Hard Numbers

217,000: Every day, 217,000 people rise out of extreme poverty globally, 325,000 more people gain access to electricity, and 300,000 to clean drinking water.

107: Germany’s ruling parties have been unable to form a coalition for 107 days, the longest period the country has gone without a government since its reunification in 1990. When Germany sneezes, does Europe catch a cold?

41: The informal sector — the part of the economy where people work/employ without declaring it to the government — comprises 41 percent of the GDP of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. That’s a massive amount of untaxed income and unregulated working conditions.

2: US life expectancy has fallen for two years in a row for the first time in more than half a century. The biggest increase in mortality was registered among 25- to 34-year-olds, in part because drug overdoses among this group have increased 50% since 2014.

1: About one million Indians enter the workforce every month. Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to create 10 million jobs a year but has delivered only a few hundred thousand — will voters remember that in the 2019 general election?

More from GZERO Media

​A general view of the German lower house of parliament, in Berlin, Germany.
A general view of the German lower house of parliament, in Berlin, Germany.
REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

Under a plan agreed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the opposition, Europe’s largest economy is now headed toward early elections in February.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un attend a state reception in Pyongyang, North Korea, in June, 2024.

Sputnik/Vladimir Smirnov/Pool via REUTERS

North Korea's state-controlled news agency KCNA announced on Tuesday that the country has ratified a strategic partnership agreement that allows Russia to use North Korean troops to help push Ukrainians from Russia’s Kursk region.

Midjourney

Artificial intelligence was not a primary focus of the US presidential campaign for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, and AI-generated disinformation did not disrupt election proceedings like many experts feared. Still, with Republicans looking set for a clean sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the election results have major implications for the future of AI.

AI-generated cyber threats have C-suite leaders on edge.
Fortune via Reuters

The Biden administration is planning to support a controversial United Nations treaty on cybercrime, which will be the first legally binding agreement on cybersecurity.

An illustration of the ChatGPT logo on a phone screen, along with the US flag and court gavel.
Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters

A federal judge in Manhattan last Thursday threw out a lawsuit filed by the news outlets Raw Story and AlterNet against OpenAI, alleging that the artificial intelligence startup behind ChatGPT used its articles improperly to train large language models.

Flags of Taiwan and the US.
Tyrone Siu/Reuters

The US Department of Commerce ordered Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to stop shipping advanced chips to Chinese customers starting yesterday, Monday, Nov. 11. The government sent a letter to TSMC specifying that this restriction applies to all chips that are seven nanometers or smaller, which can be used to power artificial intelligence models.

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Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: With Donald Trump heading back to the Oval Office, loyalty among personnel is expected to play a major role in shaping policy, affecting everything from trade tensions with China and US-Middle East relations. In his latest Quick Take, Ian Bremmer explains the potential impacts on global politics.

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In a GZERO Global Stage discussion at the 7th annual Paris Peace Forum, Dr. Comfort Ero, President and CEO of the International Crisis Group, shed light on the increasing elusiveness of global peace amid rising conflicts worldwide. She pointed out a "crisis of peacemaking," noting that comprehensive peace processes and settlements have become rare, with the last significant one being in Colombia in 2016.

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Today, around 3.3 billion people live in countries spending more on debt than on essential services like education and healthcare, and governments worldwide are struggling to pay these debts. Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, warns of looming trade wars and faltering financial systems designed to reduce global poverty and promote development. What will it take to get countries back on track? Grynspan shares insights on this, highlighting the roles of the UN General Assembly and the International Monetary Fund in a Global Stage interview with GZERO’s Tony Maciulis on the sidelines of the 7th annual Paris Peace Forum.