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A man is vaccinated at a monkeypox vaccination clinic run by CIUSSS public health authorities in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, June 6, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Mpox hits the 6ix, Canadian rail strike looms, sexual assaults in the US military go undercounted, J&J looks to close out talcum powder suit, the problem with city birds
2: The two largest Canadian rail companies are threateningto lock out their employees as soon as Aug. 22 amid stalled labor talks with the Teamsters union. Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National Railway are at loggerheads with the union over a new contract, with the Teamsters demanding more rail safety guarantees. Last week a federal mediator was brought in to speed up the talks.
6.48 billion: American pharma giant Johnson & Johnson is preparing to show it has widespread support for a proposed $6.48 billion bankruptcy settlement with claimants who say its talcum powder products gave them cancer. Tens of thousands of claimants were given until late July to vote on the proposal, and a 75% threshold is required for approval. J&J is attempting to offload the liability onto a newly created subsidiary in a maneuver that has already been rejected twice by federal judges.
1/4: Nearly one quarter of active-duty women in the US military experienced sexual assault between 2001 and 2021, according to a new study by Brown University’s Costs of War Project. Black women and LGBTQ service members were disproportionately likely to be victims, said the report, which also estimated that the number of sexual assault cases in the military in 2021 and 2023 was likely twice as high as Pentagon estimates, reaching more than 70,000 in each of those years.
3: You may remember the children’s story about “country mouse and city mouse,” but now there’s “country bird and city bird” — and in this tale, the urban fowl are particularly foul. A new global study says city-dwelling birds — ducks, crows, gulls, and geese, in particular — are three times more likely than their country cousins to host antibiotic-resistant strains of disease. “Anti-microbial resistance,” as it’s known, is a major concern for epidemiologists, especially given the increased transmission of disease from animals to humans.
A herd of cows standing on top of a lush green field.
Hard Numbers: Danes tax cow farts, SCOTUS sides with Biden (on social), Deadly mpox strain hits DRC, China’s lunar probe returns
6-3: In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the government can go to combat misinformation on social media when it comes to topics like COVID-19 and election security. The case stemmed from administration efforts to have platforms remove posts that touched on issues like COVID vaccines and election fraud.
8,000: There have been nearly 8,000 cases of a new strain of mpox, aka monkeypox, this year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including 384 deaths – almost half of which were children under 15. The virus, which can cause lesions across the whole body, has been spreading at a worrying rate, risking cross-border and international spread of the virus.
4.5 billion: China’s lunar probe has returned to Earth with the first-ever samples from the unexplored far side of the moon. The Chang’e-6 landed in the Inner Mongolia desert on Tuesday after a nearly two-month mission that was fraught with risk. Scientists hope the samples will help test theories about how the moon was formed 4.5 billion years ago and whether it resulted from a collision with a very early version of Earth.man collects crude oil from a mini depot at an illegal oil refinery site near river Nun in Nigeria's oil state of Bayelsa.
Hard Numbers: Nigeria’s dwindling oil output, Baltics and Poland ban Russians, Puerto Rico goes dark, China’s monkeypox warning
32: Nigeria’s oil output has hit a 32-year low due to underinvestment in oil infrastructure as well as widespread crude oil theft by gangs and terrorists. Crucially, the country has been unable to capitalize on increased crude oil prices amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
4: Four European states – Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – closed their doors to Russian tourists on Monday due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Finland, which also borders Russia, opted out of the ban, saying it did not want to reject visas to Russians granted by other EU states under the Schengen zone agreement.
1.3 million: More than 1.3 million Puerto Ricans were without power Monday after Hurricane Fiona knocked the power grid offline. This comes almost exactly five years after Hurricane Maria landed in Puerto Rico, killing 3,000 people and destroying infrastructure, much of which has not been fully restored.
1: China’s health ministry told residents to avoid touching any foreigners after the first case of monkeypox was recorded in the southwestern city of Chongqing. This comes amid rumors that Beijing might look to ease its restrictive zero-COVID policy after the Communist Party holds its five-yearly congress next month.
Coronavirus vs monkeypox
The reigning pandemic champs aren't happy about this upstart challenger -- but maybe there's a deal to be made?
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How China could retaliate after Pelosi's Taiwan trip
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How could China possibly hit back over Nancy Pelosi's Taiwan trip?
Well, it was highly unlikely they were going to interfere with her getting onto the island and ditto with her leaving it. But we've already seen announcements of lots of military exercises all around Taiwan, potentially missile tests going over Taiwan through Taiwanese airspace. That would be unprecedented as a provocation. Beyond that, there have been sanctions already on over a hundred Taiwanese companies that provide food into China. I can certainly imagine more limitations on Taiwanese companies doing business with the mainland. And the real question is, do they change the status quo with Taiwan either economically or diplomatically during the Party Congress coming up where Xi Jinping is supposed to get his third term?
I do believe that we are going to see a significant amount of retaliation. The Chinese were very public and very consistent in their warnings. And it feels like from the Chinese perspective, a great loss of face as Xi Jinping is planning to secure his third term.
But Pelosi decided to go anyway. The Americans have the ability to escalate and hit back. Biden administration has warned the Chinese not to escalate. I do think that the Chinese, given their economic challenges right now, are not looking for a massive crisis. But this is going to significantly deteriorate the relations between two most powerful countries in the world. That's what we are looking at right now.
Will the death of the al-Qaida leader shift the dynamic between the US, Pakistan and the Taliban?
I mean, it's a big deal, of course, for any American president to kill al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida and critical deputy even back in 9/11, helping to orchestrate the attacks against the United States at that point. I mean, it's a big deal and it's a big deal to the Americans who were able to pull that off with no collateral damage without having any troops on the ground, making you wonder why it was the US had boots on the ground in Afghanistan for such a long time when they were normally there in principle, not to rebuild Afghanistan, but to ensure that the Afghan government were not harboring terrorists that could launch attacks against the US or its ally. So, anyway, I don't think the dynamic changes because the Taliban has obviously been lying as we all knew about not harboring any terrorist. This leader of al-Qaida was in a property that belonged to a deputy of the leader of the Taliban. It's very obvious that they were helping him and fully aware that he was there and there are going to be more attacks I'm sure from the US going forward. The US considers the Taliban government a pariah. They have frozen their reserves.
There's been a lot of humanitarian outcry about that. This clearly justifies the US position and the Taliban not getting any access to their cash going forward. I think the relationship between the US and Afghanistan will continue to be a very much arms length and antagonistic. And to the extent that the Pakistan government is seen as providing some support and engagement for that, even if you don't have strong open diplomatic relations does mean that Pakistan will also continue to be on the wrong side of US policy. And of course, they're much closer to China these days. So that's not much changing, but certainly entrenchment of the existing US policy.
Finally, with California and Illinois joining New York to declare states of emergency over monkeypox, will the US do better to react this time?
It does not seem that way in the sense that the Americans don't have a great testing protocol in place for monkeypox. Vaccines do exist. It took the US a fair amount of time to acquire them. It shouldn't be a state of emergency. This should be something the Americans, if they were really learning lessons from COVID, would've been on top of immediately with an effort to educate, inform, and contain. And that's not where we are, in part because it is a disease that is harder to transmit. And also where there is an effective vaccine that already is in place. And you're not looking at significant lethality. But what if it were? And the answer to that is we'd be in a much worse place. And it's unfortunate to see that on the back of two and a half years of pandemic.
So that's where we are. I hope everyone's well. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
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The Sierra Leone-flagged ship Razoni leaves the sea port in Odesa after restarting grain export, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Grain ship finally departs Odesa, EU cash to Ukraine, monkeypox spreads in Brazil, BoE mulls big rate hike
26,000: The first grain-filled ship to leave the Black Sea port of Odesa set sail on Monday. Carrying 26,000 metric tonnes of Ukrainian corn, the ship will first stop in Istanbul en route to Lebanon.
1 billion: The EU disbursed 500 million euros on Monday to Ukraine, and another 500 million is set to drop on Tuesday. EU Commission VP Valdis Dombrovskis said the billion euro loan is the first part of a 9 billion euros financial package to help Ukraine amid the war, and that the EU will provide support “for as long as it takes.”
1,000: Brazil’s health ministry reports the country is battling close to 1,000 cases of monkeypox, with the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro especially hard hit. Brazil has recorded one death from the virus; Spain has reported two.
25: While the Bank of England has raised interest rates by .25 percentage points several times since December, it is now mulling its highest benchmark rate in 25 years. The bank will announce on Thursday whether its new benchmark rate is 1.75% – a .50 percentage point hike.
Russia cutting Nord Stream 1 gas to undermine European leaders
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60:
Is Russia waging a gas war with Europe?
They certainly are. You have Nord Stream 1 back online after scheduled maintenance, and first was 40%, now 20% of normal volumes. Technical problem, that's what the Russians say. But of course, in reality it is because they know that the Europeans are moving to diversify away from Russian energy as fast as possible and the Russians are not letting them do it on their timeframe. Winter's coming and Russia's best opportunity to undermine European leaders and get a whole bunch of Europeans saying, "What are you doing? Why are you sanctioning the Russians, you're hurting us. We are the ones that are facing the economic pain as a consequence. We don't want you to." A bigger peace movement is if they make life impossible for the Europeans during winter this year. So, I mean, frankly, I'd be surprised if you have any Russian gas go into Germany, come winter this year. The Germans are aware of that possibility and they are very concerned about it. By the way, if the worse comes to worst you're talking about a 2a to 3% contraction of the EU economy. It's a big deal, but it's not a disaster. Next year will be easier for the Europeans.
Is the world prepared to combat the growing global monkeypox outbreak?
I wish we weren't talking about another major outbreak. We're talking about tens of thousands of cases already around the world, and we don't have enough vaccines, even though we do have vaccines for it. We don't have enough monitoring, even though we've just been through a global pandemic. The good news is the vaccine works. The good news is it's very rarely lethal, and it's not leading to huge numbers of hospitalization. So I'm not anywhere close to as worried about monkeypox as we have been about COVID. But still this is absolutely a serious disease and it is not one we are anywhere close to containing, hence the World Health Organization's statement over this week.
How is the UK race going to become the next prime minister?
Well, I mean, it's going in orderly fashion. No one is going to claim that it was rigged or that it's unfair or that you should stop the steal. No, one's saying that in the United Kingdom; no one said that in France during parliament elections. No one said that in Germany, when Scholz became chancellor. Only the United States among advanced industrial democracies; maybe we should learn something from that. But more importantly, we've got two serious contenders, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. Rishi kind of more the technocrat and Liz Truss more the populist. She certainly would not be the favorite in terms of EU-UK relations, though she does have more of the conservative base on her side. Look, it's going to be a closely run event. Could go either way from my perspective at this point. But what we do know is that Boris Johnson very soon will be no more.
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The myth of feeling safe from the pandemic: former CDC chief Tom Frieden
Although COVID will likely become endemic sometime this year in some parts of the world, the virus will still rage on everywhere else.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer catches out on the pandemic's state of play with former CDC chief Tom Frieden, who has a message for everyone who hasn't gotten vaxxed yet: do it, since new variants could emerge and make the virus more deadly.
Frieden says he's stunned by how infectious COVID is compared to other diseases — and that's why those who claim they can predict what's going to happen in a few weeks don't know what they're talking about.
Frieden thinks China should get better vaccines to the most vulnerable, and accept "almost" zero-COVID, like Singapore.
If we've learned anything from COVID, it's that we need to invest a lot more in public health. And now that many parts of the world have moved on from COVID, should we be worried about monkeypox?
Certainly, but we need to know more about the disease, Frieden tells Bremmer.