Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Hard Numbers

Hard numbers: China raises retirement age, Cocaine found in sharks, Russia and Belarusian athletes accused of supporting Ukraine war, Deadly Ethiopian mudslides

​Chinese retirement home.

Chinese retirement home.

Make us preferred on Google
65: China is beginning to gradually raise its retirement age over the next five years to cope with its aging population and overburdened pension system. China’s current retirement age is one of the lowest in the world: 60 for men and between 50-55 for women. Meanwhile, the country’s life expectancy has risen above that of the US, to 78 years. At the end of the adjustment, China’s retirement age is expected to be 65.

13: In the real-life sequel to “Cocaine Bear,” 13 sharks have tested positive for cocaine off of the coast of Brazil – at a level 100 times higher than other aquatic life. Experts believe cocaine is getting into the water via illegal labs illegally manufacturing the drug, or through excrement of drug users.

17: A human rights law firm has accused the International Olympic Committee of negligence for allowing 17 Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in the Summer Games in Paris even though the competitors have shown support for the war in Ukraine in breach of Olympic rules. Russia and Belarus have been banned from sending official teams to Paris. Still, some sports allow athletes to compete as individuals if they have passed a special IOC test of neutrality – which the law firm’s suit alleges they violated.

229: At least 229 people have died in mudslides this week following heavy rains in southwestern Ethiopia in the deadliest such disaster recorded in the Horn of Africa country. Most of the victims were rescue workers who were buried in a mudslide on Monday as they searched the steep terrain for survivors of another mudslide the previous day.

More For You

The ‘gooolllll’ heard around the world
Will Fitzpatrick
Ferran Torres scored the decisive goal in extra time, prompting the emphatic call from Cantor, the Argentine-born announcer who has now been at the microphone for ten World Cups. But the 44-second call on Sunday wasn’t his longest of the tournament. That honor belongs to his 52-second celebration when Curaçao scored its first-ever World Cup goal [...]
Betting on Trump
Farida Dowidar
Gabriel Perez, who has worked for the president since 2016, is under fire for his prediction market wagers, allegedly using his access to the speeches to make his bets. At times, Perez reportedly backed out of bets mid-speech when Trump skipped over portions of addresses that he’d bet would be mentioned. Kalshi, the platform used, detected unusual [...]
Hunger strike in India intensifies
Farida Dowidar
Sonam Wangchuk has long campaigned for the reform of India’s corrupt and inefficient system of entrance exams for higher education. That issue is also central to the recently formed Cockroach Janata Party protest movement, led by people decades younger than Wangchuk, who is 59-years-old. In India, millions of students compete vigorously for a [...]
China’s economic engine cools
Will Fitzpatrick
China’s economy posted one of its slowest quarterly growth rates on record. The slowdown was hardly a surprise: earlier this year, Chinese officials set the country’s lowest growth target since 1991. The weak growth is not coming from a decrease in manufacturing. In fact, exports rose 27% year over year in June. Instead, it’s coming from sluggish [...]