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Hard Numbers

20,800: The United States is on track to resettle only 20,800 refugees in fiscal year 2018, according to calculations by The Economist. That’s a 61% annual reduction, and the lowest number since 1980, when the modern system of refugee admissions was established.


318: Chinese companies have bought or invested in European assets amounting to at least $318 billion over the past 10 years, according to Bloomberg. American firms invested 45 percent less over the same period.

39.2: Africa spent $39.2 billion on defense in 2016 — but given its 1.2 billion population, that’s the lowest per capita military expenditure of any region in the world. Still, the continent faces numerous security challenges including transnational terrorism, local militancy, and clashes over resources that are becoming scarcer because of climate change.

5: At least five of the seven men who carried the coffin at Kim Jong-Il’s funeral have been executed, banned, or banished since his son Kim Jong-un came to power in 2011.

2: The blackouts in Puerto Rico caused by last year’s Hurricane Maria are the second largest power-outage ever on record, knocking out nearly 4 trillion customer hours. According to a study by Rhodium Group, only Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 was worse, knocking out more than 6 trillion customer hours in the Philippines.

GZEROMEDIA

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