by RADMILLA SULEYMANOVA
We gather the numbers to know from the week’s biggest economic news stories so you can impress your friends.
Another week has gone by, and Friday is here. What’s the progress on vaccines? Depends on who you ask. Is the pandemic getting better or worse? Depends where you look. And how is the global economy faring as it tries to bounce back from COVID-19? Again, it is in the eye of the beholder. The United Nations warned this week that developing countries could shoulder the lion’s share of the pandemic’s costs.
This week we had an array of numbers and stories to choose from. We handpicked bite-sized, easy-to-digest, news nuggets for you – five numbers we think you need to know going into the weekend.
Some are updates on already dismal situations such as the worsening petrol price crisis in Lebanon. Others are new discoveries. The Wall Street Journal this week revealed that Facebook knows exactly how its photo-sharing Instagram app is hurting girls’ mental health.
And of course, we did not forget the story that increasingly has legions of investors on edge. China’s Evergrande Group – the world’s most indebted real estate developer – could be heading for a messy debt default that could have far-reaching consequences for the world’s second largest economy and beyond.
If all this makes you want to hunker down at home, cradle your remote and watch Netflix all weekend, you’re not alone. Indians, locked down to stop the spread of the coronavirus, have been doing just that – bingeing on Netflix. Their oh-so-clear preference? South Korean dramas.
We have those stories and more. So start reading and enjoy the weekend.
10
That’s how many years since Occupy Wall Street protesters gathered in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Their protest ignited a national dialogue in the United States and beyond about income inequality, and embedded terms like “the one percent” and “the 99 percent” into the modern lexicon.
Occupy Wall Street was born in the wake of the Great Recession that stretched from December 2007 to June 2009. As the world marks the 10th anniversary of Occupy, Al Jazeera’s Courtney Kealy explores what the movement accomplished, its influence on a generation, and where it’s headed at a time when the top one percent commands a dizzying 28.8 percent of US wealth. Read that story here.
38 percent
Lebanon’s government on Friday hiked petrol prices by nearly 38 percent in a bid to fully scale back fuel subsidies and fight crippling fuel shortages.
The price of 20 litres of 95-octane and 98-octane gasoline increased to 174,300 ($11.24) and 180,000 ($11.64) Lebanese pounds respectively on Friday – the equivalent of nearly a quarter of what a person on minimum wage earns a month.
Al Jazeera for more