Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
Hard Numbers
The Snoopy balloon prepares to join the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on West 77th street in New York, on November 23, 2023.
100: This Thursday marks 100 years since the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade first took New York City by storm with “floats, brass bands ... and clowns in profusion.” The event – famous for its seven-story tall balloons of cartoon characters – was originally themed around Christmas, to whet people’s appetites for holiday shopping. The pageantry has had its run-ins with political issues and culture wars over the years. Last year’s installment, for example, drew boycott demands from ultra-conservative groups upset about the inclusion of two non-binary performers.
288,000: Economic need, meet political reality. To offset declining birth rates and the retirement of skilled workers, Germany will require an influx of as many as 288,000 foreign workers every year until 2040. Is that feasible at a moment when anti-immigrant backlash is one of the leitmotifs of German and wider European politics?
44: Pudge tried to dodge, but his plan was too plump by half. A South Korean man was sentenced to a suspended prison term for deliberately gaining more than 44 pounds in a bid to escape military service. South Korea runs a conscription system in which all able-bodied men serve for nearly two years.
2 million: President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of undocumented migrants has scared the stalks off of the US agriculture industry, where roughly half of the country’s 2 million farm workers are thought to lack legal status. Industry leaders warn that deportations from the fields could cause inflation to soar, and have sought assurances that Trump’s plans will focus more narrowly on undocumented migrants with criminal records.
1,006: Africa is home to some of the most vibrant tech hubs in the world – Lagos, Nairobi, and Cape Town among them – but also to increasingly sophisticated cybercrime operations. Over the past two months, Interpol has arrested 1,006 people across 19 African countries on charges of ransomware schemes, digital extortion, fraud, and trafficking. Those nabbed in the crackdown had scammed or fleeced at least 35,000 people out of nearly $200 million.Hard Numbers: Hacks galore, Hollywood dreams, US on top, Pokémon Go scan the world
A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration of a hacker.
3 million: Evidently, there’s hot demand for AI-related scripts in Hollywood. A thriller about artificial intelligence from a relatively unknown screenwriter named Natan Dotan just sold for $1.25 million, a number that will rise to $3 million if it’s turned into a film. Despite Hollywood’s perennial discomfort with AI infiltrating the film industry, maybe all of the hubbub has got them thinking that audiences will turn out for a good old-fashioned AI thriller.
36: Stanford researchers analyzed the AI capabilities of 36 countries and determined that the US significantly leads in most of the 42 areas studied — including research, private investment, and notable machine learning models. China, which leads in patents and journal citations, came in second, followed by the UK, India, and the UAE.
10 million: Niantic, the developer of the augmented reality game Pokémon Go, announced that it’s building an AI model to make a 3D world map using location data submitted by the game’s users. The company said it already has 10 million scanned locations.President-elect Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 14, 2024.
25: President-elect Donald Trump took aim at Canada and Mexico via Truth Social on Monday, posting about his plan to charge the countries — currently America’s No. 1 & No. 2 trading partners, — a whopping 25% tariff on all products entering the US. The tariff would be enacted on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump said, and would “remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He then posted that he would charge China, where the precursor chemicals to fentanyl are made, “an additional 10% tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America.”
49: Uruguay’s left-wing opposition leader Yamandú Orsiwon the small South American country’s presidential election with 49% of the vote in a neck-and-neck runoff contest on Sunday. It was yet another rebuke of an incumbent party — the theme of many global elections this year — but not to worry: Uruguay is remarkably stable, and Orsi is a moderate with no radical plans.
1: One crew member died on Monday when a DHL cargo flight crashed during its attempted landing in Vilnius, Lithuania, with surveillance video showing a huge ball of flames as the plane went down. Lithuanian officials said they could not rule out whether Russia played a role in the crash, following months of suspicions over Moscow’s possible role in other cases of sabotage against the German shipping giant. Germany, meanwhile, is sending investigators to Vilnius to aid with the probe.
3: Human Rights Watch has determined that an Israeli drone strike that killed three journalists in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians, which is a war crime. More than 3,500 people in Lebanon have died amid Israel’s invasion, and more than 1 million have been displaced from their homes in the 5.3-million-strong country.
300: Asylum applications in Ireland have spiked 300% so far this year – with a fourfold increase from Nigeria – compared to last. The rise has been driven by tougher immigration stances in the UK, including a quixotic plan to house asylum-seekers in Rwanda. The uptick is becoming a political issue in Ireland, with voters increasingly concerned by the impact of increased migration on scarce housing.Hard Numbers: North Koreans killed in Russia, Ireland approaches crucial vote, Pakistan locks down over Khan, Bitcoin to the moon!
FILE PHOTO: In the photos taken on January 31, 2024, Ukrainian soldiers are deployed in the middle of the conflict with Russia. Ukrainian Intelligence has stated that Russian forces "have already made use" of some missiles delivered to the country by North Korea as part of the invasion and has stressed that there is "cooperation between the two regimes" at a military and weapons.
500: Ukrainian media reported Sunday that a strike on North Korean forces operating in the Kursk region of Russia killed at least 500 troops, though Pyongyang has not (and probably won’t) confirm the figures. If true, it would be the first major casualty incident for the Korean People’s Army while fighting Ukraine, and the sheer number of deaths at once may be difficult for Pyongyang to explain at home.
20: The left-leaning Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein is polling at 20% ahead of elections on the Emerald Isle on Friday, neck-and-neck with the ruling Fine Gael party at 22%. Sinn Fein looks likely to be able to block Fine Gael and its coalition partner from forming a majority government, but it would need to majorly outperform polling to take charge of the government itself as other parties have sworn not to cooperate.
150: Pakistan’s government on Sunday blocked expressways leading into the capital, Islamabad, shut down cell phone and internet service, and placed shipping containers across major thoroughfares amid mass protests calling for the release of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The ex-cricket-star-turned-politician is facing 150 criminal charges (all of which he denies) and has been serving a three-year prison sentence since last year.
100,000: The cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin reached a value of $100,000 per token on Friday, a record high fueled by the expectation of a friendlier environment for crypto under the incoming Trump administration. Ten years ago, it was trading for about $350.Hard Numbers: Adani’s alleged big bribe, Ortega wants to promote his wife, Australians want teens off social media, Trump expands into knock-off guitars
Supporters of India's main opposition Congress party hold placards during a protest against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, after he was indicted in New York over his role in an alleged multibillion-dollar bribery and fraud scheme, in New Delhi, India, November 21, 2024.
250 million: The US Department of Justice charged Indian billionaire Gautam Adani for his alleged role in a yearslong bribery scheme, which included promising $250 million to Indian government officials for solar energy contracts. Adani is a key ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the opposition Indian National Congress is calling for a parliamentary investigation into the affair.
2: Nicaragua may soon have two presidents if Daniel Ortega’s proposal to elevate his wife to a “co-president” position passes the legislature, which is likely. The couple will also see their terms expanded to six years from five, deepening Ortega’s control over the small Central American state.
16: Teens under age 16 in Australia may soon find themselves kicked off social media if a bill in parliament banning children from sites like TikTok, Facebook, or Snapchat passes. The bill has wide support, and research showed 95% of Australian parents and caregivers said online safety was their toughest parenting challenge.
10,000: Feel like overpaying for a guitar? Donald Trump has just the axe for you, complete with his signature, for just $10,000. You’ll get an imitation of a Gibson Les Paul, with some MAGA imagery and Trump’s scrawl, to add to your collection of Trump merch like the Bible, golden sneakers, marked-up watches and, of course, cryptocurrency.
HARD NUMBERS: NW natural gas prices hit record lows, Solar company sues border authorities, Turkey prices tank as holiday approaches, RFK Jr. takes aim at AMA
An allegedly-enslaved Chinese worker labors at a building materials factory in China's Xinjiang region, 11 December 2010. Canadian authorities have tried to crack down on the import of Chinese products manufactured with forced labor.
1.04: Natural gas prices in western Canada and the northwestern US are athistoric lows as local producers continue to ramp up production. At the latest reading, the benchmark cost for a million British thermal units of gas was $1.04. British Columbia producers have been expanding output ahead of the opening of a liquefied natural gas export facility on the B.C. coast next year.
5 million: A Canadian solar panel firmhas launched a lawsuit against border authorities over their wrongful detainment of $5 million worth of panels from China suspected of having been made with forced labor. In 2020, Canada adopted rules to stop the import of products made with slave labor, above all in China’s Xinjiang province, where Beijing operates forced labor camps. Since then, about 50 shipments have been intercepted — only one was proven to violate the rules.
6: As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches in the US, Americans can be grateful for this: prices for turkey, the centerpiece of the holiday spread, aredown 6% this year, in part because of ebbing demand for the bird. Still, Turkey prices are 19% higher than they were before the pandemic.
10,000: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom president-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the US Health and Human Services Department, isreportedly devising a plan to remove the American Medical Association from its decades-old role in setting prices for the more than 10,000 medical services reimbursed by Medicare, the US insurance scheme for the elderly. The AMA has longargued that doctors aren’t compensated fairly, but critics decry the fees that the AMA itself takes for setting the price codes.Hard Numbers: Spain welcomes migrants, Giraffes need protection, Brazil uncovers a plot to kill Lula, Nigel Farage excluded from farmer protests
Several migrants on their arrival at the port of La Restinga, on September 22, 2024, in El Hierro, Canary Islands, Spain.
117,000: Federal wildlife officials are calling for giraffes to be given protection under the United States Endangered Species Act because their populations are declining so rapidly – with just about 117,000 wild giraffes left worldwide, down nearly 30% since the 1980s. If they are granted protection, import of their body parts would be restricted in the US and conservation funding would increase.
5: Brazilian police have arrested five people after uncovering a plot to kill President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after he won the 2022 election. The plot came to light as a part of the ongoing investigations into the storming of Congress by outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters following his loss. Four of the arrested were active members of the military and the fifth a member of the police force, and they allegedly planned to assassinate the president, his vice president and a member of the Supreme Court.
20: Outside of Downing St in the UK, farmers protested on Wednesday to convince Labour leaders to change their mind on implementing an inheritance tax that would mean farmers with assets over £1 million will be subject to a 20% levy. Political leaders from all parties were invited to speak. That is, with the exception of Reform UK leader and Brexit architect Nigel Farage, who was left out because organizers didn’t want the protest to become the “Nigel Farage show.”