Hard Numbers: Minding mines in Ukraine, Bangladeshi manhunt, World Cup of gas, GOP crickets for Trump
61,000: Ukrainians have liberated huge swathes of their country from Russian occupation over the past few months, but that in itself heralds huge challenges. Experts say as much as 61,000 square miles of land could be littered with Russian land mines and other ordnance.
2: Two Bangladeshi Islamic militants sentenced to death for hacking a blogger to death with machetes have escaped from a courtroom in the country’s capital, Dhaka. The men, who were sprung from custody in a brazen escape involving chemical sprays and motorbikes, fatally attacked Avijit Roy, a US citizen of Bangladeshi origin, in 2015. A manhunt is now underway.
100 million: You know who’s not so ruffled by allegations of corruption, human rights abuses, and LGBTQ crackdowns in Qatar? China, which has just struck a deal to buy more than 100 million tons of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf monarchy over the next quarter century. It’s one of the biggest gas deals of all time.
1: In the week since Donald Trump announced he’s running for president again, the response from GOP senators has been crickets. So far just one of them, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, has endorsed him. The GOP is in a bind: They can’t win with Trump, but they can only lose without him.