FYI, the suspected origin is South America, not on board the ship. Cruise ships do seem to be perfect environments for further spreading disease, though.
On Thursday, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said the Dutch couple, who were the first two cases, had travelled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip “which included visits to sites where the species of rat known to carry the virus was present”.
This particular strain (Andes) is capable of human to human transmission.
“The quickest way to become a millionaire is to start out a billionaire and buy an airline.” - Richard Branson
I don’t think ownership by the people is going to solve this problem.
If I’m not mistaken this part of the trail is also pretty steep, more so than it looks in the picture. The views are amazing when the weather is clearer.
As the other responder pointed out, this is not a simple issue (also at some point we switched from Slovenia to Czechia). There are at least two ways the east/central/west distinction applies. The first is geographical - every point that claims to be the middle of Europe is in or to the east of Czechia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_midpoint_of_Europe), so geographically it’s pretty clearly not eastern (which again, the original Wikipedia link also says - pretty sure they’re not all Nazis).
Politically it’s a more complex thing. A common American interpretation is “part of the Soviet bloc”. By that definition, yes, eastern Europe. But, there’s also a not uncommon perception that this means it’s a not well off country that is behind because of communism (see the movie Eurotrip for an example in pop culture). People who are in those countries would like to not have this association, so “central” is a way to avoid the Cold War era east/west split.
Universally by whom? Have you asked the Czechs? Wikipedia has it in central Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic
Power plant and bridge days sound like it’s infrastructure week again.
For the routine stuff: no engine oil to replace, no engine air filter, regenerative braking means you barely use the real brakes. Electric engines are also much simpler so there’s just less to go wrong and need fixing.