Speed

Increase in road deaths amid rise of e-bikes prompts Houten to test willingness of freedom-loving cyclists to slow downAs road deaths increase and cycle lanes overflow with e-bikes, the Netherlands is considering a cycling speed limit of 12mph (20km/h).The government has started a two-week trial in Houten, near Utrecht, to gauge whether freedom-loving Dutch cyclists are willing to slow down – and whether they have any idea how fast they are going in the first place. Continue reading...

• France, Germany, Italy, and 14 other European nations have signed a joint declaration to coordinate the testing of autonomous vehicles across international borders. • The agreement includes a total of 17 countries, including Belgium, Poland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, aiming to standardize the deployment of robotaxis. • This collaboration matters as it removes fragmented national barriers, potentially accelerating the adoption and scaling of self-driving technology throughout the EU.

• The European Central Bank (ECB) has urged eurozone banks to accelerate their technological upgrades to combat rising cyber risks driven by artificial intelligence. • In its supervisory priorities for 2026–2028, the ECB reported that significant cyber incidents have doubled in recent years, identifying operational resilience as a primary concern. • The move highlights a growing gap in regulatory approaches, as the ECB takes a proactive stance while U.S. regulators have yet to set formal expectations regarding AI-driven threats.

• The Indian government has notified new rules to establish a National Sports Board and a National Sports Tribunal to overhaul sports governance. • These new bodies are designed to regulate sports organizations and provide a streamlined mechanism for resolving legal and administrative disputes. • The initiative aims to enhance transparency and accountability within India's sports ecosystem, reducing delays in dispute resolution.

• London-based startup Fractile raised $220 million in a Series funding round led by Accel, Factorial Funds, and Founders Fund to develop specialized AI chips for inference acceleration. • Founded in 2022 by Oxford researcher Walter Goodwin, Fractile is building hardware architectures designed to increase inference performance from 40 tokens per second to approximately 1,200 tokens per second. • The company claims its systems could compress workloads that currently take a month into a single day, addressing a critical bottleneck in AI deployment.

A Kitt lookalike was filmed speeding in Brooklyn but the fine was sent to a museum where a replica is on displayA replica of the talking car Kitt from the 1980s US television action series Knight Rider for years has been parked in a museum about an hour’s drive north of Chicago, so how did it get a speeding ticket in New York City?That is the question the Volo Museum is asking after it says it was recently mailed a $50 fine by New York City for a violation caught by traffic camera, alleging that its Knight Industries Two Thousand – Kitt for short and a black Pontiac Trans Am– got busted going 9mph over the speed limit in a 25mph zone on 22 April. Continue reading...

Recent consumer alert on ebike safety laws says some vehicles should be classified as mopeds or motorcyclesAmazon said it plans to stop selling certain high-speed electric bicycles in California after a string of high-profile incidents and a consumer alert that the state attorney general issued last month.In April an 81-year-old man in Orange county died after a teenager illegally riding an e-motorcycle struck him. The teen’s mother, Tommi Jo Mejer, has since been charged with involuntary manslaughter in Ed Ashman’s death as officials say she was warned it was illegal for her son to operate the vehicle. Continue reading...

Tuesday’s federal budget to include $500m to fund faster approvals for housing, energy and mining projects. Follow today’s news liveGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastGood morning, Krishani Dhanji here with you. Friends, it’s budget week, and it has come very quickly if you ask me!We’re getting a few final announcements from the government before Jim Chalmers hands down his budget tomorrow. That includes some money to speed up environmental approvals to boost productivity (more on that in a moment). Of course, all the big-ticket items – including reforms to capital gains tax, negative gearing and trusts, have already been out for weeks. Continue reading...

Police see off gatherings of teenagers in London and Edinburgh after videos of similar stunts in US go viralHundreds of teenagers have attempted to “speed run” Scientology buildings in different parts of the UK as part of a TikTok trend that started in Los Angeles.Scientology speed running is where people rush into churches and see how far they can get before being ushered out by staff. The Church of Scientology said using its church spaces for viral stunts was “trespass, harassment, and disruption of religious facilities”. Continue reading...

Cap of 20mph in towns and cities and 60mph on motorways would cut fuel demand and combat rising prices, IPPR saysBritain should lower speed limits for drivers as part of a package of measures to reduce the impact of the Iran war on consumers, a thinktank has said.Capping legal speeds at 20mph in towns and cities and 60mph on motorways would help reduce fuel demand and combat soaring oil prices triggered by conflict, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Continue reading...

Group broke through locked door in Manhattan, damaging property and injuring a staff member, church saysA group of youths forced their way into a Scientology church in New York on Saturday in the latest in a string of nationwide “speed running” incidents that have gone viral on social media in recent weeks.The group broke through a locked door to gain entry to the Church of Scientology on West 36th Street in Manhattan, throwing objects, damaging the property and injuring a staff member as worshippers and visitors attended a seminar, the church said in a statement to the Guardian. Continue reading...

Religious group ‘reviewing all available remedies’ after clips of young people rushing its buildings in ‘raids’ go viralOn any given day, Los Angeles’s Hollywood Boulevard teems with tourists and street performers clustered near the area’s many landmarks. But in recent months, the strip has been set abuzz for a new reason.Throngs of mostly adolescent boys and young men have been rushing the Church of Scientology’s international headquarters on the famed street. Continue reading...

• A leading AI startup focused on enterprise AI solutions secured $150 million in Series B funding on April 25, 2026. • The round was led by Lightspeed Ventures and SoftBank, signaling strong investor confidence in scalable AI technologies for businesses. • This funding underscores accelerating growth in the US enterprise AI sector amid rising demand for efficient AI deployment tools.

Creator card is designed for people making money through TikTok Live, some of whom have complained of delays in paymentsTikTok and Visa have launched a debit card for content creators in the UK that they say will allow people to quickly access their earnings from the platform.The creator card is designed for the growing numbers of people making money through TikTok Live, a live streaming feature where creators receive virtual gifts from viewers that are later converted into cash. Continue reading...

• IBM announced IBM Autonomous Security on April 15, 2026, deploying coordinated AI agents to detect and contain threats at machine speed without human intervention. • The service addresses a critical gap: attackers now achieve full network lateral movement in as little as 27 seconds, compared to an average of 29 minutes in 2024—a 65% speed improvement driving urgent demand for AI-powered defenses. • AI-enabled attacks surged 89% year-over-year in 2025, with a 44% increase in assaults exploiting public-facing applications, prompting major security vendors to adopt autonomous AI defense strategies.

Review of original train order is meant to prevent service problems north of Birmingham, but it may do the oppositePlans to change the size of HS2 trains to maximise capacity are likely to inflate costs and mean fewer seats and slower services north of Birmingham, a senior government and rail industry figure has warned.The £2bn order for 54 high-speed trains, to be built in Britain by a joint venture of Alstom and Hitachi, is under review as HS2 Ltd seeks to cut costs and renegotiate contracts. Continue reading...

• Anthropic secured $8 billion in its Series E funding round on April 9, 2026, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from US-based investors including Amazon and Google. • The funds will accelerate development of Claude 4 AI models and expand enterprise AI infrastructure in US data centers. • This round values Anthropic at $61.5 billion post-money, solidifying its position as a leading US AI challenger to OpenAI amid intensifying competition.

Conservationists say move could push species closer to extinction and clearer environmental rules are needed insteadFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastConservationists and scientists have warned a mining lobby proposal to use artificial intelligence to speed up national environmental approvals could generate “Robodebt-style” failures, putting threatened species at further risk.The Minerals Council of Australia has asked the government to spend $13m to trial the use of AI to help companies prepare applications and help the federal government make decisions. Continue reading...

• FBI agents have arrived in Cuba to investigate the February fatal shooting of five men aboard a US-flagged speedboat, which Cuban authorities claimed was attempting to infiltrate the island. • The probe occurs amid strained US-Cuba relations, focusing on circumstances surrounding the incident near Cuban waters. • This development underscores ongoing tensions in US-Latin America diplomacy, potentially affecting migration and security cooperation.

Company will assess whether drop to 186mph from 224mph will save money and help bring forward launchMinisters have told High Speed Two to consider running its trains at lower speeds, in an attempt to rein in the spiralling budget and begin operations as soon as possible.HS2 Ltd will assess whether limiting the speed to 186mph (300km/h) instead of 224mph could save money – potentially billions of pounds – and bring the railway into being earlier in the 2030s. Continue reading...

International Energy Agency recommends emergency measures, including working from home, as Iran war hits fuel supplyLowering speed limits to minimise fuel consumption is among potential contingency plans being drawn up by the UK government as the crisis in the Middle East threatens global oil supplies.Sources stressed that there is no shortage of fuel in the UK, but said that officials in the Department for Transport are working with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) on an analysis of how what measures could be taken to curb oil demand. Continue reading...

• Bell's stop-fold tiltrotor uncrewed aircraft for DARPA's Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (Sprint) project Phase 2 has been officially designated the X-76. • The demonstrator aims to achieve high-speed vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, marking a key advancement in aerospace technology. • Coverage highlights emerging technologies including Sikorsky's hybrid powertrain tests and light-driven sustainable aviation fuel production.