The proposals would immunise an owner from prosecution if his or her autonomous car crashes, with passengers also exempt. Charles said the bill could “deliver one of the world’s most comprehensive legal frameworks for self-driving vehicles, with safety at its core.” Car makers are to face fines and potential criminal suits, depending on the gravity of the incident.
The seven-car Nightjets include the usual couchette and sleeper cars and are part of a €6.1-billion ($6.6-billion) investment by ÖBB, which plans to add 330 new trains to its fleet over the coming years."With over 20% more passengers in long-distance services compared to 2019, we have a new record high," said chief executive Andreas Matthä, who said ÖBB would add "more than 100,000 modern seats over the next few years."
Costing around $1.1 billion, the Chinese-built Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport opened on October 16 and can handle large, long-haul aircraft, meaning it should soon be possible to fly directly from Europe and North America rather than connect via bigger cities and airports in the region such as Bangkok or Singapore. Built during the 12th century, Angkor Wat is the world's biggest religious structure, according to the Guinness Book of Records. The ruins of the 400-acre Hindu-Buddhist temple complex are a popular stop for tourists visiting Cambodia, with over 2.2 million visitors a year recorded in 2019, before Covid pandemic border closures and lockdowns.
Home to around a million people, Amsterdam has in recent years been struggling to handle between 15 and 20 million annual visitors. The city has long been a magnet for hedonists, drawn to its so-called coffee shops, where cannabis can be bought and smoked, and to its red-light district. The tax hike was expected, coming after city governors in 2002 said they aimed to “combat bachelor parties that cause disturbances and organised pub crawls” as well as “introduce earlier closing times for bars and clubs in parts of the city centre” and “introduce a ban on smoking cannabis on the street in parts of the city centre.” A so-called “stay away” advertisement campaign was launched earlier in 2023, asking British stag groups to take their often rowdy and debauched behaviour elsewhere.
In the latest move against the sector by a major city, Florence is to ban short-term lettings such as those offered on Airbnb. “In 2016, we had just under 6,000 apartments listed on Airbnb; today we have almost 14,378,” said Dario Nardella, Florence’s mayor, adding that rents had climbed by 42% over the period. The early October announcement, which covers the “historic” centre of the city, came in the wake of several other tourist-draw towns recently imposing limits on holidaymaker lettings amid soaring rents for long-term tenants and residents, and after the Italian government proposed restrictions covering the whole country.