Hard Numbers: Bagram spoils, Ever Given out of Suez Canal, US military cancels Microsoft, Swedish PM is back
An Afghan man rests in his shop as he sell U.S. second hand materials outside Bagram U.S. air base, after American troops vacated it, in Parwan province, Afghanistan.
3.5 million: US troops leaving Afghanistan's Bagram airbase, nerve center of NATO's 20-year counterterrorism presence in the country, left behind 3.5 million catalogued items, ranging from doorknobs to combat vehicles. Within minutes of the US' abrupt exit, looters showed up to seize the spoils.
106: The Ever Given container ship is finally on its way out of the Suez Canal 106 days after it blocked the crucial waterway entirely for a full week, wreaking havoc on global maritime shipping. After months of haggling, the vessel's Japanese owners reached an agreement with the Egyptian canal authorities for an undisclosed amount in compensation.
10 billion: The Pentagon has cancelled a $10 billion contract with Microsoft to build a cloud storage system for the US military. Microsoft won the contract during the Trump administration, but the company's main rival, Amazon — considered the market leader in cloud services — sued to prove that its own bid was rejected because of Trump's personal animosity toward (now-former) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
3: Stefan Löfven, who last week stepped down as Sweden's prime minister after losing a no-confidence vote, got his old job back on Wednesday. MPs agreed to return Löfven to the post by a narrow 3-vote margin, ending Sweden's brief and very rare political crisis.
