Hard Numbers

23: After Mexico's deadliest year in decades, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is cutting the country's national security budget by 23 percent in 2019, compared to the average levels under his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto. AMLO is moving funds away from traditional security forces and toward a newly constituted National Guard, which is expected to enlist 60-thousand plus soldiers.

240: French authorities arrested 240 gilets jaunes, or "Yellow Vest," protesters over the weekend. The demonstrations, which are now entering their 19^th week, have recently been smaller but much more violent – with participants overturning cars, looting, and setting important Parisian landmarks on fire.

11: Eleven babies died in less than 24 hours in Tunisia last week, where a confluence of poor economic conditions and few opportunities caused half of newly registered doctors to leave the country to work abroad in 2018. Six years on from the only successful Arab Spring revolution, a worsening healthcare system could become a political problem in Tunisia.

140,000: Chinese authorities have shut down more than 140,000 online blogs and deleted more than 500,000 articles for containing what they claim is false information or obscenities since December. Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government isn't shying away from going after the country's most widely-read writers.