Hard Numbers: UN cuts Yemen food aid, Israelis to get 2nd booster, Madagascar's top cop swims to safety, Taliban stiffed

December 22, 2021

Children wait outside a health center where they will receive nutritional support from the World Food Programme (WFP) in the north-western Yemeni city of Hajja June 9, 2010.

REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

1.6 billion: A funding shortage of $1.6 billion has forced the World Food Programme to cut food aid in war-torn Yemen to half the minimum daily ration per person. UN Resident Coordinator David Gressly recently told GZERO World about Yemen's dire humanitarian situation.

4: Israel will become the world's first country to administer a fourth COVID vaccine shot. The government plans to offer a second booster to frontline health workers and people over 65 to deal with the omicron variant.

800,000: The Taliban mistakenly wired about $800,000 to the Afghan embassy in Tajikistan, where the diplomats in charge are still loyal to the former Afghan government. The embassy won't return the money, and neither will the Tajik government because it considers the Taliban a terrorist organization.

12: Madagascar's police minister swam for 12 hours to reach shore after a helicopter crash at sea. The minister used a seat cushion as a flotation device, and after being picked up on a beach by local villagers he said he'd take just a single day off before returning to work. Here's a good, short read for him while he rests up.

Budget clash puts South African government on brink of collapse

African National Congress (ANC) members of parliament react after South African lawmakers passed the budget's fiscal framework in Cape Town, South Africa, April 2, 2025.

REUTERS/Esa Alexander

The second largest party in South Africa’s coalition, the business-friendly Democratic Alliance, launched a legal challenge on Thursday to block a 0.5% VAT increase in the country’s new budget, raising concerns that the fragile government could collapse.

Hard Numbers: UN cuts Yemen food aid, Israelis to get 2nd booster, Madagascar's top cop swims to safety, Taliban stiffed

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Stocks have plummeted, layoffs have begun, and confusion has metastasized about the bizarre method the United States used to calculate its tariff formula. But Donald Trump says it’s “going very well."

The second largest party in South Africa’s coalition, the business-friendly Democratic Alliance, launched a legal challenge on Thursday to block a 0.5% VAT increase in the country’s new budget, raising concerns that the fragile government could collapse.

Remember the TikTok ban? The new deadline President Donald Trump set for the app to find an American buyer or be banned from US app stores, midnight Saturday, is rapidly approaching.

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Subscribe to GZERO Media's newsletter: Signal

Overnight, the US moved to having the world’s highest tariffs by a long margin. Here is Ian Bremmer's Quick Take on the near and long-term fallout

Have you stayed atop GZERO’s news coverage this week? Here's your chance to prove it.

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