Global Headlines Express | Supreme Court Justice Kennedy Will Retire, and The Economist Examines the Decline of Public Transit in Big Cities
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018, still in its trial run. As ever, it is here to help you know more.
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018, still in its trial run. As ever, it is here to help you know more.
What the Agenda-Setters Are Talking About
The Economist: The Decline of Public Transit Systems in Big Cities
In the rich world's big cities, people are using public transit less and less.
From April 2017 to April 2018, New Yorkers made 2.8% fewer weekday transit trips than in the previous period, and 4.2% fewer on weekends; in Toronto, the number of trips adults take on transit has fallen every year since 2014 (children ride free in the city, so their trips have been rising); from March 2017 to March 2018, the London Underground carried 19 million fewer riders (1.4%) than in the previous period; the Paris Metro's 2017 ridership was where it had been in 2012...
A few local factors explain what is happening in particular cities — London and Paris have been plagued by terrorist attacks, New York's subway lines are old and badly maintained. But this "decline" is so widespread that there must be more general causes behind it.
One broader explanation is that in some cities the systems themselves have decayed. Take Madrid: after the financial crisis hit Spain in 2008, the city cut back on transit service. Between 2007 and 2013, ridership on the Madrid Metro fell 19%. Even after the economy recovered, cities like it never upgraded or improved their systems.
Where systems have been kept in good shape, ridership is still falling. Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing services have hit public transit the way they hit the taxi trade. In San Francisco, 16% of weekday trips are made by public transit and 9% by ride-hailing, and the places people go with Uber or Lyft are often right next to a transit stop.
Self-driving taxi services look set to compete with public transit even more directly. People sensed the competition before such services even existed. Last week Nashville voted down a proposal to build streetcar and bus rapid transit lines, because people believed cheap self-driving taxis would soon arrive.
The rise of two-wheeled bike-sharing is affecting public transit too. In Berlin, the length of bike lanes has grown from 856,000 kilometers in 2002 to 1.433 million kilometers today. The number of bikes available through app-based rental services grew from 2,000 to 16,000 in two years. But the effect cuts both ways: a bike can replace public transit, or it can carry people to a transit stop and so increase transit use.
Ways of living have changed as well, and people simply travel less. E-commerce means no one has to go out to shop, and working from home is becoming normal. In Britain, the number of people working from home rose from 2.9 million in 1998 to 4.2 million in 2014. Some London offices have been set up inside train stations, sparing people a transfer to another mode of transport.
The biggest blow to public transit, of course, still comes from the private car. In the United States alone, 76% of people drive to work. Ever-friendlier gas prices look set to push that number higher. In poorer, outlying suburbs, where there is little transit to begin with, driving is simply the best option.
In Southern California, poor immigrants were once heavy users of public transit. They too have gradually acquired cars — in 2015, a California law allowed undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses. And many immigrants who crossed an ocean to reach the United States may already have known how to drive.
Transit systems do not look like they will die out, but the days when people moved through cities along fixed rails in great flocks, like migratory birds, are over. Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics, calls this the fragmentation of the world. He has switched from the Underground to a bicycle himself.
The 24-Hour News Makers
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy Announces His Retirement
On June 27, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced that he would formally retire on July 31, saying he wanted more time with his family. His departure hands President Donald Trump the chance to appoint a justice, pushing the court further toward the conservative camp.
Kennedy, 81, had served on the court for 30 years. He was regarded as a centrist. In 2015, he cast the deciding vote that let the court legalize same-sex marriage 5-4. Yet a day before his announcement, in the ruling that upheld the Trump administration's travel ban on several Middle Eastern countries, Kennedy sided with the conservatives.
Once Kennedy leaves, the court will be split between four liberal justices appointed by Democratic presidents and four conservatives appointed by Republicans. Trump's nominee will give the conservatives the majority.
Last year Trump appointed the conservative Neil Gorsuch to fill the seat of Antonin Scalia, who died after an illness. He has said he will pick Kennedy's successor from a list of 25 conservative judges.
The New York Times noted in its report that a court remade by a conservative successor would reshape the country's legal landscape, and could in future overturn key precedents such as those protecting women's right to abortion.
What Else Happened in the World
Xi Jinping meets U.S. Secretary of Defense Mattis. Xi said the world is in a period of major development, major transformation and major adjustment, that multipolarity and economic globalization are deepening, and that countries are more interdependent than ever. Nearly 40 years of history and reality since China and the U.S. established diplomatic relations show that a China-U.S. relationship in good health benefits the peoples of both countries and of the world, and serves peace, stability and prosperity globally and regionally. The two countries share interests across a wide range of areas, and their common ground far outweighs their differences.
Putin and Trump will hold a summit in a third country. Russian President Vladimir Putin met U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton on the 27th. Afterward the Kremlin announced that Russia and the U.S. would hold a leaders' summit in a third country, with the time and place to be announced on Thursday.
A fourth round of South Korea-U.S. talks on the cost of stationing American troops collapses. Yonhap reported that the fourth round of talks toward a 10th defense cost-sharing agreement ended in Seoul on the afternoon of the 27th with no compromise, the gap over the amount still too wide, and the two sides agreeing to keep meeting after July. The two countries have negotiated and signed nine cost-sharing agreements since 1991; the ninth expires at the end of this year. The first three rounds, held from March to May, also ended without a compromise, again over the size of the payment.
Poland amends its "Holocaust law," dropping the criminal penalties. Polish President Andrzej Duda signed the "Holocaust law" in February; the bill had already drawn criticism from Israel, the U.S. and Europe while parliament was still studying the draft. On the 27th, the Sejm voted to amend the law and remove the clause on criminal penalties. The version signed in February barred accusing Poland of taking part in the Jewish Holocaust and forbade calling the concentration camps Polish camps. Offenders faced fines or up to three years in prison.
Defending World Cup champion Germany is knocked out in the group stage. In the final round of Group F, Germany lost 0-2 to South Korea. In the other match, Sweden beat Mexico 3-0, and the two advanced together on six points each. Germany went out with one win, two losses and three points. In Group E, Brazil beat Serbia 2-0 to win the group, and Switzerland drew 2-2 with Costa Rica to go through in second place.
Someone Said
No one could have expected this football meme to save the life of a man who had gambled everything away on football and wanted to die.
According to Southern Metropolis Daily, at 9 p.m. on June 20, the Nanfeng police station of the Guangming branch of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau took a call from a local woman: her husband, Mr. Liu, wanted to jump into a reservoir and kill himself, and she wanted the police to come and help.
Mr. Liu is a football fan who had hoped to make some money betting on the World Cup. He pawned his car and sold his house to raise 600,000 yuan in cash, and lost all of it. He then took everything in his wife's Alipay account and maxed out her credit card to keep betting, and lost that too. When his parents refused to help, he began thinking about suicide.
When the officers arrived, one of them said "blame it on Benzema," which made Mr. Liu laugh. Things eased between them, and after the officers talked with him, Mr. Liu gave up the idea.
"Blame it on Benzema" is a line fans use to tease one another. For a while, half joking and half accusing, fans pinned Real Madrid's defeats on the French striker Karim Benzema. In time it grew into a meme that reached beyond Real Madrid and beyond football: whenever anything went wrong or felt off, on the pitch or away from it, Benzema was the one who carried the can.
The speaker is Matthias Maurer, an astronaut from Germany. Last year he and two other astronauts from the European Space Agency (ESA) trained for two weeks alongside several Chinese astronauts. Maurer has also taken up Chinese.
In a report titled Why Europe's Astronauts Are Learning Chinese, the BBC said that given China's ambitions in space — it plans to become the first country to land on the far side of the Moon this year, and to finish its first space station by 2023 — it looks like a smart choice for ESA to work with China while keeping its partnerships with the U.S. and Russia. China has also signed an agreement with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, promising to open its new station to international research.
Over the next few months, ESA astronauts will train inside Chinese space capsules, hoping to fly joint missions later on.
Policy and the international climate make it unlikely that NASA will work with China any time soon. But in the long run both sides want to explore the Moon and Mars further, so cooperation cannot be ruled out entirely.
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Art Is Helping Iran Challenge Stereotypes
In a country where homosexuality and insulting the Prophet can carry the death penalty, free speech is tightly limited for journalists, activists and artists. Yet Iran's art market has been lively in recent years. And although artists still face taboos in what they can show, they can say things about themselves and about Iranian society that musicians, comedians and film and television stars cannot.
Two exhibitions in the United States — one in Los Angeles, the other in New York — opened to the public recently. The artists hope that by showing Iran as it is they can overturn some Western stereotypes about the country. One of the two sets out to clear up misunderstandings of Iranian culture and its taboos; the other opens a window onto the lives of Iranian women.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's show, In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art, brings together 125 works by 50 Iranian artists, among them 16th-century manuscripts, 19th-century photographs and work from the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Some artists reinterpret Iranian history through symbols; others work in cartoons. The Paris-based artist Malekeh Nayiny contributes a pink self-portrait.
"This exhibition adds to the visual information American audiences use to read and understand Iran," the curator said. "When you imagine what Iranian art looks like, it might be some retro, outdated image, or something you have seen in news coverage, but that is not what it is. It is an exciting picture, one that could hang in any contemporary art show and still have a character of its own."
The exhibition at the Bronx Museum in New York is called Iran: Women Only. It shows photographs by the American photojournalist Randy H Goodman, the first foreign woman photojournalist to cover Iran in the 1980s. The pictures focus on places in Iran open only to women, such as women-only subway cars. Goodman photographed the country in 1980 and again in 2015, using her images to show how the capital, Tehran, and the people in it have changed.
"This city is developing," Goodman said. "Now you see women on the street with dyed hair, headscarves pushed back, wearing clothes with real design in them."
On This Day
On June 28, 1712, the French philosopher, writer, educator and Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born.
On June 28, 1838, Britain's Queen Victoria held her coronation.
On June 28, 1840, the First Opium War broke out.
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife were assassinated during a visit to Sarajevo by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip.
On June 28, 1958, Pelé led Brazil's national football team to victory at the sixth World Cup.
On June 28, 1992, the physicist Qian Sanqiang died.
Cover image from: Wiki Commons
Translated from the original QDaily article. Original publication date retained.