Christopher Groskopf

Republican front-runners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz each have their own dramatic plan for reducing federal taxes, and new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) shows just how dramatic those plans are: Both would reduce federal revenues to the levels of the Truman administration, and require deep cuts across a huge variety of government programs.

For the past few years, parties that languished on the fringes of European politics have been winning elections across the continent. In France, the far-right National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, unexpectedly took 25% of the vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Last year, the far-left Syriza party in Greece claimed nearly half of the seats in two separate national parliament votes.

In April, harvest season begins in Southern Africa. An ongoing drought means the season will yield a historically poor crop. Countries including Malawi, South Africa, and Zimbabwe will have major shortfalls of grain. By one count, more than 20 million people in the region already have limited access to food—notwithstanding the drought. Without intervention, the next year will put those people and millions more at risk of malnutrition or even starvation.

Air pollution helps kill 5.5 million people each year. That’s the conclusion of new analysis by a group of researchers from Canada, China, India, and the United States. They analyzed data from the University of Washington’s Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) to parse out the effects of air pollution on global mortality rates.

Latin America experienced spectacular economic growth over the last decade. More than 70 million people were raised out of poverty.

Oil prices just keep falling and crashing into things on their way down. It seems like every day another country gets a bill for damages: Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Russia, the UK. While the global economy’s biggest players are reeling, there is a less visible group of people who stand to benefit tremendously: those without enough to eat.

This post has been corrected.

Last week Quartz asked readers to help solve an American economic mystery: Why is there less income inequality in the US Midwest than in other regions of the country? We received more than 100 comments on the post, on Reddit and on Twitter. About half of the responses contained at least one specific suggestion.

The midwest is the most equal region of the United States. Can you help us explain why that is?

You’ve probably had the following experience: You are reading along when a map, shaded in a procession of pastels, interrupts the story. Your eyes travel first to your home country, then to the country where you spent a summer abroad, and then, finally, sweep around the map looking for the brightest or dimmest shades that mark a place is the most or least of something. Along the way you cross a vast colorless expanse where Central Africa should be. “No data,” the legend explains.

This post has been corrected.

Global poverty has declined to a point where a single billionaire could put an end to it, in some countries. That’s according to a new blog post by Laurence Chandy, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who crunched the numbers just in time for Davos.

Most of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work is in storage.

Three players will split the record-breaking $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot in the United States. It is statistically certain that you aren’t one of them.

Every year on Jan. 1, thousands of books, movies and songs move into the public domain, free for anyone to use for any reason whatsoever. It’s Public Domain Day!

Dosing instructions for over-the-counter medicines are maddeningly vague: How fast will they work, and how long will they last?

Not so long ago, hijackings by Somali pirates were a daily part of the headlines. But this year no attacks were reported in east African waters, according to data from the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization.

There is good news for fans of slow computers. Yesterday (Dec. 15) Amazon announced the availability of a new “t2.nano” server type for its Amazon Web Services cloud business. With only 512 MB of memory and a single “virtual CPU,” it is Amazon’s slowest performing offering yet.

This guide was written to help Quartz staff identify problems with data they report on. After publishing it on GitHub, we heard from folks in many other industries who also found it helpful, so we’re republishing it here for the benefit of all Quartz readers. The most up-to-date version of this guide can always be found on GitHub.

China does a brisk trade in wristwatches. Last year, it exported $2.6 billion worth of them. And it also imported $2 billion worth.