Hard Numbers: Gaza newborns evacuated, Old Joe keeps a low pro, Shakira shakes tax rap, Bolsonaro’s whale of a harassment charge, a long overdue story from Minnesota
81: President Joe Biden kept the celebrations extra low-key as he turned 81 on Monday, and small wonder why. Recent polls show that a majority of Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats, are worried that he’s too old to be commander in chief. So far, that’s not stopping him from running for reelection next year.
8 million: Así es perfecto, indeed – Colombian pop megastar Shakira reached a settlement on Monday with Spanish prosecutors on day one of her tax evasion trial in Barcelona. She will pay $8 million to avoid further prosecution on charges that she failed to pay nearly $16 million worth of taxes to the Spanish government between 2012 and 2014. She must also pay the owed taxes and interest.
15: Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro is being investigated for reportedly “harassing” a humpback whale off the coast of Brazil. The right-wing populist – who’s banned from seeking reelection until 2030 following his attempts to sow doubt about the reelection bid he lost in 2022 – reportedly rode his Jet Ski within 15 meters of the surfacing cetacean. Bolsonaro, known to some as “Captain Chainsaw,” has a rocky relationship with the natural world: As president, he oversaw a massive uptick in Amazon deforestation, and who could forget the ornery emu that bit him on the hand while he was suffering from COVID-19?
103: This story is long overdue. A book checked out from a Minnesota public library 103 years ago has finally been returned after a local person found it in a family member’s belongings. If you’re thinking you’d probably need Shakira’s lawyers to get you out of the late fees on that, you’d be right – except that the library stopped charging late fees altogether in 2019.