HARD NUMBERS: Foreign no-shows in Canadian schools, Ontario makes a big call to doctors, Dastardly dye dies in US, Gringo companies send toxic waste south

50,000: Nearly 50,000 foreign students authorized to study in Canada never showed up for class last spring, according to a new government report. That was about 7% of the roughly 700,000 students from abroad, and Indians accounted for about 20,000 of the truants. Canada has been tracking these numbers to crack down on people who use student visas as a back door to settle in the country permanently.

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100: Meanwhile, the government of Ontario is looking to have 100 foreign-trained doctors licensed to practice in high-need communities such as Sudbury, Goderich, and Huntsville. This comes after the province missed its initial target of 50 by the end of 2024. The program aims to address shortages in primary care physicians as older doctors retire and population growth continues.

3: This isn’t only a hard number, it’s a red number. Red 3, to be precise, is a food coloring that is being banned in the US, food safety regulators announced Wednesday. The bright red petroleum-based dye — used in candies, soft drinks, pills, baked goods, and, famously, maraschino cherries — has been found to cause cancer in lab animals. The move is a victory for consumer protection groups that have sought the dye’s death for decades. Food producers have two years to replace it in their products, and pharma companies get an extra year beyond that.

200,000: US companies sent some 200,000 tons of toxic waste to a single processing plant in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2022. Researchers recently found extremely high levels of neurotoxins in the soil surrounding the Zinc Nacional plant, which treats the dust generated from recycling metal junk — such as cars, electronics, and appliances — and turns it into fertilizers and other products. Lead contamination levels alone in homes near the plant were found to be more than 60 times higher than what the US considers safe.