News
Hard Numbers: Much ado about Ma, EU-Russia holdouts, Ukrainians in Mexico, Oz raises interest rates
Gabriella Turrisi
9.4: Shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba plunged by as much as 9.4% on Tuesday after state broadcaster CCTV abruptly announced that someone named "Ma" had been detained. CCTV later clarified that it was not Jack Ma, Alibaba's billionaire founder caught in the crosshairs of Xi Jinping's tech crackdown.
2: The EU looks ready to ban Russian oil imports as a bloc over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But so far there are two holdouts: Hungary — whose PM Viktor Orbán is Vladimir Putin’s best EU buddy — and Slovakia, which claims its sole refiner can’t immediately switch to non-Russian crude.
500: Some 500 Ukrainian refugees are waiting in a makeshift camp in Mexico City for US immigration authorities to process their papers. President Joe Biden says they're welcome but has not exempted them from Title 42, a pandemic-era rule to curb immigration that requires US asylum-seekers to apply from a third country.
0.35: Australia's central bank upped interest rates by 0.35% Tuesday, the first hike in over a decade. It's a long-overdue move to combat rising inflation, expected to be a major campaign issue ahead of the parliamentary election on May 21.Tune in on Saturday, February 14th at 12pm ET/6pm CET for the live premiere of our Global Stage from the 2026 Munich Security Conference, where our panel of experts takes aim at the latest global security challenges.
Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.
At the Munich Security Conference, the mood is clear: Europe no longer assumes the United States will lead. In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer reports from Munich, where this year’s theme, “Under Destruction,” reflects growing anxiety that the US itself is destabilizing the transatlantic alliance it once anchored.
Every year, the Munich Security Conference, the world’s leading forum on international security, releases data that sheds light on how citizens view global risks.