Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Puppet Regime is up for a Webby Award!   VOTE HERE
News

Hard Numbers: COVID bursts Olympic bubble, Italian prez re-elected, Yemeni child soldiers, Peruvian ecocide

Hard Numbers: COVID bursts Olympic bubble, Italian prez re-elected, Yemeni child soldiers, Peruvian ecocide

An employee is seen while people undergo PCR tests for COVID-19 upon their arrival at Beijing Capital International Airport ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics. The 24th Winter Olympic Games are scheduled to take place in Beijing on February 4-20, 2022.

Valery Sharifulin/TASS

34: The organizers of the Beijing Winter Olympics reported on Sunday 34 new COVID infections within the "bubble" set up for the Games, where athletes can only compete if they test negative twice in 24 hours. Troubling news for China's zero-COVID policy.


8: After eight rounds of secret voting, Italian lawmakers on Saturday "elected" Sergio Mattarella to serve another seven-year term as president. Mattarella, 80, agreed to postpone his retirement so Mario Draghi could stay on as PM.

2,000: According to the UN, almost 2,000 child soldiers recruited by Houthi rebels died fighting in Yemen's civil war from January 2020 to May 2021. GZERO World recently reported on the Yemeni conflict, the biggest humanitarian crisis you've probably never heard of.

12,000: Peru has barred execs from Spanish energy giant Repsol charged with "ecocide" from leaving the country, while authorities investigate an oil spill that leaked almost 12,000 barrels of crude into the sea. Repsol says the accident was caused by the tsunami triggered by a massive volcanic eruption in Tonga.

More For You

How the Iran war made China stronger
The conventional wisdom was that a destabilizing war in the oil-producing heart of the Middle East would badly hurt China, the world's leading oil importer, and its sputtering economy. It hasn’t worked out that way. So far, China is weathering the US-Israeli war with Iran better than many of its neighbors and looks set to emerge relatively stronger. [...]
Another milestone for a bleak civil war
- YouTube
Sudan marks a grim milestone today: three years of a civil war widely described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.At least 59,000 people have been killed. There have been multiple accusations of genocide in Darfur. Fourteen million people – roughly a quarter of the population – have been forced from their homes, while 19 million face acute [...]
Houthi solders gather in front of a digital billboard in Sanaa, Yemen, on July 11, 2025.

Houthi solders gather in front of a digital billboard featuring a Houthi Unmanned surface vehicle in the Red Sea during a protest against the United States and Israel, amidst the ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, on July 11, 2025.

IMAGO/ Sanaa Yemen
There’s another waterway to worry aboutWhile the world’s attention for the last month and a half has been on the Strait of Hormuz, it may soon switch to another vital shipping lane in the Middle East: the Red Sea. Why? On Wednesday, Tehran threatened to halt shipping there if the United States continued its blockade of ships that stopped at [...]
Hard Number: Saudi Arabia picks up Pakistan’s tab again
Natalie Johnson
The extra cash comes just before Islamabad sends a $3.5 billion debt repayment to Saudi Arabia’s friend-turned-rival, the UAE. This isn’t the first time that Saudi Arabia has provided Pakistan, a relatively poor country with a mighty military, with funding. In 2018, Riyadh gave Pakistan a rescue package worth $6 billion as it faced an economic [...]