HARD NUMBERS

99.6: Some 99.6% of people in Iceland who were watching TV on June 16 were tuned into Iceland’s first-ever World Cup match. Their team rewarded their attention with a stunning 1–1 draw vs. world football power Argentina. #HandOfCod

68: President Erdogan has expanded the number of religious schools across Turkey from 450 in 2003 to 4,500 today. His government increased the budget for religious education this year by 68 percent.

57: Need a more cost-effective approach to pension reform? Russia’s prime minister Dmitri Medvedev has proposed an increase in the retirement age for men to 65. Current World Bank data suggests that just 57 percent of Russian men will live to age 65, a percentage that hasn’t increased in 50 years.

16: El Salvador, a source of large numbers of would-be asylum seekers in the US, is the world’s most violent country that is not an active war zone. It’s typical for criminal gangs to demand bribes of local businesses. Salvadorans spend $756 million per year on extortion fees. The country’s central bank estimates that violence costs the country around 16 percent in GDP.

1:​ For the first time since 2012, the US was the world’s #1 recipient of new asylum applications, with 331,700 lodged in 2017, according to a new UN report. That’s a 27 percent increase from 2016 (262,000) and nearly double the number in 2015 (172,700).

More from GZERO Media

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk walk to the podium at the Presidential Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, for a press conference after their meeting on May 10, 2025.
Kyodo via Reuters Connect
The number of planes bought by Qatar.
Riley Callanan

The Qatari government’s gift of a $400 million plane to Donald Trump turned out to be quite the omen, as Doha welcomed the US president to town on Wednesday by announcing that it would buy $96 billion worth of Boeing jets, plus a red carpet and a brigade of camels.

As AI and data centers drive record-breaking power demand, Enbridge is stepping up to deliver reliable, always-on energy. From natural gas to renewables, Enbridge’s diverse mix supports the tech powering our lives. “Big tech wants partners who can deliver,” says CEO Greg Ebel. “They know we get things done.” With data needs growing fast, Enbridge is ready to fuel the future—securely, sustainably, and at scale. Read more.

It’s been three and a half years since I first laid out the idea of a technopolar world: one no longer dominated solely by states, but increasingly shaped – and sometimes steered – by a handful of powerful tech companies with the newfound ability to influence economies, societies, politics, and geopolitics.

Sen Van Hollen, a vocal Trump critic, on how the Democrats get back in the fight | GZERO World

In a clip from GZERO World’s latest episode, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen lays out what Democrats must do to reclaim political momentum—and it starts with ditching reactive politics. “Voters don’t like people who always seem to have their finger to the wind,” he says. “Probably if I’d done that, I wouldn’t have gone to El Salvador.”

Chicken eggs are showing in an incubator Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at Sunnyside Hatchery in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. They will be in the incubator for 21 days.

2.3: US inflation fell to 2.3% in April, as prices for airfare, hotels, and eggs — yes eggs! — plunged. Economists warned that inflationary effects of Trump’s tariffs, many of which have been temporarily suspended, could hit later in the year.