Hard Numbers: Emojis are super geopolitical

80: More than 80 percent of the electronic voting systems currently used in the US are made by just three companies, according to a new report which warns that they are regulated less effectively than "colored pencils."

45: The number of countries suffering organized online political disinformation campaigns has shot up 45 percent since 2017, to a current total of 70, according to a recent report by Oxford researchers.

168: Last month the global tech consortium that strictly regulates the coding and use of emojis approved 168 new ones, bringing the total to more than 3,000. It turns out the geopolitics of emojis – from navigating Russian government opposition to a gay family emoji or China's pushback against the Taiwanese flag – are pretty interesting.

3.2 million: Traffic in the rickshaw-choked streets of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is so bad that it costs the city's people 3.2 million working hours every day, says the World Bank. A city plan to ban rickshaws has run into resistance from people who make a living off them, as well as critics who say the city lacks sufficient public transit alternatives.