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Hard Numbers: Venezuela grabs Biden by the border, EU reaches deal on Ukraine aid, US strike on Houthi drones, Professional trust crisis, ICJ rules on Russia, Amelia Earhart found at last?
Venezuelan migrants are pat-down before boarding a repatriation flight as a part of an immigration enforcement process, at the Valley International Airport, in Harlingen, Texas, U.S. October 18, 2023.
14: Venezuela has given the US 14 days to back off its “economic aggression,” or it will stop accepting deportation flights from the US carrying undocumented Venezuelan migrants. Washington has threatened to re-impose oil sanctions on Caracas after Venezuela banned the leading opposition candidate from running for president. But Venezuela is hitting Biden where it hurts: The migration crisis at the US southern border is becoming a major political liability for him, and Venezuelans are the third most common nationality of undocumented migrants apprehended.
50: The EU on Thursday reached a deal on an additional €50 billion in aid for Ukraine, breaking through a deadlock caused by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. "All 27 leaders agreed" on the support package, tweeted Charles Michel, the European Council president. Though Orbán is finally on board, it was not immediately clear what the Hungarian leader gained in exchange for abandoning his objections.
10: A US strike destroyed 10 Houthi drones in Yemen on Thursday, as Washington prepares to retaliate over a deadly attack on US forces in Jordan that the White House blamed on an Iran-backed coalition of militias. The US has repeatedly targeted the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in recent days in response to attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
78: Who do Americans trust? Nurses, that’s who. A whopping 78% of respondents polled said nurses are honest and ethical, the highest of nearly two dozen professions. The bad news? That’s still down 7 points since 2019, amid a wider collapse of trust in all trades. The least trusted? No surprises here: members of Congress, with just 6% – lower than car salespeople! And just one profession is seen as more trustworthy than it was four years ago: Labor union leaders, who rose by one mere percentage point to 25% during that period.
7: After seven years, the International Court of Justice (yes the same court that is handling the Gaza genocide case) on Wednesday ruled that Russia violated a UN anti-terrorism treaty by supporting separatists in Eastern Ukraine, and a minority rights treaty by suppressing the Ukrainian language in Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014. But in a setback for Ukraine, which brought the case, the court declined to rule on Russian responsibility for downing the MH17 commercial airliner in 2014.
87: Here’s some good news about America’s most famous missing aviatrix: An explorer claims his sonar imaging technology has found and photographed the remains of Amelia Earhart’s plane, which went missing over the Pacific Ocean 87 years ago as she attempted to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. Not bad. Next up, we’d like to ask this explorer to find us Jimmy Hoffa.