Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

Hard Numbers: Olympic spectators in Japan, Armenia's election, Indonesia's COVID spike, China's vaccine milestone

Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organising Committee President Seiko Hashimoto bows upon her arrival at the fourth roundtable meeting with medical experts to discuss on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) countermeasures, in Tokyo, Japan June 18, 2021.
Make us preferred on Google

10,000: Japan's government said Monday that up to 10,000 spectators will be allowed to attend events at the Tokyo Olympic Games, set to begin on July 23. This comes despite an earlier recommendation from a medical advisory panel that the Games should be held without crowds to avoid the spread of more contagious COVID variants. Crowds or not, some 80 percent of Japanese are opposed to the Games being held at all.


54: Armenia's incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan won snap elections Monday, with his Civil Elections party reaping 54 percent of the vote. It's the first time that Armenians have voted since Armenia suffered defeat in a war last year with Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

14,536: Indonesia is now grappling with one of the worst COVID outbreaks in the world, recording 14,536 new cases on Monday alone, the highest daily caseload in that country since the start of the pandemic. The World Health Organization said it is very concerned about the overstretched healthcare system in the world's fourth most populous country, including in the capital Jakarta, where 80 percent of hospital beds are full.

1 billion: China has now administered more than 1 billion COVID vaccine doses domestically, accounting for almost 40 percent of all shots administered globally. Though it's a massive feat, China still lags behind the US and the UK in vaccine doses administered per 100 people (single and double shots).

More For You

All we’ve lost
Twenty-five years ago this morning, I rolled out of bed ready for a big day. My return to grad school at New York’s Columbia University was set to kick off that morning with a class called “War, Peace, and Strategy,” and my friend David and I had tickets to Yankee Stadium to see Roger Clemens pitch that evening.David called early to ask if he [...]
What we're still watching
A group of firefighters walks near the remains of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. Two hijacked U.S. commercial planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center early on Tuesday, causing both 110-story landmarks to collapse in thunderous clouds of fire and smoke.
The air qualityJust a week after the Twin Towers fell, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency declared the air in Lower Manhattan safe to breathe. However, files released by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office last week confirmed that 10 months after the attacks, health officials were still finding evidence of carcinogens like asbestos. The [...]
What America got right–and wrong–in the post-9/11 era
- YouTube
The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 radically altered the course of American history. They reshaped our politics and sense of security, sending the country on a completely different arc—from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the sweeping expansion of the national security apparatus. 25 years after that fateful day, has America learned the right [...]
The lasting impact of 9/11 on US leadership
- YouTube
In this ‘ask ian,’ Ian Bremmer reflects on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, examining the long-term consequences of America's response to the attacks. [...]