Juan Convers

Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the refugee crisis generated by tis war has been a major humanitarian challenge. Eurostats keep track on the data of people granted temporary protection across the Union. The latest data published by the agency shows that Germany has taken in more Ukrainian refugees than any other European Union country except Poland.

As of March 2023, there are over 1 million Ukrainian refugees in Germany. The majority of refugees are women and children, as Ukrainian men are banned from leaving the country based on the mobilization law in place.

Compared with the population of each EU member, the highest numbers of total registered refugees per thousand people in March 2023 were observed in Czechia (30.9%), Estonia (27.8%), Poland (25.9%), Lithuania (24.2%) and Bulgaria (22.5%).

You can find more information about this data on the Eurostat website.

It has been 9 days since the beginning of the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian nation, which unfortunately has been catastrophic for this country. More than 1 million refugees have fled to neighboring countries, mainly Poland and several Ukrainian cities have been heavily bombed.

At least all western countries have condemned in unison this unprovoked invasion and have uniformly applied sanctions against the Russian regime. Hopefully they will make it economically impossible to sustain this senseless war.

Slava Ukraini

Last night when I passed near the rathaus in Basel I found that a Ukrainian flag had been placed on the flagpole of this emblematic landmark. There was also a group of young people gathered in the square with peace signs and notices imploring an end to the unprovoked invasion of this European country. Sending my love and best wishes to all my ukranian friends.

An invasion is defined as 'an instance of invading a country or region with an armed force.' Ukraine has been an indendent country since the signing of the Belovezh Accords in 1991, that dissolved the Soviet Union. The news about the that the Russian president has recognised the independence of two Russian-controlled territories in east Ukraine, that call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, and the subsequent incurssion of his military forces on this region of Ukraine, fits the definition of an invasion.

Diplomacy is always the preferred option to avoid a military conflict, but I feel bad for my Ukranian friends, because it seems that the conflict is already there :/, and the world should act accordingly.

When Theresa May announced her intention to seek a general election back in April, the conservative lead on the polls over labor was around 21%. As you can see in the graph above this lead has been shrinking over time. It's very interesting to see what is going to happen in this election next month.

Two days ago. Amazing Coldplay concert in the Olympia Stadium in Berlin.

Interesting chart about the top UK selling music acts in history. Data from wikipedia

In the aftermath of the UK referendum on the European Union, the news media were discussing how there was a "regret" feeling and how the biritish people were trying to understand what they have voted for. If you look at the wikipedia trends about the UK Brexit and Irish Passport articles it seems to confirm this point.

The chart above contains a breakdown per region of the brexit vote results. In a nutshell England and Wales voted to leave (with the exception of london) and Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain.

It's shocking the UK decided to leave the European Union, but on the other hand Scotland voted clearly in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% - with all 32 council areas backing Remain. Heading towards a new Scottish independence referendum?

According to this wikipedia article that tracks all the polls related to the British referendum on the European Union membership (Brexit), it's going to be a close call even if the remain vote has been gaining ground in the last days.

In the last episode of last week tonight, John Oliver summarised quite nicely why [leaving the European Union](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAgKHSNqxa8) would such a bad deal for the United Kingdom. Crossing the fingers.

Yesterday at the office we were discussing the issue about the possibility of the UK leaving the European Union. Actually we wrote in our company blog, what this brexit would mean for European workers, some time ago. But with all this brexit discussion, we forget the UK is actually one of the oldest members of the European Union (1973).

You can check this map in detail here

Yesterday evening I was listening a really cool Freakonomics podcast episode titled How needs handwriting . Stephen Dubner discussed the pros and cons of handwriting, its origins and the emphasis is still given in the high school system. Quite interesting.

I started to think that I use hand writing at work to draw schemas about the different pieces of a project or task that I need to accomplish, but it definitely has been a while since the last time I wrote a proper hand written letter.

I'm wanted to check if there was data about postal volume, because I guess the decline in handwriting has an impact on these numbers. I found two interesting sources:

• [UK Postal Museum](http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/explore/history/statistics/)
• [US Postal Services](https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/decade-of-facts-and-figures.htm)

Both sites show a decline in the number of total mail send. The decline is particularly dramatic after 2005: