Hard Numbers

7: A no-deal Brexit would push the UK into recession and hit its economy seven times harder than the rest of the EU, the IMF forecast on Tuesday.

529 billion: Remittances (money sent home by immigrants) to low- and middle-income countries set a record in 2018, according to the World Bank. The total reached $529 billion, a sum greater than foreign investment in the developing world during the same period.

11: More evidence the US economy remains strong: According to official data released in March, the US economy had 7.6 million unfilled jobs at the end of January, but just 6.5 million people looking for work. That was the 11th straight month the number of US job openings topped the number of job seekers.

85: By 2050, up to 85 percent of the world's French speakers will live in Africa, according to estimates from an organization that monitors language statistics. That's up from about 44 percent of all French speakers today. The expected increase will come mainly from rising birth rates in French-speaking African countries but also higher rates of French language study in both English and Portuguese-speaking African countries.

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President Donald Trump meets with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron.
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614: For all the US efforts to end it, the Russia-Ukraine war is showing no signs of slowing down, as Moscow fired 614 drones and other missiles at its neighbor.

Members of the Hargeisa Basketball Girls team wrapped in the Somaliland flags walk on Road Number One during the Independence Day Eve celebrations in Hargeisa, Somaliland, on May 17, 2024.
REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri

Last week, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) became the latest American conservative to voice support for Somaliland, as he publicly urged the Trump administration to recognize it as a country. Doing so would come with benefits and risks.