Hard Numbers: Israel PM hopeful, Facebook board punts on Trump, Japan’s COVID squid, US population declining

May 05, 2021

Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid gestures as he delivers a speech following the announcement of exit polls in Israel's general election at his party headquarters in Tel Aviv.

REUTERS/Amir Cohen

28: Yair Lapid, leader of Israel's opposition Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party, has 28 days to form a new government. President Reuven Rivlin tapped Lapid after incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to cobble together a governing coalition by Tuesday's midnight deadline, further prolonging Israel's political stalemate.

6: Facebook has six months to decide whether to reinstate or permanently ban former US president Donald Trump on its platform, its oversight board has ruled (or punted, depending on your view). Facebook dropped Trump for his role in inciting the US Capitol insurrection on January 6.

25 million: A Japanese town has spent 25 million yen (almost $229,000) in COVID relief money to build a life-size statue of a giant squid. The mayor's office hopes the attraction will help boost tourism, but netizens complain it's a waste of funds needed to help local economies recover from the pandemic.

4: The number of births in the US dropped by 4 percent in 2020, double the average rate of decline in the past six years, according to new CDC data. This means that America's population is now below replacement levels, with more people dying than being born each day.

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: Israel PM hopeful, Facebook board punts on Trump, Japan’s COVID squid, US population declining

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

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: Israel PM hopeful, Facebook board punts on Trump, Japan’s COVID squid, US population declining

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.