You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
3 weeks
Last week, President Trump threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border this week “if Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States.” Were that to happen, the U.S. would run out of avocados in three weeks, according to the CEO of the world’s largest avocado-growing and -distributing company. Forty percent or more of the U.S.’s imported fruits and vegetables are grown in Mexico. [The Guardian]
$18.2 million raised
Bernie Sanders raised a whopping $18.2 million in the first six weeks of his presidential campaign, a stat that “cements his status as one of the top fund-raisers in the sprawling Democratic field,” according to The New York Times. The money came via 900,000 contributions from 525,000 individual donors, according to Sanders’s campaign manager. [The New York Times]
Up roughly 15 percent
The price of Bitcoin (remember it?) surged some 15 percent on Tuesday, to about $4,800 — a four-month high. And in a bit of analysis that roughly dovetails with my overall understanding of cryptocurrency, “the reason for the sudden price jump wasn’t immediately clear,” CNBC reported. [CNBC]
Final 4 teams
And then there were four. The Baylor Lady Bears, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, UConn Huskies and Oregon Ducks are the sole survivors of the 2019 NCAA women’s basketball tournament. According to our predictions, their chances of winning the championship on April 7 are 58 percent, 23 percent, 15 percent and 5 percent, respectively. [FiveThirtyEight]
387 reported cases of measles
There have been 387 reported cases of measles — a very contagious and very preventable disease — in the U.S. this year, already surpassing the 372 cases reported during all of 2018, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Measles killed some 90,000 people worldwide in 2016. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that American doctors were heretofore so unfamiliar with seeing the disease, which was declared nonexistent in the country in 2000, in person that they have been reviewing photos of the measles rash “to refresh their memories.” [San Francisco Chronicle]
20 percent off
Amazon, owner of Whole Foods, is cutting prices at its grocer for the third time in two years, and the company reports that customers will see an average savings of 20 percent on some items. Nevertheless, last month a Morgan Stanley analyst found that Whole Foods’s prices had risen for three months straight and were 15 percent above its rivals’. [CNN]
From ABC News:
News headlines today: April 3, 2019
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