Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

Hard Numbers: Lebanon’s bread crisis, US prices soar, Boris Johnson fined, Koreans start from zero

Lebanon’s bread crisis, US prices soar, Boris Johnson fined, Koreans start from zero

Workers carry boxes of bread loaves at a bakery in Beirut, Lebanon.

REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Make us preferred on Google
15.3: The Lebanese government will give about $15.3 million in assistance to importers to help assuage a growing bread crisis. As elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, rising costs for grains and fertilizer as a result of the war in Ukraine are straining the country’s already-battered economy.

8.5: Prices for goods and services in the US have grown 8.5% over the past year, the largest annual increase since the early 1980s. Rising costs for food, housing, and fuel drove the increase, which is taxing households and shaping up to be a major problem for President Joe Biden and the Democrats as they head into midterm elections this fall.

50: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other top officials will be fined for breaking pandemic lockdown laws by holding parties at government buildings while ordinary Brits were prohibited even from visiting dying relatives in hospital. British authorities say more than 50 violations of the rules were confirmed.

1: Everyone in South Korea is about to get one year younger – on paper at least. To harmonize his country’s records with those in the rest of the world, president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol wants to do away with the current system in which South Koreans are aged “1” when they are born.

More For You

Donald Trump speaking during an address to the nation on July 16, 2026.

US President Donald Trump speaks about election security during an address to the nation from the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., US, July 16, 2026

SAUL LOEB/Pool via REUTERS
Trump’s election claims add to a cloud of mistrustThe US president used a primetime address last night to argue America’s election system is broken and vulnerable to “rigging.” He pointed to documents he says show Chinese interference in the 2020 vote. But the evidence Trump offered, along with past assessments from the intelligence community, [...]
Betting on Trump
Farida Dowidar
Gabriel Perez, who has worked for the president since 2016, is under fire for his prediction market wagers, allegedly using his access to the speeches to make his bets. At times, Perez reportedly backed out of bets mid-speech when Trump skipped over portions of addresses that he’d bet would be mentioned. Kalshi, the platform used, detected unusual [...]
Hunger strike in India intensifies
Farida Dowidar
Sonam Wangchuk has long campaigned for the reform of India’s corrupt and inefficient system of entrance exams for higher education. That issue is also central to the recently formed Cockroach Janata Party protest movement, led by people decades younger than Wangchuk, who is 59-years-old. In India, millions of students compete vigorously for a [...]
​Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a session at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, Israel, on July 16, 2026.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a session at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, before it dissolves ahead of the 2026 Israeli elections, in Jerusalem, Israel, on July 16, 2026.

REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
It’s official: on Sunday, Israel’s parliament affirmed that the country will hold a national election on Oct. 27. It will be the first time that Israelis head to the polls since the Hamas attacks on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent wars in Gaza, southern Lebanon, and Iran.The big question in this election yet again is whether Benjamin [...]