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Europe

Green

Measuring What Is Gained With Car-Free Cities — Including Cash Profits

Copenhagen is a great example of the positive impacts of pedestrianization: it provides €400,000 in profit for every kilometer of bike lane, and helps to decrease the deadly effects of air pollution.

MADRID — Pedestrianization is the end of retail, an attack on individual freedoms, an obstacle to accessibility, a gateway to public insecurity, a design that destroys the essence of cities, a new socioeconomic neighborhood structure that drives out the long-time residents.’ The arguments against pedestrianization and reducing road traffic in cities are many (and not all equally solid).

But the data in favor of pedestrianization are increasingly conclusive and transparent.

Two recent articles support this. Research carried out in 14 Spanish cities concluded that pedestrianization increased the income of businesses and that, once changes were implemented, most residents preferred a friendly, walkable environment to a car-oriented one.

A study in Copenhagen also found that for every kilometer of bike lane built in the Danish capital, 400,000 in benefits were generated per year through a reduction in transport, healthcare and accident costs.

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The European Union v. AI — Good Luck On That!

The European Commission has asked digital platforms to create an "Artificial Intelligence label" to alert users of AI-generated texts, photos or videos. But will it be able to stop the tsunami of misinformation?

-Analysis-

PARIS — How can we continue to trust a text, an image, or a video in the age of artificial intelligence? The question of trust in information has been around for a long time, as we know, but the emergence of powerful tools such as Chat-GPT for text, or Midjourney for photos, and many others, transforms the question into a potential nightmare.

The European Union's executive body, the European Commission, wasted no time in raising the question of how to regulate these technologies, which risk transforming the information space into a jungle. Yesterday, even before the major European law that is being prepared – the AI Law – the Commission took the lead.

It calls on digital platforms to define an AI label that will enable users to know whether a text, photo or video has been generated, in whole or in part, by artificial intelligence. The aim is to limit the explosion of misinformation that could result from these new, unregulated tools.

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Power, Patience, Grain: Xi Jinping's Careful Calculations On Ukraine

According to a new report, the world’s primary recipient of Ukrainian grain is China, and the pace of exports has exceeded pre-war levels. But the Chinese leader’s long game goes much further.

China’s all-powerful leader Xi Jinping now stands at the very center of the geopolitical arena — and that makes him pivotal for what happens in the war in Ukraine.

Just in the past few weeks, we’ve seen the list of global leaders lining up: Russian President Vladimir Putin has basically bet his entire future on him; French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen came to China to try to stop him from send arms to Putin; U.S. President Joe Biden is trying to squeeze a spot into Xi’s busy schedule; and, yes, Volodymyr Zelensky is nervously waiting for a call from Beijing.

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What to make of this choreography? Most China experts say only one thing with certainty: the ancient “Middle Kingdom” is proceeding cautiously — and playing for time. Or as the Chinese proverb says: "If you sit on the riverbank long enough, sooner or later, the corpse of your enemy will float by."

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This Happened - April 3: Marshall Plan Launched

The Marshall Plan was signed into law by U.S. President Harry Truman on this day, 1948.

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Geopolitics
Gregor Schwung

China's Military Intentions Are Clear — And Arming Taiwan Is The Only Deterrence

China is spending more money on weapons and defense than ever. The reason is evident: Xi Jinping wants to take Taiwan. Europe should follow the U.S. and support Taipei militarily as the only way to deter Beijing from war.

-OpEd-

BERLIN — Fear is never the best advisor.

It is, however, an understandable emotion when China announces the biggest increase in its defense budget in memory. And when Beijing does so after siding with Russia in the Ukraine war with its supposed "peace plan" and justifying the increase with an alleged "escalating oppression" of China in the world.

The budget plan unveiled by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang calls for a 7.2% increase in defense spending. That's more than in previous years — and just the official figure.

Experts estimate the true spending is much higher, as Beijing finances its military through numerous shadow budgets.

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

​Putin v. The West Began 16 Years Ago In Munich — And Nobody Noticed

The Munich Security Conference of 2023 takes place this weekend. The 2007 edition was a turning point for the world, where Vladimir Putin made his intentions clear — and today it all looks destined to arrive at the invasion of Ukraine.

-Analysis-

PARIS — The Munich Security Conference, which runs through Sunday, has often been described as the "Davos of Defense," where generals take the stage instead of CEOs. It is also where, 16 years ago, Vladimir Putin made it clear to the world that he would invade Ukraine.

This is obviously an oversimplification. Still, it's worth returning to the Munich Conference of 2007 when the Russian President announced to the West that the post-Soviet party was over.

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Putin delivered a brutal and cutting speech in the German city that was largely overlooked at the time. He had already been in power for seven years, had led the war in Chechnya, and stabilized the situation in Russia after the tumultuous 1990s. By 2007, he was ready to tell the West how he really saw the world.

He launched a scathing critique of the unipolar world, led by the sole superpower at the time, the United States, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "It is a world of one master, one sovereign," he said.

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Future
Tyler J. Kelley

Irrational Nuclear Fears Are The Real Risk — Just Look At Ukraine And Climate Change

Greener than renewables, safer than oil and gas, nuclear power is deeply misunderstood — to the detriment to humans and our planet.

-OpEd-

When Russian forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, back in March, many watched on in horror.

“By the grace of God, the world narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe last night,” said the United States ambassador to the United Nations the next morning. When power was cut to Chernobyl five days later, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister tweeted that its reserve diesel generators only had a 48-hour capacity and that radiation leaks were “imminent.” And several months later, in an August video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the ongoing occupation of Zaporizhzhia, claiming that “every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant is a risk of a global radiation disaster.”

None of these statements were accurate.

Commentators, either through ignorance or willful denial, misunderstood the layers of redundant safety systems built into nuclear plants like Zaporizhzhia. If power from the grid was cut, generators would turn on; if primary coolant was lost, a secondary system would kick in.

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Ideas
Juan Cruz

From Arrabal To Me — Chance, Forgetting And The Engines Of Creativity

A bit like the playwright Fernando Arrabal who launched an artistic project of decades after spotting a several disjointed phrases, our columnist reflects on the anodyne coincidences that led him to write these words.

-Essay-

MADRID — In art, everything is fortuitous. And so too in the piece you are reading...

In the 1960s, the Spanish playwright and artist Fernando Arrabal founded the Panic Movement, named after Pan, the Greek god of nature — and pranks. The inspiration for the artistic departure came to Arrabal when he placed two books on a big table and opened them at random. The first phrase to catch his eye was "the future acts," and then in the second book, "through coups de théâtre."

Thus a fortuitous adage, that "the future acts through coups de théâtre" or dramatic turns, became a creative spark and strangely presaged the exuberant "chaos" of the riots of May 1968.

Arrabal wanted at the time to distance himself from Surrealism, a current with which he is associated and which is equally fond of disorder. With the help of the Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and the cartoonist Roland Topor, he duly turned a post-war period still weighed with conservative torpor, into creative years.

Arrabal, who is 90 and lives in Paris, liked to startle his Catholic compatriots, painting himself in the company of Jesus at the Last Supper. He once scribbled 'I shit on the fatherland' (me cago en la patria) on one of his books.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Pierre Haski

More Than Ever, Europe Knows It Can't Allow Ukraine To Fail

Volodymyr Zelensky's visits this week to London, Paris and Brussels reinforce the intertwined fates of Europe and Ukraine. And for Kyiv that will ultimately mean more weapons support.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Volodymyr Zelensky's first trip abroad since his country’s invasion almost a year ago was to Washington. The second was reserved for Ukraine's neighbors in Europe: London and Paris yesterday, and today Brussels, to meet the "27" of the European Union.

There is obviously a logic to this order: without the United States, it must be recognized, Ukraine would undoubtedly be a Russian colony by now, and Zelensky himself a prisoner, or dead. But without Europe, Ukraine would not have a "host family," which has received millions of refugees, provided some 50 billion euros in support in one year, and promised to bring them into the EU club as soon as it is possible.

But the Ukrainian President has not come to say 'thank you.' He comes to ring the alarm, because on the battlefield, his forces are under increasing pressure from Russia, which is betting on its numerical superiority and its ability to bear heavier losses than Ukraine.

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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortés, Inès Mermat, Renate Mattar and Hugo Perrin

LGBTQ+ International: Lithuanian Fairy Tales, Egypt Dating App Gangs — And Other News

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on a topic you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

This week featuring:

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Society
Julia Amigo

Kleptomania, How A "Women's Pathology" Was Built On Gender And Class Bias

Between 1880 and 1930, there was a significant rise in thefts in department stores, mostly committed by women from the middle and upper classes. This situation brought with it the establishment of a new pathology: kleptomania. A century later, feminist historians have given new meaning to the practice as a protest against the social structures and oppressions of capitalism and patriarchy.

Kleptomania is defined as the malicious and curious propensity for theft. The legal language tends to specify that the stolen objects are not items of necessity; medically, it is explained as an uncontrollable impulse.

What seems clear is that kleptomania is a highly enigmatic condition and one of the few mental disorders that comes from the pathologization of a crime, which makes it possible to use it as a legal defense. It differs from the sporadic theft of clothing, accessories, or makeup (shoplifting) as the kleptomaniac's impulse is irresistible.

Studies have shown that less than one percent of the population suffers from kleptomania, being much more common among women (although determining exact numbers is very difficult).

The psychiatric disorders manual, DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) has included kleptomania since 1962. Previously, it had already received attention from, among others, Sigmund Freud. Like nymphomania or hysteria, kleptomania became an almost exclusively female diagnosis linked to the biology of women's bodies and an “inability” to resist uncontrollable desire.

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Coronavirus
Duncan Robertson

Why Making COVID Predictions Is Actually Getting Harder

We know more about COVID than ever before, but that doesn't make it easier to predict what will happen this year. It also remains to be seen if we'll put the lessons we learned into practice.

In 2020, we knew very little about the novel virus that was to become known as COVID-19. Now, as we enter 2023, a search of Google Scholar produces around five million results containing the term.

So how will the pandemic be felt in 2023? This question is in some ways impossible to answer, given a number of unknowns. In early 2020, the scientific community was focused on determining key parameters that could be used to make projections as to the severity and extent of the spread of the virus. Now, the complex interplay of COVID variants, vaccination and natural immunity makes that process far more difficult and less predictable.

But this doesn’t mean there’s room for complacency. The proportion of people estimated to be infected has varied over time, but this figure has not fallen below 1.25% (or one in 80 people) in England for the entirety of 2022. COVID is very much still with us, and people are being infected time and time again.

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