Hard Numbers: Israel's bonfire breakup, China's second wave, Tequila's pandemic boom, UK economy's collapse

May 13, 2020

320: Police in Israel arrested 320 worshippers of a 2nd century Jewish mystic after they rioted against a coronavirus-related prohibition on visiting his tomb. The annual Lag Ba-Omer festival usually draws thousands of people for days of praying and dancing around bonfires. This year, it drew people to jail.

13:China's northeastern Jilin region, which borders North Korea and Russia, hasemergedas the potential source of a second wave of COVID-19 infections in the country. With 13 locally-transmitted cases reported, partial lockdowns have already been imposed

60: As Americans drink up while locked down, Mexico's tequila distillers are toasting to a huge export boom: US sales of the spiritjumped 60 percentin April. The industry, which employs 70,000 people, is a rare bright spot for Mexico – the IMFsaysthis year the country will suffer the biggest GDP hit of any large Latin American economy except Venezuela.

5.8: The British economy shrank by 5.8 percent in March, the sharpest decline since the government started tracking monthly data in 1997. With the economy paralyzed by lockdowns, the Bank of England forecasts an overall contraction of 14 percent this year, the largest annual drop since 1701.

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's bonfire breakup, China's second wave, Tequila's pandemic boom, UK economy's collapse

GZEROMEDIA

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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.

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

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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's bonfire breakup, China's second wave, Tequila's pandemic boom, UK economy's collapse

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.