You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
$572 million
In a “landmark ruling” in a lawsuit relating to the opioid crisis, an Oklahoma judge ruled that Johnson & Johnson must pay the state $572 million. The corporation, the state argued, contracted with poppy growers in Tasmania and “supplied 60 percent of the opiate ingredients that drug companies used for opioids like oxycodone.” A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary has also produced its own opioid pill and a fentanyl patch. [The New York Times]
$8.49 12-piece combo meal
Beginning today at a single location in Smyrna, Georgia, Kentucky Fried Chicken is testing an offering of meatless “chicken” in partnership with the “plant-based food purveyor” Beyond Meat. A 12-piece combo meal will go for $8.49, a discount from the typical $12.99 of an actual-chicken 12-piece combo meal. The main ingredient is pea protein. It’s a brave new world. [Yahoo Finance]
7 northern white rhino eggs
This weekend, scientists in Italy took frozen sperm previously removed from two of the planet’s last living male northern white rhinos (both of whom have since died) and used it to try to artificially fertilize eggs taken from the last two living females of the species. They hope to create as many as seven embryos, with a goal of creating a herd of at least five of the animals that could be returned to their natural habit. What did you do over the weekend? [Associated Press]
$22 million
Leaders at the G-7 summit have agreed to provide “logistical and financial support,” including $22 million, to fight the widespread wildfires in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said the plan treated the country “as if we were a colony or no man’s land.” Environmentalists have blamed Bolsanaro and his “anti-environmental rhetoric” for the drastically increased number of fires. [BBC]
10 candidates
As of yesterday afternoon, 10 Democratic presidential candidates had qualified for the third primary debate, meeting both the polling and donor requirements set by the Democratic National Committee. If that number stands, the 10 will all take the stage together. If the number grows, however, the debate’s hosts will split candidates up over two nights of rhetorical combat, “conducting a random draw this Thursday to determine each night’s lineup,” my colleague Geoffrey Skelley writes. [FiveThirtyEight]
3 floors
“Evidence of bedbugs” has been discovered on all three floors of the newsroom of The New York Times. Having had bedbugs in the city myself, I sympathize deeply and have therefore resisted my nearly-as-deep urges to make a joke here. [Slate]
From ABC News:
SigDigs: Aug. 27, 2019
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