The rate the number of international flights taken by Swedes is growing has more than halved so far this year to around four percent, down from around nine percent annually in the years since 2009. At the same time, 188,000 fewer passengers took internal flights: a drop of three percent. “It’s still growing, certainly, but not as much as previously," Jean-Marie Skoglund, from the Swedish Transport Agency's sea and air transport division, told Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT. She said that more people were now conscious of the environmental impact of taking flights, and suggested that the flight tax could have had an effect. “Private people are weighing up their travel in a completely different way from what they were doing previously,” she said. “Then we don’t yet know what effect the flight tax brought in in April has had.” Skoglund said that the bankruptcy … [Read more...] about Swedish air travel growth stalls after flight tax comes in
Travel
Stephen Hawking’s final book suggests time travel may one day be possible
"If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately," writes the physicist Stephen Hawking in his posthumous book Brief Answers to the Big Questions. He was right. But he was also right that asking whether time travel is possible is a "very serious question" that can still be approached scientifically.Arguing that our current understanding cannot rule it out, Hawking, it seems, was cautiously optimistic. So where does this leave us? We cannot build a time machine today, but could we in the future?Let's start with our everyday experience. We take for granted the ability to call our friends and family wherever they are in the world to find out what they are up to right now. But this is something we can never actually know. The signals carrying their voices and images travel incomprehensibly fast, but it still takes a finite time for those signals to reach us.Our inability to access the "now" of someone far away is at the heart of Albert … [Read more...] about Stephen Hawking’s final book suggests time travel may one day be possible
Free bus travel for current and former service personnel for Remembrance Sunday
PUBLISHED: 17:04 10 November 2018 | UPDATED: 17:04 10 November 2018 Reece Hanson The wooden crosses in memorial to Eastern Counties Newspapers staff who died in the two World Wars, to be placed in the Field of Remembrance at Norwich Cathedral. Picture: DENISE BRADLEY Copyright: Archant 2018 Service personnel wearing their uniforms will be able to travel on First Eastern Counties buses for free during Rememberance Sunday. Drivers with the bus company who had previously served in the forces are also being encouraged to support the day by wearing their military attire on Sunday.The offer is open to anyone wearing uniforms of the Royal Navy, Army, Royal Marines, Royal Air Force and any associated cadet force.Alternatively, commuters can show a current Ministry of Defence issued ID card with their branch of the military stated.Steve Wickers, managing director for First Eastern Counties said: “This is an important day for many people who want to remember … [Read more...] about Free bus travel for current and former service personnel for Remembrance Sunday
Travel: Walking through the Cévennes, in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson
LONG lizards scurry up moss-covered craggy rocks and walls, while the deafening courtship calls of cicadas reverberate across the peaks of the Cévennes mountains. This region, a 90-minute drive from Montpellier and Nîmes, lies to the north of the French Mediterranean lowland and although busy with tourists in the summer is under-visited the rest of the year. The delightfully unspoilt landscape of small medieval villages clinging to the steep slopes became known to the young writer Robert Louis Stevenson when he made his celebrated trip with a donkey through the area in autumn 1878. He kept detailed notes of his solo ramble which inspired his classic work Travels With A Donkey In The Cévennes. His donkey, called Modestine, carried food, tools, a lamp and candle, a gun and a bottle of Beaujolais. He wrote that it had ‘"a kindly eye, a determined under-jaw and a sober daintiness of gait". One hundred and forty years on, the area through which Stevenson travelled for … [Read more...] about Travel: Walking through the Cévennes, in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson
55 MPs urge US not to let Tommy Robinson travel for fundraising tour
Some 55 MPs have written to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging him not to allow far-right activist Tommy Robinson to enter America for a fundraising tour. The cross-party group raised "grave concern" at reports that the US authorities might grant Mr Robinson - real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - a waiver on his current ban on entering the country. They warned that the English Defence League (EDL) founder would use any visit to "promote his violent and extremist agenda" and was expected to raise about £1.1million through speaking appearances. Robinson has gained a high profile in the US after right-wing websites took up his cause when he was jailed for 13 months for contempt of court. The sentence was later quashed and the case has been referred to the Attorney General. Labour MPs make up the bulk of the letter's 55 signatories, including frontbenchers Valerie Vaz and Gloria de Piero as well as former Home Office ministers Vernon Coaker and George Howarth. MPs from other … [Read more...] about 55 MPs urge US not to let Tommy Robinson travel for fundraising tour