Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

Hard Numbers: Viennese protest mandates, Auckland’s lockdown ends, botched ambush in India, Italian takes up arm against vaccines

Demonstrators hold flags and placards as they march to protest against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions and the mandatory vaccination in Vienna, Austria, December 4, 2021.

40,000: At least 40,000 people joined protests in Vienna on Saturday against new lockdowns and vaccine requirements, the second week in a row the city has seen mass demonstrations of this kind. Amid a surge in new cases, the Austrian government announced that a nationwide vaccine mandate would come into effect on February 1.


107: Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, has come out of a citywide lockdown put in place 107 days ago to curb the spread of the delta variant. Still, for now, only vaccinated Aucklanders will be permitted to travel to other parts of the country.

13: Tensions are high in the state of Nagaland in northeast India after Indian troops mistakenly ambushed a group of miners on their way back from work, killing six of them. Clashes then broke out between civilians and soldiers, bringing the death toll to 13. Indian forces have long been at war with separatists in the region, though violence has declined since the two sides signed a peace deal in 2015.

416: An Italian man tried to get around his country’s vaccine requirements by showing up to a clinic with a prosthetic arm believed to cost 416 euros on Amazon. He almost got away with it until the health worker, sensing something amiss, asked him to take off his shirt.

More For You

​Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on March 6, 2026.

Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, on March 6, 2026.

REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Overnight, Israel’s military shifted part of its focus to a new front, one that isn’t Iran: it pummeled the Lebanese capital of Beirut with airstrikes, and issued more evacuation warnings across areas of the country controlled by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. “The objective is to disarm Hezbollah,” Nimrod Novik, a fellow at the Israel [...]
Cargo ships are unloading newly arrived chemical fertilizers at the port terminal in Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu province, on February 27, 2024. ​

Cargo ships are unloading newly arrived chemical fertilizers at the port terminal in Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu province, on February 27, 2024.

(Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto)
Iran conflict could trigger a food crisisDisruptions to a key Gulf waterway in the Iran conflict aren't just threatening the world’s oil and gas supplies; they could also cause a food security crisis. Roughly a quarter to a third of global raw materials used in fertilizer pass through the Strait of Hormuz. With tanker traffic in the strait largely [...]
​Bangladeshi women hold placards as they take part in a rally to mark International Women's Day in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on March 8, 2021. (Photo by Mamunur Rashid/NurPhoto)

Bangladeshi women hold placards as they take part in a rally to mark International Women's Day in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on March 8, 2021. (Photo by Mamunur Rashid/NurPhoto)

(Photo by Mamunur Rashid/NurPhoto)
27.5%: The share of parliamentary seats women hold worldwide, as of Jan. 1, 2026, per a report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. It’s a modest gain – 0.3 points – from a year prior, but marks an overall slowdown since 2017. The Americas topped the list of regions with the highest share of female parliamentarians, with women making up 35.6% of [...]
​An explosion in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, Iran, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in this still image from a social media video released on March 5, 2026.

An explosion in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, Iran, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in this still image from a social media video released on March 5, 2026.

Social Media/via REUTERS
Iran conflict hits new frontsTwo Iranian drones hit Azerbaijan, Iran’s northern neighbor, on Thursday, injuring four people and expanding the Iran conflict onto another front. The Azeris, who have a tense relationship with the Islamic Republic over their growing ties to NATO countries, have reportedly deployed troops to the Iranian border, which [...]