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Reuters

That'll be £8, please

Ken Livingstone, London’s mayor, has expanded the capital's congestion-charge zone to include Bayswater, Kensington, Chelsea and Notting Hill, some of London's wealthiest neighbourhoods. Two weeks after the expansion, Transport for London (TfL) said traffic in the western extension had fallen by 13%, with about 33,000 fewer cars per day. The area's 60,000 residents, who are eligible for a 90% discount on the congestion charge, were expected to add to traffic in the old, central zone. But there has been no sign of this yet.

Critics of the extension have complained that its rationale is more about extorting money from rich west Londoners than easing traffic flows. They say that parts of congested east London should have been targeted first. Drivers who enter the zone on weekdays between 7am and 6pm must pay £8 (about $16), unless they stick to the designated “rat runs” that traverse it. Hybrid and electric cars are exempt altogether. The original congestion zone was launched in February 2003, with a £5 daily charge. According to TfL, the number of cars in the zone has dropped by 20% since then.

London is to receive cheap fuel from Venezuela’s state oil company for its 8,000 buses. Under the terms of a deal signed by Mr Livingstone and Venezuela’s foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, on February 20th, the South American country will sell diesel fuel to London at a 20% discount. In return, the Greater London Authority, which runs the city, will send employees to Venezuela to advise on public transport, tourism, urban planning and the environment.

The deal is expected to cut London’s spending on diesel by around £16m a year. As a result the 250,000 Londoners on income support will pay half-price fares on buses and trams from July 2007. “Both London and Venezuela will be exchanging those things in which they are rich to the mutual benefit of both,” said Mr Livingstone. But Richard Barnes, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, says Venezuela should concentrate on helping its own poor, rather than Britain’s. Venezuela, whose GDP is reckoned to be less than half of London’s, has similar deals in place to provide heating oil to New York and Boston.

After months of delays and recriminations, the new Wembley Stadium looks set to stage the final of the FA Cup, English football’s main knockout tournament, on May 19th. The Football Association, which runs football in England, was given the keys to the ground on March 10th by Multiplex, the Australian firm in charge of its construction. Wembley needs a General Safety Certificate from the local council in order to stage events at its full 90,000 capacity. It will host two “ramp-up” events for up to 60,000 spectators in late March—a community day and an Under-21 football international. If these go well, it should receive certification in time for the FA Cup final.

The stadium, five years in the making, has cost £798m—far more than Multiplex's initial £326.5m bid. It was scheduled to host last year's FA Cup final, but late design changes and wrangling between Multiplex and Wembley National Stadium Limited (the FA's subsidiary responsible for the project) made this impossible.

The Wimbledon tennis championships are to award equal prize money to men and women. The All England Tennis Club, which organises the 130-year-old event, announced on February 22nd that it would bring its policy into line with the US and Australian Opens. The other major, the French Open, pays its male and female champions the same amount, but retains a discrepancy for players eliminated earlier.

Wimbledon had defended its own discrepancy on the grounds that men played five sets and women only three. The All England Club also said that women's shorter matches gave them a better chance to earn extra money by playing in doubles competitions. Now, citing “broader social factors”, the club has had a rethink. Wimbledon's women's final draws a bigger television audience in America than the men's; women make up 55% of spectators at Wimbledon; and, as Billie Jean King, who won 39 Grand Slam titles, argued: “Entertainers don't get paid by the hour. They get paid, period.”

Last year Wimbledon's men’s champion, Roger Federer, won £655,000, £30,000 more than Amélie Mauresmo, the women’s champion. The new policy is expected to cost about £600,000—not insurmountable for a tournament whose annual profit has exceeded £25m since 1994.