You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
9 1/2
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil, was convicted on corruption and money-laundering charges Wednesday and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison. He’ll face four more trials related to allegations of corruption. [NPR]
82 percent
Percentage of respondents to an AP/NORC poll who said wealthy people had too much power and influence on what happens in Washington. Other groups that a majority of respondents said had too much power: large businesses, political lobbyists and Wall Street. Now, 75 percent of respondents said people like them didn’t have enough power in Washington, which is fine, but who I’m really interested in is the 3 percent of respondents who said that people like them had too much power in Washington. The notion that about 1 in 33 Americans is like, “screw this, my friends and I shouldn’t have this much control over the future of the country” is a level of either impostor syndrome or moral clarity that I find immensely entertaining. [The Associated Press]
314 grams
A Cookie Monster doll became a Florida Cookie Monster doll after 314 grams of cocaine was found inside it during a traffic stop in Key West. [Boing Boing]
2,200 square miles
An iceberg that approaches the size of Delaware has broken off from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica. With a water volume roughly twice that of Lake Erie, the chunk represents a big break. [The Washington Post]
$109,420
Federal prosecutors allege that a Massachusetts man illegally made more than $100,000 thanks to insider trading. They say he traded on secret information gleaned from his wife, an attorney, about an acquisition in the mining industry. Authorities may have a real case here given that in the complaint, the man is reported to have searched “how sec detect unusual trade,” “insider trading with international account,” “insider trading cases” and “insider trading options” online over the course of the deal. [The Wall Street Journal]
$17.8 billion
Total sports advertising on national TV in 2016, up from $10.8 billion in 2011. Sports advertising last year made up 31 percent of national TV advertising, according to Kantar Media. [Bloomberg]
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.