Our daily hot girl walk around the world

🌏🪸 The Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains a thriving marine ecosystem. That’s according to a new peer-reviewed study published yesterday in Nature Ecology & Evolution, which examined over 100 items of debris collected from the 610,000-square-mile garbage patch – and discovered living specimens on 70% of the items. Though much like in Homeward Bound, many of these animals are far from home. 46 different marine animal species were identified in total, with most of them typically found in coastal regions rather than in the middle of the ocean.

🇮🇳🇨🇳 India is projected to pass China as the world’s most-populous country sometime this month. China has held the title ever since the UN began tracking data in 1950, but by the end of the year, it’s projected to have ~3 million fewer residents than India (which the UN estimates will contain 1.429 billion people). India is expected to remain on a population upswing, before peaking around 1.7 billion people in the early 2060s. On the flip side, China’s population fell last year for the first time since the famine-struck 1960s, and is projected to keep shrinking slowly over the next several decades.

🇫🇷 French President Emmanuel Macron signed into law a controversial pension reform plan. The new law, which has been the subject of mass protests by citizens since mid-January, raises the country’s minimum retirement age for full pension benefits from 62 to 64 (background). Macron’s signature on Saturday came hours after France’s constitutional court officially approved the plan, while also rejecting a request for a citizens’ referendum on the issue. The court is scheduled to rule in another case requesting a national referendum sometime next month.