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Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on May 14, 2025.
HARD NUMBERS: Israeli air strike in Gaza kills 50, Houthis try and fail to hit Israel, Al Qaeda-linked group kills Burkina Faso soldiers, Uruguayan liberal hero dies, Brazil’s secret cash cow
50: An Israeli air strike in Northern Gaza killed at least 50 on Tuesday night, including 22 children and 15 women, according to an Indonesian hospital operating in the area. Israel has ramped up its latest Gaza offensive, with its security cabinet reportedly approving a plan to “capture” the enclave.
3: The Iran-backed Houthi rebels fired three missiles at Israel during a 24-hour period spanning Tuesday and Wednesday, two of which were intercepted. Israel seems ready to respond, ordering a trio of Yemeni ports to be evacuated.
60: An Al Qaeda affiliate killed 60 Burkina Faso soldiers in the country’s northern Loroum province, amid mounting tensions in a place that has been roiled by an Islamist insurgency for nearly a decade. It’s not clear when exactly the attacks took place.
89: Uruguay’s former president José Mujica, renowned for his humble lifestyle, died at the age of 89. He had cancer of the esophagus. Once the leader of a violent guerilla group in the 1960s, he served 15 years in prison before eventually becoming president in 2010. He earned cult status among liberals worldwide when he became the first leader to legalize weed.
80%: Zebus, an Indian cow breed renowned for its humped back and turkey wattle, now comprise 80% of Brazil’s total cattle herd. They are more resistant to heat and parasites than their European cousins, allowing them to proliferate, which in turn has helped Brazil become the largest net exporter of food.
People shout slogans in front of the portrait of Sirri Sureyya Onder, a prominent pro-Kurdish party lawmaker and key figure in Turkey’s tentative process to end the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) insurgency who died on Saturday at age 62, during his funeral in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 4, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Kurds in Turkey formally disband, Burkina Faso’s military murders civilians, White Afrikaners land in US, UK tries to curtail immigration, Top Argentina Court discovers Nazi docs
41: The revolution will not be finalized, as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a militant rebel group in Turkey, formally disbanded after a 41-year insurgency against the Turkish government. The original goal was to create an independent Kurdish state, but the group’s weakened position in Iraq and Syria forced it to declare a ceasefire in March, before ultimately dissolving. Turkey hasn’t fully secured peace, yet: it must now establish how to disarm the rebel group.
130: In March, the Burkina Faso military and its allied groups killed at least 130 ethnic Fulani civilians, per a Human Rights Watch report, as the government’s response to the Islamist insurgency turns vicious. Leaders of the Fulani, who are a Muslim community, deny any links with the Islamist militants. The massacre triggered reprisal killings, with insurgent groups – who control around 40% of the country – murdering at least 100 civilians in villages they believe are helping the government.
59: A group of 59 white Afrikaners landed in the United States from Johannesburg on Monday, after the Trump administration granted them refugee status in response to what they see as “racial discrimination” from South Africa’s government – the Rainbow Nation denies these claims. The move further escalates the rising tensions between Pretoria and Washington.
100,000: In the latest sign of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced measures to reduce annual net immigration by 100,000 by 2029. The plan includes banning recruitment of care workers from abroad, cutting access to visas for skilled workers, and increasing English language requirements for all work visas. Net immigration reached a record 906,000 in the 12 months to June 2023.
4: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Ramasecured a fourth term in office after his party dominated Sunday’s parliamentary elections. With 94% of ballots counted, Rama’s Socialist Party won 52%, while opposition leader Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party sits on just 34%. It marks a setback for the MAGA message: Berisha had relied on the help of major Trump allies, to no avail.
83: As if replicating the plot of an Indiana Jones film, Argentina’s Supreme Court discovered Nazi documents among its archives that included propaganda material aimed at spreading the fascist ideology across the country. The material is believed to be part of the 83 packages that the German embassy in Tokyo sent to Buenos Aires on the “Nan-a-Maru” steamship in 1941. Argentina was a safe haven for the Nazis after World War II, though some – Adolf Eichmann, most infamously – were tracked down and brought to justice.
Burkina Faso’s junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore attends the first ordinary summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger, on July 6, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Burkina Faso foils coup effort, Trump dents democracy rating, Spain to hit defense-spending target, Musk to reduce his DOGE hours, Migrants arrested while fleeing US, Japan rids foreign debt, Tourists killed in Kashmir
40%: Burkina Faso’s ruling military recently foiled an attempted coup aimed at removing junta leader Cap. Ibrahim Traoré, the country’s security minister said on Monday. The Sahel nation has had to deal with widespread insurgency in recent years, with rebel jihadist groups reportedly controlling around 40% of the country’s land mass.
55: US President Donald Trump made a dent in American democracy almost as soon as he won the 2024 election, according to a survey of 520 political experts. The Bright Line Watch benchmark gave US democracy a rating of 55 in February, down 12 points from where it was on the day of Trump’s election victory and 14 points from where it was in October 2024. It’s the country’s fastest drop since the survey began in 2017.
2%: Our globally minded readers will immediately recognize this figure as the proportion of gross domestic product that NATO member nations are encouraged to spend on defense. Under pressure from the Trump administration and its European allies to expand its military, Spain said Tuesday that it will finally hit that figure again this year, after falling short for over 30 years.
130: Elon Musk is DOGE-ing himself. The Tesla CEO says he will cut back his role in the government after his electric vehicle company reported a massive profit drop. Musk says he will spend just one to two days each week on DOGE following accusations that he has let his focus on Tesla slip. Regardless, temporary government employees like Musk are normally limited to working 130 days a year, which would expire at the end of May.
8: So much for the Great Escape: From January through April, US authorities arrested eight undocumented Dominican migrants in Puerto Rico who were trying to return to their home country. The arrests raise questions over the Trump administration’s stated goal of encouraging undocumented migrants to leave of their own accord.
$20 billion: Trump’s tariffs have Tokyo in a selling mood. Japanese investors said sayonara to more than $20 billion of foreign debt early this month. The selloff shows how Wall Street jitters can ripple across the Pacific. It’s not clear which foreign debt Japanese investors unloaded, though they are the largest holders of US Treasuries of any country worldwide, so their investment choices are observed hawkishly.
26: Outrage is rising after gunmen killed 26 tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pahalgam on Tuesday. Several other victims remain critically injured. The Resistance Front – believed to be an offshoot of Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba – has claimed responsibility.
Burkina Faso's junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore attends the first ordinary summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger July 6, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Coup bloc, Gaza school bombed, Ukraine in the dark, Tesla in China, Six days in Greece
3: Junta leaders from Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso announced Saturday they would form their own international bloc and “irrevocably” turn away from ECOWAS, just ahead of the latter’s summit on Sunday. Burkina Faso’s President Ibrahim Traoré claimed the new alliance would stand up to Western influence in Africa, saying “These imperialists have only one cliché in mind: ‘Africa is the empire of slaves’.”
16: An Israeli attack on a UNRWA school in Gaza killed at least 16 people and wounded 50 on Saturday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. UNRWA officials said at least 500 people have now been killed while sheltering in its facilities in Gaza, but Israel claims Hamas often uses the facilities as operating bases, essentially positioning civilians as human shields.
100,000: Russian airstrikes on power infrastructure in northern Ukraine left over 100,000 households in the dark on Saturday night. Targeting energy plants and transmission equipment has become a key strategy for Russia in its attempts to damage civilian morale in Ukraine, and the country’s energy utility says it has lost nine gigawatts of power capacity over the last three months — enough to power the entire Netherlands.
947,000: Tesla has officially been added to a list of approved government vehicle purchases in the Chinese province of Jiangsu, the only foreign-owned EV manufacturer on the list. However, the company manufactured over 947,000 cars at its Shanghai factory last year, most of which were sold in China.
6: Greece is experimenting with a six-day workweek, which allows firms that operate 24 hours a day to schedule employees to work up to eight hours at 40% overtime on the sixth day after a regular 40-hour workweek. They also have the option to spread 40 hours across six 6.5-hour work days. Workers are critical of the new rules, which seem to run against positive experiences some countries have had with four-day workweeks.FILE PHOTO: Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif attends a summit on climate resilience in Pakistan, months after deadly floods in the country, at the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland, January 9, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Sharif’s return to power, Burkina Faso killings, Boeing’s big fine, Trump’s delegates
201: Shehbaz Sharifsecured 201 votes in Pakistan’s parliament to become prime minister after a bitterly contested election in which former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s supporters shocked the establishment, delivering the greatest vote share to independent candidates allied to Khan.
170: Authorities in Burkina Faso say jihadist factions killed at least 170 people during raids into three settlements in the country’s north, as extremism spirals in the wake of a 2022 military coup. Jihadist violence has killed over 20,000 people and displaced 2 million in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in West Africa.
51,000,000: Boeing is facing a hard landing, with the aerospace giant paying $51 million to settle over 200 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations laws, according to the State Department. The government says Boeing may have put national security at risk when its employees downloaded sensitive technical documents while physically located in China and Russia, among other countries.
244: After winning GOP primaries in Michigan, Missouri, and Idaho on Saturday, former President Donald Trump has 244 delegates - more than five times as many as his only remaining challenger, Nikki Haley. Trump’s lead is set to grow this week on “Super Tuesday,” but Haley did win her first primary on Sunday in Washington DC, which nearly doubled her vote count.FILE PHOTO: Russian officers from the Wagner Group are seen around Central African president Faustin-Archange Touadera, as they are part of the presidential security system during the referendum campaign to change the constitution and remove term limits, in Bangui, Central African Republic July 16, 2023.
Have gun, will travel? Russia wants you in Africa
Moscow has reportedly begun recruiting 20,000 soldiers to be deployed to at least five Russia-aligned African countries to replace Wagner Group mercenaries previously stationed there as Russia deepens its influence on the continent.
Just how many recruits “Africa Corps” can drum up is not clear (nor is why they named themselves after a Nazi unit, Afrika Korps, that got its arse kicked up and down Libya before surrendering en masse). Many Wagner fighters took contracts with the Ministry of Defense after an aborted revolt by former leader Yevgeny Prigozhin resulted in his death and the company’s disbandment, and those with experience in Africa may be rolled into the new unit. Then again, with Moscow trying to find 250,000 more men to throw into Ukraine, some recruits may figure that sweating it out in the Sahel beats getting shelled in a rat-infested trench.
The troops will provide security for coup leaders in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, as well as the House of Representatives government in Libya (not recognized by the United Nations) and the Central African Republic, which has drifted toward Moscow since 2016. In exchange, Russia will help themselves to Wagner’s former commercial fiefdom on the continent, including potentially lucrative mining operations producing gold, diamonds, and valuable industrial minerals.
But it’s a gamble: Wagner’s force in Africa was only ever a fraction of the size of this putative Africa Corps, and as a nominally private company, Moscow could shrug its shoulders when Wagner fighters committed atrocities. Now, the Russian flag would be undeniably flying over the murder, torture, and rape of civilians – but color us skeptical that the potential international opprobrium will hold them back one bit.Supporters of Burkina Faso's junta attend a rally to mark the one-year anniversary of the coup that brought Captain Ibrahim Traore to power in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on Sept. 29, 2023.
ECOWAS “officially” loses three junta-run states
Junta leaders in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have cut ties with their former French colonial overlords and kicked out French troops meant to fight terrorist groups threatening communities in the arid grasslands south of the Sahara Desert. In their place? Russian mercenaries, naturally, who have allegedly been complicit in a spate of atrocities over the last two years.
While the coups have done little to stave off the terrorists (the region suffered thousands of attacks last year), they’ve done a much better job scaring off troops from neighboring democracies. A threatened military intervention in Niger to be led by Nigeria last year amounted to nothing, and no one in the region is eager to put lives on the line now.
ECOWAS isn’t casting itself in the best light. When coup leaders in Niger invited an ECOWAS delegation to talks about the bloc’s sanctions in the capital Niamey on Friday, only Togo showed up. The other delegates said their plane got stuck in Abuja with mechanical issues.
There may be an odd silver lining in the disorganization, though. Since ECOWAS rules require states to file for withdrawal a year in advance, and no one seems to have bothered to put in an official notice, rejoining may not be such a technical hurdle should the political winds shift. We’ll be watching (but not holding our breath) to see whether Mali and Burkina Faso go ahead with elections scheduled for later this year.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Burkina Faso's interim President Ibrahim Traore at the Russia-Africa Summit in Russia in July.
Russia helps Burkina Faso go nuclear
Only one in five citizens of Burkina Faso has access to electricity, making it one of the least electrified countries in the world. It also has one of the highest electricity costs on the continent. The landlocked country gets one-third of its total energy supplies from petroleum products, 2% from coal, and the remainder from biofuels, chiefly wood and charcoal. The nuclear plant would help the Burkinabe government meet its goal of attaining 95% electricity access for urban areas and 50% for rural areas by 2030.
The plant would also help cement ties between Moscow and Ouagadougou. Traore, who took power in a coup just last year, needs assistance to battle Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. In May, Traore hailed Russia as a key strategic ally while denying that he had retained the services of Russia’s Wagner Group. But analysts say he doesn’t have much choice and will likely go down the same road as neighboring Mali, which hired Wagner in 2021, and the military junta in neighboring Niger, which has made overtures to the mercenary group since taking power in July.
Moscow, meanwhile, needs allies in Africa to shore up support for its side in its war in Ukraine. It is eager to fill the vacuum created by France’s military withdrawal from all three Sahel nations, where anti-colonial sentiment is on the rise.Russia is also helping Egypt build a nuclear power plant and is committed to building another in Nigeria.