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FILE PHOTO: Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni attends her end-of-year press conference in Rome, Italy, January 4, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Meloni suffers Sardinian blow, Russia jails another critic, Japan’s baby bust continues, Big Oil pumps Big Money
0.4: The rugged island of Sardinia has dealt rightwing Italian PM Giorgia Meloni the first serious electoral blow she’s suffered since taking office in 2022. In local presidential elections (Sardinia has special autonomy from Rome, and its own president) a candidate from the left-leaning anti-establishment 5-Star Movement beat the Meloni-backed candidate by a mere 0.4 points. Alessandra Todde will now become not only Sardinia’s first female leader, but the first 5-Star member to head any of Italy’s 20 regions.
30: It must be election season in Putin’s Russia! Leading human rights activist Oleg Orlov was sentenced to 30 months in prison on charges that he had “repeatedly discredited” the Russian army by criticizing the invasion of Ukraine. During the sham proceedings, Orlov – whose Memorial human rights group shared a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize – sat quietly reading Kafka’s The Trial. In his statement to the court he said he regretted nothing, and asked the presiding judges “Aren’t you afraid?”
758,631: Last year only 753,631 babies were born in Japan, a fall of more than 5% from 2022, reaching a record low for the eighth straight year. The Japanese government is struggling to turn around a slow motion demographic crisis that could see the world’s fourth largest economy lose a third of its population in the coming decades, strangling the economy and straining social safety nets.
313 billion: It’s no secret that Big Oil isn’t a Big Fan of Joe Biden, whose climate agenda has antagonized the fossil fuel sector. But the industry can complain all the way to the bank these days: top US producers are on track for net income of $313 billion since Biden took office, triple what they made during the same period of the preceding Trump administration, which was overtly friendlier to the sector. The lesson? Presidents matter a lot less than pandemics and wars when it comes to energy sector profits.