Hard Numbers: Dems vs. Biden, Indian population vs. China's, Ukrainian army vs. Russia, Asian Vegas vs. COVID

Hard Numbers: Dems vs. Biden, Indian population vs. China's, Ukrainian army vs. Russia, Asian Vegas vs. COVID
US President Joe Biden takes questions from reporters in Washington, DC.
REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

64: With friends like these … A new poll says 64% of US Democratic voters — and nearly all of those under the age of 30 — don't want President Joe Biden to run for re-election in 2024. Biden, who would be almost 82 at the time, says he will do so. Let’s see how this plays out as the presidential contest heats up.

1: Sometime next year India will surpass China as the no. 1 most populous nation in the world, according to a UN report released on World Population Day. China’s falling birthrate has cooled its population growth for years.

1 million: Ukraine's defense minister says his country is amassing a million-strong army equipped with NATO weapons to fight Russia. The Ukrainians are racing against time to launch a counteroffensive to take back parts of the eastern Donbas region and Black Sea ports captured by Russian troops.

1,526: Macau, China's gambling mecca, shut down all its casinos on Monday for the first time in two years after logging 1,526 COVID infections since mid-June. Although it's much smaller than Las Vegas, Macau actually brings in six times more revenue than Bugsy Siegel’s desert dreamtown — including a lot of illicit cash from the mainland.

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REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh/File Photo

Diplomats and foreign ministers from 17 Arab and EU states convened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday to discuss the lifting of economic sanctions on Syria, originally imposed during the rule of ousted president Bashar al-Assad.

Photos published by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Jan 11, 2025 shows two North Korean military personnel captured by Ukraine forces soldiers in the Kursk region. Two soldiers, though wounded, survived and were transported to Kyiv, where they are now communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine, Zelenskyy said. This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the war against Ukraine, he said. I am grateful to the soldiers of Tactical Group No. 84 of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as our paratroopers, who captured these two individuals.
(Ukraine Military handout via EYEPRESS) via Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Saturday that his troops had captured two North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region and released a video of them describing their experience fighting for Russia.

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A person holds a placard on the day justices hear oral arguments in a bid by TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to block a law intended to force the sale of the short-video app by Jan. 19 or face a ban on national security grounds, outside the U.S. Supreme Court, in Washington, U.S., January 10, 2025.
REUTERS/Marko Djurica

On Friday, the Supreme Court appeared poised to uphold the TikTok ban, largely dismissing the app’s argument that it should be able to exist in the US under the First Amendment’s free speech protections and favoring the government's concerns that it poses a national security threat.

Listen: On the GZERO World Podcast, we’re taking a look at some of the top geopolitical risks of 2025. This looks to be the year that the G-Zero wins. We’ve been living with this lack of international leadership for nearly a decade now. But in 2025, the problem will get a lot worse. We are heading back to the law of the jungle. A world where the strongest do what they can while the weakest are condemned to suffer what they must. Joining Ian Bremmer to peer into this cloudy crystal ball is renowned Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama.

President-elect Donald Trump appears remotely for a sentencing hearing in front of New York State Judge Juan Merchan in his hush money case at New York Criminal Court in New York City, on Jan. 10, 2025.
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Pool

President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced in his New York hush money case on Friday but received no punishment from Judge Juan M. Merchan, who issued an unconditional discharge with no jail time, probation, or fines

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In a way, Donald Trump’s return means Putin has finally won. Not because of the silly notion that Trump is a “Russian agent” – but because it closes the door finally and fully on the era of post-Cold War triumphalist globalism that Putin encountered when he first came to power.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greets supporters at a protest ahead of the Friday inauguration of President Nicolas Maduro for his third term, in Caracas, Venezuela January 9, 2025.
REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria

Regime forces violently detained Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as she left a rally in Caracas on Thursday, one day before strongman President Nicolás Maduro was set to begin his third term.