Hard Numbers: Cheaper British pound, India’s Congress Party march, Chilean damage control, convictions of Hong Kong children’s authors
37: Markets are responding negatively to new British PM Liz Truss, with the British pound falling this week to its lowest level against the US dollar in 37 years. Truss is taking the helm this week as the UK grapples with cost-of-living and inflation crises that dwarf those in the EU and the US.
2,218: Rahul Gandhi, the leader of India’s once-prominent Congress Party, will embark on a 2,218-mile cross-country march over five months to connect with locals and try to boost his flailing party’s political prospects. Congress has been crippled by internal dissent in recent years, and many supporters have defected to PM Narendra Modi’s BJP.
5: Chile’s embattled leftist President Gabriel Boric has replaced five cabinet ministers – interior, health, science, energy, and the presidency – with more moderate politicians closer to the center-left. This comes just days after Chileans gave a resounding thumbs down to a proposed new constitution, with many saying that some of the new provisions were too radical.
5:Five producers of children’s books in Hong Kong were convicted Wednesday of sedition, with authorities saying that their cartoons – depicting sheep trying to stave off wolves from a village – constituted a plot against the government. This targeting of the authors, all of whom are speech therapists who now face a couple of years in prison, is the latest attempt by Beijing to quash freedom of expression in Hong Kong.