Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

Hard Numbers: Israel's bonfire breakup, China's second wave, Tequila's pandemic boom, UK economy's collapse

Hard Numbers: Israel's bonfire breakup, China's second wave, Tequila's pandemic boom, UK economy's collapse
Make us preferred on Google

320: Police in Israel arrested 320 worshippers of a 2nd century Jewish mystic after they rioted against a coronavirus-related prohibition on visiting his tomb. The annual Lag Ba-Omer festival usually draws thousands of people for days of praying and dancing around bonfires. This year, it drew people to jail.


13: China's northeastern Jilin region, which borders North Korea and Russia, has emerged as the potential source of a second wave of COVID-19 infections in the country. With 13 locally-transmitted cases reported, partial lockdowns have already been imposed

60: As Americans drink up while locked down, Mexico's tequila distillers are toasting to a huge export boom: US sales of the spirit jumped 60 percent in April. The industry, which employs 70,000 people, is a rare bright spot for Mexico – the IMF says this year the country will suffer the biggest GDP hit of any large Latin American economy except Venezuela.

5.8: The British economy shrank by 5.8 percent in March, the sharpest decline since the government started tracking monthly data in 1997. With the economy paralyzed by lockdowns, the Bank of England forecasts an overall contraction of 14 percent this year, the largest annual drop since 1701.

More For You

Coke trade booms despite crackdowns
Will Fitzpatrick
Over the past year, the Trump administration has unleashed a massive military campaign against suspected drug traffickers in South America and the Caribbean, including dozens of lethal airstrikes on alleged smuggling vessels. Despite these tactics, which human rights lawyers and activists have questioned, “massive” amounts of cocaine continue to [...]
Serhii Kusnetzow, a former Ukrainian army officer charged by German federal prosecutors with being a co-perpetrator of a war crime over the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline blasts, attends his trial in Hamburg, Germany.

Serhii Kusnetzow, a former Ukrainian army officer charged by German federal prosecutors with being a co-perpetrator of a war crime over the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline blasts, attends his trial in Hamburg, Germany, October 14, 2026.

Markus Scholz/Pool via REUTERS REFILE
Nord Stream sabotage trial begins in GermanyA Ukrainian former special forces officer is accused of war crimes for leading the September 2022 sabotage of the massive undersea pipeline, which once carried Russian gas to Germany. The officer’s lawyers say Nord Stream was a legitimate military target following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and [...]
The GOP’s Musky scent
Musk’s cash splash – which makes him the largest known midterm donor – is meant to help Republicans head off a so-called “Blue Wave” of Democrat support that could cost the GOP not only the House, but possibly the Senate as well. It signals that Musk intends to remain a fixture of Republican politics, despite his rocky exit from the Trump [...]
Boxes of perished goods are seen outside an Intermarche supermarket in Paris the day after a cyberattack targeted refrigeration systems at French supermarket chains, causing food losses and fires at several stores, France, October 13, 2026.

Boxes of perished goods are seen outside an Intermarche supermarket in Paris the day after a cyberattack targeted refrigeration systems at French supermarket chains, causing food losses and fires at several stores, France, October 13, 2026.

REUTERS/Lucien Libert
Supermarket cyberattacks turn the heat up in France Hackers set their sights on an unusual target in France this week: supermarkets. On Monday, attackers used remote software to raise the temperature on fridges and freezers to around 122 degrees Fahrenheit, spoiling food and sparking fires. While the full scale of the attack remains unconfirmed, [...]