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Hard Numbers: “Sky Queen’s” reign ends, Ukraine gets a bright idea, Baghdad loses its leaves, IMF sees the bottom at last
A modified Boeing 747 takes off carrying Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket, in Mojave, California
REUTERS/Gene Blevins
747: The last commercial Boeing 747 ever to be made will be delivered on Tuesday. The jumbo jetliner, with its iconic forward hump, first took flight in 1970, under Pan Am (RIP) livery. But since then, smaller and more efficient aircraft have swiped its market share. The “Queen of the Skies,” as the 747 is known, is dead – Long Live the Queen of the Skies!
50 million: The Ukrainian government is aiming to distribute 50 million energy-efficient LED light bulbs to homes and businesses as part of a joint Kyiv-Brussels plan to ease power demand as Russia continues to pummel the country’s energy infrastructure. (See our recent piece on how Moscow has enlisted General Winter to defeat Ukraine.)
12: Baghdad, once famed for its lush, green gardens under the Abbasid caliphs, is going brown fast. Real estate developers have eaten away more than half of the sweltering city’s green spaces over the past two decades, leaving just 12% of the Iraqi capital under natural shade.
2.9: The bottom is in sight, says the IMF, which predicts that global economic growth will slump by half a point to 2.9% this year, before rising again in 2024. Emerging market economies overall will see higher growth this year than last, but that’s driven largely by the behemoth economy of China, which is now reopening. About half of emerging markets will still suffer a slowdown this year.In his latest Quick Take, Ian Bremmer argues that the war between the United States and Iran has entered a more dangerous phase, with both sides demonstrating they can sustain military and economic pressure without forcing the other to back down. The question is, will this standoff bring them back to the table before the conflict escalates further?
Ukraine is bringing the war to Russia, challenging one of the conflict's biggest assumptions: that time is on Vladimir Putin's side. Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba joins Ian Bremmer to discuss whether the war is entering a new phase.
For years, Russia has counted on one advantage above all else: time. Ian Bremmer explains why Ukraine's expanding campaign inside Russia is challenging that assumption, and what it could mean for the future of the war.
The US president used a primetime address last night to argue America’s election system is broken and vulnerable to “rigging.” He pointed to documents he says show Chinese interference in the 2020 vote. But the evidence Trump offered, along with past assessments from the intelligence community, doesn’t support his broadest claims.