A protest ahead of the World Economic Forum 2023 in Davos, Switzerland on January 15, 2023.

Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

• The top 1% has garnered two-thirds of the $42 trillion new wealth created since 2020, per UK non-profit Oxfam.
• But at least 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation outpaces wages.
• Oxfam’s calling on governments to impose much higher taxes on the super-rich to redistribute wealth.

Governments around the world need to reduce the number of ultra-wealthy people by adopting “billionaire-busting policies,” Oxfam said in a Monday report.

The UK-based group of non-profits said in the report the richest people have grabbed nearly two-thirds of $42 trillion in new wealth created since 2020 — when the COVID-19 pandemic started. That’s twice as much as what the rest of the 99% managed to amass in new wealth, Oxfam said citing Credit Suisse data.

As a reflection of this growing wealth disparity, at least 1.7 billion workers are living in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, according to Oxfam’s analysis of data from Eurostat, Trading Economics and consultancy Korn Ferry.

Oxfam is now advocating to halve the wealth and number of billionaires between now and 2030 through taxation and other moves in order to get to a “fairer, more rational distribution of the world’s wealth.”

It’s also seeking a permanent increase in the taxes of the richest to at least 60% of their income — in particular, Oxfam is calling on governments to raise taxes on capital gain.

“We need to do this for innovation. For stronger public services. For happier and healthier societies. And to tackle the climate crisis, by investing in the solutions that counter the insane emissions of the very richest,” Gabriela Bucher, the executive director of Oxfam International, said in the report.

Just four cents of every tax dollar come from wealth taxes, according to Oxfam’s analysis based on data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Most of the income of wealthy people are also “unearned” and are derived from returns on their assets — but it’s taxed at an average of 18% — just over half of the average top tax range on wages and salaries, according to Oxfam’s study.

“Taxing the super-rich is the strategic precondition to reducing inequality and resuscitating democracy,” Bucher said in the report.

Oxfam published its report just as the World Economic Forum commences on Monday in Davos, Switzerland.

Volunteers have a military training in Rostov on December 6, 2022, amid the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine.

Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images

• A Russian soldier accidentally set off a hand grenade in Belgorod on Sunday evening.
• Three soldiers died, 16 were injured, and another eight are missing, Russian state media reported.
• The grenade was detonated by a senior sergeant serving as a platoon commander, 112 reported.

Three Russian soldiers were killed and 16 more were injured when a sergeant accidentally detonated a hand grenade in a dormitory in the Belgorod region of Russia on Sunday evening, Russian media reported.

The grenade exploded in Tonenkoye village’s community center, which was used to store ammunition and house Russian soldiers, per Russian state news outlet TASS.

The explosion also started a fire, forcing 15 people to evacuate from nearby houses, TASS reported.

“The preliminary cause of the explosion is careless handling of ammunition,” a source in the emergency services told TASS.

Eight more soldiers are missing after the explosion, and a search for them is still ongoing, Russian news agency Interfax reported, citing local emergency services.

The grenade was detonated in a weapons storage room by a senior sergeant serving as a platoon commander, according to the 112 Telegram channel, which is closely linked to Russian security services.

The resulting explosion created a fire covering around 4,843 square feet, the Telegram channel wrote.

The channel also reported that the blast was caused by an RGD-5 grenade, an anti-personnel hand grenade designed in the early 1950s.

Belgorod sits on Russia’s border with the northeast of Ukraine, around 46 miles from the city of Kharkiv.

The border region has been hit by multiple munitions-related incidents and explosions since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

Russian news agencies reported several times in 2022 that ammunition and fuel depots in Belgorod were struck by explosions. Local officials and state media attributed the blasts to Ukrainian shelling and missile strikes, though Kyiv has not claimed responsibility.

In a separate incident, 11 Russian soldiers were shot dead and 15 more were injured during a firearms training class in Belgorod, the RIA news agency reported in October. The shooters had volunteered to participate in the war in Ukraine and were killed at the scene, RIA reported. The shooters were from an unspecified former Soviet republic, Reuters reported, citing Russia’s defence ministry.

Russia has become increasingly reliant on conscripts over the course of its war, after its widely unpopular mobilization of 300,000 reservists in October.

Ukraine’s military intelligence has claimed that Moscow intends to mobilize another 500,000 personnel. Russian officials have neither confirmed nor denied such reports.

Russia’s Ministry for Defence and Ministry for Civil Defence and Emergency Situations did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

An Iranian American imprisoned in Iran for more than seven years on spying charges that the United States rejects as baseless appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday to bring him home and said he was starting a seven-day hunger strike.

Siamak Namazi made the plea in a letter to Biden seven years to the day that Iran released five other U.S. citizens in a prisoner exchange choreographed to coincide with the implementation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

“When the Obama Administration unconscionably left me in peril and freed the other American citizens Iran held hostage on January 16, 2016, the U.S. Government promised my family to have me safely home within weeks,” Namazi, 51, said in the letter to Biden released by his lawyer, Jared Genser.

“Yet seven years and two presidents later, I remain caged in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison,” he added.

Namazi asked Biden to spend one minute a day for the next week thinking about the suffering of U.S. citizens detained in Iran, who include environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, 67, who also has British nationality, and businessman Emad Shargi, 58.

Namazi, whose father was allowed to leave Iran in October for medical treatment after being detained on espionage-related charges rejected by Washington, said he would be on a hunger strike for the same seven days. read more

“All I want sir, is one minute of your days’ time for the next seven days devoted to thinking about the tribulations of the U.S. hostages in Iran,” he added. “Just a single minute of your time for each year of my life that I lost in Evin prison after the U.S. Government could have saved me but didn’t.”

Asked for comment, a White House national security council spokesperson said the government was committed to securing Namazi’s freedom.

“We are working tirelessly to bring him home along with all U.S. citizens who are wrongfully detained in Iran,” the spokesperson said. “Iran’s wrongful detention of U.S. citizens for use as political leverage is outrageous.”

President Donald Trump speaks as White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders listens during an East Room event on “second chance hiring” June 13, 2019.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

• Matt Gaetz thinks Trump should pick Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Kristi Noem for his 2024 running mate.
• Gaetz said Trump should run with a woman to get votes from women who don’t like him.
• Gaetz theorized that Trump only won in 2016 because women who didn’t like him still voted for him.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz says he’s told former President Donald Trump to pick a woman as his running mate if he wants to win in 2024. 

“What I’ve said to President Trump is like, you have to create a permission structure where women who do not like you vote for you again,” Gaetz said on the conservative “Timcast IRL” podcast on Friday.

Gaetz added that he thought the “reason Trump won in 2016” is because “a whole lot of women who didn’t like him voted for him” instead of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Gaetz named Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former White House press secretary, as his pick for Trump’s 2024 running mate. The Florida congressman praised Sanders for her “directness” and her move to ban TikTok on state government devices.

“She’s the kind of person I look at,” Gaetz said.

Sanders, for her part, avoided endorsing Trump directly in an interview on Fox News on January 15. 

“I love the President, have a great relationship with him. I know our country would be infinitely better off if he was in office right now instead of Joe Biden but right now my focus isn’t 2024,” Sanders said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Gaetz also named South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as a possible Trump running mate, calling her a “pretty stellar” alternative to Sanders.

The Florida congressman did not say if Trump had responded positively to his suggestions. Representatives for Trump, Gaetz, Sanders, and Noem did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

Trump announced on November 15 that he is running for president again in 2024. This is his third presidential run: He won his first race against Clinton in 2016 and lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. 

In October, The New York Times Magazine journalist Robert Draper told the Daily Beast that Trump has “repeatedly” discussed choosing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as his running mate. Draper said this is because Greene has been “unflaggingly loyal” to the former president through a litany of scandals and lawsuits.

In January, The Daily Beast also reported, citing two sources who have spoken to Trump and an unnamed GOP strategist, that Trump has mostly been considering female running mates for his 2024 campaign. GOP Reps. Elise Stefanik and Greene, as well as former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, have been floated as candidates, per the Daily Beast.

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