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Hard Numbers: Chinese jabs for Mexico, EU drops fugitive Catalans’ immunity, US protects Venezuelans, Philippine red-tagging
Gabriella Turrisi
36 million: Mexico, with the world's third highest COVID death toll, has ordered a total of 36 million doses of Chinese-made vaccines — a third of which are from the still-unapproved Sinopharm shot — amid growing uncertainty over the efficacy of all jabs from China. The country's lackluster vaccine rollout has been heavily criticized, and the US recently turned down a request from the Mexican president to send vaccines to its southern neighbor for the time being.
400: The European Parliament has voted to lift the immunity of Carles Puigdemont, the former president of the Spanish autonomous region of Catalonia, and two other former Catalan MEPs accused by Spain of sedition for unilaterally declaring Catalan independence in October 2017. The move to strip Puigdemont's immunity, which strengthens Spain's legal case to extradite all three fugitive Catalan politicians from Belgium, was supported by EU 400 lawmakers and rejected by 248, with 45 abstentions.
320,000: The Biden administration has granted temporary protected status to around 320,000 undocumented Venezuelans in the US. It's yet another reversal of former president Trump's immigration policies, and follows Colombia's recent decision to regularize a whopping 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants that fled the country's political, economic and humanitarian crisis.
9: Philippine police killed nine suspected communist insurgents over the weekend as part of hardline President Rodrigo Duterte's fresh crackdown on the rebel New People's Army. Duterte — who recently encouraged cops to shoot to kill armed guerrillas — has denied claims by human rights groups that he is "red-tagging" political opponents as terrorists to justify extrajudicial executions.The Pentagon is going all-in on AI warfare. Ian Bremmer breaks down what that means, how it happened, and what's at stake when machines start making targeting decisions.
Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.
Israel’s right-wing government has overseen a record expansion of settlements in the West Bank in recent years. The settlements, which are illegal under international law, are driving the displacement of Palestinians. One proposal the government is now advancing is the controversial E1 settlement plan, which would effectively slice the West Bank in two and severely undermine Palestinian aspirations for a contiguous state.
More than 70% of the earth’s surface is covered in good old H2O, so it would seem there’s plenty to go around. But the vast majority, at least 97%, is contained in the oceans as saltwater. The growing scarcity of freshwater for drinking, cooking, industrial, and agricultural uses is quickly moving water up as a global risk. In fact, our parent company, Eurasia Group, added it to its Top Risks list for 2026 as “The water weapon.”