Hard Numbers: Navalny sentenced (again), oily oceans, Alibaba stock buyback, Ukrainian fundraising star

Hard Numbers: Navalny sentenced (again), oily oceans, Alibaba stock buyback, Ukrainian fundraising star
A poster by street artist Harry Greb depicting Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in Rome.
Reuters

9: Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced on Tuesday to nine more years in jail after being convicted of fraud and contempt of court. In his closing statement, the top Kremlin critic blasted Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war in Ukraine, urging Russians to protest.

52.8 million: That’s the amount of toxic oily water being dumped annually into the world’s oceans, according to an investigation by Deutsche Welle. The figure is roughly five times the equivalent of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, one of the worst maritime environmental disasters ever.

25 billion: Alibaba wants to buy back more than $25 billion worth of stock. The Chinese e-commerce giant aims to reassure investors about the company's future despite being targeted by Xi Jinping’s tech crackdown.

380,000: A seven-year-old Ukrainian girl who went viral for singing the Frozen theme song from a bomb shelter in Kyiv performed her country’s national anthem during a concert in Poland. The event, attended by thousands, raised some $380,000 for Ukrainian refugees like her.

More from GZERO Media

The world has its first (North) American pope. Now what? On a new GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with Jesuit priest and bestselling author Father James Martin to talk about the historic ascendancy of Pope Leo XIV and what his papacy means for the Catholic Church, American politics, and a world in search of moral clarity.

US President Donald Trump is joined by Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Vice President JD Vance while announcing a trade agreement with the United Kingdom in the Oval Office on May 8, 2025.
Emily J. Higgins/White House/ZUMA Press Wire

On Wednesday evening, the US Court of International Trade ruled that President Donald Trump could not impose his “reciprocal” tariffs. GZERO spoke to Eurasia Group’s top analysts to assess what could happen next.

A portrait of former US President Ronald Reagan hangs behind US President Donald Trump as he answers questions from members of the news media in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on May 28, 2025.
REUTERS/Leah Millis

Donald Trump’s tariff gamesmanship ran into a legal brick wall on Wednesday when the Court of International Trade ruled that he did not have the authority to impose sweeping “Liberation Day” import duties.