Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

Hard Numbers: Hackers slide into DMs, actual Nazi convicted, US shells out vaccine cash, Chinese sex toys surge

Hard Numbers: Hackers slide into DMs, actual Nazi convicted, US shells out vaccine cash, Chinese sex toys surge

36: Hackers who targeted verified accounts on Twitter earlier this month gained access to at least 36 of those account-holders' Direct Message inboxes, including an"elected official in the Netherlands," believed to be anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders. The ability of hackers to slide into elected officials' DMs has raised fears of blackmail.


5,230: As a teenager in Nazi Germany, Bruno Dey worked as a guard at the Stutthof concentration camp. On Thursday, a German court convicted him of 5,230 counts of accessory to murder, one for each person killed on his watch. The ruling against Dey, who is 93 years old, is likely to be one of the last convictions of living participants in the Holocaust.

1.95 billion: The US government has committed to paying $1.95 billion for 100 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine currently in development by US pharma giant Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech. Earlier this year, the White House shelled out $1 billion to reserve 300 million doses of the rival vaccine being made by Oxford University and the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca. The White House says vaccines will be free for all Americans.

50: Sales of Chinese-made sex toys have increased by 50 percent so far this year due to higher demand from customers in Western countries under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. China's sex doll exports have doubled globally, and risen five-fold in Italy alone.

More For You

​Donald Trump as a giant hitting Venezuela with a stick.

Donald Trump as a giant hitting Venezuela with a stick.

GZERO design
2026 is a tipping point year. The biggest source of global instability won’t be China, Russia, Iran, or the ~60 conflicts burning across the planet – the most since World War II. It will be the United States. That’s the throughline of Eurasia Group’s Top Risks 2026 report: the world’s most powerful country, the same one that built and led the [...]
​Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks at the lower house of Parliament, ahead of a European Union leaders' summit, in Rome, Italy, December 17, 2025.

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks at the lower house of Parliament, ahead of a European Union leaders' summit, in Rome, Italy, December 17, 2025.

REUTERS/Remo Casilli
4: Italy has reformed its voting rules four times since 1993, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is now considering a fifth change. Meloni wants to end the first-past-the-post system, which remains in place for a third of seats. The goal: pre-emptively halting a left-wing alliance at the next election in 2027.$7: As protests over Iran’s worsening [...]
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks with China's President Xi Jinping.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks with China's President Xi Jinping.

REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
What happens to China’s claim to Venezuelan oil?US President Donald Trump said Tuesday Venezuela would ship up to 50 million barrels of crude oil, worth about $3 billion, to the US. Hours later, the US energy secretary said Washington would “indefinitely” control Venezuela’s oil industry, which is currently run by the Venezuelan government. [...]
​Supporters of the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council during a rally in Aden, Yemen, on December 30, 2025.

Supporters of the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) wave flags of the United Arab Emirates and of the STC, during a rally in Aden, Yemen, on December 30, 2025.

REUTERS/Fawaz Salman
Yemen’s civil war had been at a stalemate for years.That changed in early December, when the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group seeking to re-establish the southern Yemeni state that existed until 1990, stormed through the oil-rich region of Hadramout, ousting the Saudi-backed forces and extending its area of [...]