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A view shows Batman logo on a box of cocaine, said to be recovered by New Zealand Police.
Hard Numbers: Batman found on cocaine, Disney censors Simpsons, Nicaragua jails priests, Bard flub costs Google billions
3.2: In a possible indication that the Marvel universe is winning, Batman is now on cocaine. New Zealand’s navyintercepted a haul of 3.2 tons of the drug floating in the pacific. Many of the packets were labeled with the Dark Knight’s symbol, evidently a trademark of certain producers in South America.
1: Disney hasremoved one single episode of the current Simpsons season from its streaming service in Hong Kong. They haven’t commented on why, but the episode features a scene where Marge Simpson’s online spin instructor stands before a background that advertises “the wonders of China: Bitcoin mines, forced labor camps where children make smartphones!”
5: A Nicaraguan courthas sentenced five priests to decade-long prison terms for supporting pro-democracy protests in 2018 that the government of strongman Daniel Ortega deemed illegal. Since those protests, Ortega has cracked down severely on civil society, with a particular focus on his one-time allies in the Catholic Church.
100 billion: Google’s parent company Alphabetlost more than $100 billion in value on Wednesday after Bard, its newly unveiled AI-powered chatbot, incorrectly attributed the origin of certain deep space photographs in an advertisement. That weird sound you hear right now is rival AI bot ChatGPT, somewhere deep in the metaverse, laughing its neural networks off.
Political unrest when governments fail struggling citizens
What happens when 1.4 billion people are cut off from the global economy because they don't have a bank account at a time of mounting crises?
"The geopolitical ramifications are potentially huge," Ali Wyne, senior analyst for Global Macro-Geopolitics at Eurasia Group, says during a livestream conversation on closing the global digital gap hosted by GZERO in partnership with Visa.
First, it was COVID. Then came the twin blows of the food and energy crises, aggravated by Russia's war in Ukraine. When people are struggling, Wyne adds, they'll look to their governments for solutions.
"And if they feel that they're not getting satisfactory answers," he warns, "we can't understate the potential for significant political unrest."
Demonstrators from across Ecuador march on the capital Quito
Hard Numbers: Indigenous protests in Quito, Russia bleeds troops, Texas school to be razed, Great Barrier Reef lawsuit
10,000: On Tuesday, roughly 10,000 Indigenous people took to the streets of Quito, Ecuador’s capital, to protest rising fuel prices and unemployment. The country’s 1 million Indigenous people – who are disproportionately impacted by poverty and joblessness – say that President Guillermo Lasso’s government has failed to make good on a promise to revive the country's ailing economy.
55: The Russian-backed Donetsk militia fighting in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has lost 55% of its original force, according to British intelligence. Amid such heavy losses, Russia’s proxy administration is reportedly offering one-year contracts to foreign mercenaries to join its ranks in the region.
3: Local authorities will demolish Robb Elementary School, the site of the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 21 people were killed. This comes amid reports that well-equipped police officers were on hand within three minutes of the gunman entering the school – but waited over an hour to go in and end the standoff. The US Justice Department is reviewing the police response.
267: An environmental group is suing Woodside Energy Group, which plans to build a 267-mile offshore gas pipeline in Western Australia, saying that the project will release more carbon into the atmosphere that will further damage the Great Barrier Reef … even though the reef is many miles away in the country’s east. The energy company hit back, saying the pipeline is crucial to helping countries in Asia Pacific meet pledges of getting to net zero carbon emissions.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Hard Numbers: Blinken leads migration summit, Rohingya tragedy in Malaysia, East Timor votes, South African leftists join Eswatini protests
6: Six Rohingya refugees were killed crossing a highway while trying to flee a detention center in northwest Malaysia. The country was once a safe haven for Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar, but in recent years, xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment have led to many refugees being held in unsanitary and oft-dangerous detention centers.
60: With 60% of the vote counted Wednesday, Jose Ramos-Horta looks set to win the presidential runoff in East Timor, Asia’s youngest democracy. Ramos-Horta, an independence fighter during Indonesia’s long occupation of the country and a Nobel laureate, served as president from 2007-2012. He’s vowed to tackle enduring poverty, corruption, and political instability.
36: South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters – the country’s third-largest political party with Marxist affiliations – joined protests on the border with Eswatini against King Mswati III, who has led that country’s absolute monarchy with an iron fist for 36 years. Eswatini has been plagued by anti-government protests since an extrajudicial killing by the king’s police last May.A demonstrator holds a "No To War" sign during an unsanctioned anti-war protest in Moscow.
Hard Numbers: Russia arrests protesters, Ukraine gets crypto donations, EU closes airspace, Ukrainians flee
6,000: As of Monday afternoon in Moscow, an independent monitoring site said almost 6,000 Russians had been arrested in multiple cities for protesting the invasion of Ukraine. Russia hasn’t seen such mass rallies since the January 2021 return and imprisonment of top Putin critic Alexei Navalny.
13 million: Ukraine raised over $13 million in cryptocurrencies this weekend after the government launched an unprecedented crypto crowdfunding appeal. Ukraine’s digital ministry has said the funds will “help Ukraine armed forces.”
30: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Sunday that the 27-member strong EU will shut its airspace to Russian airlines, following similar moves by the UK, Iceland and Norway. This means Russian carriers could have only a route via the tiny Gulf of Finland to fly west.
500,000: More than 500,000 Ukrainians have fled to Poland and other neighboring countries since the Russian invasion began, according to the UN refugee agency. Unlike in the 2015-2016 Syrian migrant crisis, this time eastern EU members have rolled out the red carpet for Ukrainians.Hard Numbers: France bets big on nuclear, Africa underreporting COVID, Chinese space tug, NYC fires unvaxxed workers, Turkish electric protest
50 billion: France plans to spend 50 billion euros ($57.4 billion) to further boost its already big nuclear program. The EU recently classified nuclear power as a sustainable investment despite strong objections from Germany.
7: Africa’s COVID infections could be up to seven times higher than reported, and deaths 2-3 times higher, according to the World Health Organization. The likely cause? Low supplies for testing.
300: Like a space tugboat, a Chinese satellite was recently spotted pushing another long-defunct satellite into a “graveyard” orbit some 300 km (186 miles) away. Such operations are becoming more common to get rid of space junk.
18: Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently raised power prices by half and bumped the value-added tax on electricity from 1% to 18% in response to sky-high inflation. Now, a Turkish opposition leader says he won’t pay his electricity bill until Erdogan repeals the price and tax hikes.
3,000: New York City is expected to can 3,000 unvaccinated municipal employees on Friday. Although they only represent 1% of the city's public workforce, it's likely the biggest mass firing tied to a vaccine requirement in the US — just as New York state is lifting some mask mandates.
The new Olympic spirit of protest
Politics at the Olympics are nothing new. In 1968, two black athletes who won medals in the 200m race raised a fist to protest racial inequality, a move that got them banned from the Olympics for life. A few years later, the IOC introduced Rule 50, which reads: "It is a fundamental principle that sport is neutral and must be separate from political, religious or any other type of interference." As this year's Tokyo Games wrap up, they'll be remembered not just for the pandemic, or the heated local battles over whether they should happen at all. They are also a moment when Rule 50 got squishy. Whether it was soccer players taking a knee, German gymnasts in full body leotards, or Australian athletes holding up an indigenous flag, there's been a lot of protesting going on. And to some extent, the rules have been relaxed - though not everyone agrees they should be.
Podcast: The IOC's Dick Pound on how sports and politics should mix
Listen: On the GZERO World Podcast, a look at the long history of protest at the Games with Dick Pound, the longest serving member of the International Olympic Committee and a former Olympic athlete himself. With COVID rates rising globally, this year's Olympics faced some major hurdles. But the pandemic was only part of the picture. The Tokyo Games played out against a backdrop of mounting global tension surrounding gender equality, racism and human rights, leaving many people to examine the place of politics on the playing field and podium.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.