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Visite d’Etat de M. XI Jinping, Président de la République populaire de Chine, en France en presence de Ursula Von der Leyen
HARD NUMBERS: China lifts EU sanctions, Harvard reports on discrimination, Turkish police continue crackdown, Argentines scoop up dollars, Plastics kill
5: China lifted sanctions on five European Union lawmakers on Wednesday as Beijing seeks to balance the growing trade war with the United States by warming ties with Europe. The sanctions were originally imposed on members of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights in relation to European condemnations of human rights abuses against Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang.
500: Two Harvard University reports on anti-Muslim and antisemitic sentiment on campus released Monday stretched to over 500 pages cumulatively, noting that sizable minorities of Muslims (47%) and Jews (15%) did not feel physically safe. The reports, which were commissioned before the Trump administration took office, also showed that 92% of Muslims and 61% of Jews feared professional and academic repercussions for expressing political beliefs.
18: Turkish police have arrested 18 municipal employees in Istanbul as part of a growing crackdown against city Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, who was imprisoned last month. Imamoğlu is widely considered the only opposition figure able to go toe-to-toe with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the next presidential election, but legal obstacles may effectively bar him from running. The municipal employees were among a group of 52 detained over the weekend, and are accused of taking bribes and participating in criminal conspiracy.
1 billion: Argentines deposited $1 billion in US dollars into their bank accounts over the last eight business after the government lifted restrictions on buying US currency following five years of strict controls. The dollar’s relative value has been sliding under the Trump administration and hit a three-year low last week after the president repeatedly criticized the chair of the Federal Reserve.
350,000: What stretchy inanimate thing killed 350,000 people in 2018? One word. Are you listening? Plastics. More specifically, chemicals that are added to the plastics that we encounter in everyday items like food packaging, lotions, and shampoos. A new study suggests that these “phthalates,” as they’re called, contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths from heart disease, especially in emerging economies where middle-class consumption has grown rapidly in recent decades.
A pair of wolf cubs explore their surroundings in Dallas, Texas, on April 7, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Trump explores drones over Mexico, House Dems go big, Dominican roof collapse leads to tragedy, Electricity generation crosses green threshold, South African citrus goes bad, Dire wolves are back (sort of)
5: Five years ago, President Donald Trump suggested firing missiles into Mexico as a way to curtail drug cartels, according to former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s memoir. While that never happened, the commander-in-chief is exploring something similar, but this time with drones. Plans are still in their early stages, but American forces have already started reconnaissance flights – with Mexico’s approval – in a bid to acquire more information about the cartels.
35: Last week’s special elections in Florida appear to have House Democrats all giddy, as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of the House Democratic Caucus, released a list of 35 Republican-held seats that it plans to target in next year’s midterms. Some are realistic, others less so: Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) is on the list, despite winning reelection last year by 26 points.
98: At least 98 people have died and scores more were injured in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, after the roof of the Jet Set nightclub collapsed early Tuesday. The authorities reported that rescuers made 134 trips to the hospital, sometimes carrying two to three patients at a time due to the overwhelming number of casualties. One video captured the extent of the damage.
40: Environmental think-tank Ember found that electricity generated from low-carbon sources – solar, wind, hydropower, nuclear – exceeded 40% in 2024, the first time it has crossed this threshold since the 1940s. The fast rise of solar underscored this milestone, but the report also had some sobering news for environmentalists: Carbon dioxide emissions reached an all-time high last year.
35,000: The Trump administration’s expansive new tariffs are a sour fruit to swallow for South Africa’s citrus industry, as the new 31% duty on imports from the Rainbow Nation could spoil some 35,000 jobs, according to the Citrus Growers' Association of Southern Africa. Pretoria exports $100 million worth of citrus to the United States each year.
>10,000: Over 10,000 years since dire wolves went extinct, Biotech firm Colossal claims to have effectively brought them back from the dead. Using preserved DNA, Colossal scientists rewrote the code of a common gray wolf and used domestic dogs to birth three dire-like wolves, called Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. The species became a feature of public consciousness after they starred in the hit show “Game of Thrones.” Experts are skeptical about how closely these three pups resemble the dire wolf; one paleogeneticist suggested that these lupine creatures are grey wolves with dire wolf-like characteristics.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) speaks during a marathon address from the US Senate floor on Tuesday, April 1, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Booker sets record for longest Senate speech, Israel expands latest Gaza offensive, Netanyahu and Orbán defy the ICC, Oz universities cut off Confucius, Argentina’s poverty plunges
25+: The Democrats may not have the White House or a majority in Congress, but one thing they do have, still, is words. Lots and lots of words. Words for days, even, as Democratic Sen. Cory Booker showed by taking to the podium on Monday with a broadside against Donald Trump that lasted more than 25 hours. The veteran lawmaker from New Jersey, a former football player, had vowed to stay up there as long as he was “physically able.” Before yielding the floor on Tuesday night, Booker broke the record for the longest Senate floor speech, surpassing one set in 1957 by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, who filibustered against civil rights.
42: The first stage of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, brokered in January, officially lasted 42 days. The deal now looks to be far in the rearview mirror, as Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on Wednesday that he would expand his army’s latest military offensive in Gaza. The two sides are still negotiating another ceasefire deal via mediators but haven’t yet reached an agreement.
5: Benjamin Netanyahuleaves Wednesday on a five-day visit to Hungary. It’s the Israeli PM’s second trip abroad since the International Criminal Court last year issued an arrest warrant for him over alleged war crimes in Gaza. In February, he visited the US. Hungary is an ICC member, but the country’s proudly “illiberal” PM Viktor Orban says he won’t honor the court’s warrant. In recent years, the right-winger Netanyahu has cultivated controversial ties with populist nationalist parties in Europe, including some with histories of overt antisemitism.
6: In recent years, half a dozen Australian universities have closed the Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes on their campuses. The CIs educate students about Chinese language, history, and culture. The moves come amid broader tensions between Australia and China, and they reflect fears that Beijing has used the institutes to spread pro-Chinese propaganda and cultivate possible intelligence assets.
38: Argentina’s poverty rate plunged from 53% to 38% last year. Analysts credit “anarcho-capitalist” president Javier Milei, who drastically slashed government spending to put the mismanaged economy on a more stable footing. After an initial bout of pain, those measures brought inflation down from nearly 300% to 70%, easing poverty as people’s spending power increased.
A man holds a picture of hostages of Shiri Bibas and her two children Kfir and Ariel, on the day of their funeral procession, at a public square dedicated to hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel February 26, 2025.
HARD NUMBERS: Bibas family snubs government, Crypto bros cry, South Korea sees mini baby boom, Morocco suffers sheep shortage, Trump to tariff the EU
0: In a reflection of the deep political divisions within Israel over the government’s approach to freeing the hostages held in Gaza, zero government officials were invited to the funeral of a mother and her two children, whose remains Hamas returned to Israel last week. A relative of the three victims – Shiri Bibas and her two sons, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months – recently rebuked the government for leaking details about their deaths. Hamas said the three were killed in an Israeli airstrike, but Israel says they were beaten and strangled to death. Thousands of Israelis poured into the streets on Wednesday to pay their respects to the family. Meanwhile, Hamas returned the bodies of four more slain Israeli hostages and Israel began releasing 600 Palestinian prisoners in what is envisioned as the final swap of the first phase of the Israel-Hamas hostage deal.
800 billion: Global cryptocurrencies have lost $800 billion in value since January, a huge reversal of the crypto-euphoria that preceded Donald Trump’s inauguration. Traders blame the rout on worries about the global economy, disappointment with the slow rollout of Trump’s anticipated pro-crypto agenda, and a series of high-profile scandals (looking at you Javier Milei.) All told, here’s the mood in the crypto space right now, by way of a small camel.
9: Oh baby, this is good news from South Korean maternity wards. The country’s fertility rate rose last year for the first time in 9 years. An average Korean woman will now have .75 babies during her lifetime. That’s up .03 points compared to 2023, but it’s still the lowest in the world – and it’s way below the “replacement rate” of 2.1. Experts say the birth bump was partly due to a surge of post-pandemic marriages. The government has recently boosted parental leave and has increased financial support for childcare.
38: Morocco is suffering a sheep shortage so bad that King Mohammed VI has asked his people to refrain from the tradition of slaughtering the animals as part of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in June this year. Years of drought have reduced the North African country’s sheep population by nearly 40% over the past decade. This year alone, rainfall was 53% lower than the 30-year average. The kingdom recently signed a deal to import 100,000 sheep from Australia.
25: Donald Trumpsaid on Wednesday that he will soon slap a 25% tariff on all imports from the European Union. By way of explaining the measure, which could affect up to $30 billion of European exports, the US president said the EU was "formed to screw the United States." In fact, the origins of the EU lie chiefly in postwar efforts, backed by the US, to create political and economic interdependencies that would prevent future conflict on the continent.
Washington, DC, USA; President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, outgoing United States President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden participate in the departure ceremony for the Bidens on the East Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC after the swearing-in of Donald Trump as President on January 20, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Biden’s preemptive pardons, Trumpcoin, Billionaires blow up, India convicts hospital rapist
5: With just minutes left in his term, President Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons to five members of his family, explaining that he feared people associated with him could be prosecuted under the Trump administration. Hours earlier, he pardoned Gen. Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as the members and staff of the Congressional committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and police officers who testified before that committee. Biden also commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous activist who was controversially convicted of killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.
5.5 billion: A cryptocurrency token launched by President Donald Trump, known as $Trump, reached a value of nearly $5.5 billion within hours of its launch on Saturday. A Delaware company called CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC owns 80% of the coins, but it is unclear how much money Trump will make from this launch.
3: Oxfam, the UK-based anti-poverty charity, reported that the wealth of billionaires grew three times as fast in 2024 than in 2023, accelerating wealth inequality while the global rate of poverty has barely changed. The report comes as the World Economic Forum, the marquee gathering of the world’s political and financial bigwigs, gets underway in Davos, Switzerland.
1: A court in India has convicted one person, Sanjay Roy, of the brutal rape of a trainee doctor in Kolkata last year that launched nationwide protests — but the parents of the victim maintain that the crime was committed by a group, not a single man. Despite Indian police claiming before the court that the rape was “rarest of rare” incidents, the most recent data available in India shows 31,516 reports of rape in 2022, a fraction of the true number of assaults as many are not reported.
A man walks past a Jio-bp fuel tanker, an Indian fuel and mobility joint venture between Reliance Industries (RIL) and British Petroleum (bp), in Navi Mumbai, India, October 26, 2021
Hard Numbers: BP cuts thousands of jobs, UK drug seizures soar, Astronauts take a hike, Nigeria kills dozens of jihadists
5: Energy giant BP announced Thursday it would cut 4,700 employees and 3,000 contractors, a total of more than 5% of its global workforce. The move is part of a broader strategy that aims to bring down costs by $2 billion over the next two years.
3.66 billion:Drugs is big business, innit. In the year ending March 2024, UK authorities seized a record 119 tons of illegal narcotics, with a street value of $3.66 billion. About two-thirds of the haul was cannabis, and a fifth was cocaine. Elsewhere in Europe, drug interdictions have also surged – a massive Interpol operation last spring led to the seizure of more than 600 tons of narcotics or precursor chemicals. The UN says cocaine consumption in European cities has risen 80% since 2011.
7: If you’ve got cabin fever, go for a walk – if you’ve got space station fever, go for a spacewalk! That’s what US astronaut Suni Williams did Thursday, stepping out of the International Space Station for the first time since arriving more than seven months ago. Williams and her colleague Butch Wilmore were supposed to be at the station for only a week, but spacecraft trouble has kept them stranded in space, where they’ll likely remain until April or May.
76: In recent weeks, Nigerian forces have killed 76 jihadists in the country’s northeastern state of Borno. The militants belonged either to Boko Haram or to Islamic State West Africa, whose jihadist insurgency against the Nigerian government has displaced more than 2 million people and killed as many as 30,000 since it began in 2009. Growing violence and extremism in the Sahel region (which includes Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Chad) remains one of Africa’s biggest security challenges.Los Angeles City firemen spray water to protect houses threatened by a brush fire in Griffith Park, Los Angeles May 8, 2007. The fire broke out in the hills above Los Angeles forcing evacuation of the city's largest park and zoo. Local media reported that authorities have arrested an arson suspect who was badly burned.
Hard Numbers: LA faces more fires, Meta makes big cuts, US inflation ticks up, Zaijian TikTok
6 million: Fire officials in Southern California said over 6 million people are still in danger from four major fires burning in the hills around Los Angeles, with hot, dry winds expected to worsen conditions over the weekend. Herculean efforts from fire crews have contained large sections of the Palisades and Eaton fires, but they are racing against time to save as many lives and houses as possible in America’s second-largest metropolis.
5: Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, says it will lay off 5% of staff this year, amounting to about 3,600 jobs. The announcement comes amid major policy changes at the social media giant, including the end of content moderation for the US and the replacement of its public policy chief with a prominent Republican.
2.9: US inflation rose from 2.7% in November to 2.9% in December, the third straight month of accelerating price hikes while rates remain well above their target levels. That said, underlying pressures of inflation appear to be easing, and analysts still believe the Federal Reserve will be able to proceed with planned interest rate cuts in 2025 – though how the Trump administration’s planned tariffs will skew plans is yet to be seen.
700,000: Have you paid your cat tax? You’ll need to share a cute pic of your favorite feline if you join the 700,000 TikTok users who have set up shop over at rival Chinese video streaming app Xiaohongshu, also known by its English name RedNote. (The literal translation, “Little Red Book” was also the nickname of the collection of Mao Zedong’s sayings that Red Guards used to justify atrocities during the Cultural Revolution). So far, the “refugees” have had a playful welcome, with Chinese netizens teaching the newcomers Mandarin and engaging in absurdist humor in exchange for coveted pet pics.Re-elected Croatian President Zoran Milanovic with wife Sanja Music Milanovic celebrate after winning Croatia's presidential election ON January 12, 2025 in Zagreb, Croatia.
Hard Numbers: Croatia’s populist prez, Sweden sails forth, Mayotte hunkers down again, Hindus commence world’s largest religious ceremony
74: Populist Croatian President Zoran Milanovic won an impressive landslide reelection on Sunday, taking 74% of the vote. His office is largely ceremonial, but the overwhelming margin of victory should send a message to Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic – in power since 2016 – about the changing mood of the country.
3: Sweden, NATO’s newest member state, announced its Navy would contribute up to three warships to the alliance’s efforts to secure the Baltic Sea from Russia. The Swedish coast guard will also contribute a further four ships, with seven on standby. With increased resources, NATO aims to prevent possible provocations like severing undersea communication cables, 10 of which have been damaged since 2023.
1: Nearly one month to the day since the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte was devastated by Cyclone Chido, Tropical Storm Dikeledi brought more inundating rains and strong winds to the island. Over 200 people were still missing from the first storm, which killed at least 39 and injured over 5,000 while destroying entire neighborhoods, and the French government has deployed over 4,000 emergency personnel and security forces to the island.
400 million: At least 400 million pilgrims are expected to kick off the Maha Kumbh Mela festival on Monday in the Indian city of Prayagraj, where pilgrims will immerse themselves at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers over six weeks. Hindus believe the mystical Saraswati River will intermingle in the mundane waters and cleanse worshippers’ souls — but the government faces a big logistical challenge: This will be the world’s largest-ever religious gathering, and officials have assembled 150,000 tents, 3,000 kitchens, 145,000 lavatories, all served by 450,000 new electric connections, protected by 40,000 policemen, and transported by 98 special trains making over 3,300 trips.