Hard Numbers: AUKUS compensation, $5 gas in America, Iran-Venezuela cooperation, counting toes in Zimbabwe

June 12, 2022

Jess Frampton

600 million: Australia will cough up $600 million to compensate the French defense company it scrapped a submarine deal with in order to join AUKUS. Le sub snubstrained relations between Canberra and Paris and opened up a can of worms with Beijing.

5: Average US gasoline prices surpassed $5 a gallon for the first time on Saturday, just as peak driving season gets into full swing. This is bad news for President Joe Biden, who's struggling to ease inflation at the pump ahead of the November midterms with his own approval ratings in the tank.

20: Iran and Venezuela signed a 20-year cooperation agreement during Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's visit to Tehran. Details are murky, but the two oil-rich international pariahs will likely continue scratching each other's back while they remain under crippling US sanctions.

130: An internet rumor about Zimbabweans selling their toes for cash became so widespread that the deputy information minister asked Harare street vendors to debunk it by showing they all had 10 toes. What is true is that inflation has surged more than 130% since the beginning of the year in a nation with painful memories of worthless money

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Congolese ceasefire collapsing as peacekeepers’ mandate extended

Malawi soldiers part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) military mission for eastern Congo, wait for the ceremony to repatriate the two bodies of South African soldiers killed in the ongoing war between M23 rebels and the Congolese army in Goma, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo February 20, 2024.

REUTERS/Arlette Bashizi

Fighters from the M23 rebel group in northeastern Congo have been targeting civilians in violation of a July ceasefire agreement, according to the Southern African Development Community, whose peacekeeping mandate was extended by a year on Wednesday.

Hard Numbers: AUKUS compensation, $5 gas in America, Iran-Venezuela cooperation, counting toes in Zimbabwe

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Hard Numbers: AUKUS compensation, $5 gas in America, Iran-Venezuela cooperation, counting toes in Zimbabwe

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Fighters from the M23 rebel group in northeastern Congo have been targeting civilians in violation of a July ceasefire agreement, according to the Southern African Development Community, whose peacekeeping mandate was extended by a year on Wednesday.

Ukraine has begun using long-range missiles from the US and UK to hit targets inside Russia for the first time, after getting long-awaited permission from Washington and London.

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Subscribe to GZERO Media's newsletter: Signal

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The UN Humanitarian Air Service is scheduled to restart flights to Haiti on Wednesday, a week after several planes attempting to land at Port-au-Prince airport came under small arms fire.