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

Premature newborns receive treatment after being transferred from Al-Shifa Hospital to Al-Emarati Hospital in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.
Premature newborns receive treatment after being transferred from Al-Shifa Hospital to Al-Emarati Hospital in Rafah.
28: On Monday, 28 critically ill premature babies previously evacuated from Al Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip were transferred to Egypt for ongoing care. Israeli forces seized control of Al Shifa last week, alleging – thus far without independently verified evidence – that there was a vast Hamas command center located beneath the hospital. As of late Monday, Israeli forces had surrounded another large hospital in Northern Gaza, forcing the evacuation of at least 200 patients, according to the Gaza health ministry.

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.

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