Gulf Daily News Sunday, 18th January 2015 Three months a year... By GWYNNE DYER E n New traffic laws ... drivers need to exercise more caution For the last two years, I have hardly seen any traffic police patrolling or setting any checkpoints in any areas. Where have they all gone? I suggest that the traffic department allow all drivers to catch these hasty drivers by taking pictures while they break the law and forward it to police for action. Sara Please do something! HE morning traffic is tough as it has always Trecently, been the case on school days. However, we see more cars, and specially bus- es, filled with children from different schools, driving on the dirt shoulders of the road, forcing themselves into the traffic at high speeds and with very aggressive attitude. From 6.30 to 8am, every car on Road 13 in Saar has at least one student in it. Such driving attitude poses risks for children inside buses and cars aside from the fact of teaching our children the wrong driving ethics. Something needs to be done before anyone gets hurt. Fares Saghbini A great service been reading GDN since it was in the IEra”’VE “Hard Copy and was extremely happy when you launched the website. It is a great joy to have the news on our handheld devices and read it on the go. However, the joy and feeling you get from reading a hard copy newspaper is something one should try at least once in their lifetime. down by a campaign last month. The financing scandal bombing came on that marks the stunthe eve of a meetning denouement of ing between US “...be intolerant of ignorance, but understandone of Europe’s most administrator L Paul ing of illiteracy.” – Maya Angelou, American respected statesmen Bremer and UN Secwriter (1928--) and the man who reretary-General Kofi united Germany. Annan to discuss 2001 – Helicopters Iraq’s future, includlower rescuers into the crater of a volcano in ing whether Iraq is safe enough for the world body San Salvador, El Salvador after voices are heard to return. there, reviving unlikely hopes that a group of 2005 – The Supreme Court says the results of peasants thrown from the crater’s rim might still Ukraine’s presidential election can be published be alive. Nearly 700 people were killed by the before it rules on an appeal by the losing candiearthquake. date, suggesting the way is open for the inaugu2002 – The Sierra Leone government declares the ration of Western-leaning reformer Viktor Yushcountry’s 11-year-old civil war, which killed about chenko. 50,000 people – mostly civilians – over. In the war, 2006 – President Laurent Gbagbo calls on his supthe Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel group, porters to end days of violent street protests that known for its extreme brutality, fought against the have roiled Ivory Coast’s government-held south, government for control of the country. telling protesters to go home and asking fearful 2003 – Information on allied troop locations in Af- workers to return to their jobs. ghanistan was “basically non-existent” for US pilots 2007 – A woman, who disappeared in the jungles last spring, when two Air Force pilots mistakenly of northeastern Cambodia as a child, is found 19 bombed Canadian soldiers, killing four, the avia- years later. The woman – identified as Rochom tors’ former squadron commander Colonel David P’ngieng, 27 – does not speak any intelligible lanNichols testifies. guage, but is recognised by a village policeman 2004 – A suicide bomber sets off a truck bomb who claims to be her father. at the gates of the US-led coalition headquarters 2008 – Masai fighters in Kenya battle rival tribeskilling about 20 people and wounding 63 in the man loyal to President Mwai Kibaki on the third, deadliest attack since Saddam Hussein’s capture final and bloodiest day of protests over Kenya’s Coming to the letters section, it’s something I read with interest as it contains opinions and views that I can relate to and feel happy in knowing that there are people out there who still think sensibly and have time to look upon things that define one’s personality and character contrary to those who consider those issues small and take no interest in it. We, as humans, usually tend to look at big issues rather than trying to solve the little ones forgetting the fact that the bigger problem is just a collection of small issues we neglected on the way. I really hope this section of yours keeps going and someday someone might gain positives out of it. Name withheld disputed election. 2009 – Israeli troops begin to withdraw from Gaza after their government and Hamas militants declare an end to a three-week war. 2010 – Taliban militants wearing explosive vests launch a brazen daylight assault on the centre of Kabul, with suicide bombings and gunbattles near the presidential palace and other government buildings that paralyse the Afghan capital for hours. 2011 – The UN tribunal investigating the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister warns against speculating about the sealed indictment as a quiet show of force by Hizbollah rattles nerves amid fears the militant group will react violently if accused. 2012 – Italians tally 11 dead, 21 missing from cruise ship disaster in which the $450m Costa Concordia, carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, slammed into a reef and flopped on its side off the tiny Italian island of Giglio after the captain made an unauthorised detour on his route. 2013 – The International Monetary Fund warns Portugal against the temptation to relax its contentious austerity drive, saying any backsliding could undermine the 17-country euro zone’s recovery. 2014 – Egypt’s election council claims that 98.1 per cent of voters supported the new military-backed constitution with a 38.6 turnout. verybody knows where the population explosion came from. Two centuries ago, birth rates and death rates were high everywhere, and population growth was very slow. Then clean water, good food and antibiotics radically cut the death rate – and the human population of this planet increased 300 per cent in the past 90 years. Eventually, as people moved into cities and big families were no longer an advantage, the birth rate dropped too. The world’s population is still growing, but it will only increase by 50pc in the next 90 years. So far, so obvious. But what's happening to the human lifespan is equally dramatic. Here's the key statistic: The average human lifespan in a developed country has been increasing at three months per year ever since 1840. Everybody assumes that lifespan grew much faster in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and is growing much slower now. But no. It has plodded along at the same rate, adding about three months to people's life spans every year, for the past 175 years. And yes, that does mean that a baby born four years from now can expect to live, on average, a whole year longer than a baby born this year. There have always been some people, who lived to 70 or 80, but the average age at death in 1840 was only 40 years. By 2000, it was 80 years. That's 40 more years of life per person in 160 years. And lifespan is still increasing at the same rate. In Britain, for example, the average lifespan has increased by 11 more years in the past 44 years – three months per year, just like in the 19th century. This is why actuaries predict that babies born in 2000 will have an average lifespan of 100 years. Give those babies the 80 years of life that people who died in 2000 enjoyed, then give them an extra three months for every one of those 80 years – and they will have 20 years more years to live. That is, an average of 100 years. This sounds so outlandish that you instinctively feel there must be something wrong with it, and maybe there is. The fact that it has gone on like this for 175 years doesn't necessarily mean that it will go on forever. But it's not stopping or even slowing, so the smart money says that it will continue for quite a while yet. What about the developing world? Most of it has been playing catch-up, and by now the gap isn't very big any more. In China, the average lifespan was only 42 years as recently as 1950 – but then it began increasing by six months per year, so that the average Chinese citizen can now expect to live to 75 years. Once you hit an average lifespan of 75, however, the pace slows down to three months per year, the same as in the developed countries. So do we end up with a huge population of people so old they can barely hold their heads up, let alone eat solid food? Probably not. In real life, crippling diseases and disabilities are still mainly a phenomenon of the last decade of life, and as the lifespan lengthens that final decade also moves. Demographers now talk about the "young old", who are in their 70s and 80s and still in reasonably good shape – and the "old old", in their 90s and 100s, who are mostly frail and in need of care. So the time is probably coming when people must work until into their 80s, because the over-65s will amount to a third of the population. No society can afford to support so many. But by then, people won't be decrepit in their 80s. And the only alternative is dying younger. 7