Hard Numbers: Bukele 2024, German troops in Lithuania, Manipur unrest, Chinese deepfake scam
154: On Monday, El Salvador's strongman President Nayib Bukele officially registered to run for reelection next year. Although the Supreme Court — packed with Bukele loyalists — ruled in 2021 that this doesn't violate constitutional term limits, opposition lawyers say a second term is expressly forbidden by Art. 154.
4,000: Germany will permanently deploy 4,000 troops in Lithuania, as the Baltic nation has been demanding for years in order to protect NATO's eastern flank. It's the latest example of Germany’s changing defense policy amid the Zeitenwende ("historic shift") in response to Russia's war in Ukraine.
50: India's government has ordered the chief minister of northeast Manipur state to up his game on restoring peace there after more than 50 days of continued unrest. The violence erupted in early May, after the BJP-led state government granted the Meitei community — which accounts for half of the population — Scheduled Tribe status, giving them certain privileges that other Manipur minorities resent.
400,000: An influencer with almost 400,000 followers on Douyin (Chinese TikTok) had his account banned for scamming people into ordering fake Russian products from his e-commerce biz by masquerading as a Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine. The AI-generated “Pavel Korchatie" was exposed as a deepfake when users noticed that the IP addresses of the videos were located in Henan province, China.