You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
Anywhere from +9 to -10
Tonight we’ll have a live blog devoted to a special election in an off-year in a typically one-party state that is competitive due to both national trends as well as a sex scandal. And polls of the Alabama Senate election released on Monday had once-heavily favored Republican Roy Moore anywhere from up 9 points to down 10. You’ll want to keep a close eye on this one. [FiveThirtyEight]
30 gigawatts
Electricite de France SA, which produces a substantial chunk of Europe’s power, announced a plan to add 30 gigawatts worth of solar energy capacity between 2020 and 2035. The project will cost about 25 billion euros and looks to create tens of thousands of jobs. [Fox Business]
80 percent
Saudi Arabia will gradually eliminate domestic energy subsidies, with gas prices poised to rise 80 percent in January alone, as part of a process to bring rates in the petroleum-fueled monarchy to international levels in the next five to seven years. [Bloomberg]
3,631 people
From 2010 through 2016, police officers in the 50 largest local police departments in the United States shot at least 3,631 people, of them at least 1,378 fatally, according to an accounting by VICE news. That’s considerably higher than previous estimates. [VICE]
$11 million
Pre-tax revenue generated from June 1, 2016, to June 1, 2017, by Ryan of the YouTube channel Ryan ToysReview. Turns out there’s serious money in a six-year-old removing the packaging on a toy, playing with it and then “reviewing” it on the internet. [The Washington Post]
$400 million
Reported sale price of Shazam, an app that detects which song is playing based on audio input, to Apple. Obtaining the app’s trove of data about users likely contributed to Apple’s interest in the acquisition. [The Los Angeles Times]
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If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.