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Significant Digits For Friday, Oct. 11, 2019

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


43 new accusations

Two dozen women have already publicly accused President Trump of inappropriate behavior, but a new book details 43 new allegations, including more than two dozen cases of “unwanted sexual contact.” The book is “All The President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator” by journalists Monique El-Faizy and Barry Levine, and draws upon more than 100 interviews to illustrate the president’s relationship with women across different periods of his life. Assistant Esquire editor Adrienne Westenfeld writes, “What emerges from the authors’ reporting is a portrait of a serial predator who hides behind wealth and institutional power to frequently harass and abuse women.” [Esquire]


$1.055 billion in unpaid dues

The United Nations is in a “serious financial crisis” thanks to unpaid dues. Secretary General António Guterres called it the U.N.’s worst deficit in a decade, and has asked member states to pay their outstanding contributions, as the organization faces the prospect of being unable to pay staff salaries next month. Out of 193 members, 64 have not paid in full. That includes the United States, which is expected to cover 22 percent of the U.N.’s regular budget. U.N. records show the U.S. is on the hook for $674 million this budgeting period. But according to a U.N. spokesperson, the U.S. owes a total $1.055 billion when you include unpaid contributions from previous years. [CNN]


389 bird species

A new report from the National Audubon Society, a bird-focused conservation group, says about 389 out of 604 American bird species are at risk of extinction if global temperatures rise by 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. “Survival by Degrees: Bird Species on the Brink” was based on 140 million “bird records,” and accounted for the impact of environmental factors like sea-level rise, urbanization, cropland expansion, droughts and heavy rain. “This new data pivots forward and imagines an even more frightening future,” said David Yarnold, CEO and president of Audubon. “It’s a bird emergency.” [USA Today]


20 percent of U.S. workers

New state regulations aimed at creating safer workplaces now mean that one in five workers in the U.S. are required to undergo sexual harassment training, compared to one in 100 workers only two years ago. California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, New York and Washington all expanded training to more employees in the past two years, with New York’s new law going into effect this week. [Bloomberg]


2.2 million people auto-registered to vote

A FiveThirtyEight analysis of 2.2 million people who were registered to vote through automatic voter registration (AVR) in seven states and the District of Columbia showed turnout rates that varied between 42 percent and 54 percent. As my colleague Nathaniel Rakich writes, “Automatic voter registration began as a way to get more voters on the rolls — and the data we have so far suggests it has succeeded.” But, “… it is not a cure-all for low turnout because campaigns still need to finish the job of getting people to actually show up on election day.” [FiveThirtyEight]


11-year high

A move by the U.S. to blacklist a major Chinese operator of oil supertankers has prompted the cost of moving oil around the world to hit an 11-year high, leaving producers scrambling to find alternatives to more than 40 transport ships. The U.S. sanctions were put in place last month due to allegations that the vessels were connected to illegal shipments of Iranian crude. [Wall Street Journal]

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