Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

Hard Numbers: Shenzhen lockdown, anti-war spam, Bitcoin bond, Saudi mass execution

Hard Numbers: Shenzhen lockdown, anti-war spam, Bitcoin bond, Saudi mass execution
Annie Gugliotta & Jess Frampton
Make us preferred on Google

17.5 million: The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen will go into lockdown and test its entire population of 17.5 million three times after logging 60 COVID infections on Sunday. Xi Jinping clearly has no plans to relax his Draconian zero-COVID policy anytime soon.


150: A Norwegian computer scientist has developed a website allowing anyone to spam 150 Russian emails at a time with messages about the war in Ukraine. Activists and hackers are getting increasingly creative with ways to circumvent Russian censorship.

1 billion: El Salvador, the only country that accepts Bitcoin as legal tender, now wants to raise $1 billion with a 10-year Bitcoin bond set to launch this week. Crypto-loving President Nayib Bukele wants to use the money to pay off debt and build a Bitcoin City.

81: Saudi Arabia executed 81 men on Saturday, its largest mass execution ever. Murder, terrorism, and holding “deviant beliefs” were among the offenses. One was Syrian and seven were from Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has been fighting a long proxy war with Iran.

More For You

Washington’s controversial new approach to foreign aid
What do countries receiving US foreign aid owe Washington? Since returning to power in 2025, the Trump administration has drastically changed the answer to this question, pursuing an ‘America First’ philosophy that is dramatically more transactional: the US will give you money, but you must give the US something valuable in return.In the [...]
People wearing protective masks walk through the street as haze from wildfires shrouds the area in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia, October 14, 2026.

People wearing protective masks walk through the street as haze from wildfires shrouds the area in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia, October 14, 2026.

REUTERS/Arief Rahman Septian Prathama
Indonesia’s wildfires ignite regional tensionsIndonesia’s worst wildfires in a decade are quickly becoming a domestic and international headache for President Prabowo Subianto. He has so far refused to declare a national emergency, which would free up more resources to fight the blazes. Prabowo says the government has things under control without [...]
Senegal’s LGBTQ+ crackdown
Lottie Tellyn
Senegalese LGBTQ+ people have also faced forced HIV testing and challenges getting legal representation amid a wider crackdown. As a candidate in the 2024 election, now-president Bassirou Diomaye Faye pledged to strengthen existing laws that criminalized same-sex relations. In March the government doubled the maximum prison term for same-sex [...]
Refugees and migrants arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos, November 10, 2015. Since the start of the year, over 590,000 people have crossed into Greece, the frontline of a massive westward population shift from war-ravaged Syria and beyond.

Refugees and migrants arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos, November 10, 2015. Since the start of the year, over 590,000 people have crossed into Greece, the frontline of a massive westward population shift from war-ravaged Syria and beyond.

REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
Anti-immigration political parties are making big gains across Europe these days. Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party just won two major state parliamentary elections, campaigning in part on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Spain’s far-right Vox party continues to grow in popularity, especially after a recent surge of [...]