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Representation of Ethereum, with its native cryptocurrency ether.
Hard Numbers: Crypto upgrade, Angolan inauguration, Iran’s SCO bid, soaring US mortgage rates, enthusiasm for omicron boosters
99: Ethereum, the world's no. 2 cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, successfully completed a long-awaited software upgrade that will reduce carbon emissions linked to its mining by 99%. Crypto fans hope “the merge” will help get environmentalists off their backs and end the crypto price slump they’ve suffered since May.
2: Following an unusually competitive election, João Lourenço was inaugurated on Thursday for his second term as Angola’s president. What should we expect? Protests from the opposition, which contested the result as rigged.
9: Iran just inched a step closer to becoming the ninth member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization by signing a memo to join the Central Asian security bloc. Increasingly isolated on the global stage, Tehran needs all the friends it can get — it also recently applied to join BRICS.
6: Thirty-year fixed mortgages, the most common home loan in America, surpassed 6% for the first time since 2008, double what it was nine months ago. This comes as the consumer price index released this week showed the cost of housing remains stubbornly high despite rising interest rates.
72: Around 72% of Americans say they would get a new COVID booster shot, the first vaccine developed to match developing Omicron variants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, this comes amid growing criticism that the public awareness campaign around the new shots has been sluggish.Former Malaysian PM Najib Razak speaks to the media outside a court in Putrajaya.
Hard Numbers: Najib pardon mulled, Angola counts votes, Taiwan ups defense budget, Sardinia woos you
12: Malaysia's highly influential ex-PM Mahathir Mohamed says the king will likely pardon Najib Razak, the disgraced former prime minister who this week began serving a 12-year prison term over corruption related to the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal. Not good when you're trying to show you're serious about punishing graft.
51: With almost all ballots counted, the ruling MPLA party has won 51% of the vote in Angola's most competitive election since independence. That's a seven-point lead over the opposition UNITA party, which is crying fraud and will likely contest the result in court.
19.41 billion: Taiwan plans to boost defense spending by 13.9% next year to a record $19.41 billion. China is getting increasingly bold in its military moves to intimidate the self-governing island following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent trip to Taipei.
15,000: Sardinia is offering 15,000 euros ($14,960) for people to move to the sun-soaked Italian island, famous for its pristine coastline, donkeys, and breads. But there's a catch: you'll have to live in a small town, use half of the money to buy or renovate a home, and become a full-time resident. Totally worth it, if you ask this Signalista.Angolans (finally) get an interesting election
On Wednesday, Angolans will go to the polls to vote in the most competitive parliamentary and presidential election since the oil-rich country’s 27-year civil war ended 20 years ago.
For the first time, the opposition UNITA party has a shot at (peacefully) beating the ruling MPLA party, which has governed Angola throughout its entire independent history. But the MPLA has no plans of handing over the reins to its longtime enemy — whatever voters decide.
Why does this election matter? For one thing, the former Portuguese colony in southwestern Africa has a long history of internal strife. Its 1975-2002 conflict began as a proxy fight during the Cold War, with the Soviets and Cuba backing the MLPA and the US and apartheid South Africa supporting UNITA.
The 1990s saw Paul Manafort (!) lobby Washington on behalf of UNITA leader Jonás Savimbi. In the early 2000s, China entered the fray by offering the cash-strapped MLPA huge loans in exchange for crude to fuel the Chinese economic boom. By the time it ended with Savimbi's death, Angola’s civil war had already spilled over into the neighboring DRC and internally displaced over a million people.
But Angola is really a big deal because it’s literally swimming in offshore oil and natural gas. In May, it briefly overtook Nigeria as Africa's top oil producer, and Europe wants to buy more Angolan crude and gas to diversify its energy options away from Russia.
Yet Angola is hardly tying its fortunes to the West. It’s one of the 17 African countries that abstained in the UN vote over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, partly due to the MPLA’s longstanding ties with Moscow. Luanda is also so deep in the red with Beijing that a big chunk of its crude revenues go toward paying off Chinese loans. China is by far Angola’s No. 1 oil customer, accounting for almost three-quarters of its crude exports in 2020.
The ruling party's candidate is milquetoast President João Lourenço, who took over in 2017 after longtime strongman José Eduardo dos Santos stepped down. Dos Santos died last week in Spain, and his body arrived this weekend in Luanda — just in time to grab media attention away from the vote.
Lourenço's main pitch to voters is that the economy has done well on his watch due to high oil prices and big infrastructure spending. But he's waffled on his promise to end the rampant corruption of his predecessor.
(Dos Santos' oil-soaked kleptocracy was the stuff of legend. In 2013, his daughter Isabel became Africa's richest woman … until last year, when Forbes magazine dropped her from the list after most of her assets had been seized or frozen by Lourenço's government and some European countries.)
Meanwhile, UNITA leader Adalberto Costa Júnior is regarded as a breath of fresh air. Costa Júnior — famous for his slick social media videos to appeal to young voters — promises transparency, separation of powers, and more social spending in a country where one-third of the population lives in poverty despite the vast oil wealth.
His message is resonating with the electorate, says Eurasia Group analyst Shridaran Pillay: “For the first time in Angolan history, the opposition has provided voters [with] something to consider.”
With a tight result all but assured, the MPLA is putting its thumb on the scale to keep Lourenço in power. The ruling party has appointed most members of the (technically independent) national electoral commission, which has banned the opposition from running as a single party. With the MPLA calling all the shots, the process will be anything but free and fair.
If, as expected, Lourenço wins in what is perceived to be a rigged vote or Costa Júnior does but his victory is overturned, the opposition will likely challenge the result in court. Protests will follow, but we probably won't see post-election violence on a scale that would trigger a national uprising.
Lourenço "has been far less heavy-handed with protesters" than Dos Santos was, "which we expect to continue as he seeks endorsement from the international community," says Pillay. Still, the president won't hesitate to respond with force if he feels threatened — as he did in October 2021, when pro-democracy activists took to the streets to protest the changes in the electoral law.
If things do go south, expect Brussels and Beijing to react differently. Unrest following a disputed MPLA victory "would likely have a greater effect on the relationship with the EU than with China because of the human rights angle," explains Pillay, "but it could also see oil majors pull back from Angola."The word Pegasus, binary code and the Spanish flag.
Hard Numbers: Spain spy chief sacked, US gun deaths soar, Angolan diamonds dull, Ecuador prison explodes (again)
63: Spain’s spy chief Paz Esteban has been fired over revelations that the intelligence community had targeted 63 Catalan independence activists with the controversial Pegasus spyware.
35: Gun-related homicides in the US shot up 35% during the first year of the pandemic, the largest annual increase ever recorded, according to the CDC. Experts attribute the surge to higher firearms sales and the economic and psychological disruptions caused by the pandemic. The murder rate for young Black men was more than 20 times as high as it was for white men of the same age.
10.05 million: Angola’s state diamond producer has warned that its output could fall by a third this year, to 10.05 million carats, because US and European sanctions against Moscow are interfering with deliveries of diamond mining equipment from Russia.
44: At least 44 inmates were killed in a prison riot in Ecuador this week. The violence at the Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas facility was sparked by a drug gang rivalry, but experts say prison overcrowding is an ongoing problem in the Andean country, where riots like this are common.
The Graphic Truth: Where will the next megacities be?
By 2030, ten urban areas are projected to attain "megacity" status, a population of more than 10 million people. Six will be in Asia, where more than half of the population will be living in cities at the end of the decade. But the fastest growing megacities will be in Africa — including new megacities in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Luanda (Angola). Can urban planners and governments in Africa keep pace with this rapid urban growth? We look at the world's upcoming megacities, comparing their current and future estimated populations, to get a sense of how crowded each megalopolis will be in 2030.