Trump takes egg (and stock prices), the data on disasters and a meandering cyclone
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!
In this week's newsletter we have charts on … the stock market under Trump, how inflation has raised prices on different grocery items, mapping the Myanmar earthquake, the meandering path of a tropical cyclone and a look at 'music DNA'.
Boffins at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency spent years creating an extreme weather risk index down to the county level. Only a month or so after launch, the Trump administration deleted it.
But our Guardian US colleagues have recreated the index, using projections on worsening storms, wildfires and floods.
The solid red area near Los Angeles looks particularly troubling.
1. More disaster maps
Thousands were killed by the earthquake that struck Myanmar and hundreds remain missing. Reuters have mapped the 7.7-magnitude quake that struck the region on Friday.
The piece also includes some great visuals on how earthquakes occur and the history of earthquakes in the region.
2. What could we buy for one nuclear sub?
Last week's budget measures paper was the 'skinniest' in 20 years – because of the imminent election, but also the result of an ongoing trend.
The centrepiece of the budget was a surprise tax cut. But, coming in at just over $17bn, it wouldn't even buy you half a nuclear submarine*. With questions mounting over the Aukus nuclear submarine program, we took a look through the budget papers to see what one nuclear sub would buy us.
*An important caveat is that we don't know what the final cost will be for the Aukus nuclear subs for almost another two decades. We took the estimated figure when the deal was announced and divided it by the potential number of submarines: eight. The spending obviously includes lots of non-materiel things like training and research programs.
3. The unpredictable path to the deep north
For days before Cyclone Alfred made landfall, the forecast path and intensity of the weather system were in flux. This meant an anxious wait for communities up and down the Queensland coast, and made it harder to prepare.
The visual stories team at the Sydney Morning Herald mapped the cyclone's unpredictable path.
Something else I learned from this story – at least 20 cyclones have come within a few hundred kilometres of south-east Queensland since records began.
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4. The cost of US inflation in 10 items
Eggs have become so expensive in the US that millions have reportedly stopped buying them entirely. But the spiralling cost of food isn't a recent phenomenon.
Egg prices have risen by more than 310% in the US over the past 20 years, even as the federal minimum wage has largely stagnated since 2009. This beautiful illustration piece by our colleague Mona Chalabi shows the rising cost of 10 different items.
We've only screenshotted a small section of the beautiful graphic but you can click through for the rest.
5. A viral chart about the stock market under Trump
A chart showing the decline of US companies' stock prices under the terms of various presidents went viral several weeks ago, showing up on BlueSky, Reddit and Twitter (I refuse to call it X).
Here's how it looked in the Economist's Graphic Detail series ($):
The earliest version of the chart format I could find was by Owen Winter from the Economist, who has been updating the chart since at least 4 March. His latest predates the 'liberation day' tariffs announcement though – the plunge continues.
A Reuters' visual explainer on how tariffs aren't all the same
Guardian US on the global chaos from Trump's tariffs
A timeline of key tariff announcements
How Trump's tariffs will hit Australia, in four charts ($)
Perennial Crunch favourites The Pudding are back with another banger about bangers. This time its a deep dive into the 'DNA' of music – a visual (and auditory) look at how ideas and themes repeat and can be traced back through history.
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The Independent
36 minutes ago
- The Independent
Top US universities raced to become global campuses. Under Trump, it's becoming a liability
Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%. Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world's best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation's borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education. Trump's latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His order applies only to Harvard, but it poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform. It's rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University, where foreign students make up 40% of the campus. 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Most international students study the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard's government and design schools, along with five of Columbia's schools. The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings. 'That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, 'If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,'' he said. Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%. 'We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can't get in because we have foreign students there,' Trump said at a news conference. The university called Trump's latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard 'yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights.' In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of 'a painstaking, decades-long project' to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school's mission and reputation, it said. 'In our interconnected global economy," the school said, 'a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage.' ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Finextra
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- Finextra
Fintech challenges due to new US policies: By Konstantin Rabin
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Belfast Telegraph
an hour ago
- Belfast Telegraph
Trump ‘disappointed' with Musk after he turned on the Republican tax bill
Mr Trump suggested the world's richest man misses being in the White House and has 'Trump derangement syndrome'. We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review your details and accept them to load the content The Republican president reflected on his break-up with Mr Musk in front of reporters in the Oval Office as the Space X owner continued a storm of social media posts attacking the president's 'Big Beautiful Bill' – and warning it will increase the federal deficit. 'I'm very disappointed in Elon,' Mr Trump said. 'I've helped Elon a lot.' Mr Musk has called Mr Trump's big tax break bill a 'disgusting abomination'. As Mr Trump spoke to reporters at the White House on Thursday, Mr Musk was watching. 'False,' he fired back on his social media platform as the president continued speaking. 'This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!'
