You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
11 alleged assailants
Fifteen members of Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s security team were accused of beating up protestors last year during a visit to Washington. Nine people went to the hospital and it caused a severe diplomatic kerfuffle. But charges have now been dropped against 11 of the 15 alleged assailants, though officials said they weren’t dropped for political reasons. [The Daily Beast]
Nearly 20 percent
That’s the share of Americans who froze their credit score after the data breach at Equifax, according to a new study. That cost consumers $1.4 billion in aggregate. [Krebs On Security]
2,739 hours per year
The South Korean government is taking some extreme steps to reduce the amount of time that government employees spend working. On average, government employees work 2,739 hours per year, or 1,000 hours more than other developed countries. So Seoul is simply going to shut the computers off starting the last Friday in March at 8 p.m., then at 7:30 p.m. for two Fridays in April, then at 7 p.m. every Friday in May. Here’s the kicker: 67.1 percent of government workers have asked to be exempt. [BBC]
$3.1 million
That’s how much money Facebook spent lobbying Congress and the federal government in the final quarter of 2017. While CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he supported the most of the policies in the Honest Ads Act — a bill supported by a bipartisan group of 18 senators that would introduce disclosure rules for online political advertising — his lobbyists have actually been working against disclosure rules for online ads. [Quartz]
$206.5 million
Economic cost of the opioid epidemic to Boone County in southern West Virginia, according to the American Enterprise Institute study. Boone has a population of 23,645 people. At $8,734 per person , it’s the most severe economic cost per-capita in the country. [Charleston Gazette-Mail]
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