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Polish soldiers build a fence on the border between Poland and Belarus near the village of Nomiki.
Hard Numbers: Polish razor wire, Ecuadoran cop killers, drug deal of the century, Cairo’s COP crackdown
3: To head off a potential migrant crisis, Polish authorities are laying three rows of razor wire fencing along the border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. The issue isn’t Russians fleeing the draft but Kaliningrad airport’s welcoming of flights from the Middle East and Africa, which Poland fears may carry refugees and asylum-seekers. Last year, a Poland-Belarus border crisis erupted when Minsk pulled a similar move.
5: At least five Ecuadoran police officers were killed Tuesday as gangs reacted violently to government plans to transfer prisoners among the country’s notoriously overcrowded prisons. In response, President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency in two Ecuadoran provinces as his government struggles to stamp out powerful drug gangs running product to the US and Europe.
10 billion: Speaking of drugs, two of America’s largest pharmacy chains, CVS and Walgreens, reached a tentative deal to pay $10 billion in damages for their role in fomenting the US opioid crisis. The money would go to state governments and Native American tribal authorities. Opioid deaths in the US rose 15% last year, breaking 100,000.
67: Local human rights groups say the government of Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has arrested at least 67 climate activists recently, as Cairo prepares to host the United Nations’ COP27 climate summit next week. Climate activism star Greta Thunberg has already announced she’ll boycott the summit over Egypt’s abysmal human rights record.
A Kenyan entrepreneur turns farm waste into low-cost organic fertilizer.
Hard Numbers: The scarcity edition
2 million: As the war in Ukraine rages on, the African continent is facing a shortfall of around 2 million metric tons of fertilizer that’s causing an unprecedented loss in food production throughout the continent. A Senegalese official warned at a recent G20 meeting that starvation could kill more Africans than COVID-19.
10: American women are the latest victims of the supply chain crunch. Tampon shortages as a result of staffing issues at manufacturing plants, transportation disruptions, and the scarcity of materials like cotton caused tampon prices to soar almost 10% in the US in recent months.
50: Europe’s largest paper packaging company, Smurfit Kappa, recorded a whopping 50% increase in core profit during the first half of this year as a result of surging pandemic-related demand. Still, the company says it’s preparing for paper shortages across the continent in the months ahead as a result of mandatory gas rationing as EU states try to reduce their dependence on Russian natural gas.
10: Several Polish supermarkets are limiting sugar purchases to 10 kilograms per person after consumers cleared out shelves fearing further price hikes and scarcity of the sweet staple. Poland, one of Europe’s biggest sugar producers with ample supply of the stuff, recently recorded its highest inflation rate in 25 years.