12 August 2019
CityLab: Berlin Tiptoes Into Europe’s Car-Free Streets Movement
This summer, the German capital has announced plans to pedestrianize some vital central streets starting in October. One experiment will ban cars from the main section of Friedrichstrasse, a long, store-filled thoroughfare that, before World War II, was considered the city’s main shopping street. Another will test daily closures on Tauentzienstrasse, another key retail street, with a view toward going permanently car-free in 2020.
These plans are notably muted compared to, say, the blanket car ban in central Madrid, or London’s new Ultra Low Emissions Zone. But they are nonetheless ground-breaking for Berlin, and could do much to slash the presence of cars in some of its busiest areas. [...]
There are budding efforts to go further in Berlin, as well. There’s talk among the city’s Greens—still too hazy to count as proposals—of banning cars in inner Berlin by 2030, after an interim congestion charge. And this Saturday, a group of activists who favor a city-wide car ban are planning a demonstration intended to temporarily shut down Western Berlin’s Sonnenallee, a long avenue bisecting the fast-gentrifying working-class district of Neukölln. Lined with affordable cafés and restaurants, Sonnenallee also has traffic that can sometimes be deafeningly loud, making what might otherwise be a promenade for strolling into something that sounds and smells like a race track. Piloted by an organization called Autofrei Berlin (“Car-free Berlin”), the demonstration hopes to amp up pressure to free the space from private cars.
Vox: Study: many of the “oldest” people in the world may not be as old as we think
Across the United States, the state recording of vital information — that is, reliable, accurate state record-keeping surrounding new births — was introduced in different states at different times. A century ago, many states didn’t have very good record-keeping in place. But that changed gradually over time in different places. [...]
In other words, as soon as a state starts keeping good records of when people are born, there’s a 69 to 82 percent fall in the number of people who live to the age of 110. That suggests that of every 10 supposed supercentenarians, seven or eight of them are actually younger than that, but we just don’t know it because of poor record-keeping.
This doesn’t mean that any of these false supercentenarians are lying. It could be that they lost track of their age a long time ago, accidentally double-counted some years, or were told the wrong birth year. But it does mean that the majority of people claiming to be supercentenarians, born in areas that didn’t keep reliable, accurate birth records, are probably not quite as old as they say they are. [...]
The paper puts forward a controversial proposal. It seems unlikely that living in high-crime, low-life-expectancy areas is the thing that makes it likeliest to reach age 110. It seems likelier, the paper concludes, that many — perhaps even most — of the people claiming to reach age 110 are engaged in fraud or at least exaggeration. The paper gives a couple of examples of how this might come about; some of it might be reporting error, and some of the supercentenarians might be produced by pension fraud (someone might be claiming a dead person is still alive for pension benefits, or claiming the identity of a parent or older sibling).
The Observer view on India’s aggression over Kashmir
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, and the ruling nationalist BJP stand accused of acting without proper legal authority by unilaterally revoking article 370 of the constitution, which guarantees Kashmir’s special status. Delhi’s arbitrary bifurcation of the state into two union territories (Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh) is also legally contentious. Opponents say Modi has opted for “raw power” over legitimacy.
Modi also ignored UN resolutions on the internationally recognised dispute with Pakistan over sovereign control of the Kashmir region and, notably, the 1972 Simla agreement, which stipulates that its final status must be settled by peaceful means. That point was made last week by the UN secretary-general while appealing for “maximum restraint”. To cap it all, Modi failed to consult Kashmir’s political leaders, whether pro-independence or pro-India, or the Kashmiri people. Quite the opposite, in fact. Political leaders were placed under house arrest. The population was placed under curfew. Means of association and communication were cut. And massive army deployments have been used to enforce Delhi’s diktat. [...]
Khan has limited options. His country is severely indebted. Modi has been clever in strengthening ties with Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia that traditionally bankrolled Pakistan. None of them spoke up on Islamabad’s behalf last week. Meanwhile, relations with the US have become strained, not least over Afghanistan.
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