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Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris shakes hands with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, as they meet in the Vice President's Ceremonial Office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington, on Sept. 26, 2024.
Hard Numbers: US sends billions to Ukraine, Poland’s PM takes aim at beavers, NYC adopts new tool to battle rats, Japan finds longtime death row inmate innocent
120,000: You’ve heard of the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror. But what about the war on beavers? Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is publicly blaming the country’s 120,000 beavers for exacerbating the deadly floods that battered central Europe and killed at least 16. Tusk called on Poles to “do whatever” to protect dikes, after saying beaver dams can damage riverbanks and weaken levees. “Beaver experts” (yes, they’re a thing) say that only a small percentage are problematic and that their dams can actually help slow river flows.
12: Speaking of a war on rodents, New York City is getting a new tool for its war on rats (a war it’s always losing). The city council passed a bill introducing rat contraceptives in a 12-month pilot problem. The bill’s sponsor, Council Member Shaun Abreu, says, “We can’t poison our way out of the rat problem, but we can certainly do a lot of damage trying.”
46: The world’s longest-serving death row inmate — Japan’s Iwao Hakamada — was acquitted after decades in solitary confinement for the alleged murders of his boss, the man’s wife, and their children. After 46 years of living on death row, he was freed in 2014 and granted a retrial. That trial has now proven that investigators fabricated the original evidence used against him. Japan and the United States are the only members of the G7 who still use the death penalty.FILE PHOTO: 08 March 2019, Tierpark Berlin: Grass rats in their cage in the Tierpark Berlin.
Another invasion of Ukraine
First, it was Russia. Now, it’s… rodents? The trenches in Eastern Ukraine have become infested with an army of mice and rats, wreaking havoc on soldiers’ mental and physical health.
Why now? Experts say the reason for the rodentine irruption can be found in the fields: War limits the harvesting of crops, leaving more for rodents to feast on. This helps them thrive and reproduce, resulting in exponentially more mice and rats looking for warmth and food in the trenches.
While there, they spread disease, chew through rations, and make themselves at home inside military equipment – here, for example, are hundreds of mice pouring out of a Russian tank. Crucially, their nocturnal gnawings also rob soldiers of desperately needed sleep.
The rat problem reflects a bigger issue: The rats are skittering through a stalemate. Both sides are ramping up air attacks, but the ground game – the focus of the conflict – has ground down. The only thing that would break the deadlock is a massive upgrade in military technology or manpower for one side or the other, but that doesn’t look likely. Russia is hemmed in by sanctions, while Ukraine is constrained by weakening Western support. Both sides are wary of expanding conscription anymore.
The ratting is on the wall: With the trenches becoming ever more entrenched, a de facto partition of Ukraine is becoming more likely by the day. (See our Eurasia Group friends’ 2024 Top Risk on this very subject.)Waste pickers roam collecting waste in Durban, South Africa
Hard Numbers: South African unemployment, migrant Med deaths mount, Argentina devalues Peso, and NYC rat sightings are … down
1,800: According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 1,800 migrants have died this year trying to reach Europe via the central Mediterranean route, the deadliest of the world’s migrant routes. This route claimed 11 more lives on Monday when a boat carrying Tunisian and sub-Saharan African migrants sank off Tunisia’s coast.
18: Following libertarian populist Javier Milei’s unexpected success in Sunday’s primary in Argentina, the government decided on Monday to devalue the peso by 18% in a move that analysts say was likely discussed with the IMF. This is meant to head off uncertainty amid concerns that Milei, if he wins the presidency this autumn, wants to dollarize the economy and do away with Argentina’s central bank, plans that are bound to cause market instability.
20: New York City’s newly appointed rat czar recently led Harlem in its first-ever Anti-Rat Day of Action, an initiative that may help explain why rat sightings in the Big Apple were down 20% year on year in July. (P.S.: This hard number is a hint for this week’s crossword puzzle!)
AI generated images of armed rats
New Zealand declares war … on rats
It is a truth universally acknowledged that where there are humans there are, generally, rats. As humans have moved about the world, the rats have followed to feast on their crops, their garbage – and in the case of New Zealand – their native birds.
There are, to be fair, a few exceptions. Two, to be precise. One is Alberta, Canada, which launched a massive anti-rat mobilization in the 1950s and has been rat-free since. The other is South Georgia Island in the southern Atlantic Ocean, which was declared rat-free in 2018, after the government deployed helicopters to rain poison pellets from the sky.
Now New Zealand aims to become the third. The island nation is launching Predator Free 2050 Ltd, a public body that hopes to protect native birds by eradicating all rats. Their chances of success? Historians of the rat vs. human power struggle would say: “slim.”
Alberta’s war on rats was defensive – a whole-of-society mobilization unleashed before the rodents had shown up in large numbers. The borderlands with already-infested Saskatchewan were seeded with rat poison, hundreds of exterminators would fan out after a single sighting, and propaganda posters mobilized the population to vigilance.
But New Zealand is already infested: Rats run rampant there, devouring 26 million birds a year, and the country has just 36 rat catchers armed with peanut butter and poison.
As the next battle in the unending war between rats and mankind unfolds, the score stands at …
- Humans: 2 territories
- Rats: rest of the world
Your move, Kiwis.