Hard Numbers: Money for Your Cow Dung

1 billion: West African leaders have pledged $1 billion to combat the growing threat of Islamic extremism in the region. Mali-based insurgent groups with links to the Islamic State and al Qaeda have since spilled over into neighboring countries, hitting Burkina Faso particularly hard in recent months.

45: When polls closed in Tunisia on Sunday evening, just 45 percent of eligible voters had turned out to vote in the presidential election, down 19 percentage points from 2014 when that country held its first post-Arab Spring election after 22 years of dictatorship.

60: India's newly created National Cow Commission has promised to fund 60% of the startup capital for any companies that commercialize a curative product known as panchagavya which is made by mixing milk, cow urine, and cow dung. The ruling Hindu nationalist BJP government has been very cow-friendly.

100 million: As fires continue to ravage the Amazon rainforest, the US and Brazil have agreed on a $100 million biodiversity conservation fund to help save the area, led by the private sector. This plan is already facing pushback from environmentalists who say it's a roundabout way to open the rainforest to even more mining, logging and farming.

More from GZERO Media

- YouTube

"We are seeing adversaries act in increasingly sophisticated ways, at a speed and scale often fueled by AI in a way that I haven't seen before.” says Lisa Monaco, President of Global Affairs at Microsoft.

US President Donald Trump has been piling the pressure on Russia and Venezuela in recent weeks. He placed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil firms and bolstered the country’s military presence around Venezuela – while continuing to bomb ships coming off Venezuela’s shores. But what exactly are Trump’s goals? And can he achieve them? And how are Russia and Venezuela, two of the largest oil producers in the world, responding? GZERO reporters Zac Weisz and Riley Callanan discuss.

- YouTube

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says AI can be both a force for good and a tool for harm. “AI has either the possibility of…providing interventions and disruption, or it has the ability to also further harms, increase radicalization, and exacerbate issues of terrorism and extremism online.”

Demonstrators carry the dead body of a man killed during a protest a day after a general election marred by violent demonstrations over the exclusion of two leading opposition candidates at the Namanga One-Post Border crossing point between Kenya and Tanzania, as seen from Namanga, Kenya October 30, 2025.
REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

Tanzania has been rocked by violence for three days now, following a national election earlier this week. Protestors are angry over the banning of candidates and detention of opposition leaders by President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

Illegal immigrants from Ethiopia walk on a road near the town of Taojourah February 23, 2015. The area, described by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as one of the most inhospitable areas in the world, is on a transit route for thousands of immigrants every year from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia travelling via Yemen to Saudi Arabia in hope of work. Picture taken February 23.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

7,500: The Trump administration will cap the number of refugees that the US will admit over the next year to 7,500. The previous limit, set by former President Joe Biden, was 125,000. The new cap is a record low. White South Africans will have priority access.