Hard Numbers: Trump’s big lead, Russian nationalists and pig heads, a bet on steel and fusion, Taiwan’s new sub, Barbie’s underground Russian adventure
16: Recent polling averages show that Donald Trump leads the combined rest of the GOP presidential field by 16 percentage points.
3: Three prominent Russian military analysts, including one who recently wrote an article calling for the killing of Ukrainian civilians, have discovered severed pig heads outside their homes in recent weeks.
35 million: In an unprecedented step, Nucor, the largest US steelmaker, is working with a nuclear fusion startup on construction of a 500-megawatt fusion power plant that would be placed at one of Nucor’s steel mills by 2030. The company’s $35 million investment is an early bet that steel will eventually be made without carbon emissions.
10: To help deter a potential future Chinese invasion, Taiwan has unveiled its first domestically made submarine. Over time, the island nation’s government wants to build a fleet of 10 submarines and equip them with missiles.
0: In today’s edition, we really wanted to highlight the excitement generated in Russia by underground screenings of the movie Barbie. Unfortunately, we found zero good numbers we could use from the press coverage, some of which you can see here, here, and here.