Mexico City has joined with Paris, Madrid and Athens in committing to eliminating diesel-fueled vehicles from their cities by 2025.
The agreement was announced at the C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico’s capital late on Thursday. A statement said the commitment would reduce air pollution and related health issues in those cities, while also helping cities meet climate goals.
“It’s a worldwide public health concern,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on Friday.
Removing diesel from Paris streets was a goal Hidalgo set when she took office in 2014. She cited Tokyo as an example already well on its way.
It is a major reversal in France where more than 20 years ago the government had selected diesel as the future of urban mobility and supported it, Hidalgo said.
Now, recognizing that the tiny particles emitted by diesel-burning vehicles cause severe health problems, Hidalgo said governments must once again steer manufacturers to meet their needs.
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said the city’s diesel buses will be phased out and replaced with alternatives and the buses that make up the city’s bus rapid transit system operating in dedicated lanes will be replaced with hybrids and eventually the city’s first electric corridor.
He did not mention how the diesel-fueled cargo trucks that rumble through the city would be replaced, but he pointed to the city’s successful bike-share program as one way to get people out of vehicles and mentioned that the first 30 charging stations had been installed for electric vehicles.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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