> - presumably, since it is compiled, it does static checks on the code? How many statically-detectable bugs that are now purely triggered at runtime can be eliminated with LPython?

Yes, it does static checks at compile time. The only thing that we do at runtime (imperfectly right now, eventually perfectly) are array/list bounds checks, integer overflow during arithmetic or casting and such. Those checks would only run in Debug and ReleaseSafe modes, but not in Release mode. So for full performance, you choose the Release mode. For 100% safe mode, you would need to use ReleaseFast.

- does it deal with the unholy amounts of dynamism of Python? Can you call getattr, setattr on random objects? Does eval work? Etc. Quite a few Python packages use these at least once somewhere...

It deals with it by not allowing it. We will support as much as we can, as long as it can be robustly ahead of time compiled to high performance code. The rest you can always use just via our CPython "escape hatch". The idea is that either you want performance (then restrict to the subset that can be compiled to high performance code) or you don't (then just use CPython).