I’ve lived in big cities. And I was often woken at night and frequently concerned by the almost constant sounds of car and truck engines. I now live in the middle of the woods.

So I was excited when hearing about the Spanish city that has prevented cars from running. It seemingly means I could have everything that a city offers, museums and culture, walking to get groceries or delicious coffee, a quick subway or bus ride to work—and peace and quiet. It sounds like that’s what people in Pontevedra got after this city carried out its leader Lores’ order of changing 75 acres of this city’s historic center into a pedestrian-only (行人专用) place.

Formerly, the area had been filled with cars. People tried to get in and out of the area as quickly as they could. Cars would get stuck in the area when they tried to cross the city, while others circled endlessly looking for a parking space, which led to upset for drivers and plenty of noise for pedestrians and residents.

Later the area was rebuilt with beautiful stones and returned to pedestrians. Nearly three-quarters of what were car journeys are now made on foot or by bicycle. Air becomes much cleaner. As a result, the population of central Pontevedra is obviously increasing after it has attracted 12.000 new residents from nearby towns to live there.

Considering the negative health effects of pollution, it makes sense to get rid of cars from at least some parts of urban areas. The good news is that Pontevedra isn’t the only one to expand car-free areas. Dublin, Santa Monica and Burlington have pedestrian-only areas, too. These cities’ great changes will probably positively shape many other leaders’ decisions on city planning.

There has been a rapid rise in the use of emojis(表情符号) over the past decade. In 2010, there were just over 1, 000 emojis available for people to use on their phones. By 2021, the number had risen to 3, 353, and another 107 are expected in 2022. In that time emojis have become a part of people’s everyday language when they communicate online or with text message. It is estimated that there are around five millions emojis are used every day on Facebook and Facebook Messengers alone.

If an emoji replaces a word in a sentence, people comprehend it without issue. If an emoji that doesn’t make sense is added to a sentence, we spend more time trying to make sense of it. And yet, emojis are not words. Consider what happens when emojis stand on their own, without text. We’ve found that when emojis are strung together one after another, like words in a sentence, they are harder to comprehend than when they are combined to look like one picture.

While emojis can stand in well for concrete nouns such as kiwi and cat, they are in short supply at grammatical concepts such as verb tense, prepositions and pronouns. In addition, emoji users can not easily create new ones to fit a conversational context. This limitations mean emojis will never replace language nor exist as a language all on their own.

So if emojis aren’t words, what are they? In some sense emojis give us something we already have with spoken/signed language. In face-to-face communication, as well as using words, we also extract meaning from the tone and pitch of the voice, facial expressions, hand gestures, body language—and even the physical setting of the conversation. Emojis, similarly, give us a way to enrich the text-based medium.

World-famous music and movie star Olivia Newton-John died at her home in southern California. She sold over 100 million record albums during her career. From 1973 to 1983, she was among the world’s most popular entertainers. She had 14 top 10 singles in the United States alone and won four Grammys.

Newton-John is most remembered for her performance in 1978’s wildly popular musical movie Grease. She stars as high school student Sandy. “I was worried that at 29 I was too old to play a high school girl, ” Newton-John told The Telegraph in 2017. “Everything about making the film was fun, but if I had to pick a favorite moment, it was the transformation from what I call Sandy 1 to Sandy 2. I got to play a different character and wear different clothes, and when I put on that tight black outfit to sing You’re the One That I Want, I got a very different reaction from the guys on the site.”

Physical, Newton-John’s biggest single, came out in 1981. It was hugely popular, holding the number one position on Billboard’s hit list for 10 weeks straight. Later, it was named the song of the year. A video linked to it won a Grammy as well.

In 1992, Newton-John’s father died and she suffered from breast cancer. Three years later, she and actor Matt Lattanzi ended their marriage. And, a years-long relationship with cameraman Patrick McDermott ended mysteriously when he went missing during a 2005 fishing trip in California. “He was lost at sea, and nobody really knows what happened. But those are the things in life you have to accept and let go,” she said.

Newton-John was born in Britain to Irene Born and Brin Newton-John. The Newton-Johns moved to Australia when Olivia was 5, but she returned to England in her teens and lived with her mother after her parents divorced. She had early dreams of becoming an animal doctor. After winning singing competitions in high school, she decided on a career in music instead.