Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidential election in Ukraine by a landslide, gaining 70% of the votes against the current President, Petro Poroshenko. It was the second round of voting and 37 candidates were eliminated in the first round. The outcome was a humiliating defeat for Poroshenko since Zelensky has no political experience whatsoever. According to the BBC:
“Mr Zelensky, 41, is best known for starring in a political satirical drama called Servant of the People in which his character accidentally becomes Ukrainian president.
“He ran under a political party with the same name as his show.
“With no previous political experience, his campaign focused on his difference to the other candidates rather than on any concrete policy ideas.”
Zelensky thus becomes the most recent anti-politics leader of a country, joining such people as Macron in France and Trump in the US.
Volodymyr Zelensky
More than 200 people were killed in eight bombings in Sri Lanka that targeted Christians celebrating the Easter holiday. Sri Lanka is no stranger to violence as it endured a 26-year civil war between its majority Buddhist and minority Tamil populations that ended in 2009. But this outbreak of violence is unusual and unexpected. As of this writing, no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the level of coordination in the bombing strongly suggests a well-organized group. Some of the attacks were suicide attacks indicating a very high degree of commitment. So far, authorities have arrested seven people.
Tomorrow is Earth Day. One way to measure the human strain on the earth’s resources is to think about what is termed the overshoot day which is “calculated by comparing humanity’s total yearly consumption (Ecological Footprint) with Earth’s capacity to regenerate renewable natural resources in that year (biocapacity).” As the chart below suggests, every year we use up the earth’s resources at a much faster pace.
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