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Eurostar security made us leave our e-bike battery behind in Paris – The Guardian

We travelled with our folding e-bike for a cycling holiday in France with no problems on the way out, but on return it was not allowed on the train
At the end of August my partner and I went on a cycling holiday in France with our folding e-bikes. We travelled by Eurostar and had no problems on the way out.
However, on the return journey we were stopped by security at Paris Gare du Nord and told our batteries would not be allowed on the train as “they were at risk of exploding”.
We are in our early 70s and before I booked I read the Eurostar guidance on e-bikes carefully. They are allowed, providing they are bagged and conform with size requirements, which ours did.
We could not get the security staff to change their minds so stowed the batteries in left luggage to avoid confiscation.
We missed our train, but were provided with a ticket for a later one, however that did not make our connection to Somerset.
The batteries are worth more than £1,000, so I complained to Eurostar and tried to get it to arrange for them to be transported to St Pancras for us to collect.
It told me to raise a complaint with SNCF, the French national railway company. However, it told me that security at the station is not its responsibility.
After several weeks of calls and emails it reached the point where we felt we had no choice but to travel back to Paris (by car and ferry) to retrieve the batteries.
I want Eurostar to reimburse us for all the expenses incurred – nearly £1,000 – because of this mistake, and to change the advice on its website.
I would never have considered travelling with our e-bikes if I had known there was a risk of confiscation.
CS, Bridgwater
With e-bikes an increasingly popular mode of transport, it is concerning to hear reports like this. I contacted Eurostar and it has apologised and offered to fully refund the extra costs you incurred.
Foldable e-bikes and their batteries are permitted on our services,” it says. “Unfortunately, an error occurred in this instance, and we sincerely regret the difficulties it caused. We are addressing this with the security provider at Paris Gare du Nord to ensure all contracted staff are fully aligned with our policies on restricted and prohibited items.”
We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions.

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Tech Bytes: Browser add-on Honey accussed of scamming users – WDIO

A browser add-on accused of scamming users One YouTuber claims PayPal’s Honey is ripping people off.
The browser extension helps users find bargains. Influencer Megalag says Honey actually ignores cheaper deals. PayPal insists Honey follows industry rules.
Meta may be adding displays to its Ray-Ban smart glasses. According to Financial Times, the screens would likely appear in the second half of next year. The displays will reportedly be used to show notifications or responses from Meta’s AI virtual assistant.
And if you have some cash laying around, how about this post-Christmas gift? It’s a solid aluminum keyboard called the Icebreaker. Features include hot-swappable keycaps and configurable RGB backlighting. The price? $1,500. Pre-orders are available.
Any person with disabilities who needs help accessing the content of the FCC Public file should contact Vicki Kaping at vkaping@wdio.com or (218) 727-6864
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    How keepers help animals while West Midlands Safari park is shut – BBC.com

    Preventing lemurs escaping via an icy lake and ensuring giraffes stay at a safe temperature – it's never a dull day at West Midlands Safari Park, even in winter.
    The attraction will be closed for much of January, but behind the scenes the "workload is harder", say staff.
    Ice needs clearing, animals receive extra bedding on the colder ground and with them using a "lot more energy in cold weather, you have to adjust diets".
    "I've spent many hours breaking ice off water troughs," said head keeper of ungulates Lisa Watkins, of the metal squares where the residents seek out a drink.
    "We don't leave without the animals having water. It's a big task… we have to sacrifice other things."
    If the lake within the lemur area freezes solid, staff must get sticks around the edges to break it up, otherwise that could be a potential escape route.
    Using probably three of four people, it could take about an hour depending on how thick the ice was, Miss Watkins said.
    She reflected it had been a "tough year" with the cost-of-living crisis and poor weather.
    The attraction in Bewdley, Worcestershire, still welcomed 715,000 visitors between October 2023 and September this year and had tried to remain competitive with 35% discounts when people book online.
    The safari park has about 700 animals overall.
    In the winter "everything is about preparation," Miss Watkins said, with workers ensuring heating systems are maintained before bad weather arrives.
    Animals produce "more mess for us to clean," as they make more use of overnight housing and shelters that are visible on the drive-through safari.
    Workers must keep giraffes, who are "built to lose heat," at between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius, so if one was out too long, staff try to coax them back in to their specially-heated home using branches.
    But preparation starts well before the nights draw in. When leaves are on the trees in the summer, keepers chop them into airtight containers, so they can be winter giraffe food.
    One beneficiary has been Strider, the oldest giraffe aged 21, although these residents cannot go out, if the ground is slippery.
    Ms Watkins said: "If a giraffe breaks a leg, you can't repair it… They're more prone to injury."
    The marmosets, small monkeys, would really struggle, if they were put out in the cold, the senior keeper said.
    Also, if plenty of snow arrives, keepers must attend to paths for penguins used to a hot climate in South America.
    Some on the park's register, however, can cope better than others with colder temperatures, such as camels accustomed to be in deserts where it can be minus 40 degrees.
    Red pandas who come from the Himalayas were "in their element, the colder the better," while sea lions had "four inches of blubber," Miss Watkins pointed out.
    The summer has other commitments, such as more patrols by keepers, so that visitors and animals are safe, but in the winter, with fewer staff, it is a different challenge.
    Miss Watkins said: "We have to defrost padlocks. You have to defrost to get anywhere."
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    Julian Love Hits Career Milestone In Hometown Game – Seahawks.com

    Seahawks.com Writer
    CHICAGO– Sunday was sort of a homecoming for safety Julian Love who grew up in Westchester, Illinois, a suburb outside of Chicago and because of that, he had a lot of people cheering for him in Thursday’s win.
    “A lot of family, a lot of friends, former coaches,” Love said.
    Before Thursday’s game, throughout his NFL career, Love had played at Soldier Field three times previously with the New York Giants, all of those games ended in a loss, but tonight was a bit different.
    “That’s great. I love playing here. I feel like I always play well here but just never got the win,” Love said. “That was a former time though. I’m a Seahawk and I only get wins in here.”
    And Love was right, the four times, including Thursday’s performance were all memorable games. In 2019, his rookie season, Love came up with an interception that he returned for 30 yards and a pass defensed. In 2020, he had five tackles, an interception and a pass defensed. And in Thursday’s game, although he didn’t come up with an interception, he passed a career milestone, notching 100 tackles on the season for the third consecutive year.
    “That’s exciting, 100 tackles,” Love said. “That’s something I really hang my head on. Since I was a young kid, I felt like tackling was, to be a defensive player, just part of the game. I don’t think it is appreciated as much as it should [be] but I’m extremely proud of that, especially my changing roles, week to week to be able to do that consecutively, I’m proud of it.”
    The defense as a whole was productive, coming up with 7.0 sacks collectively, 54 tackles, and an interception.
    “Everyone was just locked in,” Love said on the defensive performance. “And everyone was balling and there’s such a confidence going on there.”
    Love added, “We were having fun. I don’t know if it was the rain, the temperature, the weather. It was like playing backyard football. I felt like everyone was connected with communicating well, we were just running and hitting.”
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    © Seattle Seahawks 2023. All rights reserved. ® SEAHAWKS, SEAHAWKS LOGO, SPIRIT OF 12, WE ARE 12, BRING ON THE 12, LEGION OF BOOM, 12 and 12S are trademarks of the Seattle Seahawks. ®

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    Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 PC System Requirements, Console Specs Revealed; RTX 4080, RX 7900 XT Recommended For 4K@30 FPS – Wccftech

    The Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 official PC system requirements have been shared online today, detailing what players will require to run the second entry in the system at various resolutions, frame rates and quality settings.
    To run the game at 1080p resolution, 30 frames per second, players will need an Intel i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, GTX 1060 (6 GB), or RX 580, and 16 GB RAM. As the target resolution and framerate increase, so do the requirements, and to run Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 at either 1440p at 60 FPS or 2160p at 30 FPS, players will need an Intel i7-13700K or AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, RTX 4080 or RX 7900 XT GPU and 32 GB RAM. Judging from the system requirements, it definitely looks like the game will be rather CPU-intensive, which is not surprising, considering what its predecessor did.
    However, this is not a betrayal of the promise that the game runs well even on low-end hardware. We contacted Warhorse and confirmed that these are the requirements targeting native resolution. Needless to say, everything will run faster when using NVIDIA/AMD/Intel upscalers, which are practically essential these days.
    Warhorse Studios also shared today the Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 console specs, which highlight how both the base PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X will feature a Performance mode running at unlocked 60 FPS with VRR and upscaled 1440p resolution. On PlayStation 5 Pro, the game will run at upscaled 2160p resolution with PSSR and unlocked 60 FPS.
    Together with the confirmation of the PC system requirements and console specs, Warhorse Studios also shared a new Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 story trailer today. You can check it out below.

    Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 launches on February 4th on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S worldwide, having just been moved up one week from the previous February 11 release date. Pre-orders are now open on all platforms. The Gold Edition is priced €20 more and comes with the Season Pass, which includes three upcoming expansions as well as the bonus unlockable content Shields of Seasons Passing. Available on day one, Shields of Season Passing lets you customize your shields with one of four unique designs.
    There’s also a Collector’s Edition priced at €200 that adds the following physical items to the Gold Edition’s content:
    All pre-orders for Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 include the Lion’s Crest bonus quest, which will provide the legendary armor and weapons of Knight Brunswick upon completion.
    Some posts on wccftech.com may contain affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com
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    Billings airport experiences parking overflow after record numbers since pandemic – Q2 News

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    The Billings-Logan International Airport is seeing a record number of passengers since the pandemic this December.
    Just this month, the airport has seen 80,000 passengers, and over 900,000 this year.
    In comparison, December 2022 and 2023 had roughly 71,000 passengers.
    The Billings airport’s record for most passengers was in December of 2019, with about 87,000. However, one of the airport’s operation supervisors, Mick McCarthy, expects this year to surpass that number.
    Because of these high numbers, long-term parking has become quite a bit of an issue.
    As far as the eye can see, parked cars lined the street on Thursday.
    “We don’t have really any quick fix for this problem. We’re just doing the best we can, and serve our customers the best we can and hopefully everyone can see that,” McCarthy said.
    McCarthy has worked at the airport for 31 years and hasn’t seen parking this intense since the 1990s. He gets to work at 3 a.m. and counts the amount of spots available. He said recently those spots have been claimed by 5 a.m.
    McCarthy believes this is happening for a variety of reason, such as the airport’s recent $60 million expansion of Terminal B, additional flights to Denver and Phoenix, the holiday season, and people traveling post-pandemic.
    “A lot of people are just tired of staying at home, I think. It’s just steadily been increasing after COVID. Everybody was kind of stuck at home, and so we’ve been seeing an increase every year after that,” he said.
    On Thursday, cars were parked in long-term parking, the overflow lot, grassy areas near the Rims, past the Beacon Air Group, with some parking nearly a mile away form the airport terminal.
    The airport staff have accommodated for the issue, providing free shuttles to and from the overflow parking, having staff outside to help park cars, and putting the snow removal staff on parking duty.
    Brian Shannahan was on his way to Buffalo on Thursday. He’s from Musselshell County, so he was surprised by the parking situation but was thankful to encounter an airport shuttle transporting passengers to the entrance.
    “I didn’t mind a bit. I appreciated the shuttle. I didn’t know that there would be a shuttle out there,” he said.
    Some passengers were luckier than others, like Nick Vertz.
    Vertz thought of trying the long-term parking lot in hopes someone would be leaving a spot. He was able to find a spot and had a short walk to the terminal.
    “I can’t complain at all,” he said.
    Until the holiday season slows down, airport staff is planning on short-term solutions to get them through these next few years, like allowing passengers with handicap tags to park in short-term parking.
    McCarthy said shuttles will run from 4 a.m. until Midnight until needed. He hopes the airport will eventually build an additional lot or parking garage to prevent a similar situation in the future.
    “We’ll continue to run the shuttle regardless of if we’re doing snow removal, ‘cuz we don’t want our passengers to have to walk that .25 of a mile in a snowstorm dragging their suitcase,” he said.

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    7 of our best science-based tips for mental and cognitive health – Daily Herald

    Improving our mental and cognitive health does not always require drastic change. Even small, intentional habits can add up over time, creating a ripple effect that improves not only our brain but our overall quality of life.
    From managing our nighttime light exposure, to embracing mindful activities such as yoga and gardening, to finding JOMO, or the joy of missing out, here are seven science-based tips that can help bolster our brain health and strengthen our emotional resilience:
    1. Sleep with an eye mask
    Your bedroom is probably not as dark as it should be. Even through closed eyelids, light streaming from the television or hallway can make its way into our retinas and harm our health and mental acuity the next day.
    The deleterious health effects of nighttime light exposure are staggering.
    Research has shown that even relatively dim light when we snooze — about the equivalent of a hallway light — can have surprisingly profound physiological effects, raising heart rates, reducing the duration of important sleep stages and increasing insulin resistance. In older adults, any light exposure at night was associated with higher rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension. It also affects our sleep quality, memory and alertness.
    Thankfully, there is a simple solution: Wear an eye mask when you sleep.
    2. Do sun salutations
    Yoga has long been associated with better physical flexibility and health, and now it is being linked by research to improved cognition.
    A recent study also suggests that yoga may benefit some older people at risk for cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.
    The holistic mind-body practice of yoga provides physical and mental health benefits through four main components: breathing, physical relaxation, mindfulness meditation, and postures.
    Together, they make up a “smorgasbord” that allows people to reap benefits and gravitate to what speaks to them the most, said Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and editor in chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. “It’s about optimizing your functioning and performance as a human being on all levels,” Khalsa said.
    3. Stay up-to-date with vaccines
    Getting sick feels bad in the moment and may affect your brain in the longer term.
    A new study published in Nature Aging adds to growing evidence that severe infections, including flu, herpes and respiratory tract infections, are linked to accelerated brain atrophy and increased risk of dementia years later. It also hints at the biological drivers that may contribute to neurodegenerative disease.
    The current research is a “leap beyond previous studies that had already associated infection with susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease” and provides a “useful dataset,” said Rudy Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and the director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital.
    Other recent studies have found that the flu shot and the shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia. Severe infections have also been linked to subsequent strokes and heart attacks.
    4. Manage blood pressure
    For a healthy brain as we age, we need healthy blood pressure.
    However, nearly half of American adults have hypertension, which is one of the most common — and preventable — risk factors for developing dementia decades later, research shows.
    Hypertension, or chronically high blood pressure, is a double whammy for the brain — making it harder for oxygen and nutrients to get into the brain and more difficult for the brain to get rid of metabolic waste products. Abnormally high blood pressure can damage the small blood vessels in the brain, causing brain injury and atrophy, and driving neuroinflammation.
    When people have hypertension, especially in midlife, “they start losing blood flow to the brain, they start having impacts on the vasculature in the brain,” said Silvia Fossati, an associate professor of neural sciences and the interim director of the Alzheimer’s Center at Temple University School of Medicine. “And this is parallel and additive with the Alzheimer’s pathology.”
    5. Try JOMO — the joy of missing out
    Your friends are probably having fun without you.
    For many, this knowledge would trigger a fear of missing out — popularly acronymized as FOMO. But emerging research suggests that missing out need not be something we fear, but something we can enjoy.
    For better mental health this year, try reframing those feelings of FOMO and instead find JOMO — the joy of missing out.
    “JOMO reminds us that we cannot only not fear that we are missing something important, but actually enjoy missing something,” said Tali Gazit, an associate professor of information science at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.
    The research into JOMO is nascent and focuses on the effects of social media. But we can find JOMO in the rest of our lives, too, by choosing when we want to step away. JOMO can feel rejuvenating because it helps us stop being preoccupied with other people.
    6. Garden to connect with nature and friends
    Looking for a simple change that can improve your physical, mental and emotional health? Try gardening.
    People garden indoors and out, in different weather and climes and with different intensities and goals. Research consistently shows that gardening has a positive effect on mental health and well-being. And emerging research suggests that gardening may also be a way into healthy behavioral changes writ large.
    Why is gardening such a healthy pursuit? Research suggests that there are two main pathways that lead gardeners to mental well-being. One is through the connection with nature and its aesthetic beauty. But another, perhaps surprisingly, is how gardening can also be a way for us to connect with other people.
    “I feel like it’s just about bringing the pieces back together of what makes us human,” said Jonathan Kingsley, senior lecturer of health promotion at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
    7. Help someone
    If you want to increase your happiness and well-being, spend your money, time or energy on someone else.
    Research consistently finds that acts of altruism such as donating money, volunteering or giving blood benefit both the receiver and the giver — even when the giver does not expect anything in return.
    American volunteering and charitable giving have been on the decline in recent years. But helping others may set up a positive feedback loop: Because doing good feels good, altruism can beget more altruism and better well-being.

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