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Hard Numbers
A view of the city of Tehran, Iran, amid pollution.
10 million: Officials in Tehran, a city of more than 10 million people, closed elementary schools and kindergartens on Saturday and Sunday because of dangerous levels of air pollution. On Tuesday, they announced the closure of all governmental offices, universities, and schools on Wednesday and Thursday. Schools will move classes online. In Iran, schools are generally open from Saturday to Wednesday.
45: A new survey found that 45% of “Swing voters” in the US presidential election reported getting most of their news from social media. Just 39% cited local news as their primary source of information, and 38% cited broadcast news.
168: A militia fighting on behalf of the Buddhist Rakhine minority group has driven Myanmar’s army out of its last outpost along the country’s 168-mile border with Bangladesh. This rebel group now claims control of the northern part of Rakhine state, where locals have pushed for independence.
40: The HTS rebels who now control Syria’s government say their search of a hospital morgue has discovered 40 bodies that show signs of torture by former dictator Bashar Assad’s security forces. Human rights groups say more than 100,000 people have disappeared since Assad ordered the 2011 crackdown on protests that ignited the country’s civil war.
20 billion: The US confirmed that it has sent $20 billion to Ukraine from seized Russian assets as part of a $50 billion G7 package to make Russia “bear the costs of its illegal war, instead of taxpayers," in the words of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The US Treasury transferred the $20 billion to a World Bank fund; money handled by the World Bank cannot be used for military purposes. Instead, it is intended to be used for hospitals and emergency services. The move comes weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has said he would cut aid to Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Musk’s new money, A Marvell to behold, Enter the Chatbot Arena, Meta’s millions, OpenAI’s Sora
A photo illustration with the xAI logo displayed on a smartphone with the official profile of Elon Musk in the background.
6 billion: xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, secured $6 billion in new funding last week, bringing its total investment to $12 billion and valuation to $50 billion. The company, which makes the Grok chatbot, is also reportedly building a supercomputer facility in Memphis, Tennessee.
100 billion: The chipmaker Marvell Technology saw its market capitalization rise above $100 billion last week after positive earnings and news that it’s helping Amazon develop its own AI chips. The AI boom has helped this small California-based chipmaker become more valuable than Intel, which has struggled in recent years and recently forced out its CEO.
170: A project from UC Berkeley aims to be the Billboard Hot 100 of AI models. Chatbot Arena is a website that lets users test different AI models and rate them, creating a crowdsourced ranking in the process. Google’s Gemini-Exp-1206 model is currently atop the leaderboard followed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o-latest model.
600 million: Nearly 600 million people use Meta’s AI tools every month, the company now claims. Meta boasts 3.29 billion daily users across its social media and messaging apps — about half of the world population — so it’s unclear if the company is counting anyone who interacts with AI on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp or solely through its chatbot.
20: OpenAI announced on Monday that its long-awaited Sora video model is now publicly available, letting users generate clips up to 20 seconds in 1080p resolution. The company first announced the project in February but limited access to a small group of testers.
Workers at an organic cocoa processing plant in Ghana. Fears of insufficient rain in the region have driven cocoa prices to 7-month highs on global markets.
7: Giving someone a box of chocolates for the holidays? That could soon count as a luxury gift now as cocoa prices have reached their highest levels in seven months. Dry weather is expected to suppress crop yields in West Africa, one of the world’s main producers. Prices for the stuff reached $10,454 per metric ton.
2 billion: In the hours after Syrian despot Bashar Assad fled the country, ordinary Syrians ransacked his sumptuous presidential villa, making off with hundreds of thousands of dollars of luxury goods and furnishings belonging to the “butcher of Damascus” and his wife. The Assad family had an estimated worth of $2 billion in a country wracked by war and poverty. Gear heads noted with awe that Assad’s private garage reportedly contained dozens of exotic cars, including a rare gullwing Mercedes and a Ferrari F50, worth nearly $2 million.
4: The city of Tokyo has moved to a four-day workweek for municipal employees, as part of a strategy to boost the country’s record-low birth rate. The average Japanese woman will have 1.2 children, well below the “replacement” rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. That extra day off is meant to ease the burden on families with small children, and maybe to give those on the fence about having kids some extra free time to … make them
6: A jury in New York acquitted former Marine Daniel Penny of manslaughter in the death of Jordan Neely, a mentally ill subway performer, in 2023. Neely, who was Black, had been behaving erratically and threatening passengers before Penny, who is white, subdued him with a fatal chokehold for roughly six minutes. The case sparked intense debate about race, mental illness, and New York’s pandemic-driven crime surge.
5: Authorities arrested and arraigned Luigi Mangione, a person of interest in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, on Monday in Altoona, PA. The 26-year-old, who was spotted at a McDonalds, was reportedly found with a 3D-printed gun and a silencer. He has been charged with five crimes in the Keystone State: carrying a gun without a license, forgery, falsely identifying himself to authorities, tampering with records of identification, and possessing “instruments of crime.” Late Monday, authorities in the Big Apple added their charges, including second-degree murder, and Mangione is expected to be extradited to New York.
Hard Numbers: Police ID Thompson murder suspect, A Ghanaian comeback, DRC’s deadly mystery, Trump gets big crypto boost
A reward poster for information leading to the arrest of the suspect is seen on the Upper West Side, Manhattan.
60,000: “The net is tightening,” NYC Mayor Eric Adams said this weekend about the search for UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson’s suspected murderer. New images of the suspect have been released, and Adams says authorities have identified the man but are withholding his name. Meanwhile, the Big Apple’s police department is offering a $10,000 reward, and the FBI is offering $50,000, for information leading to an arrest.
53: Donald Trump isn’t the only comeback kid this year. Ghana’s former President John Dramani Mahama will also return to power following Sunday’s presidential election. Mahama blamed his rival, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, for policies that have left Ghana in an economic crisis. Bawumia conceded after provisional results showed Mahama securing over 53% of the vote, compared to his 45.16%.
80: Viral or bacterial? Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo still aren’t sure, but they do know that they’ve seen 376 cases of a flu-like syndrome that has killed nearly 80 people. Children with pre-existing health conditions appear to be more vulnerable to it. Epidemiologists are being sent to investigate the situation.
30,000,000: Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire Justin Sun — the guy who bought that pricey banana art and ate it — has invested a whopping $30 million in President-elect Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial. The investment makes Sun, who is notably being sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly defrauding investors, its largest investor. Trump’s company only launched in October, and it had been struggling — but Sun’s investment means it could soon profit more than $15 million.
Hard Numbers: OPEC+ ain’t eager to pump, Mexico woos Trump with drug bust, Bitcoin to the moon, Merkel’s book is a blockbuster, Quake hits the Golden State
Police officers stand guard on the rooftop of Vienna's OPEC headquarters before the start of meeting of OPEC oil.
1,100: Mexican authorities in the northern state of Sinaloa seized over 1,100 kilograms of fentanyl late on Tuesday in the largest drug bust of its kind in the country’s history. Taking deadly drugs off the street is always a good thing, but critics of the Mexican government say authorities are strategically timing major busts to curry favor with the incoming US administration.
103,000: The price of the cryptocurrency token Bitcoin reached $103,000 on Thursday, breaking its previous record as speculators bet big on a friendly regulatory environment. President-elect Donald Trump appointed Paul Atkins, a crypto promoter, to the Securities and Exchange Commission, prompting the market run.
200,000: Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new book, “Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021,” is set to become Germany’s bestselling book this year, with 200,000 copies already sold in the week after release. At over 700 pages, you’d expect a juicy nugget or two, but early reviews expressed disappointment that Merkel doesn’t spill much tea on other world leaders and historic events — or reflect on the legacy of some controversial policies, such as welcoming large numbers of refugees and pursuing closer ties with Russia and China.
7.0: A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California on Thursday morning, triggering evacuation warnings along coastal areas from San Francisco all the way to southern Oregon. Fortunately, a tsunami did not develop, and minimal damage took place from the shaking.
Hard Numbers: US mail to Canada stops, Border apprehensions fall, Foreign students face Canadian exits, Climbing team missing
A Canada Post mailbox is seen in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in November 2024.
55,000: Santa’s sleigh may struggle to go north this year. A strike by some 55,000 Canada Post employees has led the US Postal Service to alert customers that it will not be able to deliver to Canadian addresses for the foreseeable future. Just ahead of the holiday season, the service stoppage is likely to cause headaches to cross-border families trying to exchange gifts.
700: The US border patrol said its agents on the Canadian border had apprehended about 700 migrants crossing illegally into the US in November, down from 1,300 in October. Crossings are down on the southern border too, with 47,000 apprehensions in November, the lowest figure since July 2020.
766,000: Some 766,000 foreigners in Canada hold student permits that are set to expire by the end of 2025. While some permits will be renewed, many of the foreign students will likely have to leave Canada amid the country’s rising economic and housing concerns. The most affected country? India, whose young people make up the majority of foreign pupils in the Great White North.
3: Three climbers, two Americans and one Canadian, went missing on Monday while attempting to scale New Zealand’s highest peak, Mount Cook (also known as Aoraki). Bad weather has stymied search efforts, and New Zealand authorities say they have “grave concerns.”Hard Numbers: Murder in Manhattan, Prigozhin gets a statue, Namibia elects first female president, EU cracks down on Temu and Shein, Mexico hikes minimum wage
An image of the individual sought in connection to the investigation of the shooting death of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth's insurance unit, is seen in this still image from a surveillance video taken outside a hotel in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
371.6 billion: New York City police are looking for the gunman responsible for the targeted shooting and murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the world’s largest companies and the most significant health insurance company in the US. In 2023, UnitedHealth Group reported $371.6 billion in revenue, a 14.6% increase from the previous year.
1: Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has become Namibia’s first female leader, winning 57% of the vote, according to official results. Nandi-Ndaitwah is the current vice president. Her win extends the Swapo party’s 34 years of power. Opposition parties are disputing the results, citing ballot papers shortages and other issues.
16: In 16 feet (five meters) of bronze glory, a monument to the former leader of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and his right-hand man Dmitru Utki, has been erected in the Central African Republic. The two were killed in a plane crash last year after Prigozhin attempted a coup in Russia. The Wagner Group, renamed Corps Africa, has a huge security footprint throughout Africa. The statue was a thanks from the government for the group’s success in reigning in rebel groups.
4 billion: The European trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič is preparing to crack down on Temu and Shein by implementing a new tax on the ultra-cheap e-commerce platforms’ revenues. The tax will be part of an initiative to make them less competitive against European companies facing higher production costs to adhere to EU standards. The Asian online retailers have delivered approximately 4 billion parcels to the EU this year, triple the amount from 2022.
12: Mexico’s government announced a 12% minimum wage hike starting next year to combat poverty. In response to critics, the new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said the policy would not inflame inflation but would support a “humanist” economy. It’s also likely in anticipation of Donald Trump taking issue with low labor costs undercutting American manufacturing.