Hard Numbers: Bloomberg helps felons vote, China goes net zero, Russian dissident discharged, Facebook fake accounts

US billionaire and philanthropist Mike Bloomberg during his short-lived presidential primary campaign. Reuters

16 million: US billionaire (and failed 2020 presidential candidate) Mike Bloomberg has helped raise $16 million to help former felons in Florida pay their outstanding court debts so they can vote in the November election. Florida, a traditional swing state in the US electoral college system, is a must-win for President Trump to get reelected.

2060: China, the world's top producer of greenhouse gas emissions, has pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2060. It's the first time that Beijing has made a concrete "net zero" carbon commitment, which will entail scaling up its (voluntary) national emissions cuts under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

32: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was released from a German hospital 32 days after being taken there following his poisoning in Russia. Germany and most other Western governments — although not US President Donald Trump — have concluded that Navalny was deliberately poisoned with Novochik, a Soviet-era nerve agent normally restricted to the Russian military and intelligence services.

212: Facebook removed 212 fake accounts, most of them linked to China, for violating its policy against "coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity" in the Philippines and the US. The vast majority of the activity reached the accounts of hundreds of thousands of Filipino Facebook users, and regularly tagged critics of President Rodrigo Duterte (who is often, but not always, pro-China).

More from GZERO Media

Police arrest Emory economics professor Caroline Fohlin during a rally in which Pro-Palestinian protestors set up an encampment at the Emory Campus in Atlanta, on Thursday, April 25, 2024.
Arvin Temkar/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM

Pro-Palestinian student demonstrations and encampments have popped up at dozens of US universities in recent weeks. Columbia University – where protests began – and other elite schools in the Northeast have grabbed plenty of headlines, but where they are facing the harshest pushback – and could ultimately help Republicans win back the White House – is in the South.

A cannabis rights activist waves a flag outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 24, 2022.
Alejandro Alvarez/Reuters

The Biden admin. says it’s high time to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, and it wants to knock it from Schedule I to Schedule III — meaning it would no longer be grouped with heroin and LSD.

Supporters and armed members of the Fatah movement protest against the Palestinian Hamas government during a rally in Jabalya camp September 22, 2006.
REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Beijing, already a global economic power, wants to cut a larger figure in diplomacy, cultivating an image as a more honest broker than the US, with closer ties to the so-called “Global South.”

TikTok logo on a phone surrounded by the American, Israeli, and Chinese flags.
Jess Frampton

Last Wednesday, as part of the sweeping foreign-aid package that included much-neededfunding for Ukraine’s defense, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill requiring that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the popular video-sharing app to an American buyer within a year or face a ban in the United States.

Russia And China benefit from US infighting, says David Sanger | GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

On GZERO World, Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times correspondent David Sanger argues that China's rise and Russia's aggressive stance signal a new era of major power competition, with both countries fueling instability in the US to distract from their strategic ambitions.

NYPD officers arrive at Columbia University on April 30, 2024, to clear demonstrators from an occupied hall on campus.

John Lamparski/NurPhoto via Reuters

Last night, hundreds of NYPD officers entered Columbia University in riot gear, one night after students occupied a building on campus and 13 days after students pitched an encampment that threw kerosene on a student movement against the war in Gaza.

Israel seems intent on Rafah invasion despite global backlash | Ian Bremmer | World In :60

How will the international community respond to an Israeli invasion of Rafah? How would a Trump presidency be different from his first term? Are growing US campus protests a sign of a chaotic election in November? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.