Hard Numbers

Hard Numbers: US inflation falls, Mexico candidate gunned down, Oz Liberals choose woman leader, Germany bans the Kingdom, baseball unbans Pete Rose

​Chicken eggs are showing in an incubator Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at Sunnyside Hatchery in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. They will be in the incubator for 21 days.
Chicken eggs are showing in an incubator Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at Sunnyside Hatchery in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. They will be in the incubator for 21 days.

2.3: US inflation fell to 2.3% in April, as prices for airfare, hotels, and eggs — yes eggs! — plunged. Economists warned that inflationary effects of Trump’s tariffs, many of which have been temporarily suspended, could hit later in the year.

3: A Mexican mayoral candidate and three other people were shot at a campaign rally on Sunday. Political violence has surged in Mexico in recent years, driven by powerful drug cartels.

80: It took 80 years, but Australia’s conservative Liberal Party has elected its first female leader, tapping Susan Ley, a former pilot with several finance degrees, to lead the party. The MAGA-friendly Liberals are in the wilderness after badly losing last week’s election to Labour, which rode an anti-Trump wave to victory.

4: Germany arrested four leaders of the banned radical Kingdom of Germany party, which seeks to overthrow the government. Germany is cracking down on far-right parties, the biggest of which is Alternative For Deutschland, which has been labelled ”extremist.” Achtung: AfD placed second in February’s election.


17: Major League Baseball on Tuesday lifted the lifetime ban on 17 deceased players, making them eligible for the Hall of Fame. Among them are two of the greatest ever to play the game: Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader, who was controversially banned in 1989 for gambling infractions, and Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was blackballed for his involvement in a scheme to fix the 1919 world series. Here's a GZERO take on Rose just a few days before his death last year.

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