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A member of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) shouts to instruct his troops after Indonesian President Joko Widodo inspected their guard of honour at State House in Nairobi, Kenya August 21, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Kenya signs a big defense pact, US looks to cut down Amazon, Thailand jails king’s critic, Mexican exports get stranded, Nigeria rescues students
5: The US and Kenya have signed a 5-year defense agreement under which Washington will support the East African country’s security operations. Kenya has been battling al-Shabab jihadists in neighboring Somalia for years and is now poised — with $100 million in new US support — to lead an anti-gang mission to Haiti. Read more about why Kenya wants the Haiti assignment here.
17: The US government and 17 US states on Tuesday accused Amazon of illegally stifling competition in ways that have harmed consumers and small businesses. The sprawling online shopping and entertainment giant is the second-largest private US employer. The suit comes just weeks after the Feds opened an antitrust case against Google.
4: A prominent Thai lawyer and activist who has called for reform of the country’s monarchy was sentenced to 4 years in prison under Thailand’s strict lese-majeste laws. Arnon Nampa was one of the leaders of the mass youth-led protests against the junta-dominated government in 2020. Thai politics were recently upended by the return of exiled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra. Read more here.
125: At least 125 people were killed in an unexplained explosion at a crowded fuel depot in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on Tuesday. The victims were among thousands of ethnic Armenians fleeing Karabakh after Azerbaijan retook control over the Armenian-majority region last week for the first time in more than 30 years. Read more background here.
4: Nigerian security forces rescued 14 university students who had been abducted by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria. Half a dozen students remain unaccounted for. Kidnappings for ransom have grown common in the region in recent years, as part of a broader clash between nomadic and pastoral ethnic groups. It is the first major kidnapping of its kind since President Bola Tinubu took office earlier this year with promises to improve security.Jörg Prophet, AfD candidate for mayor in Nordhausen, stands in the city center.
Hard Numbers: German far right comes up short, Ukraine dreams of drones, a space rock arrives on earth, world trade slows
54.9%: In an upset, Jörg Prophet, of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, lost a promising bid for mayor of Nordhausen the office on Sunday, as incumbent Kai Buchmann kept his job, winning 54.9% of the vote. The AfD has been polling at 21.5% nationwide, but has even more support in Thuringia, which is where Nordhausen is located.
$1 billion: Ukraine wants a drone army, and it’s looking to spend more than $1 billion to get one. Drones, Ukrainian leaders say, are great for reconnaissance, dropping bombs, and self-exploding on impact – all useful things in Kyiv’s war of defense against Russia. But what are drones not so good at? Holding territory.
6.21 billion: That’s how many kilometers (3.86 billion miles) a NASA capsule traveled to deliver the largest-ever asteroid sample to American soil. The capsule landed in a Utah desert on Sunday. Scientists hope the sample will help us better understand how the solar system formed and why life occurred on Earth.
3.2%: World trade volumes dropped 3.2% in July compared to the same month last year — the steepest decline in almost three years. High inflation is crushing demand for exports, while the resulting interest rate hikes are choking off credit, fueling fears of a global economic slowdown.
An Iranian woman walks past a huge mural of Iran's flag, in the Enghelab (Revolution) avenue in downtown Tehran, September 12, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Iran cracks down on women, bestsellers sue AI, Venezuelan migrants get right to work, India suspends Canadian visas, Turkey jacks up rates
10: Under a new law passed Wednesday, Iranian women could be jailed for up to ten years if they refuse to wear hijab. The crackdown comes just days after the one year anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in state custody after the morality police arrested her for not wearing hijab properly.
17: A group of 17 prominent authors are suing OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, accusing the company of “systematic theft on a mass scale.” The suit says ChatGPT has violated their copyright protections because it draws upon their texts to build its language models and responses. The complaint also alleges that ChatGPT can be used to plagiarize them, and includes examples for each writer — including a Game of Thrones prequel called “Dawn of Direwolves”. (Can I read it? - Matt)
472,000: As President Joe Biden left the Big Apple late Wednesday, his administration announced that Venezuelans already in the country could legally live and work in the US for the next 18 months. The decision will affect 472,000 Venezuelans nationwide and roughly half of New York City’s migrants, letting them support themselves and easing the strain on New York’s social safety net. (For more on the situation in New York, see our explainer).
80,000: India announced it would suspend visas for Canadians amid the ongoing row over the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Last year about 80,000 Canadians visited India. Should Canada reciprocate, it could threaten the visa status of over 320,000 Indian students in Canadian universities.
30: The central bank in Turkey raised interest rates by an aggressive 5 percentage points to 30%, as official inflation rates topped 58%. It’s part of a major reversal of the Erdogan administration’s policy after winning re-election back in May: the previous economic team insisted on cutting rates even as prices soared.
(Department of Corrections: While we’re talking interest rates, in yesterday’s edition we mistakenly said the Fed’s rate pause was their first in 18 months. In fact, they decided on a pause in June, 2023 as well. We regret the error and hope it doesn’t affect your rate of interest in the Daily)
Ukraine's Deputy of Defence Minister Hanna Maliar addresses during a media briefing of the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine on 13 April 2023, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Ukraine’s housecleaning continues, China outdoes itself over Taiwan, California sues Big Oil, US loses its wings, Nobody gets to see Cristiano Ronaldo play in Iran
6: The big fall cleaning at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense continues, as President Zelensky fired six deputy ministers over the weekend. No reason was given, but the move comes just weeks after his office sacked the Defense Minister on allegations of corruption.
103: China set a new record for aerial aggression against Taiwan, sending a total of 103 warplanes towards the island in a mere 24 hours from Sunday to Monday. The move is part of Beijing’s carrot-and-stick approach to influencing Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election. Read more about that here.
135: The state of California, AKA the world’s fifth largest economy, has filed a 135-page lawsuit against the leading American oil companies and lobbying groups, arguing that the industry systematically misled the public about the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change.
80 million: Uh, you lost a what now? The US government is asking for help to locate an $80 million fighter jet that went missing after its pilot ejected somewhere over South Carolina on Sunday. On the plus side, if the US can’t find the state of the art f-35 warplane, chances are the Chinese or Russians can’t either, right? Right?
7: For the first time in 7 years, a Saudi football club will visit Iran, as Al-Nassr, home of living football legend Cristiano Ronaldo, arrives in Tehran. The trip comes amid a thaw between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but fans will have to catch a glimpse of “CR7” anywhere but the pitch, because Al-Nassr’s match against Tehran’s Persepolis isn’t open to fans. The Asian Football Federation reportedly hit Persepolis with a one-game crowd ban after the team goaded an opponent in Goa with a post about Iran’s 18th century invasion of India.
Residents fix a sign reading "Nipah containment zone" on a barricade
Hard Numbers: Kerala reacts to lethal virus outbreak, Brazil insurrectionists on trial U.S. inflation stays stubborn, uranium prices spike,
2: Two people in the southern Indian state of Kerala have died from the rare but highly-lethal Nipah virus, forcing authorities to declare a containment zone over 7 villages and shut down public schools and offices. One more adult and one child are currently hospitalized with confirmed infections, while 130 more have been tested for the disease. There is no cure or treatment for Nipah virus.
4: Today the first four supporters of Jair Bolsonaro go on trial for their actions during Brazil’s January 8th insurrection. Thousands of Bolsonaro’s supporters, outraged over his loss in the October election, stormed the capital city Brasília-- vandalizing the presidential palace, parliament, and the same supreme court where they stand trial today. The court condemned the rioter’s actions as an attack on Brazil’s democracy, and will hear the cases of two hundred more insurrectionists in the coming months.
3.7%: New US inflation data for August showed that U.S. households paid about 3.7% more for goods and services than they did a year ago. That’s up half a percentage point from the July reading and still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Most of the cost bump was fueled by higher energy prices, as Saudi Arabia and Russia recently cut oil production to boost global crude prices. The good news is that consumers continue to get relief on products besides food and energy, as so-called “core inflation” continued its 6-month downward trend.
30%: The benchmark price for uranium has soared 30% so far this year, as the transition away from fossil fuels continues to spark fresh interest in nuclear power. A pound of the radioactive stuff now costs $62, more than double what it was just five years ago. And you know who is loving the price spike? Russia, home to 40% of the world’s uranium refinement capacity.
A harvester carries coca leaves on his back in a coca plantation. He has put in half a day for this. For each 12-kilo sack, he receives the equivalent of about $1.50. A worker can harvest about 20 bags of coca leaves a day.
Hard Numbers: Colombia sees coca boom, Denmark sends museum pieces to Ukraine, World Food Program warns of “doom loop”, a river of wine flows in Portugal
6: In order to fulfill its promises to send Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine, Denmark had to pull half a dozen of the Cold War-era classics from local military history museums. The tanks in museum collections were found to be in better condition than those in Danish army storage.
24 million: The United Nations World Food Program has warned of a “doom loop” of global hunger as it faces a 60% budget shortfall this year. Unless the WFP can make up the deficit, some 24 million people around the world could fall into emergency hunger situations as the program can no longer provide for them.
600,000: Two wine tanks at the Levira Distillery in São Lourenço do Bairro, Portugal burst open, flooding the village with enough red wine to fill a 600,000 gallon Olympic-sized swimming pool. Local authorities managed to divert the torrent into an empty field before it reached the nearby Certima River - no word yet from local field mice on how they like the vintage.
10 billion: As part of its landmark antitrust case against Google, the US Justice Department says Google spends $10 billion every year to unfairly maintain its status as the internet’s most widely used search engine. The trial opened in Washington, DC on Tuesday and is expected to go on through the winter.
Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Hard Numbers: China’s Saudi visit, Greece’s energy ambitions, Colombia’s small steps, Austria’s crackdown on “boy racers”
6: Chinese President Xi Jinping will head to Saudi Arabia this week for the first time in six years in a bid to bolster economic relations with Riyadh. This comes amid broad perceptions in the Gulf that the US has lost interest in the Middle East as it focuses on the Asia Pacific and that Beijing is keen to fill the gap.
174: Greece and Bulgaria are in talks to revive a 174-mile-long oil pipeline bypassing the Bosphorus Strait to try and offset losses from reduced Russian energy exports to the region. Athens is trying to circumvent Russia as a key natural-gas exporter to the Balkans, hoping to deliver 8.5 billion metric tons of the stuff to these states by 2025.
60: The Colombian government has made progress in negotiations with the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) – the only paramilitary group that refused to sign onto a 2016 peace accord – in a bid to end the asymmetric war that’s plagued the country for nearly 60 years. As a first step, both sides agreed that displaced indigenous groups should be allowed to return to their historic lands.
14: Austrian authorities are cracking down on “boy racers” – those who drive at extreme speeds and wreak havoc on the roads – by threatening to confiscate their cars for up to 14 days. Repeat offenders, meanwhile, will have their vehicles seized and auctioned off.
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Hard Numbers: Trump’s campaign is loving impeachment
11,000 – In recent years, at least 11,000 Uighurs fleeing persecution in China have taken refuge in Turkey. The Uighurs are a Turkic ethnic group, whose plight Turkish President Erdogan has spoken out about. But as Ankara draws closer to China, Turkey has begun deporting some of them back to their homeland.
5,400 – A recent measles epidemic ravaging the Pacific island nation of Samoa has infected at least 5,400 people in the past several months. That's close to 3 percent of the population, an infection rate that equal 9 million people in the US or more than 30 million in China or India. Unfounded mistrust of vaccines and a weak public health system have contributed to the crisis. So far, 77 people have died.
2 – In the Afghan capital of Kabul, only two public swimming pools permit women to swim. They are strictly segregated by gender, and while women pay more than men for access, their facilities are crummier. Still, as the New York Times reports, the waters are a welcome escape from the chaos, uncertainty, and misogyny of daily life.
99.2 – It's too early to say how the impeachment of Donald Trump will affect the US 2020 election, but the president's own campaign is leaning into the issue: of the more than 4,500 television ads they've run this year, 99.2 percent of them focused on impeachment, according to a new Wesleyan Media Project study.