low and Ultra Low Emission Zones (LEZ/ULEZ), tolls for the Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels, HGV safety permits, and traffic fines, with the work including processing data from thousands of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras along with customer account management, payment, and billing. In May 2025, TfL said that it wanted to replace Capita's current contracts for Business Operations (BOps) and Enforcement Operations (EOps) for Road User Charging with a single deal. It planned to publish a full tender notice for this around March 31, 2026, and start the new contract on September 30, 2027. In a revision of this notice in February this year, it pushed back the tender notice to April 15, 2027, and the contract start to October 2, 2028. Last week, TfL said it plans to award the new combined contract in mid-2029, in procurement notices extending the BOps contract at a cost of up to £510 million and the EOps one by up to £402 million. Both extensions are for five years with the option to extend them to a total of seven. "Due to the scale and complexity of the existing services and the need to design, build, integrate and safely deploy a replacement solution, the full procurement, mobilisation and transition is expected to require a minimum of five years based on current programme assumptions," TfL said in the notices. It added that it will have rights to end the extended contracts early, "enabling TfL to transition to a replacement supplier at the earliest point at which it is technically feasible and operationally safe to do so." TfL expects the new combined contract to be worth more than £2 billion over 20 years. Last month, TfL disclosed that its Revenue Collection Services contract, which it awarded to Spanish defense and tech group Indra Sistemas in January covering almost all public transport ticketing in London, could be worth up to £1.964 billion if all extensions and variations are exercised. ®

Via de website konden mensen zonder recept medicijnen en designerdrugs bestellen. De producten van de website worden nu gelinkt aan ten minste achttien doden.

Oud-voetballer Rafael van der Vaart (43) heeft woensdagavond zijn excuses aangeboden voor een „grapje” na de WK-wedstrijd tussen Nederland en Japan zondag.

Social

Even puntje één. "The own-race bias (ORB) is a reliable phenomenon across cultural and racial groups where unfamiliar faces from other races are usually remembered more poorly than own-race faces." Oftewel: dat voor Nederlanders Japanners allemaal op elkaar lijken is gewoon waar en volgens internationaal erkend Japan expert Rob Goossens vinden de Japanners het zelf ook prima. Dan puntje twee. Natuurlijk maakt Rafael van der Vaart een grap. Rafael van der Vaart zit lekker half (of heel) dronken over voetbal te praten, zijn analyse is iedere keer dat elk elftal een type Van der Vaart mist maar verder is het de enige gezellige kerel aan de NOS-tafel, tussen rare kwibus Van Hooijdonk, dooie Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Wim Kieft die overal liever wil zitten dan aan die tafel en die nietszeggende Youri Mulder in. Of anders Arthur Numan met zijn lange nek. En dan schakelen ze over naar het commentaar van sfeerman Jan Roelfs of een van de andere sterren van de NOS Voetbalpodcast, de podcast waardoor we zeker weten dat de commentatoren net zulke leeghoofdige debielen zijn als je denkt dat ze zijn als je dat zielloze gewauwel hoort. En dan is de beste commentator ooit (Frank Snoeks) ook nog eens afwezig, terwijl de beste commentator van dit moment (Wytse van der Goot) voor Ziggo werkt. Jezus was is het een incompetente bende bij die met belastinggeld in de lucht gehouden droeftoeterij van de NOS zeg. Maar dat terzijde. En puntje drie. Excuses gaan maken voor een grapje is altijd bedroevend, vooral als dat naar aanleiding van vragen van de F-ing New York Times is die wel wat beters heeft om over te schrijven zoals een top-48 van mooiste uitshirtjes op het WK. Puntje vier. Het is Rafael van der Vaart, Rafael van der Vaart zit lekker half (of heel) dronken over voetbal te praten en laat hem lekker. Maar het probleem meneer, dat blijft.

Sad

Een of andere lulhannes van Kick It Out verontwaardigd over een NOS-uitzending die hij nooit heeft gezien

'NRC' plaatst 'aanhalingstekens' 'verkeerd'

Want to know what to look for in a pair of running shoes, or how to prepare for your first 10k – or even what underwear offers the best support? At 12pm BST on Thursday, running experts Kieran Alger and Sarah Marsh will be online to answer your questions. Post yours below the line now

• Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

The Filter’s running expert, Kieran Alger, and the Guardian’s consumer affair correspondent, Sarah Marsh (and personal trainer/runner), will be answering all your running questions on Thursday 18 June at midday BST.

No question is too detailed or too silly – from how to recover from a race to kit you don’t need to waste your money on. Or perhaps you’d like to know about how to manage post-partum running; which politician is the best photo-op jogger; or which, if any, AI training programmes are the best to set you up for success. Post your questions below now.

Continue reading...

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Autoblog: For years, the Chinese auto industry has employed a hostile price war to kneecap global competitors. Armed with massive state subsidies, cheap raw materials, and an aggressive "scale-first" business model, Chinese automakers flooded the market with electric vehicles priced so low that legacy manufacturers stood no chance to compete. How did they do it? Simple, they couldn't. They did it anyway. Reports from CarNewsChina show that Chinese automakers have been selling vehicles at a loss until a recent law passed by the Chinese government banned below-cost sales of new vehicles. During the ongoing sales slump in China caused by rolled-back subsidies and direct government intervention banning below-cost sales, the truth behind the rapid expansion of the Chinese auto industry has been exposed. "By the first quarter of 2026, China captured 32 percent of the global auto market, with its New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) controlling an incredible 61 percent of global share," the report notes. Yet that dominance has come at a steep cost: throughout 2025, "the profit margin for China's auto industry plunged to 4.4 percent and dropped further to a historic low of 3.2 percent in early 2026."

"Gross profit, not net profit, per vehicle, plummeted to a mere $2,000. We can expect the net figure to be loss-making." Autoblog adds: "Data shows over 70 percent of Chinese car sales were loss-making. This left more than half of the country's auto industry in the red. Great Wall Motor (GWM) even saw net profits drop 17 percent despite steady revenue growth."

China's EV price war has now hit a wall. New regulations are discouraging below-cost sales, rising material costs are forcing automakers to cut discounts and raise prices, and reduced tax incentives are weakening domestic demand. To sustain growth, manufacturers are increasingly turning to exports.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ian & Marg has added a photo to the pool:

Alan Hempseed has added a photo to the pool:

Alan Hempseed has added a photo to the pool:

BRUSSEL (ANP) - De NAVO moet haar kernwapens bij de tijd brengen, hebben de lidstaten afgesproken. Ook de planning en coördinatie moeten worden versterkt, staat in een verklaring van het nucleaire overlegorgaan van de alliantie.

De verklaring van de zogeheten Nuclear Planning Group is de eerste in bijna twintig jaar. De regelmatige vergaderingen van de NAVO-landen - minus bondgenoot Frankrijk, dat zijn kernarsenaal buiten de NAVO houdt - over de nucleaire verdediging van het bondgenootschap gaan meestal stilletjes voorbij.

"De nucleaire strijdkrachten van de alliantie blijven de ultieme garantie van de veiligheid van de bondgenoten", stellen de 31 defensieministers van de NPG, onder wie de Nederlandse. De NAVO leunt vooral op de Amerikaanse kernwapens, die ook in Nederland en vijf andere Europese landen worden bewaard. De Verenigde Staten zijn al langer bezig hun arsenaal te moderniseren.