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FILE PHOTO: Palestinian employees at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) prepare food aid rations for refugees, in Gaza city on January 19, 2022

Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect

Hard Numbers: Alt-aid for Gaza, 2024 economic outlook, Continent-sized drug racket busted, Stolen bear on the loose

30 million: Canada has made a new pledge to send nearly $30 million in aid to Gaza. The move comes after Canada followed the US lead in cutting funding to UNRWA, the UN relief agency, in light of Israeli accusations that members of the organization had participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. According to the last full year of data, in 2022 Canada gave about $24 million to UNRWA. The new batch of Canadian aid will be delivered by other UN agencies such as UNICEF, the UN Population Fund, and the World Health Organization. (What’s UNRWA and why is it controversial? Read our explainer here.)

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US ships during an underway replenishment in the Philippine Sea. January 19, 2023.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Greg Johnson via ABACAPRESS.COM via Reuters Connect

Hard Numbers: US camps in Philippines, Malaysia may nix death penalty, Bulgaria’s close vote, Burkina Faso vs. journalists, hungry as a bear in Japan

4: On Monday, the Philippine government confirmed the location of four new military camps that will indefinitely host rotating US forces, despite China’s opposition. The new encampments, which were announced last February, place US forces closer to Taiwan and key trade routes in the South China Sea, where China has territorial disputes with its neighbors.

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Members of parliament hold placards after the result of the vote on the first motion of no-confidence against the French government at the National Assembly in Paris, France, March 20, 2023.

REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

What We’re Watching: Slim win for Macron, protests in South Africa, Trump’s legal woes, Colombia peace collapsing?

Macron’s narrow escape

It came down to the wire, but Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in France’s National Assembly on Monday, with 278 voting to topple the government, nine votes shy of the threshold needed to pass.

Quick recap: The motion was triggered after Macron used a constitutional provision last week -- bypassing a vote in the lower house -- to pass a controversial pension reform despite weeks of protests (more on that here).

Not only do 70% of French adults abhor Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62 by 2030 – which he says is necessary to plug the growing debt hole – but the French electorate, which has long had a libertarian streak, is also furious that the government used what it says is an anti-democratic loophole to pass the measure.

Macron’s troubles are only just beginning. Hundreds were arrested in Paris over the weekend and on Monday as anti-government protests turned violent and smelly. Unions have called for nationwide demonstrations and strikes in a bid to pressure the government to roll back the measures (which will never happen).

Prime Minister Élizabeth Borne will likely take the fall and resign. Still, Macron, already unpopular before this debacle, will emerge a diminished political figure. After previously saying he understood that people were “tired of reforms which come from above,” it will be very hard for the ideological chameleon to regain the trust of vast swathes of the population.

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How to solve Colombia's cocaine problem
How to Solve Colombia's Cocaine Problem | GZERO World

How to solve Colombia's cocaine problem

According to a 2022 White House report, during the pandemic, coca cultivation and production in Colombia reached a record 245,000 hectares and 1,010 metric tons. In an exclusive interview with GZERO World, Colombia's new president, Gustavo Petro, said that enough is enough.

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Coronavirus Politics Daily: Italy snubs women, the COCAINE-19 crisis, ISIS exploits pandemic in Iraq

Italy's women snubbed in COVID response – Italy's COVID-19 commission, which was selected to advise the government on how to manage the crisis, has gathered for a televised briefing each night to update the public on the day's news. But in a country where more than half of doctors, and three-quarters of nurses, are women, Italians have noted a glaring omission: the 20-member body is made up entirely of men. Now, anger over gender inequality in the coronavirus response is gaining momentum: more than 70 women doctors and scientists have signed a petition demanding that the Italian government include females in the councils that govern the country's response to the pandemic. Female lawmakers have lodged a similar motion in the Senate. The absence of women in the policymaking process has led to some big mistakes, critics say: Prime Minister Conte's reopening plan, for example, fails to address childcare burdens, which disproportionately fall on the female population. The gender imbalance in the government's coronavirus response tracks broader inequalities in Italy, where only 53 percent of Italian women are represented in the workforce, the second lowest mark in the EU.

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