17: Stricken by the worst drought in its history, Taiwan's government has ordered its semiconductor manufacturing hubs to cut water consumption by 17 percent. The restrictions will make life even harder for TSMC, the world's largest supplier of microchips, amid an ongoing global semiconductor shortage.
19,610: Malawi has incinerated 19,610 expired doses of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, a first in Africa. The country's health authorities say they lit the bonfire to reassure vaccine-hesitant Malawians wary of getting jabs past their due date.
2.5 million: Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, wants the US State Department to stop funding local anti-corruption NGOs that "campaign against us." AMLO claims that one of these organizations, Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, has received some $2.5 million in USAID money.
6: The governor of Texas has signed a new law banning abortions as early as six weeks. That's before most women even know they are pregnant. Texas is the latest US state to pass laws restricting abortion, just months before the Supreme Court will hear a case from Missouri that could threaten its own 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, which paved the way to legalize abortion in America.
