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Significant Digits For Friday, May 31, 2019

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.


21 states

Though it hadn’t executed anyone in 80 years, the state of New Hampshire officially abolished the death penalty yesterday when the state’s senate overrode the governor’s veto. It became the 21st state to do so. And while 29 states allow the death penalty, four of those have moratoriums on its use. [Associated Press]

From ABC News:


New Hampshire bans the death penalty


18 Earth-size planets

Even though the Kepler space telescope died last year, after discovering thousands of new planets, researchers are still poring through the data it gathered. And that effort has recently borne fruit, with the discovery of 18 new Earth-size worlds in our galaxy, including one in “an orbit that could be life-friendly.” [National Geographic]


$85 million apartment

The best hate-reads are New York City real estate hate-reads. The latest gem has to do with an $85 million apartment on Manhattan’s West Side. The apartment comes with two Rolls-Royces, a Lamborghini, a house in the Hamptons for a summer, a yacht, Brooklyn Nets season tickets, weekly dinners at a Michelin-starred restaurant, a butler, a private chef for a year, and $2 million for renovations. Oh, and two seats on a flight to space. Eat the rich. [The New York Times]


140 people

The Food and Drug Administration is holding its first public hearings in a review of CBD, or cannabidiol, which is derived from hemp. The substance is sometimes hyped as a “magical elixir that can treat everything from inflammation to epilepsy” and its sale could become a $20-billion-plus industry by 2022. The FDA is scheduled to hear public comments from some 140 people today, though drafting its rules could take years. [CNBC]


$1 an hour

Cuba has been home to some of the tightest internet restrictions on the planet, where one of the only ways to get online is to buy scratch-off cards for $1 an hour to access publicly mounted government routers. Those restrictions will loosen somewhat, Cuba’s state-run media reported, as the country is legalizing private wifi networks and the importation of internet equipment such as routers. But access to the internet itself will still be entirely controlled by the Cuban telecom monopoly, Etecsa, the island’s only service provider. [ABC News]

From ABC News:


Cuban government launches 3G service


7 days a week

Beginning next year, FedEx will deliver seven rather than six days a week, to accommodate our insatiable online shopping habits. “Online shopping is seven days a week,” the company’s COO told the Wall Street Journal. The company expects that the number of package deliveries in the U.S. will double by 2026. [The Wall Street Journal]


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Oliver Roeder was a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied game theory and political competition.

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