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The French city of Montpellier in southern France became the latest European metropolis to allow all its residents to ride public transport for free.

The entire European country of Luxembourg including its capital of the same name scrapped fares in 2020, after Estonia’s capital Tallinn introduced the policy in 2013.

From Thursday evening, Montpellier residents with a special pass were able to ride trams and buses free of charge in the southern city.

Visitors and tourists will still have to pay 1.60 euro ($1.70) a trip.

Michael Delafosse, the Socialist mayor of the city of 500,000 people, promised free public transport when he was elected in 2020.

The study, released as a preprint in the Social Science Research Network, looked at over 7,500 legal gender changes and dysphoria diagnoses in Sweden and determined that the rates “peaked in 2018, with no evidence of further increases” and have since stabilized. This is also reflected in the Youth Risk Behavior Social Survey showing a modest decrease in trans identification after 2018 in the United States. The rates of transgender identification no longer see to be “exploding exponentially,” despite what anti-trans activists claim.

The leveling off is significant because it closely mirrors another major event where another once-discouraged trait became slowly accepted by society: left-handedness. In the early 1900s, the rates of left-handedness hovered between 3-4%. Left-handedness rates then “skyrocketed” to 12% where it has leveled off ever since. This was, of course, not caused by a “massive social contagion” of left-handedness. Rather, increases in acceptance led to people feeling comfortable using their left hand.

Results 31 festive periods from 1963 have featured a new Doctor Who episode, including 14 broadcast on Christmas Day. In time series analyses, an association was found between broadcasts during the festive period and subsequent lower annual mortality rates. In particular, episodes shown on Christmas Day were associated with 0.60 fewer deaths per 1000 person years (95% confidence interval 0.21 to 0.99; P=0.003) in England and Wales and 0.40 fewer deaths per 1000 person years (0.08 to 0.73; P=0.02) in the UK. The interrupted time series analysis showed a strong shift (reduction) in mortality rates from 2005 onwards in association with the Doctor Who Christmas intervention, with a mean 0.73 fewer deaths per 1000 person years (0.21 to 1.26; P=0.01) in England and Wales and a mean 0.62 fewer deaths per 1000 person years (0.16 to 1.09; P=0.01) in the UK.

Conclusions A new Doctor Who episode shown every festive period, especially on Christmas Day, was associated with reduced mortality rates in England, Wales, and the UK, suggesting that a doctor working over the festive period could lower mortality rates. This finding reinforces why healthcare provision should not be taken for granted and may prompt the BBC and Disney+ to televise new episodes of Doctor Who every festive period, ideally on Christmas Day.

Brent Toderian, a renowned urbanist and city planner shares his insights and experiences in shaping vibrant cities as we look ahead at Mississauga’s future.

England has more than twice as many long-term empty homes this Christmas as there are children living in temporary accommodation, the Liberal Democrats have said, calling this a stark indication of a “broken” housing market.

The numbers of families without a permanent home and in short-term housing, whether hotels and B&Bs or temporary rental properties, has hit a record high this year, with the latest statistics showing it now affects 121,327 children, according to data collated by the House of Commons library.

Other figures, also compiled by the library, show that councils across England have 261,189 homes that are classed as long-term vacant, meaning they have been empty for six months or more.

TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.

The job guarantee is a policy innovation that helps create full and meaningful employment for all via direct job creation. It is a voluntary program open to every working-age person who is ready, willing, and able to work. It provides living-wage employment opportunities in public service projects that tackle social and environmental needs. The program is funded nationally, administered locally, and available in every community.

Every city in the world is going through a learning curve, working hard to improve, albeit from very different starting points. It’s true that “better” is open to opinion and debate (including answering the really important question, “better for whom?”), and even when the difference between better and worse is well proven, some cities sadly are still doubling down on the wrong path (more freeways, anyone?). But I find even those cities with clear visions of what better means can easily struggle with the “how” part, and the fact that the path to success is often not a straight line.

Over many years working with cities at all points in that learning curve, I’ve developed a simple conversation starter that I call the “five steps toward better cities.” I’ve found it can help break the ice around how to improve, if people are really honest about where they’re starting from.

Council housing, once the bedrock of the housing system — providing secure and cheap tenure — is in shockingly short supply. According to the National Housing Federation, 1.6 million households are languishing on the waiting list — more than the number of households in the North-East — while all of England only managed to deliver a pitiful 8,900 council homes in 2021-22. Only 2,500 of these were for social rent, the traditional rent level for social housing, with the remainder at higher-cost tenures.

In the same period, the UK also sold off or demolished around 20,000 social homes, with 14,000 council homes sold off under the Right to Buy scheme. Over the years, Right to Buy has led to some 3 million homes being lost from the social housing stock. With millions in need of secure and affordable homes, rebuilding the council stock is a vital step — perhaps the most vital — in confronting the housing emergency. Council housing offers secure, lifelong tenancies and rent levels far below that of the private sector and most Housing Association properties, with the homes remaining in public hands, owned by us.

Amid this backdrop of depleted social housing, Sadiq Khan unveiled his ‘Right to Buy Back’ scheme in 2021, which has subsidised London councils to purchase homes from the private sector for use as council housing. This has allowed for former private sector homes to be added to the council housing stock, so long as the homes meet or are brought up to the Decent Homes Standard. In its first year, the scheme managed to facilitate the purchase of 1500 homes — a long way from what is needed to meet the city’s social housing needs, but almost as many council homes as were built across the rest of England last year.

Meta’s policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights on Instagram and Facebook in a wave of heightened censorship of social media amid the hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups that began on October 7, 2023. This systemic online censorship has risen against the backdrop of unprecedented violence, including an estimated 1,200 people killed in Israel, largely in the Hamas-led attack on October 7, and over 18,000 Palestinians killed as of December 14, largely as a result of intense Israeli bombardment.

Between October and November 2023, Human Rights Watch documented over 1,050 takedowns and other suppression of content Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch publicly solicited cases of any type of online censorship and of any type of viewpoints related to Israel and Palestine. Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel. The documented cases include content originating from over 60 countries around the world, primarily in English, all of peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways. This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship. Hundreds of people continued to report censorship after Human Rights Watch completed its analysis for this report, meaning that the total number of cases Human Rights Watch received greatly exceeded 1,050.