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

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

The strategy gap in the Iran war
- YouTube
In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer examines the stakes as the war in Iran enters its second month. [...]
Who’s protesting in 2026?

Top ten countries with the most protests in 2026.

Natalie Johnson
This weekend, “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration occurred across the United States, drawing an estimated 8 million people across more than 3,300 events from the Alaskan Arctic to Puerto Rico. The movement is backed by a patchwork of progressive groups in the US. [...]
The amount of time police said it took four masked men to steal paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse from a museum near Parma, Italy, earlier this month.

The amount of time police said it took four masked men to steal paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse from a museum near Parma, Italy, earlier this month.

Natalie Johnson
3 minutes: The amount of time police said it took four masked men to steal paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse from a museum near Parma, Italy, earlier this month.The crew that pulled off the daring heist at the Villa dei Capolavori made off with paintings worth more than $10 million. [...]
US President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, USA, on March 29, 2026.

US President Donald Trump talks to members of the media aboard Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, USA, on March 29, 2026.

REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Donald Trump threatens to “take the oil” in IranThe US president made the comments to the Financial Times on Sunday, just as hundreds of US Special Operations troops arrived in the Middle East ahead of a possible mission to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub. (As it happens, Trump has been thinking of doing this for nearly 40 years.) [...]