32: Turkish warplanes destroyed 32 sites associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — which Ankara and Washington label a terrorist group — in Iraq and Syria on Thursday in retaliation for Wednesday’s attack on a Turkish defense plant that killed five. No group has claimed responsibility for the assault on the plant.
35: Boeing’s unionized workers rejected an offer from the aerospace giant that included a 35% pay rise over four years, with 64% of union members voting against the deal. The union says 10 years of sacrifices need to be compensated, and that it hopes to resume negotiations promptly.
1,000: On Friday, President Joe Biden will for the first time formally apologize for the US government’s role in forcing Native American children into boarding schools, where students were harshly abused, resulting in the death of at least 1,000. Beyond the atrocious physical, sexual, and psychological trauma, the schools were intended to snuff out the intangible aspects of Indigenous cultures transmitted from generation to generation. It is unclear whether any action will follow the apology.
2136,279,841 − 1: Programmer Luke Durant made history this month by discovering the largest prime number yet known on his home computer as part of a project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. But we can’t print it in full here, as it has 41,024,320 digits. For context, the longest novel ever published, Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” has just 9,609,000 characters (including spaces) and runs to over 3,000 pages.
35: Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is recommending a resentencing for Erik and Lyle Menendez, brothers who’ve been behind bars for almost 35 years for murdering their parents. “I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” Gascón said Thursday. His office will recommend that the brothers, originally sentenced to life in prison without parole, receive a sentence of 50 years to life with the possibility of parole. Under California law, this would make the Menendez brothers immediately eligible for parole.
Gotta maximize sleigh-holder value. #PUPPETREGIME
On Ask Ian, Ian Bremmer breaks down the steady escalation of US pressure on Venezuela and why direct military action is now a real possibility.
From civil conflicts to trade wars to the rise of new technologies, GZERO runs through the stories that have shaped this year in geopolitics.
Ukrainian intelligence services assassinated a senior Russian general on the streets of Moscow on Monday, detonating a bomb strapped to his car.