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Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a televised meeting in Russia

REUTERS

Hard Numbers: Prigozhin on Putin’s payroll, Sierra Leone election unrest, Chinese millionaire dreams of college, Rainforest destruction soars

86 billion: According to Vladimir Putin, the Wagner Group was fully funded by the Kremlin and received 86 billion rubles (or US $1 billion) from Moscow in the last year. This claim has not been independently verified but sounds an awful lot like Russia's president trying to take credit for the paramilitary group's gains on the battlefield – while painting its neutered warlord, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as a traitorous leech.

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Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko speaks during a news conference in Dakar.

REUTERS/Cooper Inveen

Senegalese opposition leader sentenced, 2024 bid in peril

On Thursday, at least nine people were killed in Senegal in violence that erupted after opposition leader Ousmane Sonko was sentenced in absentia to two years in jail for "corrupting youth" by encouraging the debauchery of an underage massage parlor employee – whom he was simultaneously acquitted of raping and issuing death threats against. This is a very big deal since it might bar Sonko from running for president of the West African nation in February 2024, and it’s unclear whether he can appeal.

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Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya speaks at the United Nations Security Council in New York, U.S., September 30, 2022.

REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Hard Numbers: Russia to helm Security Council, Sonko seized, Stubborn EU inflation, Australia vs. climate change

30: Russia is set to helm the UN Security Council as of April 1, a transition of power that Ukraine has dubbed "an April Fool's joke." The council's presidency rotates every 30 days. As president, Russia – and Putin, by extension – will have the ability to set the security council’s agenda. While there have been calls to boycott, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is expected to chair the meeting in New York in April.

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