60: More than 270 million tons of waste are recycled around the world each year, according to the World Bank. That’s equivalent to the weight of 740 Empire State buildings. But at the end of last year, China announced it would drastically cut the 60 percent of plastic waste exported by the world’s richest countries, dramatically upending the global recyclables market.
31: NATO is set to launch the combat phase of its biggest military war game in decades, an exercise that will involve 50,000 personnel, 10,000 vehicles, 250 aircraft, and 65 ships, including the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier strike group. Thirty-one countries, the 29 NATO members, plus Finland and Sweden, will take part. Russia is not pleased.
23: Brazil is one of the most violent countries in the world. An average of nearly 170 people were killed each day in 2017, including a young black man once every 23 minutes.
0.5: A total of 869 people from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saharan countries were detained along the US-Mexico border in 2017, or about 0.5 percent of total apprehension in Mexico and a smaller percentage of the US total. President Trump has claimed the “migrant caravan” making its way from Central America toward the US southern border includes an unspecified number of “Middle Easterners.”
