Hard Numbers: Curveball drama, Development & the deep blue sea, Turkey hikes rates, Somali pirates plot comeback

March 21, 2024

Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers and his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara watch Major League Baseball's season-opening game against the San Diego Padres at Seoul's Gocheok Sky Dome on March 20, 2024

REUTERS

4.5 million: At least $4.5 million in wire transfers sent from the bank account of American baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani has reportedly ended up with a California bookmaker now under federal investigation. Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s longtime friend and interpreter, says the ballplayer was generously paying off Mizuhara’s gambling debt. A day later, Ohtani’s lawyer claimed Mizuhara had robbed his client. Stay tuned.

2: In competition with China, Russia, and others to reach large deposits of cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese buried beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean, India has applied to the UN-affiliated International Seabed Authority for two new deep-sea exploration licenses. (India already has two others. China has five total, and Russia has four.) These minerals are essential for the development of solar and wind power, electric vehicles, and battery technology.

5: Turkey’s Central Bank surprised just about everyone on Thursday by raising its main interest rate by 5 percentage points to 50%. The move comes ahead of important local elections on March 31, signaling that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is allowing central banker Mehmet Simsek to set rates without political interference.

20: As Yemen’s Houthis make headlines by firing on shipping hundreds of miles to the north to protest Israel’s operations in Gaza, Somali pirates are using the distraction to stage a comeback. They’ve launched at least 20 attempted ship hijackings since November, once again driving up shipping costs.

Stop with the “1930s” stuff

Café Esplanade, a fancy coffee shop that was designed by a celebrated modernist architect and frequented by many from Brno’s once-thriving Jewish community.

Brno Architecture Manual

A woman at the recent United for Israel March at Columbia University told GZERO Senior Writer Alex Kliment that the school itself had become “like 1939 Germany, and I don’t say that lightly.” Kliment doesn't say this lightly either: Get a hold of yourselves.

Hard Numbers: Curveball drama, Development & the deep blue sea, Turkey hikes rates, Somali pirates plot comeback

GZEROMEDIA

More from GZERO Media

Stop with the “1930s” stuff

A woman at the recent United for Israel March at Columbia University told GZERO Senior Writer Alex Kliment that the school itself had become “like 1939 Germany, and I don’t say that lightly.” Kliment doesn't say this lightly either: Get a hold of yourselves.

Georgians take to the streets against ‘foreign agent’ law

Protests against a controversial “foreign agent” bill in Georgia this week have led to violent police crackdowns in the capital, Tbilisi.

Student protests go global

As police ramp up efforts to dismantle pro-Palestine encampments and demonstrations on US campuses, the student protests are going global.

Campus protests spill over into US political sphere

For the second week running, campus protests continue to dominate headlines. They are starting to spill into the political sphere, especially as efforts to quell demonstrations on college campuses nationwide intensify.

Is rogue Russia using banned weapons and tactics?

The US State Department accused Russia on Thursday of using a chemical weapon called chloropicrin against Ukrainian soldiers.

GZEROMEDIA

Panama’s wild election approaches

This weekend, Panamanians will elect a president after a roller-coaster campaign period that has featured a dog with an X (formerly Twitter) account and a popular former president hiding in the storage room of a foreign embassy.

Hard Numbers: Manila’s many protests, US views of China, Kenya floods, Germany’s baby bust, US-Russia staring contest in Niger

What’s in the antisemitism bill in Congress?

In response to roiling campus protests, the House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act on Wednesday.

You vs. the News: GZERO's Weekly News Quiz

Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.

From mission creep to political creep

What started as a reaction to the Hamas-orchestrated massacre of Oct. 7 and the extent of the deadly counteroffensive by the Israeli military has now grown to encompass wider, more amorphous issues, writes GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon.

Hard Numbers: Curveball drama, Development & the deep blue sea, Turkey hikes rates, Somali pirates plot comeback

GZEROMEDIA

Subscribe to GZERO Media's newsletter: Signal

More from GZERO Media

A woman at the recent United for Israel March at Columbia University told GZERO Senior Writer Alex Kliment that the school itself had become “like 1939 Germany, and I don’t say that lightly.” Kliment doesn't say this lightly either: Get a hold of yourselves.

Protests against a controversial “foreign agent” bill in Georgia this week have led to violent police crackdowns in the capital, Tbilisi.

As police ramp up efforts to dismantle pro-Palestine encampments and demonstrations on US campuses, the student protests are going global.

For the second week running, campus protests continue to dominate headlines. They are starting to spill into the political sphere, especially as efforts to quell demonstrations on college campuses nationwide intensify.

The US State Department accused Russia on Thursday of using a chemical weapon called chloropicrin against Ukrainian soldiers.

GZEROMEDIA

Subscribe to GZERO Media's newsletter: Signal

This weekend, Panamanians will elect a president after a roller-coaster campaign period that has featured a dog with an X (formerly Twitter) account and a popular former president hiding in the storage room of a foreign embassy.

In response to roiling campus protests, the House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act on Wednesday.

Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.

What started as a reaction to the Hamas-orchestrated massacre of Oct. 7 and the extent of the deadly counteroffensive by the Israeli military has now grown to encompass wider, more amorphous issues, writes GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon.