Hard Numbers: Teamsters reach UPS deal, Hun Sen to step down, Paris reopens the Seine, Ghana kills death penalty, Israel’s markets tumble
340,000: Parcel carrier UPS reached a deal Tuesday with the Teamsters union, which represents 340,000 of its drivers. The agreement averts a strike that would have dealt a crippling blow to the US economy — UPS moves 6% of America’s GDP annually.
38: Hun Sen, Asia’s longest-serving leader, said Wednesday he will step down as prime minister of Cambodia and hand the position to his oldest son after 38 years of autocratic leadership. His son, the chief of Cambodia’s army, just won his first parliament seat in an election criticized for being undemocratic (the opposition was disqualified on a technicality). Hun Sen is expected to remain in government as president of the Senate.
100: Grab your maillots de bain! Paris is reopening the River Seine to swimmers for the first time in 100 years. The swimming ban was imposed in 1923 due to industrial and human pollution, but a decades-long cleanup plan — which involved the construction of a new underground reservoir — has cleaned it up enough to take a dip.
176: That sigh of relief you hear coming from Ghana is the sound of 176 death row inmates learning that the country’s parliament voted Tuesday to abolish capital punishment. The West African nation is the 29th African country to ban the death penalty and the 124th globally.
3: Israel’s main stock index tumbled more than 3% on Tuesday after Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government secured passage of the first of several measures to limit the power of the Supreme Court. The moves have provoked months of protests. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley, a major investment bank, cut its outlook on Israel’s sovereign debt to “dislike.”