Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Hard Numbers

Hard Numbers

Make us preferred on Google
1.6 million: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says the country's civil militia, which supplements its armed forces, has ballooned to 1.6 million members, more than three times its size at the beginning of the year. Facing a dire economic situation, many Venezuelans have turned to the armed forces as the only reliable source of income.

$100,000: Sunday's election in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which heralds its first transition of power in 17 years, will likely serve to further entrench the power of a ruling elite backing current President Joseph Kabila. Simply to participate in the election, prospective candidates had to pony up $100,000, a prohibitive threshold for almost all except those tied to the deeply corrupt state apparatus.

63: While the high-profile murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi captured a lot of attention, in all, 63 professional journalists were killed in 2018, according to Reporters Without Borders. That's up 15 percent from the previous year.

0: There is currently not a single country in the world in which women have the same economic opportunities as men, according to a new report from the World Economic Forum. The opportunity gap applies at the global level as well: where today there are just 17 female heads of state or prime ministers across the 149 countries tracked by WEF.

More For You

El Salvador to free tens of thousands
Lottie Tellyn
Bukele’s controversial crackdown on gang violence in El Salvador has featured sweeping arrests under state of emergency powers, imprisoning tens of thousands of people in maximum-security prisons where they face mass trials. Those measures have contributed to a drastic reduction in the country’s homicide rate — dropping from 100 murders per [...]
Coke trade booms despite crackdowns
Will Fitzpatrick
Over the past year, the Trump administration has unleashed a massive military campaign against suspected drug traffickers in South America and the Caribbean, including dozens of lethal airstrikes on alleged smuggling vessels. Despite these tactics, which human rights lawyers and activists have questioned, “massive” amounts of cocaine continue to [...]
The GOP’s Musky scent
Musk’s cash splash – which makes him the largest known midterm donor – is meant to help Republicans head off a so-called “Blue Wave” of Democrat support that could cost the GOP not only the House, but possibly the Senate as well. It signals that Musk intends to remain a fixture of Republican politics, despite his rocky exit from the Trump [...]
EU puts the brakes on Chinese EVs
Will Fitzpatrick
The EU has new plans to limit the flow of Chinese-made goods into the continent to address its massive trade imbalance with China. China exported more than $7.5 billion worth of electric vehicles to the bloc in the first half of this year, nearly three times as much as during the same period last year. An estimated 800,000 Chinese-made fully [...]