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Tourists visit the Torre de Belem (Belem Tower) in Lisbon, Portugal on October 19, 2021.
Hard Numbers: No tax for young Portuguese, Saudis fail at UN Human Rights Council, South Korean wins a Nobel, UN wants its money back, US inflation cools
0: To stem the flow of talented young people exiting the country for brighter job prospects in other countries, Portugal’s government has proposed a novel plan. Beginning in 2025, young people earning up to €28,000 ($30,600) a year would payzero income tax for their first year of work. They’d then get a 75% tax exemption from the second to the fifth year, 50% between the sixth and ninth years, and 25% in the 10th year.
7: On Wednesday,Saudi Arabia came up short in its bid to win a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, a setback for the kingdom’s bid to remake its image. The Asia-Pacific group of candidates, which included Saudi Arabia, had six candidates vying for five seats. The Saudis won 117 votes,seven fewer than the fifth-place Marshall Islands.
121: Novelist Han Kang is the121st winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature — and the first South Korean author to win the award. Kang was lauded for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
58.8: A United Nations tribunal has ordered a former high-ranking official to repay the UN $58.8 million of the organization’s money which he steered towards a British businessman in crooked deals. Vitaly Vanshelboim, a 20-year veteran of the UN who is from Ukraine, is accused of receiving interest-free loans and a Mercedes, among other gifts.
2.4: US inflation fell to2.4% in September. That’s an improvement from 2.5% in August but fell short of the 2.3% analysts expected. The drop in inflation may not be enough to justify a 50 basis point rate cut when the Federal Reserve meets in November.FILE PHOTO: The X account of Elon Musk in seen blocked on a mobile screen in this illustration after Brazil's telecommunications regulator suspended access to Elon Musk's X social network in the country to comply with an order from a judge who has been locked in a months-long feud with the billionaire investor, Sao Paulo, Brazil taken August 31, 2024.
Hard Numbers: X marks the spot in Brazil again, China stocks plummet on stimulus worries, Cameroon insists on presidential signs of life, Hungary embraces the olive
5: X was officially reinstated in Brazil, ending a five week ban of the social media platform, which had failed to comply with court orders to remove accounts that were spreading disinformation. X owner Elon Musk had initially defied the orders and refused to pay related fines, styling himself as a defender of free speech. In the end, Musk and X caved as the ban had caused Brazil’s 40 million X users to start using other sites instead.
7: Mainland China’s benchmark stock index plummeted 7% on Tuesday, in the largest single day drop since February 2020, a time when COVID was first spreading rapidly in the country. Analysts suggested the drop, which snapped a 10-day streak of gains, reflected fading optimism that the Chinese government’s current stimulus policies will be enough to perk up a sluggish economy.
31: He is not dead. Repeat. Not dead. That’s the official word from the Cameroonian government about 91-year old president, Paul Biya, who has not been seen in public in 32 days. Biya, who has held power since 1982, was last spotted leaving a China-Africa summit in Beijing on Sept. 8. Since then, he has missed a number of high profile events, including the entire UN General Assembly in New York.
12.35: Hungary is known for the delicacy of its goulash, the harmonies of Franz Liszt, and the architectural beauties of Budapest. But olive oil? Too chilly right? Not any more. Hungarian farmers are increasingly planting olive trees as climate change shifts the temperate zones of Europe northward and inflicts more frequent droughts on traditional Mediterranean olive habitats like Spain. A mere tenth of a liter of the stuff from Hungary now fetches $12.35 in neighboring Slovenia.Satellite image of Hurricane Milton as of 8 p.m., on Oct. 8, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Florida braces for Milton, First survey of transgender US students, TikTok faces new legal challenges, BJP defeated in Kashmir, Dominican Republic escalates deportations
9: Millions have boarded up, sandbagged, and evacuated their homes in Florida this week as Hurricane Milton barrels through the Gulf of Mexico toward the Sunshine State. Deemed a Category 5 storm on Tuesday, with winds reaching speeds of up to 180 mph, Milton is expected to weaken slightly but still bring an "extremely life-threatening situation" when it makes landfall Wednesday night. Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency – still busy with the impact of last month’s Hurricane Helene – reported this week that only 9% of its personnel, or 1,217 staffers, were available to help with new disaster relief efforts.
3.3: About 3.3% of US high school students identify as transgender, according to a new survey. The first-of-its-kind study also revealed 2.2% of students are questioning their gender identity. About 10% of transgender students reported suicide attempts, 10 times that of cisgender boys. Transgender issues are at the center of America’s culture wars – while most Americans favor discrimination protections for transgender people, support for restrictions on transgender care and education is significantly higher among Republicans than among Democrats.
13: TikTok is in legal hot water again as 13 US states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against the short-form video platform alleging that it breaks US consumer protection laws and has exacerbated a mental health crisis among teenagers. The suit comes as TikTok faces the prospect of being banned outright in the US next January unless it cuts ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance.
42: An alliance committed to restoring Kashmir’s autonomy within India won the region’s elections, which culminated on Oct. 8, taking 48 of the local legislature’s 90 seats. The vote was the first since Kashmir was stripped of its special status in 2019 by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu nationalist BJP party won just 29 seats in the Kashmir election. However, the BJP also looked set to win a surprise victory in the state of Haryana – a result that the opposition Congress party is contesting.
7,000: The Dominican Republic has deported at least 4,900 Haitians since last Thursday alone. The move is part of a new policy in which the Dominican government says it will deport up to 10,000 undocumented migrants weekly amid rising concerns about crime and lawlessness. The government of Haiti, which is currently mired in a severe political, economic, and humanitarian crisis, has blasted the deportations as “an affront to human dignity.”
Smoke rises from an explosion in Gaza, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, near the Israel-Gaza border, as seen from Israel, September 9, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Oct. 7 Edition
1,200: Hamas launched terror attacks inside Israel and killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023 – making it the deadliest day in Israel’s 76-year history. The kibbutz of Be’eri, near the Supernova music festival, suffered the highest death toll with 332 lives lost. The militants targeted the festival, 19 kibbutzim, and five cooperatives, among other targets.
251: Hamas militants took 251 people, including civilians and Israeli security personnel, hostage on Oct. 7, taking them into Gaza. As of Sept. 1, 2024, 101 hostages remained in Gaza, according to Israeli sources cited by the UN. Sixty-four are believed to be alive, while 33 are confirmed dead (four of the hostages were taken before Oct. 7).
41,870: The number of Gazans killed in the war between Israel and Hamas now stands at 41,870, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The number has been disputed by groups that peg it as either higher, due to an inability to locate people under the rubble, or lower, due to the inflation of numbers. The GHM also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. According to Israeli authorities, as of Sept. 1, the number of dead includes 17,000 Hamas terrorists.
1,664: Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, 1,664 Israelis have been killed, including 706 soldiers, according to a report by the Institute for National Security Studies.
1,900: At least 1,900 Lebanese, including civilians, medics, and Hezbollah terrorists, have been killed since Oct. 8, 2023, according to Lebanese officials, and several thousand have been wounded.
1.9 million: UNRWA says 1.9 million people have been displaced in Gaza due to the war instigated by Hamas. 143,000 people have been displaced in Israel due to Hezbollah rocket bombardment, according to an INSS report, including 60,000 evacuated from the border with Lebanon.
1.2 million: Just over 20% of Lebanon’s 5.4-million-strong population – a whopping 1.2 million people – have been driven from their homes by the recent Israeli offensive, according to Lebanese officials.
38: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity has risen since Israel launched its offensive against Hezbollah. According to Israel’s Channel 12, Netanyahu is the preferred candidate for prime minister over the centrist opposition leader, Yair Lapid, at 38% to 27% support. The latest poll gives his Likud Party a possible 25 seats, but that would not be enough to form a government with its current coalition partners.
A person takes photos of the waves as Typhoon Krathon approaches in Kaohsiung, Taiwan October 2, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Taiwan prepares for treacherous Typhoon, Benin crushes alleged coup attempt, Vietnamese sailors injured in South China Sea clash, Old US bomb makes a bang in Japan
2: At least two people are dead in Taiwan, and 70 injured, from weather attributed to Typhoon Krathon, which is expected to make landfall on the densely populated west coast of the Island on Thursday. Thousands have been evacuated from areas at risk of floods or landslides. One elderly man fell off a ladder while pruning a tree near his house in preparation for the storm, and another crashed into fallen rocks while driving. Western Taiwan is usually sheltered from major storms by its east coast mountain ranges and Taipei has put 40,000 troops on standby for expected rescue operations.
2: Two high-profile Beninese political figures were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of plotting a coup against President Patrice Talon, allegedly having attempted to bribe the head of the Republican Guard. Benin is one of the most stable democracies in West Africa — even the communist dictatorship that ruled 1975-1990 handed over power peacefully — and was not previously believed to be at risk of extralegal regime change.
40: Vietnamese media reported Wednesday that some Vietnamese fishermen were severely injured in a clash near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea after around 40 foreign sailors boarded their vessels and beat the crews with iron bats on Sunday. The hull numbers of the alleged aggressors correspond with local Chinese maritime patrols, and Beijing confirmed an operation against Vietnamese fishermen near the Paracels but denied Hanoi’s version of events.
80: A long-forgotten US bomb dating back to World War II buried deep beneath a taxiway at Japan’s Miyazaki Airport suddenly exploded on Wednesday, causing a large crater and the cancellation of at least 80 flights. No one was harmed, thankfully, though hundreds of unexploded US bombs remain buried in Japan and are sometimes dug up during construction projects.Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba arrives for a group photograph with his new cabinet members at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo, Japan, October 1, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Ishiba forms his Cabinet, Haiti plagued by hunger, Tunisia jails opposition candidate, Eurozone inflation drops, Cambodian journalist arrested
2: He may think women should inherit the imperial thrones, but that doesn’t mean Japan’s Prime Minister-elect Shigeru Ishiba is an equal opportunity employer. Of his 19 newly appointed Cabinet ministers, only two are women, whom he’s appointed as children’s policy minister and education minister. His appointments also included two former defense ministers Ishiba has worked with in the past – one as foreign minister, another as his defense chief – signaling the new PM’s focus on security issues.
5.4 million: Hunger amid horrifying gang violence in Haiti has led nearly 6,000 people to the brink of starvation, according to a new report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Nearly half the 11-million-strong country – a whopping 5.4 million Haitians – are facing crisis levels of hunger and famine. The Kenyan-led intervention force has had its UN mandate extended by a year, but an effort to turn it into a formal UN peacekeeping mission was stymied by China and Russia.
12: Running for office in Tunisia can win you … years behind bars, apparently. Ayachi Zammel, a candidate in the country’s Oct. 6 presidential election, is facing 12 years in jail for cases related to voter endorsements, his lawyer said. Zammel, who remains on the ballot, was one of just two candidates approved by Tunisia's electoral authority ISIE to challenge President Kais Saied.
1.8: European homebuyers may have cause to celebrate: Inflation in the Eurozone last month dropped to 1.8%, coming in below the European Central Bank’s 2% target for the first time in three years. As a result, the ECB is expected to drop the rate by a quarter point when it meets on Oct. 17.
2: Award-winning journalist Mech Dara has been arrested and charged for social media posts that could “incite social unrest,” a Cambodian court said. Dara, who has reported on corruption and human trafficking, faces a two-year sentence if convicted, and human rights groups are calling for his release.A drone view shows an ancient geoglyph depicting a tree at the Nazca Lines archaeological area in Nazca, Peru, January 18, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Geoglyph spotting, AI revenue surge, CAPTCHAS solved, ByteDance’s chip hoard, Helene’s chip damage
303: Archaeologists have discovered 303 giant symbols carved into Peru’s Nazca Desert, thanks to artificial intelligence. The famous and mysterious Nazca geoglyphs are giant drawings in the ground, easily visible from high up — some are nearly 2,000 years old. The research team, led by Japan’s Yamagata University with help from IBM’s Watson Research Center, trained an AI model on existing geoglyphs to identify potentially undiscovered symbols.
11: AI companies are making money more quickly than previous waves of hyped-up software companies, according to a new data analysis from the payments company Stripe. It found that it took only 11 months for the top 100 highest-grossing privately held AI companies to make $1 million in annualized revenue as opposed to software-as-a-service companies in 2018, which took 15 months to hit that mark.
100: AI bots are now smart enough to solve 100% of those pesky traffic-image CAPTCHA — the ones put it in place to make sure you’re, you know, human. Thankfully, those images, known as Google’s ReCAPTCHA v2, are no longer industry standard. The newest version, reCAPTCHA v3, is an “invisible” test that tries to prove humanity based on how you interact with a given web page.
100,000: ByteDance reportedly has ordered 100,000 Ascend 910B chips from Huawei to aid the training of a new AI model. TikTok’s parent company also depends on Nvidia chips and Microsoft cloud services, but the new model will be mostly trained with chips from Huawei, a fellow Chinese tech giant. A ByteDance spokesperson refuted the report from Reuters, saying, “The entire premise here is wrong. No new model is being developed.”
70: Hurricane Helene has ravaged North Carolina, including a small town called Spruce Pine, which is home to 70% of the naturally occurring high-purity quartz. This kind of quartz is critical to the global semiconductor trade — used for crucibles, containers that can hold high-temperature materials, and other parts of chips themselves. The two companies there, Quartz Corp and Unimin, have temporarily halted operations — if they can’t get back up and running soon, delays could afflict the global chip supply chain.
A 'coal is dead' placard is seen during the demonstration. Activists from Friends Of The Earth and other environmental groups gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice as the legal challenge to the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria begins.
Hard Numbers: UK buries coal, Austria’s far right surges, Le Pen faces trial, UN extends but doesn’t expand Haiti mission, Russia spends more on guns (less on butter)
142: After 142 years, the UK government closed the country’s last coal-fired power plant on Monday night. Coal power was a critical factor in the British-born Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, but it wasn’t until 1882 that the British opened the first public coal power plant. The closure is part of the government’s plan to generate 100% of Great Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2030. Our favorite British coal story? How coal pollution changed the color of the Peppered Moths of Manchester.
29.2: Austria’s Freedom Party became the first far-right party to win an election in the country since World War II, after taking 29.2% of the vote in Sunday’s election by appealing to Austrians worried about immigration, inflation, and the Ukraine war. But it’s a familiar story in Europe these days: A far-right party takes a plurality of the vote, only to find that it lacks an obvious coalition partner to form a government. The incumbent Austrian People’s Party has said it will only work with the Freedom Party if party boss Herbert Kickl renounces any cabinet position. That’s a tough sell – Kickl says he wants to be chancellor.
9: Meanwhile, elsewhere in European right-wing news, Marine Le Pen, the former leader and top candidate of France’s National Rally party, began a nine-week trial in which she and two dozen other party officials are accused of misusing EU funds by using them to pay party staff for political work. Le Pen says the payments were legitimate. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison, fines of several million euros, and possibly being deemed ineligible to run for office. She is considered a top contender in the 2027 presidential election.
1: The UN Security council agreed unanimously on Monday to authorize the UN-backed security force in Haiti for one more year. But a US proposal to make the mission – currently a Kenya-led volunteer force – into a formal UN peacekeeping operation was blocked by Russia and China, which said the current force needs more time to find its footing. Haiti, for its part, has called for a peacekeeping operation as the Kenyan-led force struggles to subdue the powerful gangs that have taken control over vast swathes of the capital.
25: Russia will boost defense spending by 25% next year, as Vladimir Putin doubles down both on his invasion of Ukraine and on the deeper militarization of the economy at home. Social spending, meanwhile, is set to fall by nearly 20%. Heavy spending on defense has helped to insulate Russia’s economy from the effects of Western sanctions, with GDP growing 3.6% last year and forecasters predicting a similar outcome this year. How secure is Putin? Read our recent piece on the endless ends of the Russian president.