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Car industry: New rules on cleaner and safer cars start to apply across Europe

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Tomorrow, the EU Regulation on the approval and market surveillance of motor vehicles will start to apply. Adopted in May 2018, the new Regulation significantly overhauls and tightens the previous type approval and market surveillance system. It improves the quality and independence of vehicle type-approval and testing, increases checks of cars already on the EU market and strengthens the overall system with greater European oversight.

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market said: “Europeans rightly expect to drive the cleanest and safest cars. That presupposes the strictest controls of cars placed on the market and circulating on our roads. It also requires real enforcement and oversight at European level: that is why from now on the Commission will be able to carry out checks on cars, trigger EU-wide recalls, and impose fines of up to €30,000 per car when the law is broken. These reforms complement our work on cleaner and safer mobility, which in the challenging context of the crisis require even more future-oriented investments in infrastructure and innovation. Our efforts to restore consumer confidence, strengthen the Single Market and support the long-term viability and global competitiveness of Europe’s car industry go hand in hand.”

The key elements of the new EU rules are:

Independence and quality of testing before a car is placed on the market: Technical services performing testing and inspections of new car models will be independently audited on the basis of stringent criteria to obtain and keep their designation by Member States. National type approval authorities are now subject to peer reviews to ensure that the relevant rules are implemented and enforced rigorously across the EU.

Checks on cars already on the market: The new framework also improves checks on the vehicles that are already circulating on the market and for sale at the dealerships. From now on, Member States are required to regularly test a minimum number of cars and are now able to take safeguard measures against non-compliant vehicles on their territory without waiting for the authority that issued the type approval to take action.

European oversight: In addition, the Commission is now able to carry out compliance and conformity checks on vehicles in laboratories or on the road. In cases where manufacturers are in breach of type-approval legislation (e.g. defeat devices or fake declarations), the Commission can order EU-wide recalls and impose sanctions on those manufacturers of up to € 30 000 per car. Until today, only national authorities that type approved the car could impose such measures.

Since the adoption of the Regulation in 2018, car manufacturers, type approval agencies and other stakeholders have been working continuously to implement the new rules and adapt to the stricter requirements.  

The Commission has provided additional resources for the Joint Research Centre (JRC) to take up this new role in market surveillance, funding necessary extra staff, operational costs and the construction of two new laboratories. The JRC avails of two new state-of-the-art laboratories to conduct checks.

BACKGROUND

Type approval is the process for certifying that a vehicle meets all requirements to be placed on the market and for rigorous checking of manufacturers’ ongoing compliance with EU law, including emissions limits as laid out in separate regulation.

The new type approval rules were proposed by the Commission in 2016 in the wake of the Dieselgate scandal and adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in 2018.

This reform is part of the Commission’s wider work for a clean, sustainable and competitive car sector as laid down in the Commission Communication ‘Europe on the Move‘. Commission initiatives include air quality and CO2 standards, the improvement of emission testing for cars or the support for alternative fuels and battery production and defending the competitiveness of European industry.

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Shedding light on the Sun

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This image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 20, 2013 shows the bright light of a solar flare on the left side of the Sun. Credit: NASA/SDO

As questions abound about the Earth’s closest star, scientists are seeking answers critical to forecasting solar flares that threaten satellites and other electronics.

By ANTHONY KING

For most of humankind’s history, it has been hard to explain the Sun as anything other than a powerful deity.

For instance, the ancient Greek god Helios – the personification of the Sun – raced his chariot across the sky to create night and day, whereas the ancient Egyptians worshipped their falcon-headed sun god, Ra, as creator of the universe.

Powerful surprises

Since then, science has revealed that, for example, the Sun on average turns on its axis once every 28 days. But at its equator, the hot plasma ball rotates once every 25 days, while it takes around 35 days at the poles, creating a swirling soup of piping hot plasma.

Nonetheless, the power of the Sun can still offer surprises, with blasts fierce enough to fry communication satellites or electronics on Earth. Scientists warn of more powerful solar flares as a peak of activity approaches in late 2024 and early 2025.

‘There is this turbulent motion inside our star, called convection, that is a bit like how water wrinkles just before it boils,’ said Professor Sacha Brun, director of research at CEA Paris-Saclay, part of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

An infamous magnetic storm that hit Earth in September 1859, known as the Carrington Event, triggered spectacular auroras far from polar regions and sizzled telegraph systems around the world.

There have been more since. In 1989, a geomagnetic storm caused a blackout in Quebec, Canada, according to Brun.

Greater knowledge about the Sun is needed to predict and understand such events.

That swirling ball of hydrogen and helium is also unimaginably hot – with core temperatures of 15 million °C. And it’s ginormous – more than 1 million Earths fit inside the Sun.

Its peaceful presence on a summer’s day belies the intense nuclear reactions at its core that generate vast amounts of energy. The Sun is a churning ball of plasma, with gases so hot that electrons are booted out of atoms, generating intense magnetic explosions from its surface that spew billions of tonnes of matter into space.

Magnetic charm

As it spins, the Sun’s mechanical energy turns into magnetic energy – a bit like the dynamo on a bicycle light, where pedal motion is converted into magnetic energy.

On the Sun, twisty ribbons of magnetism rise and break out as sunspots, dark patches at the surface where the magnetic field is 3 000 times more intense than in the surrounding areas.

Sunspots can trigger those solar flares that damage electrical equipment. But this activity isn’t constant.

‘The magnetism of the Sun is variable over an 11-year cycle,’ said Brun, an astrophysicist.

Over that cycle, coronal mass ejections rise in frequency, from one every three days to an average of three per day at its peak.

‘As we go further into the cycle, more outbursts will emerge from the Sun,’ Brun said. ‘People don’t realise that the Earth bathes in the turbulent magnetic atmosphere of our star.’ 

So there’s an obvious need to anticipate when such solar storms approach. For example, a solar flare in February 2022 knocked out 40 SpaceX commercial satellites by destroying their electronics.

Those energetic particles take just 15 minutes to reach Earth from the Sun. The threat posed by magnetic clouds usually takes a few days, offering more time to brace for any onslaught.

Brun co-leads an EU-funded project called WHOLE SUN to understand the interior and exterior layers of the only star in the Earth’s solar system.

Running for seven years through April 2026, the initiative focuses on the inner turbulence of the Sun and the complex physics that turns the inner turmoil into magnetism in the outer layers.

This requires the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Yet forecasting solar flares means that scientists gain greater understanding of the insides of the Sun.

A star is born

What about the distant past of the Sun? It has been around for 4.6 billion years – 100 million years before Earth. Where and how it was formed would seem to be an impenetrable mystery.

Not so, according to Dr Maria Lugaro at the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Lugaro, an Italian astrophysicist, is researching this very question in the EU-funded RADIOSTAR project. It began in 2017 and runs through August this year.

‘We believe that the Sun wasn’t born alone, but was born in a star-forming region where there’s lots of stars,’ Lugaro said.

She is looking into this past by examining chemical fossils in meteorites today.

Radioactive atoms are unstable. They release energy and decay into so-called daughter atoms, over a certain length of time, which are measurable. The daughters are therefore chemical fossils, offering information about long-gone radioactive atoms.

Lugaro’s research suggests that the Sun originated in a stellar nursery that contained lots of siblings, including exploding stars – supernovas. But digging into the Sun’s history first requires finding meteorites, bits of rock formed before Earth.

These meteorites can contain traces of the radioactive atoms such as aluminium-26 and hafnium-182. It is known that these lived only a certain length of time. Together, traces of such atoms can be used as a radioactive clock to compute the age of the stars that made them, relative to the age of the Sun.

Vivid discourse

Some radioactive atoms are made in only certain types of stars. Their presence in meteorites helps to recreate a picture of the Sun’s birthplace, albeit one that’s up for debate.

It may be that the Sun was birthed amid dust and gas clouds in a tempestuous region alongside supergiant stars and exploding stars.

Within perhaps 20 million years, the different stars begin to make their own way out of the nursery. But things are far from being scientifically settled.

‘Every year there’s debate: is the Sun normal or is it a weird star?’ said Lugaro. ‘It’s quite fun.’

Research in this article was funded via the EU’s European Research Council (ERC). The article was originally published in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation Magazine. 

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Biden is preparing Americans to lose the Second Cold War?

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Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz

Vladimir Putin’s approval  rating is 82%. Joe Biden’s  is 42%. Xi Jinping’s is anyone’s guess, but the Chinese near-unanimously trust their government. More than half of Russians trust their government. Less than a third of Americans trust theirs. These statistics are not random but speak to America’s imminent loss in this, the Second Cold War, writes ‘The American Thinker’.

Why aren’t Americans rallying around the flag? Pride, approval, and support for their respective flags in China and Russia, but not the same in America, is not an accident. All governments influence the memories they want their people and foreigners to have of them. It’s called political memory.

A look at how the governments of Russia, China, and the United States are leveraging political memory sheds light on why Russians and Chinese love their governments and rulers, and Americans are souring on America and Biden. This simultaneous occurrence is not an accident. Russia and China are preparing to win the second round of the Cold War, and America is handing them the opportunity to do this.

The goal of Russia’s political memory is “to give students and ordinary citizens a simple and consistent narrative of a powerful nation they can take pride in.” School begins by singing the national anthem and raising the Russian flag. Taking a knee or disparaging the Russian flag is unthinkable. Putin, to be certain of unified support for the actions taken, restore Ukraine to its rightful place, and prepare for Cold War II, launched a new patriotic history in 2022. Putin described the purpose: “A deep understanding of our history… to draw correct conclusions from the past.”

Russia’s political memory constantly conditions Russians to fear existential threats, particularly from the West. It’s why they revere their militaries and have always been prepared to endure heavy casualties in war. The military prevents the Russian state from being subjugated.

Russia’s approach to political memory is consistent with China’s approach and motivated by the same theme: China lives with a perceived existential threat to its independence, particularly from the west. Cold War II will test its resilience.

China began preparing for round two at the end of Cold War I. This is when it began its “Patriotic Re-education Campaign.” Cementing patriotism in China, as in Russia, is key to preparing for and achieving victory in Cold War II.

China’s and Russia’s approaches to political memory are contrary to the U.S. government’s. Instead, America appears to be preparing to wave a white flag, or maybe a rainbow-colored one. Pride in America has been sinking, and this ties to the government’s design for America’s political memory.

This political memory could emphasize things such as America being the first colony to defeat a European empire or its WWII victory over fascism. Or it could tell how, in just over 150 years, America became an economic powerhouse on the back of capitalism and then sustained this with an education system designed to unify Americans and later foster innovation.

Instead, the center of history in 4,500 schools is to depict American slavery via exaggerated interpretations of personal memories, untempered by facts. Instead of a history of patriotism and achievement, the American government is supporting a history of trauma, including systemic racism and inequality.

In 2022, it was reported that the average IQ of Americans dropped for the first time in 100 years. The researchers speculated that it was due to changes in the educational system.

The Biden government’s trauma-centered political memory strategy to divide America politically, and racially has motivated this Russo-Chinese partnership and escalated the likelihood of Cold War II, – writes the “American Thinker”.

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Riyadh joins Shanghai Cooperation Organization

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Saudi Arabia’s cabinet approved on Wednesday a decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as Riyadh builds a long-term partnership with China despite U.S. security concerns.

Saudi Arabia has approved a memorandum on granting the Kingdom the status of a dialogue partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, state news agency SPA said.

The SCO is a political and security union of countries spanning much of Eurasia, including China, India and Russia.

Formed in 2001 by Russia, China and former Soviet states in Central Asia, the body has been expanded to include India and Pakistan, with a view to playing a bigger role as counterweight to Western influence in the region.

Iran also signed documents for full membership last year.

Dialogue partner status will be a first step within the Organisation before granting the Kingdom full membership in the mid-term.

The decision followed an announcement by Saudi Aramco, which raised its multi-billion dollar investment in China, by finalising a planned joint venture in northeast China and acquiring a stake in a privately controlled petrochemical group.

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