Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Hard Numbers: London’s languages, US cities' economic boom, Asia’s concrete jungles, Addis Ababa's bike love

Students from the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement during a climate change protest on Parliament Square in Westminster, London. Reuters
Make us preferred on Google

300: London — a city where a large chunk of the population is foreign born — is home to the world's most internationally diverse student body. More than 300 languages are spoken by London's school students, many of whose families immigrated from South Asia, Africa and Europe.


70: In the decade following the 2008 global financial crisis (which left more than 11 million Americans unemployed within months), America's largest cities — including San Francisco, Boston, and New York — accounted for over 70 percent of the country's job growth. By contrast, unemployment is still at pre-2008 levels in many American rural areas and small towns.

39: Public green spaces like parks and nature reserves, which many city dwellers have flocked to in COVID-19 times, are a luxury in most of Asia's crowded urban centers. In the region's 22 major cities, average green space per capita is only 39 square meters (420 square feet), about half of the figure in Africa and more six times smaller than the per capita average in Latin America.

800: Many big city governments struggle with traffic congestion, but in developing economies the problem is often exacerbated by poor infrastructure. The answer isn't always to build more roads: Addis Ababa has an ambitious plan to build 800 kilometers (490 miles) of bike and pedestrian lanes by the end of the decade.

More For You

Bill Maher says America's 250th is still worth celebrating
- YouTube
As America turns 250, Bill Maher reflects on patriotism, polarization, and why the country is still worth celebrating. [...]
People vote in the legislative elections in Algiers, Algeria, on July 2, 2026.

People vote in the legislative elections in Algiers, Algeria, on July 2, 2026. The electorate, including the diaspora, consists of 24,727,041 registered voters. These elections will elect the 407 members of the tenth legislature of the People's National Assembly (APN), with a mandate of five years.

Billel Bensalem/APP/NurPhoto
Algerians are headed to the polls today to elect their next members of parliament. Nearly 25 million people are eligible to vote, selecting from over 1,200 candidates for 407 seats in the lower house. It’s the country’s second parliamentary election since the pro-democracy Hirak movement swept the country in 2019 – the peaceful uprising that [...]
​Smoke rises from an oil refinery following a Ukrainian drone attack, in Moscow, Russia, on June 18, 2026.

Smoke rises from an oil refinery following a Ukrainian drone attack in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Moscow, Russia, on June 18, 2026.

SOCIAL MEDIA/via REUTERS
With refiners ablaze, Russia is now importing fuel from IndiaYes, you read that correctly: Russia, one of the world’s largest oil exporters and a huge supplier of crude to India, is now buying fuel from its Soviet-era ally. The reason? Ukraine’s widening barrage of drone and missile strikes on Russian petrochemicals facilities has knocked out [...]
Over a million migrants seek legal status in Spain
Farida Dowidar
Spain has taken a very different tack from other European countries toward migrants, with Sánchez welcoming them into the country and pledging to grant legal status to half a million undocumented migrants under a new program. However, the PM underestimated how many people would apply: his government had expected 750,000 applications. With [...]