The Statistic

11th August, 2023
Number of people reported missing or dead along the Central Mediterrean migrant route so far this year: More than 1,800
Source: IOM’s Missing Migrants Project

 

10th August, 2023
Number of Indigenous people, worldwide: 476 million
Source: International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

 

9th August, 2023
Number of Venezuelans living in Brazil: 425,000
Source: UNHCR

 

8th August, 2023
Number of children in South Asia exposed to 83 or more days annually with temperatures over 35 degrees Celsius: 460 million
Source: UNICEF

 

7th August, 2023
World military expediture in 2022: $US2,240 billion 
Source: UN

 

4th August, 2023
Percentage of Sudan’s population who are enduring high levels of acute food insecurity: 42 per cent
Source: FAO

 

3rd August, 2023
Number of people who made the Darien Gap crossing in the first seven months of 2023 : 250,000
Source: Government of Panama 

 

2nd August, 2023
Proportion of the Sustainable Development Goals which have either stalled or reversed: 30 per cent
Source: UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J Mohammed 

 

1st August, 2023
Number of countries which have not completely banned smoking in healthcare facilities: 53
Source: WHO report

 

31st July, 2023
Fall in convictions for human trafficking in 2020 compared to 2019, globally: Down 27 per cent
Source: World Day Against Trafficking in Persons

 

28th July, 2023
Number of refugees from Sudan arriving daily in Chad: An average of 2,500
Source: UN

 

27th July, 2023
Size of global public debt in 2022: $US92 trillion
Source: A world of debt. A growing burden to global prosperity

 

26th July, 2023
Number of of child casualties in 100 days of conflict in Sudan: At least 435 deaths, 2,000 injuries
Source: UNICEF

 

25th July, 2023
Estimated number of people who drown each year, globally: 236,000
Source: World Drowning Prevention Day

 

24th July, 2023
Number of teams taking part in FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand: 32
Source: NPR

 

21st July, 2023
Number of people who have walked on the Moon: 12 (all American men)
Source: Britannica

 

20th July, 2023
Number of deaths from TB that could be prevented by 2035 if contact tracing and prevention measures are implemented: Close to a million
Source:  Unitaid 

 

19th July, 2023
Percentage of the world’s women and girls who live in countries with both high women’s empowerment and a small gender gap in areas such as health and education: Less than one per cent
Source:  UN Women/UNDP report

 

18th July, 2023
Size of the annual Sustainable Development Goal funding gap: $US4.2 trillion (up from $2.5 trillion before the COVID-19 pandemic)
Source:  UN Secretary-General António Guterres

 

17th July, 2023
Number of migrant children who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea during the first half of 2023: 289
Source:  UNICEF

 

14th July, 2023
Reduction in new HIV infections in east and south Africa since 2010: Down 57 per cent
Source:  UNAIDS

 

13th July, 2023
Proportion of the world’s population who experienced hunger in 2022: One in 10
Source: UN agencies

 

12th July, 2023
Amount of food commodities exported under the Black Sea Grain Initiative since July, 2022: More than 32 million tonnes
Source: UN Secretary-General António Guterres

 

11th July, 2023
Level of Antarctic sea ice levels in June, 2023: 17 per cent below average
Source: WMO

 

10th July, 2023
Number of days since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February, 2022: 500 (as of 7th July, 2023)
Source:  HRMMU

 

7th July, 2023
Proportion of households that lack water supply where females are primarily responsible for water collection: 7 out of 10
Source: UNICEF report

 

6th July, 2023
Verified number of children recruited and used in combat in 2022: 7,622
Source: Virginia Gamba, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict

 

5th July, 2023
Projected number of refugees in need of resettlement in 2024: More than 2.4 million
Source: UNHCR

 

4th July, 2023
Number of UN peacekeepers in Mali (to be withdrawn by 1st January, 2024): More than 15,000
Source:  MINUSMA

 

3rd July, 2023
Percentage of women parliamentarians in 39 countries who have experienced psychological violence: 81.8 per cent
Source:  UN Women study

 

30th June, 2023
Annual population growth in Brazil, 2010 to 2022: 0.52 per cent (the lowest since 1872)
Source: Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (via Reuters)

 

29th June, 2023
Rise in attacks on schools and hospitals, worldwide, in 2022: 112 per cent
Source:  Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba

 

28th June, 2023
Number of arrests made after the take down of encrypted communications company Encrochat: More than 6,500
Source: Europol

 

27th June, 2023
Number of illicit drug users in Afghanistan: Four million (close to 10 per cent of the population)
Source: UNODC

 

26th June, 2023
Number of countries where women serve as heads of state or government: 31
Source: International Day for Women in Diplomacy

 

23rd June, 2023
Number of widows, worldwide: More than 258 million
Source: International Widows’ Day

 

22nd June, 2023
Number of people executed in Iran in 2022: 582 people (a 75 per cent increase on 2021)
Source: OHCHR

 

21st June, 2023
Number of people displaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri due to violence since March, 2022: 5.7 million
Source: WFP

 

20th June, 2023
Number of new biosphere reserves approved by UNESCO: 11 (taking the total to 748)
Source: UNESCO

 

19th June, 2023
Proportion of the world’s landowners, worldwide, who are women: One in five
Source: UNCCD

 

16th June, 2023
Amount of remittances made by people working outside their home country back to relatives living in low and middle income countries in 2022: $US626 billion
Source: International Day of Family Remittances

 

15th June, 2023
Proportion of people 60 years and older living in community settings around the world who experienced some form of abuse in the past year: One in six
Source: WHO Fact Sheets

 

14th June, 2023
Estimated number of people in Ukraine with mental health needs: More than 10 million
Source: WHO’s representative in Ukraine Dr Jarno Habicht 

 

13th June, 2023
Number of children engaged in child labour, worldwide: 160 million (one in 10 worldwide)
Source: World Day Against Child Labour

 

12th June, 2023
Number of couples who married in China last year: 6.83 million (down 800,000 on previous year)
Source: China – Ministry of Civil Affairs (via Reuters)

 

9th June, 2023
Number of people who rely on oceans for their main source of protein: More than 1 billion
Source: FAO

 

8th June, 2023
Number of people who die each year from eating contaminated food: Estmated 420,000
Source: World Food Safety Day

 

7th June, 2023
Proportion of all fish caught which are illegally captured: About one in five
Source: International Day for the Fight against Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing

 

6th June, 2023
Proportion of global emissions generated in cities: About 70 per cent
Source: UN

 

5th June, 2023
Number of ‘grave violations’ against children in conflict took place between 2005 and 2022: 315,000
Source: UNICEF

 

2nd June, 2023
Amount of plastic waste generated annually around the globe: 400 million tonnes
Source: David R Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, and Marcos Orellana, Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights.

 

1st June, 2023
Proportion of people willing to work who are jobless in high-income countries and low-income countries: 8.2 per cent and 21 per cent
Source: ILO report Monitor on the World of Work

 

31st May, 2023
Number of World Health Organization verified attacks on healthcare facilities, transport, warehouses and personnel in Ukraine since the outbreak of war: 1004
Source: WHO

 

30th May, 2023
Number of “hunger hotspots” where acute food insecurity is set to potentially increase around the world : 18 (spanning 22 countries)
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme report

 

29th May, 2023
Number of non-self governing territories – defined as “territories whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government” – which remain around the world: 17
Source: UN

 

26th May, 2023
Number of UN peacekeepers currently serving around the world: More than 87,000
Source: UN

 

25th May, 2023
Number of the seven nations where famine-like conditions are expected in 2023 that also have high levels of armed violence: Seven
Source: WFP

 

24th May, 2023
Proportion of people killed by explosive weapons in populated areas, globally, who were civilians: 94 per cent
Source: UN Secretary-General António Guterres in comments to the UN Security Council

 

23rd May, 2023
Number of deaths caused by extreme weather incidents in the past 50 years worldwide: Two million
Source: WMO

 

22nd May, 2023
Number of people in sub-Saharan Africa estimated to die after taking illegally smuggled drugs each year: Up to 500,000
Source: UN

 

19th May, 2023
Amount the UK Government spent on Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral: £161.7 million ($US204 million)
Source: UK Treasury

 

18th May, 2023
Number of people who don’t use internet in the world’s least developed countries: 720 million people
Source: World Telecommunication and Information Society Day

 

17th May, 2023
Number of people killed and injured in road traffic accidents, globally each year: About 1.3 million killed with as many as 50 million people injured
Source: 7th UN Global Road Safety Week

 

16th May, 2023
Global life expectancy in 2019: 72.8 years (up nine years on 1990)
Source: International Day of Families

 

15th May, 2023
Number of times Title 42 was used in processing migrants at the US-Mexico border since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic: Some 2.5 million times
Source: UN

 

12th May, 2023
Number of babies born prematurely, globally, in 2020: 13.4 million (with almost a million dying of preterm complications)
Source: UNICEF and WHO’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health report.

 

10th May, 2023
Number of women and children who die every year during pregnancy, childbirth or the first weeks after birth, globally: 4.5 million 
Source: WHO report – Improving maternal and newborn health and survival and reducing stillbirth

 

9th May, 2023
Number of people publicly flogged in Afghanistan in the past six months: 274 men, 58 women and two boys 
Source: UNAMA report

 

8th May, 2023
Number of armed groups operation in the Democratic Republic Congo: More than 100
Source: UN

 

5th May, 2023
Shortage in the number of midwives needed around the world: 900,000
Source: UNFPA

 

4th May, 2023
Number of journalists killed around the world in 2022: 86
Source: UNESCO

 

3rd May, 2023
Proportion of women globally, aged between 20 and 24, who were married as children: One in five (compared with one in four a decade ago)
Source: UNICEF

 

2nd May, 2023
Number of people who have served in UN peacekeeping missions since 1948 : More than two million from 125 nations
Source: UN

 

1st May, 2023
Proportion of global deaths from malaria which occur in the World Health Organization’s ‘African region’ in 2021 : 96 per cent
Source: WHO World Malaria Report

 

28th April, 2023
Percentage of adolescent girls and young women do not use the internet in low-income countries: 90 per cent
Source: UNICEF

 

27th April, 2023
Decline in reported COVID-19 deaths since the start of 2023: 95 per cent
Source: World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

 

26th April, 2023
Number of people, globally, who live in nations where they lack citizenship: About 184 million
Source: World Bank’s World Development Report 

 

25th April, 2023
Expected population of India at the end of April (the highest population of any nation): 1,425,775,850
Source: UN Population Division

 

24th April, 2023
Eight warmest years, globally, on record since regular tracking started in 1850: 2015-2022
Source: WMO’s State of the Global Climate.

 

21st April, 2023
Proportion of the world’s children who have received no childhood vaccinations or who are under-vaccinated: One in five
Source: UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children report.

 

20th April, 2023
Proportion of the world’s population who do not make $US10 a day: 5.5 billion out of eight billion
Source: UNFPA’s State of World Population report

 

19th April, 2023
Number of people in the Sahel, Africa, at risk of experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger (one step away from famine): 45,000
Source: UN agencies

 

18th April, 2023
Number of Indigenous people groups around the world: More than 5,000
Source: UN

 

17th April, 2023
Estimated cost of clearing land mines and explosive ordnance from war-impacted areas in Ukraine: More than $US37 billion
Source: World Bank

 

14th April, 2023
Number of Afghan refugees who have been resettled in Canada since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, 2021: 30,000
Source: IOM

 

13th April, 2023
Number of humans who have walked on the Moon: 12
Source: NASA

 

12th April, 2023
Number of refugees from neighbouring nations including South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan being hosted in Ethiopia: Almost 990,000
Source: UNHCR

 

11th April, 2023
Amount of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest which was cleared in March, 2023: 356 square kilometres (up 14 per cent on the same month in the previous year)
Source: Inpe (via Reuters)

 

6th April, 2023
Proportion of Australians who don’t identify as Christian who are “warm” towards Christianity: One in four
Source: McCrindle – The changing faith landscape in Australia

 

5th April, 2023
Percentage of the world’s adults who experience infertility in their lifetime: 17.5 per cent
Source: WHO report

 

4th April, 2023
Number of children killed since the war began in Ukraine in February, 2022: At least 501
Source: UNICEF

 

3rd April, 2023
Number of people killed or maimed by landmines in 2021: More than 5,500 (mostly civilians, half of them children)
Source: International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action

 

31st March, 2023
Amount of municipal solid waste generated annually, worldwide: More than two billion tonnes
Source:  International Day of Zero Waste 

 

30th March, 2023
Number of people who fell ill from tuberculosis (TB) in 2021, worldwide: 10.6 million (with 1.6 million deaths)
Source: WHO

 

29th March, 2023
Number of Syrians whose fate remains unknown as the country enters the 13th year of civil war: 100,000
Source: UN

 

28th March, 2023
Number of school shootings, defined as any incident in which a gun is discharged on school property, in the US so far this year: 89
Source: K-12 School Shooting Database

 

27th March, 2023
Number of countries which have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan: 13 (down from 14 after Honduras ended its decades-long relationship with Taiwan and said it only recognised China)
Source: Reuters

 

24th March, 2023
Proportion of children under five dying annually as a result of inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene who live in just 10 African countries: 40 per cent
Source: UNICEF

 

23rd March, 2023
Growth in the population of Canada in the 12 months to 1st January, 2023: 1.05 million to 39.57 million (with 96 per cent of the rise due to international migration)
Source: Statistics Canada

 

22nd March, 2023
Number of children who receive school meals: Almost 420 million (up 30 million since 2020)
Source:  State of School-Feeding Worldwide report

 

21st March, 2023
Cost of recovery and reconstruction in Syria following an earthquake in February which devastated parts of the country’s north-west: $US7.9 billion over three years.
Source: World Bank 

 

20th March, 2023
Number of children in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of conflicts: 10 million (more than double the number in 2020)
Source: UNICEF report

 

17th March, 2023
Surge in coca bush cultivation (used to make cocaine) from 2020 to 2021: 35 per cent
Source: UNODC

 

16th March, 2023
Proportion of “key workers” around the world who are on a temporary contract: Almost one-in-three
Source: ILO report

 

15th March, 2023
Proportion of the Syrian population that are facing hunger: More than half (12.1 million)
Source: WFP

 

14th March, 2023
Metric tonnes of grain exported from Ukraine under the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative: 24 million (as of 13th March, 2023)
Source: UN

 

13th March, 2023
Number of years a civil war has been fought in Syria: 12 (marked on 11th March) 

 

10th March, 2023
Estimated number of lives that could be saved annually around the world if sodium reduction measures are implemented: Seven million
Source: WHO report

 

9th March, 2023
Percentage of women in the workforce of the world’s 20 largest global tech companies: 30 per cent
Source: UN Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi in a speech marking International Women’s Day

 

8th March, 2023
Number of  young people aged between 10 and 24, worldwide: 1.8 billion (the largest such generation in history)
Source: UN

 

7th March, 2023
Proportion of working-age women globally would like to work but do not have a job: 15 per cent (compared to 10.5 per cent of men)
Source: ILO

 

6th March, 2023
Number of children under 15 globally without access to child benefits, paid in cash or tax credits: 1.46 billion
Source: ILO/UNICEF report, ‘More than a billion reasons: The urgent need to build universal social protection for children‘

 

3rd March, 2023
Proportion of people, globally, who rely on wild species for income and food: One in five
Source: World Wildlife Day

 

2nd March, 2023
Amount of the world’s oceanic carbon stored in seagrasses: Up to 18 per cent (despite covering only 0.1 per cent of the ocean floor)
Source: World Seagrass Day

 

1st March, 2023
Number of the 79 nations which implement the death penalty and adhere to international standards restricting the practice to the most serious crimes: Two
Source: Mai Sato, associate professor at the Faculty of Law at Monash University in Australia, quoted in a UN News report

 

28th February, 2023
Amount of money the UN is appealing for from donor nations to provide support and protection for 17.3 million people in war-torn Yemen: $US4.3 billion
Source: UN

 

27th February, 2023
Number of people at risk from cholera outbreaks in 43 nations: A billion
Source: WHO

 

24th February, 2023
Number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022, globally: 223 (down from 339 in 2000)
Source: WHO

 

23rd February, 2023
Number of UN trucks transporting aid for earthquake victims in Syria which have passed through border crossings since the 6th February earthquakes (as of Wednesday, 22nd February): 282
Source: UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric

 

22nd February, 2023
Proportion of the world’s population who do not have access to education in a language they speak or understand: 40 per cent
Source: International Mother Language Day

 

21st February, 2023
Number of the world’s workers who live on less than $US1.90 a day : 214 million
Source: UN

 

20th February, 2023
Number of weather balloons released daily around the world : Almost 1,000
Source: WMO

 

17th February, 2023
Number of children around the world who don’t go to school because of conflict, climate disasters and displacement : 78 million
Source: UN

 

16th February, 2023
Proportion of prisoners in Europe who suffer from mental health disorders: One in three
Source: WHO

 

15th February, 2023
Estimated cost of damage from deadly earthquakes in Turkey last week: More than $US20 billion
Source: Verisk (via Reuters)

 

14th February, 2023
Number of “grave violations” committed against children in the world’s conflict zones in 2021: Almost 24,000
Source: UN

 

13th February, 2023
Amount of water required to produce a kilogram of lentils compared with the amount required to produce a kilogram of beef: 1,250 litres compared to 13,000 litres
Source: World Pulses Day

 

10th February, 2023
Number of schools targeted with acts of armed violence in Haiti in the first four months of the academic year (October to February): 72 (compared to eight during the same period in the previous year)
Source: UNICEF

 

9th February, 2023
Number of children who have limited or no access to clean drinking water at schools: Estimated 584 million
Source: UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP report

 

8th February, 2023
Projected number of people globally who could die annually as a result of anti-microbial resistance by 2050: Up to 10 million
Source: UN Environment Programme report

 

7th February, 2023
Number of girls at risk of femal genital mutiliation, globally, in 2023: 4.2 million
Source: International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation 

 

6th February, 2023
Rise in the number of people who cannot afford a healthy diet between 2019-2020: Up 112 million to almost 3.1 billion
Source: UN

 

3rd February, 2023
Proportion of all plant and animal species who live or breed in wetlands which cover six per cent of the Earth’s surface: 40 per cent
Source: World Wetlands Day

 

2nd February, 2023
Proportion of people living with HIV who are children (and proportion of all AIDS-related deaths who are children): Four per cent (and 15 per cent)
Source: WHO

 

30th January, 2023
Voter turnout in Tunisian parliamentary elections on 29th January: 11 per cent
Source: Reuters

 

27th January, 2023
Jump in the cultivation of opium in military-ruled Myanmar in 2022: Up 33 per cent
Source: UNODC

 

26th January, 2023
Growth in the global economy projected in 2023: 1.9 per cent (down from three per cent in 2022)
Source: UNDESA

 

25th January, 2023
Number of children whose education has been disrupted by the Ukraine conflict: More than 5,000,000
Source: UNICEF

 

24th January, 2023
Number of premature deaths around the globe annually which are attributed to industrially produced trans fat: Up to 500,000
Source: WHO

 

23rd January, 2023
Proportion of the global population who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 as of January, 2023: 83 per cent
Source:  WHO

 

20th January, 2023
Percentage of public education funding that the poorest 20 per cent of learners benefit from: 16 per cent (compared to 28 per cent for the richest)
Source: UNICEF report – Transforming Education with Equitable Financing

 

19th January, 2023
Percentage of children aged under five-years-old in Sri Lanka who are suffering from some form of malnutrition: 42.9 per cent
Source: Reuters

 

18th January, 2023
Proportion of the Indian population – set to pass China’s population this year – which is aged between 15 and 29-years-old: 27.3 per cent
Source: Reuters

 

17th January, 2023
Projected number of unemployed people globally in 2023: 208 million (up 16 million people)
Source:  ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook Trends report

 

16th January, 2023
Number of people around the world relying in healthcare facilities without reliable electricity: Almost a billion (an eighth of the world’s population)
Source: WHO

 

13th January, 2023
Rise in the number of people aged 65 and older by 2050: From 761 million in 2021 to 1.6 billion by 2050
Source: World Social Report 2023

 

12th January, 2023
Number of flights delayed or disrupted in the US following a 90 minute nationwide ground stop imposed on 12th January by the Federal Aviation Administration over a computer issue: More than 10,000
Source: Reuters

 

11th January, 2023
Amount committed by donor nations to help Pakistan’s flood recovery at a conference on 9th January, 2023: More than $US9 billion
Source: Reuters

 

10th January, 2023
Proportion of the global employee workforce working more than 48 hours a week: A third (while a fifth are working fewer than 35 hours a week on a part-time basis)
Source: ILO’s Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World.

 

9th January, 2023
Temperature peak in Poland on New Year’s Day: 18.9 degrees Celsius (5.1 degrees higher than the previous all-time record for January, from 1993)
Source: World Meteorological Organization

 

6th January, 2023
Number of ballots held in the 1859 contest for a US Speaker (the record number ever held): 44 
Source: CNN

 

5th January, 2023
Number of COVID-19 cases reported worldwide in December, 2022: 13 million (but experts believe the actual number is much higher)
Source: WHO

 

4th January, 2023
Proportion of the world’s population who live in China and India (each of which had a population of 1.4 billion): 18 per cent
Source: UN

 

3rd January, 2023
Proportion of people living in Arab countries (excluding Libya, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) who are living below national poverty lines: More than a third
Source: ESCWA

 

30th December, 2022
Age of Brazilian soccer legend Pele when he won his first World Cup (the first of three): 17-years-old
Source: BBC

 

29th December, 2022
Number of children who are displaced globally: 37 million
Source: UNICEF

 

28th December, 2022
Proportion of the world’s 100 million forcibly displaced who are in the Americas: About a fifth
Source: UNHCR

 

27th December, 2022
Rise in the global sea level since January, 2020: Almost 10 millimetres
Source: WMO

 

23rd December, 2022
Proportion of life-threatening bacterial infections that are becoming resistant to treatment: More than 50 per cent
Source: WHO

 

22nd December, 2022
Estimated number of children who did not return to school in Malawi after the COVID-19 pandemic: More than 400,000
Source: OHCHR

 

21st December, 2022
Number of people in Somalia projected to face possible starvation next year: More than 700,000
Source: FAO

 

20th December, 2022
Proportion of the world’s languages spoken by Indigenous people: More than 4,000 of the world’s 6,700 languages
Source: DESA

 

19th December, 2022
Number of international migrants in 2020: More than 281 million 
Source: International Migrants Day

 

16th December, 2022
Proportion of the Ukrainian rural population involved in agriculture who have stopped their activities or reduced their output due to the war: 25 per cent 
Source: FAO

 

15th December, 2022
Expected size of global trade in financial terms for 2022: Almost $US32 trillion ($US25 trillion in goods and $US7 million in services)
Source: UNCTAD

 

14th December, 2022
Number of “viewing hours” watched in the US of the first three episodes of the new Netflix series, Harry & Meghan: 81.55 million (a record for a documentary on the streaming platform)
Source: Netflix

 

13th December, 2022
Average daily number of calories consumed by each person globally in 2021: 2,960 (up nine per cent on the previous year)
Source: FAO

 

12th December, 2022
Number of people globally employed in jobs related to “nature-based solutions” (which aim to to protect, restore, and sustainably manage waters and marine ecosystems while also provide human well-being, ecosystem resilience and biodiversity benefits): 75 million (96 per cent of whom live in Asia and the Pacific and lower middle income countries)
Source: ILO/UNEP/IUCN report

 

9th December, 2022
Number of deaths, globally, due to malaria in 2021: 619,000 (slightly down on the 625,000 deaths in 2020)
Source: WHO

 

8th December, 2022
Number of people attending the FIFA World Cup in Qatar during the first two weeks: Just over 765,000
Source: Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (via Reuters)

 

7th December, 2022
Proportion of the Earth’s soils that are degraded: 33 per cent
Source: FAO

 

6th December, 2022
Proportion of people who have experienced physical, psychological or sexual violence and harassment in the workplace, globally: More than one in five (almost 23 per cent)
Source: ILO

 

5th December, 2022
Proportion of the global population with a “significant disablity”: 16 per cent (about 1.3 billion)
Source: WHO

 

2nd December, 2022
The increased risk women subjected to intimate partner violence face of acquiring HIV: A 50 per cent higher chance than those not subjected to such violence
Source: UNAIDS

 

 

1st December, 2022
Decline in global monthly wages in real terms during the first half of 2022 (the first instance of negative growth this century): 0.9 per cent
Source: ILO

 

30th November, 2022
Expected increase in the number of people who have inadequate access to water for at least one month a year: From 3.6 billion now to five billion by 2050
Source: WMO

 

29th November, 2022
Number of adolescents around the world who are not undertaking 60 minutes of physical exercise a day: 80 per cent
Source: FIFA/WHO

 

25th November, 2022
Number of migrants who have died while on the move since 2014: More than 50,000
Source: International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project

 

24th November, 2022
Proportion of the 81,000 women and girls intentionally killed last year who died at the hands of intimate partners or other family members: 56 per cent (45,000)
Source: UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women study

 

23rd November, 2022
Number of people injured in road accidents worldwide, annually: An estimated 50 million
Source: World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, 

 

21st November, 2022
Number of doctors and nurses who left Zimbabwe in 2021 and 2022 so far: More than 4,000
Source: Zimbabwean Health Services Board via Reuters

 

18th November, 2022
Number of people in Peru who don’t have regular access to enough safe and nutritious food: 16.6 million (half the country’s population)
Source: FAO

 

17th November, 2022
Percentage surge in visitors to Japan, for tourism and business, in October, 2022, compared with the same month in 2021: 2,155 per cent to 498,600 visitors (a figures still down 80 per cent on the same month in 2019)
Source: Japan National Tourism Organization via Reuters

 

16th November, 2022
Number of years it took the world’s population to grow from seven to eight billion: 12 (compared with a projected 15 years until the population reaches nine billion)
Source: UN

 

15th November, 2022
Number of peace operations UN police officers are currently serving in: 16 (with a current authorised strength of 10,000)
Source: UN

 

14th November, 2022
Number of deaths, globally, attributed to antimicrobial resistance in 2019: Estimated 1.27 million
Source: WHO

 

11th November, 2022
Number of vaccine doses, of all types, supplied worldwide in 2021: About 16 billion
Source: WHO’s Global Vaccine Market Report 2022

 

10th November, 2022
Proportion of young people worldwide who said climate impacts have made them reconsider their desire to have children: Two in five
Source: UNICEF‘s U-Report which polled some 243,512 young people from 163 countries during July and August this year.

 

9th November, 2022
Number of children impacted by flooding in 27 countries this year: At least 27.7 million 
Source: UNICEF

 

8th November, 2022
Number of people who have left their homes in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia because they face severely limited access to food, water, and other resources: Some 1.77 million 
Source: UN

 

7th November, 2022
Economic cost of 2011 Tohoku Earthquake in Japan: More than $US235 billion (the costliest disaster in world history)
Source: World Tsunami Awareness Day

 

4th November, 2022
Height of the plume caused by the 15th January underwater eruption of Tonga’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the South Pacific: 57 kilometres (the highest on record)
Source: Via Reuters

 

3rd November, 2022
Number of journalists imprisoned in 2020: 274 (the highest yearly total in 30 years)
Source: International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists

 

2nd November, 2022
Rise in the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan in 2021 compared with 2020: 32 per cent
Source: UNODC

 

1st November, 2022
Number of documented deaths on migration routes to and within Europe since the beginning of 2021: At least 5,684
Source: International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project

 

31st October, 2022
Number of people displaced by floods in Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroon: More than 3.4 million
Source: UNHCR

 

28th October, 2022
Number of people globally who die annually as a result of lead poisoning: Almost 1,000,000
Source: WHO

 

27th October, 2022
Proportion of Canadians who are immigrants in 2021: 23 per cent (the highest level on record)
Source: Statistics Canada

 

26th October, 2022
Number of children, globally, who UNICEF estimates will be exposed to “more frequent, longer lasting, and more severe” heatwaves by 2050: More than two billion (compared to at least half a billion today)
Source: UNICEF

 

25th October, 2022
Number of people, globally, who gained access to safe drinking water in the past 20 years: More than two billion
Source: State of the World’s Drinking Water report

 

24th October, 2022
Proportion of the world’s population made up on Indigenous peoples: 6.2 per cent
Source: OHCHR

 

21st October, 2022
The cost to healthcare of physical inactivity, globally, until 2030: Estimated $US27 billion a year
Source: WHO

 

20th October, 2022
Proportion of nations which have a national physical activity policy: Less than 50 per cent
Source: WHO

 

19th October, 2022
Rate at which children are being admitted for medical treatment for malnutrition in Somalia: 1 per minute
Source: UNICEF

 

18th October, 2022
Number of Venezuelans who have left country since 2015: 7.1 million
Source: UNHCR

 

17th October, 2022
Number of people globally who cannot afford a healthy diet: About three billion
Source: UN agencies

 

14th October, 2022
Number of people in Chad who are acutely hungry following severe drought and subsequent floods: 2.1 million
Source: UN agencies

 

13th October, 2022
Proportion of the world’s landholders who are women: Less than 15 per cent
Source: UN – International Day of Rural Women

 

12th October, 2022
Number of girls at risk of child marriage, globally: 10 million
Source: UN – International Day of the Girl Child

 

11th October, 2022
Number of people who arrived in Germany from Ukraine between February and August this year: 952,000
Source: Germany’s Federal Statistics Office (via Reuters)

 

10th October, 2022
Number of health facilities devastated in Pakistan’s floods: Almost 1,500
Source: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

 

7th October, 2022
Amount lost by the Afghan economy in 12 months since the Taliban takeover in August, 2021: Almost $US5 billion (reversing gains it had taken almost 10 years to build)
Source: UNDP

 

6th October, 2022
Number of new teachers required globally if the world is to achieve universal basic education by 2030: 24.4 million primary school teachers and 44.4 million secondary school teachers
Source: UN

 

5th October, 2022
Proportion of total health research output focused on dementia, the seventh leading cause of death globally: Less than 1.5 per cent
Source: WHO

 

4th October, 2022
Estimated proportion of the world’s workforce who work in tourism-related work: About 10 per cent
Source: UNWTO

 

3rd October, 2022
Projected number of people aged 65 and older, globally, in 2050: More than 1.5 billion (up from 703 million in 2019)
Source: International Day of Older Persons

 

30th September, 2022
Estimated number of workdays lost, worldwide, annually due to depression and anxiety: 12 billion
Source: WHO/ILO

 

29th September, 2022
Economic toll of the opioid addiction and overdose crisis in 2020: Almost $US1.5 trillion
Source: A US congressional report seen by Reuters

 

28th September, 2022
Estimated possible loss to international tourism as a result of the war in Ukraine: $US14 billion
Source: UN

 

27th September, 2022
Number of known nuclear weapons in existence: 12,705
Source: International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

 

26th September, 2022
Number of different sign languages used around the world: More than 300
Source: UN

 

23rd September, 2022
Number of new jobs in the renewable energy sector in 2021: 700,000 (to 12.7 million last year)
Source: ILO

 

22nd September, 2022
Proportion of deaths, globally, due to non-communicable diseases including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, and mental health illnesses, annually: Almost three quarters (taking 41 million lives a year)
Source: WHO report Invisible numbers: The true extent of noncommunicable diseases and what to do about them.

 

21st September, 2022
Number of refugees from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have arrived in Uganda so far this year: 96,000
Source: UNCHR

 

20th September, 2022
Number of British sovereigns (including King Charles III): 41

 

19th September, 2022
Estimated proportion of the world’s 10-year-olds who can read and understand a simple written story: A third (a 50 per cent drop on pre-pandemic estimates)
Source: Transforming Education Summit

 

16th September, 2022
Proportion of the world’s population who have experienced a decline in press freedom in ther country in the past five years: 85 per cent
Source: UNESCO report

 

15th September, 2022
Number of people prosecuted under Russia’s so-called “fake news law” since its introduction on 4th March, 2022: 114
Source: UN human rights expert Mary Lawlor

 

14th September, 2022
Enrolment rate for refugee children in secondary schools: 37 per cent
Source: All Inclusive: The Campaign for Refugee Education

 

13th September, 2022
Estimated number of people living in modern slavery: 50 million people (28 million in forced labour and 22 million in forced marriages)
Source: ILO

 

12th September, 2022
Number of countries which saw their Human Development Index value drop in 2020 or 2021: 90 per cent
Source: 2021/22 Human Development Report

 

9th September, 2022
Length of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II: 70 years, seven months and two days (the longest in the history of the UK)
Source: Reuters

 

8th September, 2022
Amount of income lost by women globally during the coronavirus pandemic: About $US800 billion
Source: UN Women/UN DESA report

 

7th September, 2022
Proportion of healthcare facilities worldwide which lack basic hygiene services: Half
Source: WHO

 

6th September, 2022
Number of UK Prime Ministers during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II: 15 (including Liz Truss)
Source: CNN

 

5th September, 2022
Proportion of casulaties in contemporary conflicts who are civilians: Up to 90 per cent
Source: UN

 

2nd September, 2022
Proportion of people in Asia and the Pacific who have no access to social protections: More than half
Source: ILO

 

1st September, 2022
Life expectancy in the US: 76.1 years (down from 79 in 2019)
Source: CDC

 

31st August, 2022
Number of countries in which people have vanished during conflicts or periods of repression: At least 85
Source: International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances

 

30th August, 2022
Number of children who are not attending school, worldwide: 78.2 million
Source: Education Cannot Wait

 

29th August, 2022
Amount of grain and other food items exported through Black Sea ports since a landmark grain deal: More than a million metric tonnes
Source: Joint Coordination Centre

 

26th August, 2022
Number of COVID deaths, globally, in 2022 as of 25th August: One million
Source: WHO

 

25th August, 2022
Percentage of Americans who expressed support for backing Ukraine “until all Russian forces are withdrawn from territory claimed by Ukraine” in an online poll last week: 53 per cent (18 per cent opposed)
Source: Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll

 

24th August, 2022
Drop in water availability in Africa’s Sahel region over the past 20 years: More than 40 per cent
Source: UN

 

23rd August, 2022
Verified deaths of children who have died in the Ukraine conflict: At least 972 (with the actual number believed to be “much higher”)
Source: UNICEF

 

22nd August, 2022
Number of ships which have departed Ukrainian ports under the Black Sea Grain Initiative signed by Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN on 22nd July: 25 (as of 19th July)
Source: UN

 

19th August, 2022
Number of journalists killed Mexico so far this year: 18
Source: Article 19

 

18th August, 2022
Number of reported monkeypox infections, worldwide: More than 35,000 cases in 92 countries
Source: WHO

 

17th August, 2022
Area of land, globally, which is owned, occupied or used by Indigenous people: 22 per cent
Source: UNESCO

 

16th August, 2022
Number of countries where girls are banned from going to high school: 1 (Afghanistan)
Source: UN

 

15th August, 2022
Estimated number of people who migrated as a result of the Partition of India and Pakistan: About 15 million
Source: Hindustan Times

 

12th August, 2022
Number of young people, aged 15 to 24, projected to be out of work this year: 73 million
Source: ILO

 

11th August, 2022
Estimated number of crytocurrencies, globally: More than 19,000
Source: UNCTAD

 

10th August, 2022
Estimated number of West African giraffes in the wild: About 600
Source: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threatened species

 

9th August, 2022
Proportion of the world’s population who will be aged over 65-years-old by 2050: One in six (16 per cent – up from nine per cent in 2011)
Source: World Population Prospects: the 2019 Revision

 

8th August, 2022
Number of nuclear weapons tests conducted between 1945 and 1996 compared to after that date (when the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty opened for signatures): More than 2,000 compared to fewer than 12
Source: Robert Floyd, executive secretary of the body that oversees the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty

 

5th August, 2022
Life-expectancy in Africa in 2022: 56 (well below the global average of 64 but above life expectancy in Africa in the year 2000 of 46)
Source: WHO

 

4th August, 2022
Number of children aged under five living in the Greater Horn of Africa region who are acutely malnourished: About seven million
Source: WHO

 

3rd August, 2022
Number of children with HIV, globally, who are receiving treatment: 52 per cent (compared to more than 75 per cent of all adults)
Source: UN agencies

 

2nd August, 2022
Number of Commonwealth Games gold medals won by Australian swimmer Emma McKeon (the most ever won by an individual at the Games): 12
Source: The Guardian

 

1st August, 2022
Number of civil society groups closed in Nicaragua by the National Assembly over the past few years at the request of President Daniel Ortega’s government: More than 700
Source: A group of UN experts

 

29th July, 2022
Number of nations which voted at the UN to adopt a resolution declaring access to clean and healthy environment a universal human right on 28th July, 2022: 161 (with eight abstentions)
Source: UN

 

28th July, 2022
Average number of people, globally, who died every day in 2021 due to AIDS: 1,800
Source: UNAIDS

 

27th July, 2022
Estimated proportion of people globally living with viral hepatitis who are unaware they have it: Almost 90 per cent
Source: World Hepatitis Day

 

26th July, 2022
Estimated number of people globally who die from drowning each year: 236,000
Source: World Drowning Prevention Day

 

25th July, 2022
Proportion of healthcare workers in low income countries who have received a primary course of COVID-19 vaccinations: 37 per cent
Source: WHO

 

22nd July, 2022
Proportion of the adult population of US, UK, Germany, Russia and India who have played chess at some point in their life: About 70 per cent
Source: World Chess Day

 

21st July, 2022
CIA estimate of the number of Russian troops killed to date in the Ukraine conflict: About 15,000 (and about three times as many wounded)
Source: According to CIA Director William Burns, via Reuters

 

20th July, 2022
Decline in the population of Greece since 2011: 3.5 per cent (to 10,432,481 in 2021)
Source: ELSTAT

 

19th July, 2022
Number of countries which have reported monkeypox cases: 63
Source: WHO

 

18th July, 2022
Number of children, globally, who missed out on one or more doses of a vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) in 2021 due to a range of factors including the coronavirus pandemic, conflict and misinformation: 25 million
Source: WHO/UNICEF

 

15th July, 2022
Rise in diseases transmitted from animals to people in Africa over the past decade: 63 per cent
Source: WHO

 

14th July, 2022
The gender pay gap in the health and care sector, globally: Women earn almost 25 per cent less than men
Source: ILO/WHO report – The gender pay gap in the health and care sector: a global analysis in the time of COVID-19

 

13th July, 2022
Global life expectancy in 2021: 71 years
Source: UN World Population Prospect report

 

12th July, 2022
Decline in the population of the European Union in 2021: 172,000 (to 446.8 million)
Source: Eurostat

 

11th July, 2022
Proportion of women in developing countries who start having children at the age of 19 or younger: Almost a third
Source: UNFPA

 

8th July, 2022
Estimated number of additional people who could be pushed into extreme poverty this year as a result of conflicts, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the climate crisis: 75 to 95 million
Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022

 

7th July, 2022
Rise in the number of people affected by hunger, globally, during 2021: As many as 821 million
Source: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World

 

6th July, 2022
Expected rise in the price of rice, wheat flour and vegetable oil in the Central African Republic in the next few weeks: 30 per cent, 67 per cent and 70 per cent
Source: WFP

 

5th July, 2022
Amount pledged by Norway on 1st July, 2022, to help Ukraine defend itself, support people in need and for reconstruction in the wake of Russia’s invasion: €1 billion
Source: Reuters

 

4th July, 2022
Number of schools closed in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince due to gang-related violence and other reasons: Some 1,700
Source: UN

 

1st July, 2022
Rate at which people are killed on the world’s roads, globally: One every 24 seconds
Source: UN

 

30th June, 2022
Expected growth in the number of people living in urban areas, globally, in 2050: 2.2 billion people
Source: UN-Habitat’s World Cities Report 2022 – Envisaging the Future of Cities.

 

29th June, 2022
Number of verified “grave violations” committed against children by parties to conflicts in more than 30 settings across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America: An average of 71 a day
Source: UNICEF report – 25 years of children and armed conflict: Taking action to protect children in war

 

28th June, 2022
Proportion of the world’s wastewater discharged into the ocean without treatment: More than 80 per cent
Source: UN Water

 

27th June, 2022
Percentage of the world’s commodities which are transported by ships: 90 per cent
Source: UN

 

24th June, 2022
Rate at which children around the world are being pushed into life-threatening, severe malnutrition: One per minute
Source: UNICEF

 

23rd June, 2022
Number of UN personnel who lost their lives in the line of duty during 2021: 485 (a record number which includes 70 military personnel and 414 civilian workers)
Source: UN

 

22nd June, 2022
The number of crisis-impacted school-aged children requiring educational support, worldwide: 222 million (up from 75 million in 2016)
Source: Education Cannot Wait (ECW)

 

21st June, 2022
People who suffer from some form of mental disorder, worldwide: Almost one billion
Source: WHO

 

20th June, 2022
Percentage of resettlement cases submitted by UNHCR in 2021 who were for survivors of torture or violence and people with legal and physical protection needs: 86 per cent
Source: UNHCR

 

17th June, 2022
Number of people globally impacted by droughts each year: Estimated 55 million
Source: World Day to Combat Desertification

 

16th June, 2022
Number of children living in orphanages, boarding schools and other institutions in Ukraine prior to the Russian invasion on 24th February: More than 91,000
Source: UNICEF

 

15th June, 2022
Proportion of people aged 60 or older who experienced some form of abuse in community settings in the past year: About one in six
Source: WHO

 

14th June, 2022
Number of “irregular entries” detected to Europe between January and May, 2022: 86,420 (82 per cent more than in the same period in 2021)
Source: Frontex

 

10th June, 2022
Amount countries are predicted to spend importing food this year: $US1.8 trillion (a record)
Source: FAO

 

9th June, 2022
Number of people globally, impacting by at least one aspect of the war in Ukraine – food security, energy or financing: About 1.6 billion
Source: GCRG

 

8th June, 2022
Cost in lost productivity of unsafe foods to the economies of low and middle income countries annually: About $US95 billion
Source: UN

 

7th June, 2022
Number of people in Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen facing starvation and death: Up to 750,000
Source: Hunger Hotspots – FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity

 

6th June, 2022
Average percentage of those killed when explosives are used in populated areas during conflicts who are civilians: 90 per cent
Source: UN

 

3rd June, 2022
Projected number of COVID-19 deaths in Africa in 2022: About 23,000 (down 94 per cent down on the 2021 total)
Source: WHO

 

2nd June, 2022
Number of people, globally, who still do not have access to electricity: 733 million
Source: Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report

 

1st June, 2022
Amount of sand and gravel used each year globally: 50 billion tons
Source: UNEP

 

31st May, 2022
Number of trees, globally, chopped down every year to make cigarettes: 600 million
Source: WHO

 

30th May, 2022
Number of people, globally, who live in low-lying coastal zones: Around 680 million (expected to rise to one billion by 2050)
Source: UN

 

27th May, 2022
Number of UN peacekeeping operations that have taken place around the world since the first was established in 1948: 72
Source: UN

 

26th May, 2022
Number of school shootings in the US in 2022 so far: 27
Source: Education Week

 

25th May, 2022
Number of Earths required if the world consumed resources at the rate of OECD and EU countries: 3.3
Source: UNICEF report Innocenti Report Card 17: Places and Spaces

 

24th May, 2022
Number of people expected to watch the 2022 World Cup hosted by Qatar: Five billion
Source: FIFA president Gianni Infantino

 

23rd May, 2022
Number of countries where at least 70 per cent of the population have been vaccinated against COVID-19: 57
Source: WHO

 

20th May, 2022
Increase in Russia’s defence spending in the first four months of 2022 (including two months of its invasion of Ukraine): Up 40 per cent
Source: Russian finance ministry via Reuters.

 

19th May, 2022
Proportion of the world’s food crops that depend on animal pollination at least partly: More than 75 per cent
Source: World Bee Day

 

18th May, 2022
Number of the elderly and people with disabilities, globally, who are being denied access to assistive technology: Almost one billion
Source: The Global Report on Assistive Technology

 

17th May, 2022
Number of children forced into work, worldwide: 160 million
Source: ILO

 

16th May, 2022
Number of deaths caused annually around the world through an unhealthy diet: 11 million (a further 420,000 die from consuming unsafe foods)
Source: WHO

 

13th May, 2022
Number of deaths in the US due to COVID-19: More than 1 million
Source: US White House

 

12th May, 2022
Percentage of crops, globally, lost to plant pests and diseases annually: Up to 40 per cent
Source: International Day of Plant Health

 

11th May, 2022
Amount raised to support Syrian refugees, asylum seekers and stateless people at a donor conference this week: $US6.1 billion
Source: Reuters

 

10th May, 2022
Number of hours women spend each day collecting water, globally: At least 200 million
Source: UN

 

9th May, 2022
Number of times Nepali mountaineer Kami Rita Sherpa has scaled Mount Everest: 26 (a record he achieved on 7th May, 2022)
Source: Via Reuters

 

6th May, 2022
Number of human rights defenders killed in Colombia in 2021: 139 (down from 199 in 2020)
Source: Somos Defensores

 

5th May, 2022
Percentage rise in the number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Europe during 2021: 72 per cent up on the previous year to 23,255
Source: Eurostat

 

4th May, 2022
Proportion of adults in Europe who are either overweight or obese: 59 per cent
Source: WHO study

 

3rd May, 2022
Number of COVID-related deaths in Russia since April, 2020: More than 803,000
Source: Reuters using Rosstat data.

 

2nd May, 2022
Estimated number of pieces of litter in the US: 50 billion (152 pieces per resident)
Source: Keep America Beautiful’s 2020 National Litter Study (via LA Times)

 

29th April, 2022
Number of people executed in Iran in 2021: At least 333 (up 25 per cent on the previous year)
Source: Report from Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and France’s Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM)

 

28th April, 2022
Number of years India hasn’t experienced a March as hot as during the month in 2022: 122 (the number of years since the India Meteorological Department began keeping records)
Source: Via Reuters

 

27th April, 2022
Number of planets in the Milky Way galaxy: About 100 billion
Source: NASA

 

26th April, 2022
Number of people exposed to radiation in Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation after an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986: Almost 8.4 million
Source: International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day

 

22nd April, 2022
Drop in the number of Netflix subscribers during the first quarter of 2022 (news which caused its share price to plummet this week): 200,000
Source: Via BBC

 

21st April, 2022
Number of refugees who have now fled Ukraine (as of 20th April): 5.03 million (along with seven million internally displaced)
Source: UNHCR

 

20th April, 2022
Number of people facing hunger in the Horn of Africa region amid a worsening drought and shortfall in humanitarian aid: Up to 20 million
Source: WFP

 

19th April, 2022
Percentage of people on Java, Indonesia’s most popular island, who have COVID-19 anti-bodies due to a combination of prior infections and vaccinations: 99.2 per cent
Source: University of Indonesia study (via Reuters)

 

14th April, 2022
Number of people projected to be facing hunger in South Sudan between May and July this year: About 7.74 million (the highest number yet recorded)
Source: WFP

 

13th April, 2022
Cost per person of reducing deaths from largely preventable and treatable non-communicable diseases around the world between now and 2030: $US0.84 per person per year
Source: WHO

 

12th April, 2022
Expected contraction of the Ukraine economy this year due to the Russian invasion: 45 per cent
Source: World Bank

 

11th April, 2022
Amount of oil held by the FSO Safer, a floating storage and offloading facility off the coast of Yemen which is at imminent risk of spilling a massive amount of oil due to leakages or an explosion: 1.1 million barrels (four times the amount of the Exxon Valdez, the tanker that caused one of the greatest environmental disasters in United States’ history)
Source: UN

 

8th April, 2022
Estimated number of deaths caused worldwide each year due to avoidable environmental causes: More than 13 million
Source: WHO

 

7th April, 2022
Number of people, worldwide, who rely on bananas for food security and income: More than 400 million
Source: IAEA

 

6th April, 2022
Proportion Ukraine’s children who have been forced from their homes due to war: 60 per cent
Source: UNICEF

 

5th April, 2022
Proportion of the world’s population that breathes polluted air: 99 per cent
Source: WHO

 

4th April, 2022
Proportion of children, globally, who have autism: One in 100
Source: World Autism Awareness Day

 

1st April, 2022
Number of educational institutions damaged or destroyed in Ukraine in the first month after Russia’s February 24th invasion began: More than 733
Source: UNESCO

 

31st March, 2022
Proportion of the world’s population who have yet to receive a COVID-19 vaccine: A third including 83 per cent of Africans
Source: WHO

 

30th March, 2022
Rise in the number of people crossing the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama, one of the most dangerous and impassable regions of Latin America, during the first two months of 2022 compared to last year: Triple (about 8,456 people compared to 2,928 during the first two months of 2021)
Source: UNHCR

 

29th March, 2022
Number of civilians killed in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol during a Russian siege, according to the city’s mayor: Almost 5,000
Source: Via Reuters

 

28th March, 2022
Number of people living in Shanghai, China, impacted by two lockdowns aimed at stopping the spread of coronavirus this week: 25 million
Source: Via CNN

 

25th March, 2022
Number of displaced children in Ukraine: 4.3 million (more than half of the country’s estimated 7.5 million child population)
Source: UNICEF

 

24th March, 2022
Impact of a climate or water-related disaster that has occurred on average each day over the past 50 years: 115 lives and losses of $US202 million
Source: WMO disaster statistics

 

23rd March, 2022
Number of hospitals destroyed in Ukraine since the start of the conflict there: 10
Source: Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Lyashko (as quoted on Reuters).

 

22nd March, 2022
Proportion of the world’s population that depend on underground water sources: Almost 50 per cent
Source: UN World Water Development Report

 

21st March, 2022
Number of people displaced by the war in Ukraine: 10 million (including more than three million refugees who have left the country)
Source: UNHCR

 

18th March, 2022
Social media users, worldwide, in 2021: 4.2 billion (up from 2.3 billion in 2016)
Source: UNESCO

 

17th March, 2022
Number of people who now need humanitarian assistance in Yemen: 23.4 million
Source: UN

 

16th March, 2022
Number of buildings destroyed by Russian shelling in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv: More than 600
Source: Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov via Reuters

 

15th March, 2022
Births registered in Italy in 2021 (the lowest number recorded since the unification of Italy in 1861): 399,431
Source: ISTAT via Reuters

 

14th March, 2022
Number of Ukrainian healthcare facilities which have been attacked since the Russian invasion of the country, according to the World Health Organization: 31
Source: WHO

 

11th March, 2022
Economic value of infrastructure, buildings and other physical assets damaged by the war in Ukraine (according to the Ukrainian Government’s top economic adviser Oleg Ustenko): At least $US100 billion
Source: Reuters

 

10th March, 2022
Proportion of judges around the world who are women: 40 per cent in 2017
Source: International Day of Women Judges

 

9th March, 2022
Proportion of women around the world who do not have adequate maternity protection when taking leave from work: Three in 10 (almost 650 million)
Source: ILO

 

8th March, 2022
Economic value of infrastructure damaged by the war in Ukraine, according to the country’s infrastructure minister (as of 7th March): About $US10 billion
Source: Via Reuters

 

7th March, 2022
Number of people who died in 2017, worldwide, as a result of being overweight or obese: More than four million
Source: WHO

 

4th March, 2022
Number of people around the world aged between 12 and 35 who are at risk of hearing loss: More than one billion
Source: WHO

 

3rd March, 2022
Number of nations which endorsed a resolution at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi on Wednesday to end plastic pollution, and forge an international legally binding agreement, by the end of 2024: 175
Source: UNEP

 

2nd March, 2022
Number of people who have left Ukraine since the Russian attack began on 24th February (as of 1st March): More than 600,000
Source: UNHCR

 

1st March, 2022
Emissions cut required to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius: 45 per cent by 2030
Source: IPCC report

 

28th February, 2022
Proportion of people living in African Union nations who are yet to receive a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine: About 83 per cent
Source: WHO

 

25th February, 2022
Proportion of all international migrants who is a child: One in eight
Source: UNICEF

 

24th February, 2022
Number of years of lost life due to firearms deaths in the US in 2017: 1.44 million (higher than the 1.37 million years lost to motor vehicle crashes)
Source: Study in Trauma Surgery and Acute Care Open

 

23rd February, 2022
Percentage rise in the price of cooking oil in Kenya, January 2021, compared to January, 2022: 33 per cent
Source: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (via BBC)

 

22nd February, 2022
Number of health workers who died from COVID-19 in the first 18 months of the pandemic which are linked to “systemic lack of safeguards”, according to the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization: Approximately 115,500
Source: ILO/WHO

 

21st February, 2022
Number of gold medals won by Norway at the Beijing Winter Olympics (the highest of any nation): 16 (it’s the third straight Winter Games where they’ve tied or led in gold medals)
Source: BBC

 

18th February, 2022
Number of people who have been forced from their homes since fighting broke out in the far east of Ukraine in 2014: About 1.5 million
Source: UNHCR

 

17th February, 2022
Number of women who responded to an ad to recruit 30 female train drivers in Saudi Arabia: Some 28,000
Source: Reuters

 

16th February, 2022
Number of years since America’s West has faced a “mega-drought” such as the one it is now experiencing: At least 1,200 years
Source: A study Nature Climate Change (via TIME)

 

15th February, 2022
Number people killed by lightning in India, annually: 2,500
Source: Via BBC

 

14th February, 2022
Number of internally displaced people in Myanmar: 800,000 (double that of February, 2021)
Source: UNHCR

 

11th February, 2022
Possible size of the actual number of COVID-19 infections in Africa: Up to seven times higher than official numbers suggest with deaths two or three times higher
Source: WHO (via Reuters)

 

10th February, 2022
Proportion of people who are feeling high levels of insecurity, worldwide (before the COVID-19 pandemic): Six out of seven
Source: UNDP report

 

9th February, 2022
Rise in social protection spending, worldwide, between December, 2020, and May, 2021: Almost 270 per cent to $US2.9 trillion
Source: DESA

 

8th February, 2022
Proportion of the world’s cancer deaths which are expected to occur in low and middle-income countries by 2040: More than 70 per cent
Source: IAEA/WHO

 

7th February, 2022
Number of athletes attending the Beijing Winter Olympics: 2,871 individuals
Source: Business Insider 

 

4th February, 2022
Number of people “severely affected” by Typhoon Rai in the Philippines which impact the nation in December, 2021: 9.9 million
Source: UN

 

3rd February, 2022
Proportion of the Earth’s surface covered by wetlands: six per cent (with 40 per cent of all plant and animal species live or breed in them)
Source: World Wetlands Day

 

2nd February, 2022
Length of a so-called single ‘megaflash’ of lightning, recognised as the longest horizontal distance, on 29th April, 2020, in the southern US: 768 kilometres (plus or minus 8 kilometres)
Source: WMO’s Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes

 

1st February, 2022
Number of opponents of Myanmar’s military junta killed since a coup in February, 2021: 1503
Source: Assistance Association for Political Prisoners via Reuters; the Myanmar junta have said the numbers are exaggerated. 

 

31st January, 2022
Number of laws in countries around the world which discriminate against people with leprosy: More than 100
Source: Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members, Alice Cruz. 

 

28th January, 2022
Amount of Latin America’s e-waste which reported as collected through formal channels and treated in an environmentally sound manner: Three per cent
Source: Regional E-Waste Monitor for Latin-America

 

27th January, 2022
Number of new COVID-19 cases reported in the Americas last week (a record high): More than eight million with 18,000 deaths
Source: PAHO

 

26th January, 2022
Number of people, worldwide, currently impacted by urban conflicts: More than 50 million
Source: UN

 

25th January, 2022
Number of people affected by the volcanic eruption and tsunami in Tonga: 84,000 people (more than 80 per cent of the country’s population).
Source: UN

 

24th January, 2022
Number of COVID-19 vaccine doses produced worldwide each month: 1.5 billion
Source: UN

 

21st January, 2022
Number of countries in which the Omicron COVID-19 variant has been reported: 169
Source: WHO

 

20th January, 2022
Amount of global energy consumed globally by data extraction: Almost 10 per cent
Source: UNESCO

 

19th January, 2022
Value of an agreement under which Microsoft will acquire games company Activision Blizzard: $US69 billion (the highest price ever paid by a US tech company in an acquisition)
Source: CNBC

 

18th January, 2022
Projected global unemployment in 2022: 207 million (compared to 186 million in 2019)
Source: ILO

 

17th January, 2022
Height of plumes when a massive underwater volcano erupted off Tonga’s coast late on Friday: More than 19 kilometres above sea level
Source: Tonga Geological Services.

 

13th January, 2022
Number of years the war in Yemen has been raging: Seven (with a death toll estimated which was projected to reach 337,000 by the end of 2021)
Source: Al Jazeera

 

12th January, 2022
Number of daily COVID-19 infections recorded on 10th January, 2022 (the highest daily total of any nation): 1.35 million 
Source: Via Reuters

 

11th January, 2022
Annual economic cost of piracy and armed robbery at sea to states around the Gulf of Guinea: $US1.94 billion
Source: Stable Seas/UNODC report

 

10th January, 2022
Number of years the Greenland ice sheet has shrunk during the melting season: 25 in a row (as of 2021)
Source: WMO’s State of the Climate report

 

7th January, 2022
Number of people charged by US federal prosecutors in connection with the 6th January storming of the US Capitol: More than 725
Source: TIME

 

6th January, 2022
COVID-19 vaccination target for countries which is being urged by the World Health Organization to ward off the impact of the Omicron variant: 70 per cent vaccine coverage
Source: WHO

 

5th January, 2022
Number of COVID-19 cases reported in US on 3rd January, 2022: 1.08 million (a global daily record)
Source: Via The Guardian

 

4th January, 2022
Proportion of the world’s verified child casualties since 2005 which have occurred in Afghanistan: 27 per cent
Source: UNICEF

 

31st December, 2021
Number of people forced from their homes, globally, in 2021 (as of November 2021): More than 84 million
Source: UNHCR

 

30th December, 2021
Proportion of nations which will miss the target of vaccinating 40 per cent of their population against the coronavirus by the close of 2021: 92 out of 194 UN member states
Source: WHO

 

29th December, 2021
Proportion of people in low income countries who have received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine compared with high income countries: More than seven per cent compared to more than 75 per cent
Source: World Bank

 

24th December, 2021
Proportion of low income people around the world who work in agriculture: 63 per cent
Source: IFAD

 

23rd December, 2021
Record high temperature in the Arctic (recognised by the World Meteorological Organization this month): 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk on 20th June, 2020
Source: WMO

 

22nd December, 2021
Number of people dying from COVID-19 each week, worldwide: Around 50,000
Source: WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

 

21st December, 2021
Number of deaths that could be prevented if low and lower-middle-income countries were to make an additional investment of less than a dollar per person per year in the prevention and treatment of noncommunicable diseases: Almost seven million by 2030
Source: WHO

 

20th December, 2021
Number of international migrants in 2020: About 281 million people or 3.6 per cent of the global population
Source: UN DESA

 

17th December, 2021
Number of foreign workers across the globe: Almost 170 million (up from 53 million in 2010)
Source: ILO

 

16th December, 2021
Percentage of world’s coral reefs which have disappeared since 2009: Almost 14 per cent
Source: UNEP

 

15th December, 2021
Number of children born in Italy in 2020 (the lowest figure since the unification of Italy 1861): 404,892 (down 15,192 on the previous year)
Source: Via Reuters

 

14th December, 2021
Number of children newly infected with HIV in 2020: 310,000 (or one every two minutes)
Source: UNICEF

 

13th December, 2021
Number of people pushed into extreme poverty because they have to pay for health services out of their own pockets: More than 500 million
Source: WHO/World Bank report

 

10th December, 2021
Estimated amount wagered in illcit betting markets around the world annually: Up to $US1.7 trillion
Source: UNODC

 

9th December, 2021
Number of UN peacekeepers killed in Mali as seven more peacekeepers from Togo were killed and three others seriously injured when their vehicle was hit by an IED: More than 200
Source: MINUSMA

 

8th December, 2021
Number of major conflicts going on around the world: 27
Source: Global Conflict Tracker

 

7th December, 2021
Amount of carbon emissions emitted globally due to wildfires this year: 1.76 billion tonnes (a record and equal to more than double Germany’s annual CO2 emissions)
Source: European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service

 

6th December, 2021
Proportion of the world’s people who have never used the internet: 37 per cent
Source: ITU

 

3rd December, 2021
Number of people who are expected to need emergency aid and protection in 2022: 274 million (up 17 per cent on this year)
Source: UN Global Humanitarian overview 2021

 

2nd December, 2021
Predicted value of global trade in 2021: About $US28 trillion (up 23 per cent on 2020)
Source: UNCTAD

 

30th November, 2021
Economic cost of the coronavirus to international tourism, 2021, in lost revenue: $US2 trillion
Source: UNWTO

 

29th November, 2021
Value of remittances to low and middle income countries in 2021: $US589 billion (up 7.3 per cent)
Source: World Bank

 

26th November, 2021
Number of women killed by a member of their family every day around the world: 137
Source: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

 

25th November, 2021
Amount of potential economic growth lost in Yemen due to seven years of conflict: $US1.26 billion
Source: UNDP

 

24th November, 2021
Number of annual road deaths, worldwide: 1.35 million
Source: Global status report on road safety 2018

 

23rd November, 2021
Number of people in Madagascar’s south now facing “severe hunger” as a result of drought: More than 1.3 million
Source: WFP

 

22nd November, 2021
Likelihood that children with disabilities have never attended school, worldwide: 49 per cent more likely than a child without disabilities
Source: UNICEF

 

19th November, 2021
Number of people globally who don’t have access to a properly working toilet: 3.6 billion
Source: 2021 Campaign for World Toilet Day

 

18th November, 2021
Number of Americans who died from drug overdoses in the 12 months to the end of April, 2021: More than 100,000 (up 28.5 per cent on the previous year)
Source: BBC citing US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

 

17th November, 2021
Number of people who smoke tobacco, worldwide, in 2020: 1.3 billion
Source:  WHO Global Tobacco Trends report

 

16th November, 2021
Number of people in the world with diabetes: About 422 million
Source: World Diabetes Day

 

15th November, 2021
Number of lives lost, worldwide, to pneumonia in 2019: 2.5 million people (including 672,000 children)
Source: World Pneumonia Day

 

12th November, 2021
Expected rise in the share of 10-year-olds who cannot read a basic text in low- and middle-income countries due to interruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic: From 53 per cent to 70 per cent
Source: World Bank report

 

11th November, 2021
Number of people injured or killed by landmines in 54 countries and areas in 2020: More than 7,000 (up 20 per cent on the previous year)
Source: Landmine Monitor

 

10th November, 2021
Number of times content related to bullying and harassment is seen on Facebook during the third quarter of this year: Between 14 and 15 times per 10,000 views
Source: Via Facebook

 

9th November, 2021
Air Quality Index reading in New Delhi, India, registered in the first week of November (out of 500 with scores supposed to be below 50): 451
Source: Reuters

 

8th November, 2021
Proportion of conflicts within countries which have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources over the past 60 years: At least 40 per cent
Source: UNEP

 

5th November, 2021
Percentage of the world’s population projected to live in coastal areas exposed to flooding, storms and tsunamis: 50 per cent
Source: World Tsunami Awareness Day

 

4th November, 2021
Number of children killed or maimed since the escalation of the conflict in Yemen in March, 2015: More than 10,000
Source: UNICEF

 

3rd November, 2021
Percentage of women journalists surveyed around the world who said they had been threatened, intimidated and insulted online in connection with their work: 73 per cent
Source: UNESCO – The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists

 

2nd November, 2021
Likely warmest seven years on record, globally: 2015-2021
Source: Provisional WMO State of the Global Climate 2021 report

 

1st November, 2021
Number of delegates, NGOs and press who have registered for COP26: Just under 30,000
Source: UN

 

29th October, 2021
Number of children who do not have access to remote learning according to a survey of 31 nations: At least 200 million
Source: UNICEF Remote Learning Readiness Index

 

28th October, 2021
Drop in projected working hours globally this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic: 4.3 per cent (equal to 125 million jobs)
Source: ILO (revised projections)

 

27th October, 2021
Additional reduction in annual greenhouse emissions by 2030 under current national commitments: 7.5 per cent
Source: Emissions Gap Report

 

26th October, 2021
Amount of fish and seafood produced each year globally: About 200 million tonnes
Source: Our World in Data

 

25th October, 2021
Number of people displaced in Haiti because of gang violence since June: At least 19,000
Source: UNICEF

 

22nd October, 2021
Amount of salt-affected soils, globally: 833 million hectares (8.7 per cent)
Source:  FAO Global Map of Salt-Affected Soils

 

21st October, 2021
Percentage of total net wealth owned by the wealthiest 10 per cent of people living in OECD countries compared to the poorest 60 per cent: 52 per cent/About 12 per cent
Source: Extreme poverty and human rights report to the UN

 

20th October, 2021
Proportion of the world’s population that has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine (as of 19th October, 2021): 47.8 per cent
Source: Our World in Data

 

19th October, 2021
Rise in global internet bandwidth in 2020 (compared to 2019): Up 35 per cent compared to a 26 per cent rise in 2019
Source: UNCTAD’s Digital Economy Report 2021

 

18th October, 2021
Savings which could be made worldwide by 2050 due to the move to sustainable transport: $US70 trillion
Source: World Bank

 

15th October, 2021
Death toll, globally, from tuberculosis (TB) in 2020: 1.5 million people (up on the 2019 total)
Source: WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2021

 

14th October, 2021
Percentage of landholders, worldwide, who are women: Less than 20 per cent
Source: UN

 

13th October, 2021
Number of countries and territories with coral reefs: More than 100
Source: UN

 

12th October, 2021
Number of people under 25, worldwide, who do not have internet access at home: 2.2 billion (with girls most likely not to have access)
Source: International Day of the Girl Child

 

11th October, 2021
Proportion of the World Health Organization’s 194 member states who reported that their mental health policy or plan was in line with international and regional human rights instruments in 2020: 51 per cent (compared to the 80 per cent target)
Source: WHO

 

8th October, 2021
Number of people employed in postal services, worldwide: 5.3 million
Source: World Post Day

 

7th October, 2021
Number of people who benefit from cotton production around the world: More than 100 million families over 75 nations
Source: WTO

 

6th October, 2021
Proportion of young people aged 15 to 24 who say they often feel depressed or have little interest in doing things: A median across 21 countries of one in five
Source: UNICEF: The State of the World’s Children 2021

 

5th October, 2021
Number of people experiencing emergency levels of food insecurity, worldwide: 41 million
Source: UN

 

4th October, 2021
Number of missing migrants, worldwide: Almost 45,000
Source: Missing Migrants Project

 

1st October, 2021
Percentage of global trade that’s carried by shipping: More than 70 per cent
Source: IMO

 

30th September, 2021
Number of homicides in the US last year: 21,570 (an increase of almost 30 per cent over the previous year)
Source: FBI via USA Today

 

29th September, 2021
Increase in those imapcted by extreme poverty between March and December, 2020 (while the wealth of billionaires increased by $US3.9 trillion over the same period): By between 119 to 224 million people
Source: UN

 

28th September, 2021
Number of children maimed or killed in the conflict in Yemen in 2019 and 2020: At least 2,600
Source: Report of the UN Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict in Yemen

 

27th September, 2021
Number of the people who die globally from work-related causes each year: 1.9 million
Source: WHO/ILO

 

24th September, 2021
Number of the world’s population which is obese or overweight compared with those who are underweight: About two billion compared with about 462 million
Source: UN

 

23rd September, 2021
Percentage of Afghan households who have enough to eat every day: Five per cent
Source: WFP

 

22nd September, 2021
Cost of COVID-19 vaccine doses: Ranging from $US2 to $US37
Source: UNICEF

 

21st September, 2021
Proportion of the population in the Democratic Republic of Congo who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine (as of 15th September): 0.09 per cent
Source: UN

 

20th September, 2021
Amount women earn for every dollar men earn for work of equal value: 77 cents
Source: UN

 

17th September, 2021
Number of people who may have be forced to move from their homes as a result of climate change by 2050 unless concrete climate and development action is taken now: More than 216 million
Source: World Bank’s Groundswell report

 

16th September, 2021
Number of people, globally, killed or injured by cluster munitions or their remains in 2020: At least 360 (including 107 deaths)
Source: Cluster Munition Monitor 2021

 

15th September, 2021
Number of people, globally, who could not afford a healthy diet in 2019: Around three billion people
Source: UN

 

14th September, 2021
Estimated cost of global air pollution in 2019: $US8.1 trillion
Source: World Bank

 

13th September, 2021
Number of environmental activists killed in 2020, worldwide: 227
Source: Global Witness

 

10th September, 2021
Number of students, teachers, and academics who were injured, killed, or harmed in attacks on education during armed conflict or insecurity over the past five years, globally: More than 22,000
Source: UN

 

9th September, 2021
Percentage of people in high and upper-middle income nations who have had a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine compared with those outside those countries: 80 per cent versus 20 per cent
Source: UN

 

8th September, 2021
Enrolment rate for secondary school among eligible refugee children, worldwide: 34 per cent
Source: UNHCR

 

7th September, 2021
Number of coronavirus cases recorded in the US since the pandemic began: More than 40 million (with almost 650,000 deaths)
Source: Johns Hopkins

 

6th September, 2021
Number of people who died every day, on average, over the past 50 years due to a disaster related to a weather, climate or water hazard: 115
Source: WMO report

 

3rd September, 2021
Number of countries which lack a legal definition for air pollution: 43
Source: Global Assessment of Air Pollution Legislation

 

2nd September, 2021
Number of people globally who live without any social welfare protection: 4.1 billion
Source: ILO report

 

1st September, 2021
Number of people aged 30 to 79 years around the world suffering from hypertension: 1.28 billion (double the 650 million of 30 years ago)
Source: WHO

 

31st August, 2021
Number of people flown out from Afghanistan since 14th August: More than 122,000
Source: Reuters

 

30th August, 2021
Number of children, globally, who lived outside the country of their birth in 2020: 35.5 million
Source: UNICEF

 

27th August, 2021
Number of children whose first day of school has been “indefinitely delayed” due to the coronavirus pandemic: 140 million
Source: UNICEF

 

26th August, 2021
Number of countries in Europe that reported record high temperatures in 2020: 17
Source: American Meterological Society

 

25th August, 2021
Number of people in Australia aged 18 and over who have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime: 2.9 million (including 23 per cent of women and eight per cent of men)
Source: ABS

 

24th August, 2021
Number of children known to have been killed or maimed in conflicts around the world in the year to July, 2021: 8,400 (with Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Somalia the deadliest countries for children)
Source: Virginia Gamba, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

 

23rd August, 2021
Time recorded for Jamaican Olympic champion Elaine Thompson-Herah 100 metre sprint at the Eugene Diamond League competition on Saturday: 10.54 seconds (second fastest women’s 100 metre sprint of all time)
Source: Via CNN

 

20th August, 2021
Number of aid workers attacked around the world in 2020: 475 (108 killed, 242 wounded and 125 kidnapped)
Source: UN

 

19th August, 2021
Number of United Nations peace-keeping missions currently around the world: 12
Source: UN

 

18th August, 2021
Number of people killed in climate-related and geophysical events in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2020: 312,000 (with some 277 million people directly affected)
Source: World Meteorological Organization report

 

17th August, 2021
Amount of time it took Swiss researchers to calculate pi to a new record of 62.8 trillion figures: 108 days and nine hours
Source: Via The Guardian

 

16th August, 2021
Childhood cancer survival rate in Africa compared with that in high income countries: 20 per cent/80 per cent
Source: WHO

 

13th August, 2021
Percentage of the global population under the age of 25: 40 per cent
Source: UN

 

12th August, 2021
Record temperature for Europe reportedly recorded in Sicily, Italy, this week: 48.8 degrees Celsius (yet to be verified)
Source: Via BBC

 

11th August, 2021
Number of medals won by San Marino at the recent Tokyo Olympics – the country which won the most medals when analysed on a per capita basis: Three (one silver, two bronze)
Source: BBC analysis

 

10th August, 2021
Rise in piracy and armed robbery of ships during the first half of 2020 (despite the decrease in shipping due to the COVID-19 pandemic): Almost 20 per cent
Source: UN

 

9th August, 2021
Proportion of the world’s population who made purchases online in 2019: 27 per cent
Source: UNCTAD

 

6th August, 2021
Number of doses of COVID-19 vaccines China says it will provide to other nations in 2021: Two billion
Source: CCTV via Reuters

 

5th August, 2021
Proportion of people killed in road accidents in Africa: 26 per 100,000 population (the highest of any region in the world)
Source: WHO

 

4th August, 2021
Number of ancient artifacts now being returned by the US to Iraq which were looted and smuggled out of Iraq after the US invasion in 2003: More than 17,000
Source: Iraqi Government (via Reuters)

 

3rd August, 2021
Proportion of identified trafficking victims, globally, who are migrants, in most of the world’s regions: More than half
Source: UNODC

 

2nd August, 2021
Number of FAO/WFP-designated ‘hunger hotspots’ around the world which over the next four months are expected to face an acute level of food insecurity due to the combined economic repercussions of COVID-19, the climate crisis and fighting: 23
Source: FAO/WFP

 

30th July, 2021
Amount of surface mass in Greenland lost on 27th July alone: More than 8.5 billion tons
Source: Denmark Meteorological Institute (via CNN)

 

29th July, 2021
Increase in riots, general strikes and anti-government demonstrations around the world over the past decade: 244 per cent
Source: 2021 Global Peace Index

 

28th July, 2021
Amount governments around the world have spent providing fiscal support amid the pandemic since March, 2020: $US16 trillion
Source: IMF

 

27th July, 2021
Number of children who missed out on basic vaccines in 2020: 23 million
Source: WHO/UNICEF

 

26th July, 2021
Number of athletes attending 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo: 11,656
Source: Washington Post

 

23rd July, 2021
Number of people, worldwide, who died of drowning in 2019: an estimated 236,000 people
Source: World Drowning Prevention Day

 

22nd July, 2021
Number of athletes in the Tokyo 2020 Refugee Olympic Team: 29
Source: UNHCR

 

21st July, 2021
Proportion of the adult population in US, UK, Germany, Russia, India that has played chess at some stage: About 70 per cent
Source: World Chess Day

 

20th July, 2021
Decline in women’s employment globally between 2019-2020 compared to men’s: Down 4.2 per cent (representing 54 million jobs) compared to three per cent (representing 60 million jobs)
Source: ILO

 

19th July, 2021
Proportion of the world’s almost 12 million prisoners who are being held without having stood trial or been found guilty by any court: One in three
Source: UN Office on Drugs and Crime

 

16th July, 2021
Rise in homicides in Brazil in 2020: Up four per cent (to 50,033)
Source: Brazilian Yearbook of Public Security (via Reuters)

 

15th July, 2021
Death toll from coronavirus in Argentina (as of 14th July, 2021): 100,000 (with some 4.7 million confirmed cases)
Source: Via Reuters

 

14th July, 2021
Number of people newly displaced from their homes in Afghanistan this year: 270,000 (bringing the total of internally displaced people in the country to more than 3.5 million)
Source: UNHCR

 

13th July, 2021
Number of people globally who did not have access to sufficiently nutritious food in 2020: 2.4 billion (up 320 million in a year)
Source: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021

 

12th July, 2021
Proportion of Brazilians who support a proposed move by the country’s lower house to open impeachment proceedings against President Jair Bolsonaro: 54 per cent (42 per cent oppose the move)
Source: Datafolha (via Reuters)

 

9th July, 2021
Global deaths from COVID-19 as of 7th July: More than four million
Source: UN

 

8th July, 2021
Number of people who died of COVID-19 in the week of 28th June: Just under 54,000 (the lowest weekly mortality figure since October last year)
Source: WHO

 

7th July, 2021
Proportion of children in South Sudan in need of support: Two-thirds (4.5 million)
Source: UNICEF

 

6th July, 2021
Number of people in Nigeria facing “catastrophic food conditions”, according to the UN humanitarian office, OCHA: Some 4.4 million
Source: OCHA

 

5th July, 2021
Number of countries in which the COVID-19 Delta variant has been detected as of Friday, 2nd July: At least 98
Source: WHO

 

2nd July, 2021
Speed at which COVID-19 cases are doubling in Africa at present: Every three weeks
Source: WHO

 

1st July, 2021
Number of arrests made in Hong Kong under the national security law in its first year: 117 (with more than 60 people charged)
Source: Via Reuters

 

30th June, 2021
Temperature in Lytton, British Columbia, on Monday: 47.9 degrees Celsius (a record)
Source: WMO

 

29th June, 2021
Number of Islamic State fighters still held in detention in camps run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces: Some 10,000
Source: US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who described the situation as “untenable”.

 

28th June, 2021
Proportion of businesses, globally, that consist of formal and informal micro, small and medium-sized enterprises: 90 per cent
Source: MSME Day 2021

 

25th June, 2021
Rise in the number of people using drugs in 2020 compared with 2010: Up 22 per cent (to about 275 million people)
Source: UNODC

 

24th June, 2021
Numebr of new millionaires created worldwide in 2020: 5.2 million
Source: Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report (via The Guardian)

 

23rd June, 2021
Position of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in a 2021 ranking of world’s most expensive cities for foreign workers to live in: 1
Source: Mercer’s 2021 Cost of Living city ranking

 

22nd June, 2021
Drop in direct foreign assistance to the world’s 83 weakest economies in 2020: A third (from $US1.5 trillion in 2019 to $US1 trillion)
Source: UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2021

 

21st June, 2021
E-waste volume, globally, in 2019: 53.6 million metric tonnes (up 21 per cent on five years previously)
Source:  Global E-waste Statistics Partnership

 

18th June, 2021
Rise in COVID-19 cases in Afghanistan in the past month: 2,400 per cent
Source: IFRC (via Reuters)

 

17th June, 2021
Number of people worldwide whose well-being is affected by land degradation from climate change and the expansion of agriculture, cities and infrastructure: 3.2 billion
Source: World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. 

 

16th June, 2021
Number of domestic workers, globally: 75.6 million (or one in 25 employed people)
Source: ILO

 

15th June, 2021
Proportion of older people, globally, subjected to abuse in 2017: One in six
Source: World Elder Abuse Awareness Day

 

14th June, 2021
Proportion of people affected by albinism in Tanzania: one in 1,400 (compared with one in 17,000 to 20,000 people in North America and Europe)
Source: International Albinism Awareness Day

 

11th June, 2021
Rise in the number of children in situations of child labour, worldwide, since 2016: 8.4 million to 160 million (the first rise in 20 years)
Source: ILO/UNICEF report

 

10th June, 2021
Number of Afghans killed by landmines since 1989: More than 40,000
Source: UNMAS

 

9th June, 2021
Economic value of damage caused by over-fishing around the world: Almost $US90 billion in net benefits
Source: UN World Oceans Day

 

8th June, 2021
Estimated number of cases of food-borne illnesses annually around the globe: 600 million
Source: UN World Food Safety Day

 

7th June, 2021
Number of COVID-19 vaccine doese administered as of 2nd June, worldwide: 1,581,509,628
Source: WHO

 

4th June, 2021
Size of land mass that needs to be restored if planet’s biodiversity and the communities who rely on it are to be protected, according to the UN: At least a billion hectares of degraded land (roughly the size of China)
Source: UN agencies

 

3rd June, 2021
Number of bicycles in the world: Estimated to be about a billion
Source: Bicycle Guider

 

2nd June, 2021
Proportion of Australians who are concerned they might lose their job in the next 12 months: 27 per cent
Source: ABC’s Australia Talks National Survey 2021

 

1st June, 2021
Proportion of smokers, globally, who want to quit: 60 per cent
Source: WHO

 

31st May, 2021
Proportion of coronavirus vaccines which have gone to the African continent to date: One per cent
Source: UN Secretary-General António Guterres

 

28th May, 2021
Proportion of older people on the move in Latin America who have children and adolescents under their care: About 60 per cent
Source: UNHCR

 

27th May, 2021
Number of children in foster care in the US waiting for a permanent home: About 120,000
Source: Via CNN

 

26th May, 2021
Proportion of people living in mineral rich countries who live in extreme poverty: Almost 70 per cent
Source: UN

 

25th May, 2021
Number of mass shootings, defined as events in which four or more people are killed or wounded by gunfire, in the US over the weekend of 22nd and 23rd May, 2021: At least 12 (with at least 11 people killed and 69 injured)
Source: Analysis of Gun Violence Archive data via CNN

 

24th May, 2021
Value of remittance flows to low and middle-income countries in 2020: $US540 billion (just 1.6 per cent below the 2019 total)
Source: World Bank

 

21st May, 2021
Proportion of people aged 18 to 24 who believe there should now be an elected head of state in the UK: 41 per cent (versus 31 per cent who want a king or queen)
Source: YouGov poll (via Reuters)

 

20th May, 2021
Size of a ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline to the cyber-criminal gang responsible for taking the US fuel pipeline offline: $US4.4 million
Source: Wall Street Journal

 

19th May, 2021
Estimated size of the COVID-19 vaccine shortfall at the COVAX Facility in mid-May:  About 170 million doses
Source: UNICEF

 

18th May, 2021
Number of birds in the world: Estimated at 50 billion (almost 10,000 species)
Source: University of New South Wales study (via The Guardian)

 

17th May, 2021
Number of people, globally, who died from stroke and heart disease associated with long working hours in 2016: 745,000 (up 30 per cent from 2000)
Source: WHO

 

14th May, 2021
Rise in house prices across the 37 OECD nations, fourth quarter, 2019, to fourth quarter, 2020: 6.7 per cent (fastest year-on-year growth in the past 20 years)
Source: Via CNN

 

13th May, 2021
Number of women, globally, pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, globally: 58 million (of 114 million in total)
Source: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

 

12th May, 2021
Size of forests, globally, that have regenerated since 2000 (although the gains did not make up for losses elsewhere): 59 million hectares
Source: World Wide Fund for Nature

 

11th May, 2021
Number of COVID-19 vaccine doses now given in Europe: 200 million
Source: European Commission

 

10th May, 2021
Number of COVID-19 deaths estimated to have occurred in India by August: One million
Source: India’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (via Reuters)

 

7th May, 2021
Number of UN personnel who lost their lives in the line of duty in 2020: 336 (the highest ever in a single year)
Source: UN

 

6th May, 2021
Number of people who faced food insecurity, globally, in 2020: At least 155 million
Source: Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC)

 

5th May, 2021
Rise in far right crime in Germany in 2020: Up six per cent to 23,064 (accounting for more than half of all politically motivated crimes, the highest level since police started collecting such data in 2001).
Source: German Government (via Reuters)

 

4th May, 2021
Value of e-commerce sales, globally, in 2019: 26.7 trillion
Source: UNCTAD

 

3rd May, 2021
Proportion of Australians who say the country should help Pacific Island countries to pay for COVID-19 vaccines: 83 per cent
Source: Lowy Institiute – COVID poll

 

30th April, 2021
Average new number of people displaced by weather related events, globally, in the 10 years to 2019: 21.5 million
Source: UNHCR

 

29th April, 2021
Number of children displaced internally in the Central African Republic (the highest level since 2014) due to conflict and insecurity: 370,000 (the highest level since 2014)
Source: UNICEF

 

28th April, 2021
Number of health workers who have died of COVID-19, globally: About 7,000
Source: ILO

 

27th April, 2021
Number of mass vaccination campaigns around the world which have been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic: 60 in 50 countries (which would have impacted some 228 million people)
Source: WHO

 

26th April, 2021
Size of the crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch an Australian Rules Football game on Anzac Day, 25th April: More than 78,000 people (the largest crowd, globally, to gather for a sporting event since the coronavirus pandemic was declared)
Source: Yahoo Sports

 

23rd April, 2021
Number of UNESCO-designated global ‘geoparks’: 169 in 44 countries (including eight newly designated)
Source: UNESCO

 

22nd April, 2021
Increase in the number of ‘dead zones’ in the world’s oceans, 2008 to 2019: From 400 to about 700
Source: UN

 

21st April, 2021
Number of doses of the Sinovac Biotech COVID-19 vaccine supplied (more than 60 per cent outside China): 260 million
Source: Reuters

 

20th April, 2021
Diameter and windspeeds of super typhoon Surigae (also known as Bising) which lashed the eastern Philippines on Monday: 500 kilometres and 195kph
Source: Reuters

 

19th April, 2021
Number of people killed in mass shootings in the US in 2021 (defined as shootings in which a minumum of four victims are shot and either injured or killed not including the perpetrator): More than 180
Source: Gun Violence Archive

 

16th April, 2021
Proportion of women in developing nations who are able to make decisions over their own bodies such as whether they want to have sex, seek healthcare and use contraception: About half
Source: UNFPA

 

15th April, 2021
Number of civilians killed or wounded in fighting between Afghan Government and Taliban forces in the first three months of 2021: Almost 1,800
Source: UNAMA

 

14th April, 2021
Average drop in attendance at museums worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic: 70 per cent (based on data from 104,000 museums)
Source: UNESCO – Museums around the world in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic

 

13th April, 2021
Proportion of drug deaths, globally, caused by opioids during the coronavirus pandemic: 69 per cent of deaths related to drug use disorders
Source: Ghada Waly, director-general of UNODC

 

12th April, 2021
Proportion of the more than 700 million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered so far which have been given to people in low income nations: 0.2 per cent
Source: WHO

 

9th April, 2021
Estimated number of COVID-19 deaths of people aged 60 and over which have been prevented by the rollout of vaccines in England by the end of March: More than 10,000
Source: An analysis by Public Health England

 

8th April, 2021
Amount of land cleared in the Amazon in 2020: 2.3 million hectares
Source: Amazon Conservation

 

7th April, 2021
Number of refugee athletes preparing to take part in the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics: More than 60
Source: UNHCR

 

6th April, 2021
Number of countries which have so far received COVID-19 vaccines via COVAX (as of 5th April): 86 (more than 36 million doses)
Source: UN

 

1st April, 2021
Percentage of the 15,000 respondents to UNESCO’s The World in 2030 global survey who indicated climate change and loss of biodiversity was one of the world’s biggest challenges: 67 per cent
Source: UNESCO, The World in 2030

 

31st March, 2021
Number of tourism jobs lost in Thailand as a result of the coronavirus pandemic: About 1.45 million
Source: Reuters

 

30th March, 2021
Increase in the proportion of Syrians who require humanitarian aid this year compared to last year: Up 20 per cent (to 13.4 million)
Source: Mark Lowcock, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.

 

29th March, 2021
Proportional increase in the number of COVID-19 related deaths in Mexico after officials revised the total: Up 60 per cent (to more than 321,000)
Source: Via BBC

 

26th March, 2021
Amount of plastic pollution dumped into ecosystems, globally, each year (equivalent to the combined weight of humanity): 300 million tonnes
Source: UNEP

 

25th March, 2021
COVID-19 death toll in Brazil on 23rd March, 2021 (a new daily record): 3,251
Source: AP

 

24th March, 2021
Estimated number of people suffering from tuberculosis, globally, who didn’t receive necessary medical care in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic: 1.4 million
Source: WHO

 

23rd March, 2021
Number of people, globally, who are projected to be living with disabling hearing loss by 2050: More than 700 million
Source: WHO

 

22nd March, 2021
Amount of forest lost globally each year: About 10 million hectares
Source: UN

 

19th March, 2021
Global income lost in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic: Estimated $US5.8 trillion
Source: UNCTAD

 

18th March, 2021
Estimated number of maternal and child deaths in South Asia which may have been caused by disruptions to healthcare services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic: 239,000
Source: UNICEF report

 

17th March, 2021
Number of South Sudanese experiencing “severe insecurity” due again to sporadic violence, extreme weather and the economic impact of COVID-19: About 7.2 million (60 per cent of the population)
Source: WFP

 

16th March, 2021
Number of humanitarian aid workers killed in Syria between March, 2011, and 2020: 264
Source: UNOCHA

 

15th March, 2021
Proportion of people in the US who agree that unvaccinated people should not work out at public gyms, enter movie theatres or attend public concerts: 55 per cent (rising to 62 per cent of US people who agree unvaccinated people should not be allowed to travel on airplanes)
Source: Reuters/Ipsos

 

12th March, 2021
Number of people worldwide suffering acute hunger due to conflict and instability at the end of 2020: More than 88 million (a 20 per cent increase on 2019)
Source: UN

 

11th March, 2021
Number of women who hold top governmental positions around the world: 22, including nine heads of state and 13 heads of government.
Source: IPU-UN Women Map of Women in Politics

 

10th March, 2021
Number of countries where the COVID-19 death toll has passed 100,000: Six (including the latest, Italy)
Source: Johns Hopkins University

 

9th March, 2021
Proportion of women working in the informal economy (meaning they generally earn less, save less and have a greater risk of falling into poverty): Almost 60 per cent
Source: International Women’s Day

 

8th March, 2021
Number of human rights defenders killed between 2015 and 2019 in 64 countries: At least 1,323 people
Source: Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders

 

5th March, 2021
Amount of food sold in 2019 which was then thrown away, worldwide: More than 930 million tonnes
Source: UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2021

 

4th March, 2021
Proportion of the world’s terrestrial wildlife species which live in forests: About 80 per cent
Source: World Wildlife Day

 

3rd March, 2021
Proportion of Chinese Australians who say they have been physically threatened or attacked in the past year: 18 per cent
Source: Lowy Institute survey

 

2nd March, 2021
Proportion of people accessing residential aged care and home care services in Australia found to have experienced sub-standard care: At least one in three
Source: Commissioner Lynelle Briggs, Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety

 

1st March, 2021
Growth in the size of digital labour platforms in the past decade, worldwide: Five-fold increase
Source: ILO

 

26th February, 2021
Amount of the global economy which is laundered annually: Up to 2.7 per cent of global GDP
Source: FACTI (High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda)

 

25th February, 2021
Estimated number of children deprived of school meals as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic: 370 million children in 199 countries
Source: WFP

 

24th February, 2021
Increase in hunger in found Central American nations – El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua – between 2018 and now: Almost fourhold (from 2.2 million to almost eight million people)
Source: WFP

 

23rd February, 2021
Amount of toxic waste producted every year: 400 million tonnes (Enough to fill 125,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools)
Source: UNEP

 

22nd February, 2021
Number of children who are displaced from their homes due to conflict in the Central African Republic: About three million
Source: UNICEF

 

19th February, 2021
Drop in global COVID-19 infections during the week to 14th February (compared with the previous week): Down 16 per cent
Source: WHO

 

18th February, 2021
Number of Syrians who now lack access to sufficient food: 12.4 million (almost 60 per cent of the population)
Source: WFP

 

17th February, 2021
Number of countries airlines will be flying coronavirus vaccines to under UNICEF Humanitarian Airfreight Initiative which is being run on support of the COVAX Facility’s vaccine rollout: More than 100
Source: UNICEF

 

16th February, 2021
Number of journalists, media professionals and human rights defenders killed in Afghanistan between 1st January, 2018, and 31st January, 2021: 65
Source: UNAMA

 

15th February, 2021
Proportion of people in developing countries that have access to radio: 75 per cent
Source: UNESCO

 

12th February, 2021
Proportion of engineering graduates, globally, who are women: 28 per cent
Source: UNESCO

 

11th February, 2021
Number of days a trio of three stranded Cubans survived on an uninhabited island in the Bahamas: 33
Source: US Coast Guard

 

10th February, 2021
Proportion of deaths, globally, caused annually by fossil fuel air pollution: Almost one in five
Source: Researchers from Harvard University, in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London in a study published in Environmental Research (via CNN)

 

9th February, 2021
Age of champion US quarterback Tom Brady who won his seventh Super Bowl ring when he led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31 to nine victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday: 43

 

8th February, 2021
Number of countries which haven’t yet administered a single dose of a coronavirus vaccine (as of 5th February, 2021): 130 nations (where 2.5 billion people live)
Source: WHO

 

5th February, 2021
Number of US prisoners held in privately operated facilities in 2019: About 116,000 prisoners (some seven per cent of all state prisoners and 16 per cent of federal prisoners)
Source: US Bureau of Justice Statistics

 

4th February, 2021
Percentage of people detained on security or terrorism-related offences in Afghanistan who say they have been subjected to torture or other mistreatment: Almost a third (based on 656 interviews with men, women and children in 63 detention facilities across the country)
Source: OHCHR report

 

3rd February, 2021
Number of trafficking victims reported in 2018 by 148 countries: Almost 50,000 (although the actual number is believed to be far higher)
Source: UNODC

 

2nd February, 2021
Number of rhinos killed by poachers in South Africa in 2020: 394 (down 33 per cent from 594 in 2019)
Source: South African Environment Ministry (via BBC)

 

1st February, 2021
Number of refugees resettled through UNHCR in 2020: 22,770 (of the estimated 1.44 million refugees in urgent need of resettlement)
Source: UNHCR

 

29th January, 2021
Estimated number of in-school meals, worldwide, that were unable to be provided during the coronavirus pandemic: Almost 40 billion
Source: UNICEF, WFP and Office of Research: Inocenti report

 

28th January, 2021
Percentage of 1.2 million people surveyed worldwide who agreed climate change was an emergency: 64 per cent
Source: Peoples’ Climate Vote poll

 

27th January, 2021
Number of COVID-19 infections recorded worldwide to date: More than 100,000,000
Source: Johns Hopkins University

 

26th January, 2021
Size of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment in 2020: Equivalent to 255 million jobs lost
Source: ILO

 

25th January, 2021
Number of people who have fled Sudan’s Darfur region after an uptick in violence in which more than 250 people have died: More than 100,000
Source: UNHCR

 

22nd January, 2021
Number of natural disasters – including floods, hurricanes and landslides – recorded in Indonesia in just the first three weeks of 2021: 171
Source: Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management Agency (via ABC)

 

21st January, 2021
Number of people in the Asia-Pacific region who cannot afford a healthy diet: More than 1.9 billion
Source: UN Regional Overview of Food and Nutrition

 

20th January, 2021
Number of COVID-19 vaccinations given on 16th January, the first day of vaccine rollout in India: 207,229
Source: WHO

 

19th January, 2021
Number of child labourers, worldwide: 152 million (as of 2016)
Source: ILO

 

18th January, 2021
Number of desalination plants operating in 177 countries (as of 2018): Almost 16,000
Source: UNEP

 

15th January, 2021
Number of peacekeepers serving with MINUSMA in Mali who have died since the mission was etsbalished in 2013 as of December, 2020 (excluding four killed this week): 231
Source: UN

 

14th January, 2021
Global coronavirus deaths reported on Wednesday (a new record): More than 17,000
Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

 

13th January, 2021
Anticipated eventual size of a stockpile of Ebola vaccines being stored in Switzerland which will be sent out to nations if an outbreak occurs: 500,000 doses
Source: UN agencies

 

12th January, 2021
Number of countries which have committed to protecting 30 per cent of the planet to halt species extinction and address climate change: At least 50
Source: One Planet Summit

 

11th January, 2021
Percentage of the 1.5 million people who took part in a UN survey and consultation which expressed support for international cooperation in tackling global challenges: More than 97 per cent
Source: UN

 

8th January, 2021
Amount of damage caused by natural disasters around the world in 2020: $US210 billion
Source: German insurer Munich Re (via Reuters)

 

7th January, 2021
Number of people around the world aged 60 or older: More than one billion
Source: WHO

 

6th January, 2021
Proportion of the population in England believed to have COVID-19: One in 50 (one in 30 in London)
Source: UK Office of National Statistics

 

5th January, 2021
Number of births and deaths in South Korea in 2020: 275,800/307,764 (the number of deaths outweighing births for the first time ever)
Source: BBC

 

4th January, 2021
Estimated number of babies born around the world on 1st January, 2021: 371,504
Source: UNICEF

 

31st December, 2020
Number of children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, north-east Nigeria, the Central Sahel, South Sudan and Yemen expected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021: More than 10 million
Source: UNICEF

 

30th December, 2020
Number of new COVID-19 cases recorded in the UK on Tuesday (a new record high): 53,135
Source: UK Government

 

29th December, 2020
Downturn international tourists worldwide betweem January and October, 2020: Down 900 million 
Source: UNWTO

 

24th December, 2020
Number of people displaced as a result of the six week conflict in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia: Almost 950,000
Source: Reuters

 

23rd December, 2020
Amount the organisers of the delayed Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games will spend on measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 at the events in 2021: $US900 million
Source: Reuters

 

22nd December, 2020
Number of people who attended a wedding, held as a drive-through event due to the coronavirus pandemic, in Malaysia: 10,000 (it took them three hours to pass by the bride and groom)
Source: ABC

 

21st December, 2020
Number of people displaced by violence in northern Mozambique: More than 530,000
Source: UNHCR

 

18th December, 2020
Number of young people to receive one-off food aid through a partnership between Sustain and UNICEF UK in what us the first time in UNICEF’s more than 70-year-history that it has stepped in to help children in the UK: Between 10,000 to 15,000
Source: UNICEF

 

17th December, 2020
Amount of cereal saved as a result of a campaign to treat locust infestations in 10 countries this year: Estimated 2.7 million tonnes (enough to feed 18 million people)
Source: FAO

 

16th December, 2020
Number of people killed in Colombia this year by non-state armed groups, criminal groups and other armed elements: 255 people in 66 documented massacres
Source: OHCHR

 

15th December, 2020
Proportion of healthcare facilities in the world’s least developed countries which do not have access to basic drinking water: One in two
Source: WHO report

 

14th December, 2020
Number of children at risk of death from malnutrition if they do not receive medical care in Yemen: 360,000
Source: WFP

 

11th December, 2020
Amount of money lost out of Africa due to “illicit financial flows”: Some $US50 annually
Source: UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed

 

10th December, 2020
Estimated number of people forcibly displaced from their homes around the world: More than 80 million
Source: UNHCR report

 

9th December, 2020
New official height of Mt Everest, as agreed by Nepal and China: 8,848.86 metres (about 86 centimetres higher that the previously most accepted height and four metres higher than the previous figure accepted by China)
Source: ABC

 

8th December, 2020
Drop in passenger seat capacity on aircraft, worldwide, this year: Down 51 per cent
Source:  International Civil Aviation Organization

 

7th December, 2020
Homes around the world with access to the internet, urban vs rural areas, 2019: About 72 per cent compared with about 38 per cent
Source: ITU, Measuring Digital Development: Facts and figures 2020 report

 

4th December, 2020
Number of people in the least developed countries who face being pulled into extreme poverty because of the coronavirus pandemic: More than 32 million
Source: UNCTAD

 

3rd December, 2020
Proportion of the billion people with disabilities who live in developing nations: 80 per cent
Source: UN – International Day of Persons with Disabilities

 

2nd December, 2020
Number of people killed in Yemen’s war: An estimated 233,000 (including 131,000 from indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure)
Source: UNOCHA

 

1st December, 2020
Number of people living with HIV globally: 38 million
Source: UN – World AIDS Day

 

30th November, 2020
Number of people affected by drought in southern Madagascar (many of whom are now forced to eat insects): 1.5 million
Source: WFP

 

27th November, 2020
Cluster munitions casualties worldwide in 2019: 286 (up 92 per cent on the previous year)
Source: Cluster Munition Monitor 2020

 

26th November, 2020
Rate at which children around the world are infected with HIV: One every 100 seconds
Source: UNICEF

 

25th November, 2020
Estimated net worth of Tesla founder Elon Musk (now the second richest person in the world): $US136 billion
Source: Bloomberg Billionaires Index

 

24th November, 2020
Levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) detected in the atmosphere in 2019 (a record high): 410.5 parts per million
Source: World Meterological Organization

 

23rd November, 2020
Rise in number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care beds in Germany, 21st September to 20th November: From 267 to 3,615
Source: German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (via CNN)

 

20th November, 2020
Current length of time between deaths from COVID-19 in Europe: 17 seconds
Source: Hans Kluge, WHO Europe director (via BBC)

 

19th November, 2020
Number of people, worldwide, who still go to the toilet in the open: 673 million
Source: UN – Sustainable Development Goals.

 

18th November, 2020
Number of sex abuse claims filed against the Boy Scouts of America ahead of a deadline passed on Monday: At least 92,700
Source: CNN

 

17th November, 2020
Amount of the ocean needed, if farmed sustainably, to feed a population of 12 billion: Two per cent
Source: UN Global Compact

 

16th November, 2020
Number of days it took for the US to add its latest million coronavirus cases to the national tally: Six (reaching 11 million on 15th November) 
Source: AP

 

13th November, 2020
Estimated number of deaths caused by measles worldwide last year (after the highest number of cases for 23 years): 207,500
Source: WHO

 

12th November, 2020
Number of COVID-19 cases detected in Italy, one of the 10 worst hit nations, since the start of the coronavirus pandemic (as of 11th November): More than 1,000,000
Source: Reuters

 

11th November, 2020
Proportion of the world’s worst food crises which are in countries with the largest numbers of internally displaced people: Nine out of 10
Source: WFP

 

10th November, 2020
Number of houses damaged or destroyed as a result of the impact of Typhoon Goni in The Philippines: More than 137,000
Source: OCHA

 

9th November, 2020
Proportion of internal country conflicts around the world in the past 60 years which are linked to the exploitation of natural resources: At least 40 per cent
Source: UNEP

 

6th November, 2020
Proportion of the world’s population which will live in coastal areas potentially exposed to flooding, storms and tsunamis: About 50 per cent
Source: Tsunami Awareness Day

 

5th November, 2020
Number of Electoral College votes needed to win the US election: 270

 

4th November, 2020
Number of ‘named’ storms in this year’s hurricane season (equalling a 2005 record): 28 (with Eta, which has slammed into Nicaragua, the latest)
Source: The Guardian

 

3rd November, 2020
Number of journalists killed while working around the world, 2010-2019 (including more than 150 in the past two years alone): Almost 900
Source: UNESCO

 

2nd November, 2020
Recorded speed of winds in Typhoon Goni as it struck The Philippines: 225kph
Source: BBC

 

30th October, 2020
Proportion of the world’s population predicted to be living in urban areas by 2050: Around 68 per cent
Source: UN

 

29th October, 2020
Amount of degraded land countries, local governments and private organisations have so far committed to restoring under a program which aims to see 350 million hectares restored by 2030: 173 million hectares
Source: FAO

 

28th October, 2020
Proportion of Yemen’s population which now require some form of humanitarian assistance (including about 12.2 million children): About 80 per cent
Source: UN

 

27th October, 2020
Proportion of the 14 million used cars exported worldwide from Europe, the United States and Japan between 2015 and 2018 exported to low and middle income nations: About 80 per cent
Source: UNEP study

 

26th October, 2020
Cost of a simple meal – such as rice and beans – in South Sudan: 186 per cent of the average daily income
Source: Cost of a Plate of Food 2020

 

23rd October, 2020
Annual value of the illicit trade in cultural goods, worldwide: $US10 billion
Source: UNESCO

 

22nd October, 2020
Number of jobs to be lost globally to robots over the next five years as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates workplace changes: 85 million
Source: World Economic Forum study

 

21st October, 2020
Managerial positions held by women, globally, in 2020: 28 per cent (close to the same proportion in 1995)
Source: The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics

 

20th October, 2020
Number of people displaced in countries – including Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger – in the Central Sahel region of West Africa : Almost 1.6 million (up from 70,000 two years ago)
Source: WFP

 

19th October, 2020
Amount of time the latest ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan lasted, according to accusations from both sides: Two minutes (before it was broken by Armenia, according to Azerbaijan); four minutes (before it was broken by Azerbaijan, according to Armenia)
Source: BBC

 

16th October, 2020
Number of new coronavirus cases reported in France on Thursday (a new daily record for the nation): More than 30,000

 

15th October, 2020
Number of people. globally, who died of tuberculosis and related diseases in 2019: 1.4 million
Source: WHO

 

14th October, 2020
Predicted global growth in 2020: -4.4 per cent
Source: International Monetary Fund latest economic outlook

 

13th October, 2020
Number of nations where the eco-system is at risk of collapse due to declining biodiversity: One fifth
Source: Swiss Re report

 

12th October, 2020
Proportion of people in nine emerging and developed nations – including China, Italy, Brazil and South Africa – who said they now shop online more frequently as a result of the coronavirus pandemic: 49 per cent
Source: UNCTAD survey

 

9th October, 2020
New record one day rise in new coronavirus cases, worldwide (as reported on 8th October): 338,779 (with India, Brazil and the US reporting the greatest numbers)
Source: WHO

 

8th October, 2020
Number of COVID-19 cases now recorded in Brazil, the third worst-hit country: More than five million
Source: Brazilian health ministry (Via BBC)

 

7th October, 2020
Number of countries which account for 70 per cent of all coronavirus cases and deaths to date: 10
Source: WHO

 

6th October, 2020
Amount of plastic, broken into pieces less than five millimetres wide, estimated to be at the bottom of the world’s oceans: At least 14 million tonnes
Source: CSIRO study published in Frontiers in Marine Science

 

5th October, 2020
Number of satellites orbiting the Earth: 2,666
Source: Union of Concerned Scientists

 

2nd October, 2020
Number of workers in Bangladesh’s garment industry estimated to have been laid off after $US3.5 billion-worth of clothing orders were cancelled or suspended and exports plummeted by 84 per cent in April: At least 70,000
Source: Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association

 

1st October, 2020
Number of the world’s nations which still criminalise transgender people: At least 13
Source: UN

 

30th September, 2020
Percentage of the world’s plant species which are at risk of extinction: 40 per cent
Source: State of the World’s Plants and Fungi

 

29th September, 2020
Amount of money which illegally leaves Africa each year: $US88.6 billion (equivalent to 3.7 per cent of the continent’s GDP)
Source: UNCTAD

 

28th September, 2020
Drop in income, globally, in the first nine months of 2020: 10.7 per cent ($US3.5 trillion)
Source: ILO

 

25th September, 2020
Amount of food lost, globally, between harvest and retail: About 14 per cent
Source: FAO

 

24th September, 2020
Size of a proposed fine agreed under a deal between Australian financial crime watchdog AUSTRAC and bank Westpac to settle more than 23 million alleged breaches of anti-money laundering laws: $A1.3 billion (the biggest fine in Australian corporate history)
Source: AUSTRAC

 

23rd September, 2020
Number of unidentified bodies in Mexico’s morgues as a result of the country’s crackdown on organised crime: Almost 39,000
Source: Via The Guardian

 

22nd September, 2020
Proportion of world’s population that live in countries which have signed up to the COVAX program to spread the risk and costs of vaccine development and provide their populations with early access to vaccines: About 64 per cent
Source: WHO

 

21st September, 2020
Proportion of carbon emissions attributed to the world’s richest one per cent: 15 per cent (more than twice the seven per cent attributed to the poorest half of humanity)
Source: Oxfam report

 

18th September, 2020
Additional estimated number of children plunged into poverty, globally, due to the coronavirus pandemic: About 150 million (taking the global total to 1.2 billion)
Source: UNICEF/Save the Children

 

17th September, 2020
Forecast decline in air traffic, worldwide, in 2020: 55 per cent
Source: International Air Transport Association

 

16th September, 2020
Number of consecutive months which have recorded tempoeratures above the 20th century average, globally: 428
Source: World Meteorological Organization

 

15th September, 2020
Number of journalists killed covering protests around the world since 2015: 10
Source: UNESCO

 

14th September, 2020
Proportion of English doctors who expect a second peak of coronavirus cases in the country in the next six months: More than 85 per cent
Source: British Medical Association poll

 

11th September, 2020
Number of people affected by severe flooding in west and central Africa in recent weeks: 760,000
Source: Reuters

 

10th September, 2020
Number of people who face being displaced by 2050 thanks to population growth, lack of access to food and water and increased exposure to natural disasters: More than a billion
Source: Institute for Economics and Peace’s Ecological Threat Register

 

9th September, 2020
Number of acres burnt in wildfires in the US state of California so far this year (a record number): More than two million
Source: Cal Fire

 

8th September, 2020
Number of young people and adults lacking basic literary skills, globally: About 733 million
Source: International Literacy Day

 

7th September, 2020
Percentage of the world’s population exposed to polluted air: 92 per cent
Source: International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies

 

4th September, 2020
Proportion of children who are obese or overweight in EU and OECD countries: Roughly one in three
Source: UNICEF

 

3rd September, 2020
Number of people intercepted by the UK Border Force crossing the English Channel to the UK via irregular means on Wednesday: 409 people (a single day record)
Source: BBC

 

2nd September, 2020
Documented cases of torture and ill treatment of people detained in police custody in Belarus after the disputed 9th August election: 450
Source: UN experts

 

1st September, 2020
Number of people pardoned in Venezuela, including opponents of the regime of Nicolás Maduro who are currently in prison or have fled the country: 110 people
Source: Via The Guardian

 

31st August, 2020
Number of new COVID-19 cases reported India on Sunday: 78,761 (a global daily record)
Source: Reuters

 

28th August, 2020
Reduction in visitor arrivals in the US state of Hawaii during July due to the coronavirus pandemic around the world: Down 98 per cent (compared to July, 2019)
Source: Hawaii Tourism Authority via AP

 

27th August, 2020
Number of jobs in the tourism sector, worldwide, at direct risk because of the coronavirus pandemic: 120 million
Source: UN

 

26th August, 2020
Number of consecutive days Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been in office (setting a new record for a Japanese PM): 2,799 (as of 24th August)
Source: TIME

 

25th August, 2020
Number of buildings affected by the 4th August explosion at Beirut’s port: At least 8,000 (including some 640 historic buildings, about 60 of which are at risk of collapse)
Source: UNESCO

 

24th August, 2020
Proportion of people in a UK survey who said a country that develops a COVID-19 vaccine should share that knowledge: 82 per cent
Source: Savanta ComRes for anti-poverty organisation The ONE Campaign (via Reuters)

 

21st August, 2020
Amount of mass lost by Greenland’s ice sheet in 2019: 532 gigatonnes
Source: Communications Earth and Environment via CNN

 

20th August, 2020
Number of people who have fled their homes due to violence in Burkina Faso this year: 453,000 (taking the total to more than a million)
Source: UNHCR

 

19th August, 2020
Weight of tiny plastic fragments floating in the Atlantic Ocean: Between 12 and 21 million tonnes
Source: UK’s National Oceanography Centre (via BBC)

 

18th August, 2020
Hottest air temperature recorded worldwide in at least 100 years: 54.4 degrees Celsius (in Death Valley in California’s Mojave Desert on 16th August, 2020)
Source: Reuters, quoting US National Weather Service data

 

17th August, 2020
Growth in elephant numbers in Kenya between 1989 and 2018 thanks in part to increased anti-poaching efforts: From 16,000 to more than 34,000
Source: Kenya Wildlife Service

 

14th August, 2020
Number of children who don’t have access to basic handwashing facilities at schools, globally: Almost 820 million
Source: WHO/UNICEF

 

13th August, 2020
Drop in the UK’s economy during the second quarter of 2020: 20.04 per cent (the biggest of any of the world’s major economies)
Source: Via ABC

 

12th August, 2020
Number of posts removed from Facebook in the second quarter of this year or sharing false information about coronavirus: 7,000,000
Source: Via Reuters

 

11th August, 2020
Proportion of the global population aged between 15 and 24: 16 per cent (about 1.2 billion)
Source: UN

 

10th August, 2020
Number of Indigenous people worldwide: 476 million people
Source: UN

 

7th August, 2020
Number of cases of COVID-19 now recorded in India: Two million (with India last million cases recorded in just 20 days, the fastest yet of any country)

 

6th August, 2020
Number of domestic workers whose livelihood is under threat as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic: More than 55 million people including 37 million women
Source: ILO

 

5th August, 2020
Number of locusts killed in East Africa so far this year in measures undertaken to prevent them destroying crops: More than 400 billion
Source: FAO

 

4th August, 2020
Number of children in the Caribbean who were displaced from their homes due to storms between 2010 and 2019: 895,000
Source: UNICEF

 

3rd August, 2020
Number of coronavirus cases in South Africa (more than 50 per cent of all cases in Africa): More than 500,000 (with more than 8,000 deaths)

 

31st July, 2020
Amount of compensation awarded to white farmers in Zimbabwe whose land was expropriated by the government to resettle black families: $US3.5 billion
Source: Reuters

 

30th July, 2020
Number of people reported on Wednesday to have died from coronavirus (COVID-19) in Brazil during the previous 24 hours: 1595 (a new record, although the figure included the most populous state of Sao Paulo reporting two days of deaths due to a glitch).
Source: AP

 

29th July, 2020
Decline in the prevalence of potentially deadly hepatitis B in children under five: To under one per cent (down from five per cent in the pre-vaccine decades between the 1980s and early 2000s.
Source: WHO

 

28th July, 2020
Amount of time it took coronavirus cases globally to double to 16 million: Six weeks
Source: WHO

 

27th July, 2020
Number of children impacted by monsoon rains, flooding and landslides in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal: More than four million
Source: UNICEF

 

24th July, 2020
Number of people believed to be detained and forcibly disappeared in Syria: More than 130,000
Source: UN

 

23rd July, 2020
Average years of life expectancy taken from those who have died from COVID-19 in Australia between 25th January and 31st May: 17 years (men)/14 years women
Source: AIHW via The Age

 

22nd July, 2020
Area of forests, globally, lost worldwide over the past 30 years: About 178 million hectares
Source: FAO

 

21st July, 2020
Number of people from South America’s Indigenous peoples who have died of COVID-19 as of 6th July, 2020: More than 2,000 (from more than 60,000 cases)
Source: WHO

 

20th July, 2020
Number of countries which could see hunger reach “devastating” levels in the next few months: 25
Source: WFP/FAO

 

17th July, 2020
Number of women in prisons around the world: More than 700,000
Source: OHCHR

 

16th July, 2020
Proportion of 82 countries which took part in a survey and reported disruptions in their immunisation programs related to the pandemic: Three quarters
Source: UN

 

15th July, 2020
Number of human rights defenders and community social leaders killed in Colombia since a landmakr peace agreement was signed in 2016: 686
Source: UN Verification Mission

 

14th July, 2020
Number of people in the UK who were unable to attend a funeral during the coronavirus lockdown: 9.7 million
Source: Co-op FuneralCare estimate

 

13th July, 2020
Number of new coronavirus cases detected in Florida in a 24 hour tally announced on Sunday: 15,299 (a new record for any US state)

 

10th July, 2020
Number of people forced to flee their homes in Burkina Faso as of June, 2020, due to violence : 921,000 (a 92 per cent rise on 2019 data)
Source: UNOWAS

 

9th July, 2020
Number of coronavirus cases detected in the US since the start of the outbreak: More than three million (with 132,000 deaths)
Source: Johns Hopkins tally

 

8th July, 2020
Proportional drop in working hours globally in the second quarter of 2020: 14 per cent (equal to 400 million full-time jobs)
Source: ILO

 

7th July, 2020
Proportion of businesses who took part in a UN survey which believe they have targets that are sufficiently ambitious to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030: 39 per cent
Source: United Nations Global Compact 

 

6th July, 2020
Proportion of children and adolescents in Argentina expected to be living in poverty by the end of 2020 due to the impact of coronavirus: 58.6 per cent (up from 53 per cent at the end of 2019)
Source: Roberto Valent, UN coordinator in Argentina (via Reuters)

 

3rd July, 2020
Number of US states which have seen increases in coronavirus cases in the past two weeks (compared to the previous two weeks): 37
Source: Reuters analysis

 

2nd July, 2020
Number of people killed in Philippines in police and vigilante operations between 1st July, 2016, and 31st January this year: Possibly more than 25,000
Source: Michelle Bachelet, UN human rights chief

 

1st July, 2020
Number of Chinese-made apps which have been banned in India following recent border clashes : 59 (including TikTok and WeChat)
Source: BBC

 

30th June, 2020
Number of near-Earth asteroids discovered to date: Some 16,000
Source: NASA

 

29th June, 2020
Number of civilians killed in conflicts in Mali in the year to 21st June: 580
Source: OHCHR

 

26th June, 2020
Number of people killed in the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s history (which has been officially declared over this week): 2,280
Source: WHO

 

25th June, 2020
Number of job losses announced at Australia airline carrier Qantas to help the company navigate through the coronavirus crisis: 6,000
Source: Qantas

 

24th June, 2020
Probable record high temperature reached in the Russian Arctic Circle town of Verkhoyansk last weekend: 38 degrees Celsius
Source: World Meteorological Orgainisation

 

23rd June, 2020
Proportion of the world’s 258 million widows who live in extreme poverty: Almost one in 10
Source: International Widow’s Day

 

22nd June, 2020
Number of new COVID-19 cases reported to World Health Organization, worldwide, on 21st June, 2020 (the largest single day increase): More than 183,000
Source: WHO

 

19th June, 2020
Number of children, globally, who were victims of homicide in 2017: Some 40,000
Source: Global Status Report on Preventing Violence Against Children 2020

 

18th June, 2020
Number of additional people projected to be pushed into extreme poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean this year due to coronavirus impacts: 16 million (taking the total to 83 million)
Source: FAO/ECLAC report

 

17th June, 2020
Number of people affected by land degradation, worldwide: 3.2 billion 
Source: UNCCD

 

16th June, 2020
Number of people whose lives are improved thanks to the flow of remittances sent home by 200 million people working overseas: 800 million
Source: UN

 

15th June, 2020
Number of seafarers who have been stranded at sea for months due to the coronavirus: Up to 200,000 (of the estimated two million around the world)
Source: ILO

 

12th June, 2020
Number of COVID-19 cases in Africa (as of 11th June, 2020): More than 200,000 (with 5,600 deaths)
Source: WHO

 

11th June, 2020
Amount by which the global economy is expected to shrink this year: 5.2 per cent
Source:  World Bank

 

10th June, 2020
Number of people who could be pushed into extreme poverty if countries fell to act immediately: Almost 50 million
Source:  UN Secretary-General António Guterres

 

9th June, 2020
Estimated number of lives saved by coronavirus lockdowns in Europe: 3.1 million
Source:  Imperial College London study

 

5th June, 2020
Number of cases of Ebola detected in a new outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (as of 3rd June, 2020): Eight (with four deaths)
Source: WHO

 

4th June, 2020
Number of countries which have imposed border restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic to stop the spread of the disease: More than 150
Source: UN

 

3rd June, 2020
Number of countries which have reported partially or fully re-assigning health ministry staff working on non-communicable diseases to support their country’s COVID-19 response: 94 per cent
Source: WHO

 

2nd June, 2020
Number of species of land animals found to be on the brink of extinction and likely to be lost in the next 20 years: Some 515
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

 

1st June, 2020
Number of coronavirus cases now reported in Brazil, now the second highest in the world after the US: More than 500,000
Source: John Hopkins University tally

 

29th May, 2020
Rate of black people killed in police shootings in the US since 1st January, 2015: 30 per million people (compared with 22 per million for Hispanics and 12 per million for white people)
Source: Washington Post analysis (via Forbes)

 

28th May, 2020
Number of people in the US who have now died as a result of the coronavirus outbreak: More than 100,000

 

27th May, 2020
Amount needed to continue giving life-saving assistance to millions of people in Yemen for the next six months: $US870 million
Source: World Food Programme

 

26th May, 2020
Number of coronavirus cases in Brazil, now the second highest number in the world (after the US which has more than 1.6 million cases): More than 374,000
Source: John Hopkins University tally

 

25th May, 2020
Amount earned by tennis player Naomi Osaka in the last 12 months from prize money and sponsorship (more than any other female athelete in history): $US37 million
Source: Forbes

 

22nd May, 2020
Estimated number of plant and animal species threatened with extinction worldwide: 1,000,000
Source: UNEP

 

21st May, 2020
Proportion of the world’s tea produced in China in 2016 (the world’s biggest tea producer): 43 per cent
Source: FAO

 

20th May, 2020
Proportion of the world’s crops which rely at least in part on animal pollinators: More than 75 per cent
Source: World Bee Day

 

19th May, 2020
Proportion of the world’s museums which have been temporarily closed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic: Almost 90 per cent
Source: UNESCO

 

18th May, 2020
Amount for which basketball legend Michael Jordan’s autographed”Air Jordans” from 1985 sold for in an online auction: $US560,000
Source: Sotherbys

 

15th May, 2020
Proportion of US workers claiming unemployment benefits: A quarter
Source: Via BBC

 

14th May, 2020
Amount governments of nuclear armed states spent on nuclear arms in 2019: $US72.9 billion ($35.4 billion by US alone)
Source: ICAN

 

13th May, 2020
Size of a coronavirus-related economic rescue package announced by the Indian Government: 20 trillion rupees ($US264 billion)
Source: Via BBC

 

12th May, 2020
Number of professional nurses worldwide: 19.3 million
Source: WHO

 

11th May, 2020
Number of people who live in slums or informal settlements, worldwide: 1.2 billion
Source: FAO

 

8th May, 2020
Proportion of the world’s workers affected by coronavirus lockdowns: 81 per cent
Source: ILO

 

7th May, 2020
Number of people out of work in India in April: 122 million
Source: Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (via BBC)

 

6th May, 2020
Projected number of people who will be living in places with “extreme” high temperatures by 2070: More than three billion
Source: Study via BBC

 

5th May, 2020
Weekly cost of measures taken to mitigate the spread of coronavirus in Australia: $A4 billion
Source: Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg

 

4th May, 2020
COVID-19 fatality rate for people over 80-years-old compared to the global average: Five times higher
Source: UN

 

1st May, 2020
Number of ventilators in South Sudan: Four (One for every three million people)
Source: Plan International Australia

 

30th April, 2020
Closest asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass to Earth at 7.56pm (AEST): 6.3 million kilometres
Source: Via ABC

 

29th April, 2020
Drop in number of previously anticipated international travellers around the world by September, 2020: 1.2 billion
Source: International Civil Aviation Organization

 

28th April, 2020
Number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan conflict in the first quarter of 2020 (the lowest first quarter figure since 2012): 533, including 150 children
Source: UNAMA

 

27th April, 2020
Number of people who downloaded Australia’s controversial new coronavirus tracing app with five hours of its release on Sunday: One million
Source: Australian Government

 

24th April, 2020
Decline in insect numbers since 1990: 25 per cent
Source: Research published in Science (via The Guardian)

 

23rd April, 2020
Number of countries where people faced acute food insecurity in 2019: 55
Source: FAO

 

22nd April, 2020
Number of people executed in Saudi Arabia in 2019: 184 (the most in the kingdom since records began)
Source: Amnesty International

 

21st April, 2020
Benchmark US oil price on 20th April (as it went below zero for the first time in history): -$US35.20 per barrel

 

20th April, 2020
Number of tourism-related jobs at risk globally as a result of the coronavirus crisis: Up to 75 million
Source: World Travel and Tourism Council

 

17th April, 2020
Number of countries which have so far reported no cases of coronavirus (which experts say could be due to poor identification systems, censorship or a genuine absence of cases): 15
Source: Via ABC

 

16th April, 2020
Number of travel restrictions announced around the world in response to the coronavirus pandemic: Almost 46,000
Source: International Organization for Migration

 

15th April, 2020
Average age for hetrosexual marriage in the UK, men and women in 2017 (most recent data): 38 and 35.7-years-old
Source: UK Office for National Statistics

 

14th April, 2020
Percentage of Americans who see the spread of infectious diseases as a “major threat” compared to global climate change: 79 per cent to 60 per cent
Source: Pew Research

 

9th April, 2020
Number of cases of coronavirus in Africa (as of 8th April): More than 10,000 (with more than 500 deaths)
Source: WHO

 

8th April, 2020
Proportion of the global 3.3 billion workforce whose jobs have been affected by full or partial workplace closures during the coronavirus outbreak: 81 per cent
Source: ILO

 

7th April, 2020
Percentage of the health workforce globally who are women: Some 70 per cent
Source: UN

 

6th April, 2020
Size of the UN’s coronavirus crisis appeal to boost resilience in developing nations: $US2.5 trillion
Source: UNCTAD

 

3rd April, 2020
Number of people in the Arab region – now home to 101.4 million people living in poverty – who will also pushed into poverty due to the impacts of coronavirus: A further 8.3 million
Source: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia

 

2nd April, 2020
Number of children displaced from their homes, globally, including internally displaced, refugees and asylum seekers: About 31 million
Source: UNICEF

 

1st April, 2020
Proportion of Americans now living under a lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 crisis: About 75 per cent
Source: Via BBC

 

31st March, 2020
Number of cruise ships, some carrying passengers, stranded at sea as ports around the world refuse them entry due to the coronavirus: More than a dozen
Source: Via CNN

 

30th March, 2020
Number of prisoners pardoned in Ethiopia as a measure to help prevent coronavirus spread: More than 4,000
Source: Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde

 

27th March, 2020
Number of jobless people who registered for unemployment benefits in the US, in the week to 21st March, 2020 (a new high): Almost 3.3 million
Source: US Department of Labor

 

26th March, 2020
Proportion of the world’s population who have no health insurance or access to national health services: Almost 40 per cent
Source: ILO

 

25th March, 2020
Number of people who died from tuberculosis in 2018, globally: 1.5 million
Source: WHO

 

24th March, 2020
Estimated number of stateless people who are to acquire citizenship in Uzbekistan following the passing of a new law: 50,000
Source: UNHCR

 

23rd March, 2020
Number of people who live without safe drinking water, worldwide: One in three
Source: UN

 

20th March, 2020
Number of children born with Down syndrome globally each year: 3,000 to 5,000
Source: UN

 

19th March, 2020
Number of staff being temporarily laid off at Australian airline Qantas as it suspended all international flights and almost two-thirds of domestic flights due to the coronavirus outbreak: 20,000
Source: Reuters

 

18th March, 2020
Estimated number of people globally who die each year as a result of being exposed to secondhand smoke: One million
Source: Study in the journal JAMA Network Open (via CNN)

 

17th March, 2020
Drop on the US Dow Jones stock index on 16th March, 2020, in the worst day since “Black Monday”, 1987: 12.9 per cent

 

16th March, 2020
Proportion of the world’s road traffic deaths which involve pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists: Almost half
Source: WHO

 

13th March, 2020
Number of people in Syria who require ongoing assistance as the conflict enters its 10th year: Some 11 million
Source: UN

 

12th March, 2020
Number of people who have fled Nicaragua in the past two years as “serious” social and political crises have gripped the country: More than 100,000
Source: UNHCR

 

11th March, 2020
Estimated likely cost of the coronavirus impact to the global economy in 2020: $US1 trillion ($US2 trillion under a “Doomsday scenario”)
Source: UNCTAD

 

10th March, 2020
Drop on the US Dow Jones on Monday, its heaviest one day loss since the 2008 global financial crisis: 7.8 per cent or 2,104 points to 23,851
Source: Washington Post

 

9th March, 2020
Number of countries which have enacted legal and regulatory reforms in support of gender equality in the past decade: 131
Source: UN Women

 

6th March, 2020
Number of students whose schooling has been disrupted as a result of school closures in 13 countries due the spread of the coronavirus: More than 290 million (as of 5th March, 2020)
Source: UNESCO

 

5th March, 2020
Proportion of detected human trafficking victims worldwide who are female: 70 per cent (mostly in circumstances of sexual exploitation)
Source: UNICEF

 

4th March, 2020
Size of a World Bank pledge to help developing countries grappling with tackling coronavirus: $US12 billion
Source: World Bank 

 

3rd March, 2020
Proportion of the world’s beaches which could be lost to erosion by 2100 if action is not taken to mitigate climate change: Up to half
Source: EU Joint Research Center

 

2nd March, 2020
Number of people whose cases were finalised in Australian criminal courts in 2018-19: 576,101
Source: ABS

 

28th February, 2020
Diameter of the ‘mini Moon’ which has been found orbiting Earth: 1.9 to 3.5 metres
Source: ABC

 

27th February, 2020
Estimated number of Australians living with dementia: 459,000
Source: Dementia Australia

 

26th February, 2020
Number of crop seed varieties now housed in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway: A million (as of this week)
Source: Reuters

 

25th February, 2020
Proportion of people in Venezuela who are not getting enough to eat: One in three
Source: WFP (via The Guardian)

 

24th February, 2020
Proportion of the world’s population who do not have access to education in a language they speak or understand: 40 per cent
Source: UN

 

21st February, 2020
Number of people in Haiti who require humanitarian assistance: 4.6 million
Source: UN Special Representative Helen La Lime

 

20th February, 2020
Percentage of all workers, globally, who lack any kind of employment contract: More than 60 per cent
Source: ILO

 

19th February, 2020
Date by which Singapore is aiming to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles as part of its efforts to cut greenhouse gases and fight climate change: 2040
Source: Reuters

 

18th February, 2020
Average monthly number of people who travelled from the Horn of Africa to Yemen last year in an apparent bid to reach Gulf states (making it the busiest maritime migration path in the world): 11,500
Source: IOM

 

17th February, 2020
Size of the biggest haul of cocaine ever seized in Costa Rica: More than five tonnes
Source: Via Sky News

 

14th February, 2020
New highest temperature recorded in Antarctica: 20.75 degrees Celsius (on Seymour Island)
Source: Via The Guardian

 

13th February, 2020
Number of children globally living in countries affected by fighting: About 250 million
Source: UN

 

12th February, 2020
Indigenous child mortality rate in Australia: 141 per 100,000 (twice that of non-Indigenous children)
Source: Closing the Gap report (via ABC)

 

11th February, 2020
Number of school students enrolled in Australia in 2019: 3,948,811
Source: ABS

 

10th February, 2020
The fastest subsonic New York to London journey, achieved by a British Airways flight over the weekend of 8th and 9th February, 2020: Four hours, 56 minutes
Source: FlightRadar24 via BBC

 

7th February, 2020
Number of people displaced in Syria since 1st December, 2019, as a result of ongoing bombing and shelling: 586,000
Source: OCHA

 

6th February, 2020
Number of refugees resettled through the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, in 2019: 63,696 (about 4.5 per cent of all refugees needing resettlement)
Source: UNHCR

 

5th February, 2020
Number of homeless students enrolled in public school districts in the US in 2017-18 (highest in a decade): 1,508,265
Source: National Center for Homeless Education

 

4th February, 2020
Degree to which Indigenous and tribal communities around the world are more likely to be living in extreme poverty than others: Three times
Source: ILO

 

3rd February, 2020
Number of palidrome days (in which the dates reads the same back to front) this century (including in the US and other countries which put the month ahead of the day): 1 – Sunday, 02.02.2020

 

31st January, 2020
Number of cervical cancer deaths which could be averted in the next 100 years if HPV vaccinations, cervical screening and treatments are rapidly deployed in 78 of the world’s poorest countries: 62 million
Source: Studies via Guardian

 

30th January, 2020
Number of US military personnel suffering from traumatic brain injuries after an Iranian attack on a US base in Iraq on 8th January: 50
Source: Pentagon via BBC

 

29th January, 2020
Number of seconds elapsing before another child dies of pneumonia around the world: 39
Source: UNICEF

 

28th January, 2020
Number of schools closed in Burkino Faso, Mali and Niger as a result of armed conflict and insecurity as of the end of 2019: More than 3,000
Source: UNICEF

 

27th January, 2020
Size of the world’s largest windfarm, nearing completion off the English coast: 174 wind turbines (which will generate enough power for a million homes)
Source: Via CNN

 

24th January, 2020
Death toll from the White Island volcano eruption in New Zealand on 9th December following two more deaths: 20
Source: Reuters

 

23rd January, 2020
Amount by which the average income in North America is higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa: 16 times
Source: UN World Social Report 2020

 

22nd January, 2020
Number of men who own as much wealth as all the 325 million women in Africa: 22
Source: Oxfam

 

21st January, 2020
Number of people, globally, who work fewer hours than they would like: Almost 500,000,000
Source: International Labour Organization study

 

20th January, 2020
Size of just one locust swarm in north-east Kenya as East Africa faces its worst outbreak in 25 years: 60 by 40 kilometres
Source: Via ABC

 

17th January, 2020
Number of people facing hunger in southern Africa: A record 45 million
Source: WFP

 

16th January, 2020
Estimated number of children in Europe who suffer some form of physical, sexual, emotional or psychological violence: At least 55 million
Source: WHO

 

15th January, 2020
Number of human rights defenders killed in Colombia in 2019: At least 107 (with an additional 13 to be verified)
Source: OHCHR

 

14th January, 2020
Number of stars visible to the human eye: About 9,000 (of billions)
Source: Sky and Telescope

 

13th January, 2020
Number of people killed when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti 10 years ago on 12th January, 2010: About 220,000
Source: UN

 

10th January, 2020
Number now killed in a measles outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the start of 2019: More than 6,000
Source: WHO

 

9th January, 2020
Increase in polio cases, globally, 2018 to mid-December, 2019: 28 to 113
Source: WHO

 

8th January, 2020
Length of a massive “star nursery” discovered about 500 light years from the Sun: More than 9,000 light years (and 400 light years wide)
Source: Nature

 

7th January, 2020
Estimated cost of bushfire damage in Australia since September: More than $A700 million
Source: Insurance Council of Australia (via ABC)

 

6th January, 2020
Estimated number of animals killed in bushfires in the Australian state of New South Wales since September: Some 480 million
Source: Professor Chris Dickman, University of Sydney

 

3rd January, 2020
New record “warmest day” for Norway in January: 19 degrees Celsius
Source: Via BBC

 

2nd January, 2020
Estimated net worth of Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world at the end of 2019: $US115 billion
Source: Bloomberg Billionaire Index

 

31st December, 2019
Number of UN-verified “grave violations” against children in conflicts in the first half of 2019, worldwide: More than 10,000
Source: UNICEF

 

30th December, 2019
Number of mass killings in the US in 2019 (the highest number of incidents since the 1970s in which four or more people have been killed): 41 (resulting in 211 deaths)
Source: Via ABC

 

24th December, 2019
Amount expected to spent on Christmas festivities in the US this year: More than $US1 trillion
Source: Via World Economic Forum

 

23rd December, 2019
Estimated amount of food crops, globally, which are lost to pest and diseases, annually: Up to 40 per cent
Source: FAO

 

20th December, 2019
The highest average maximum temperature across Australia (set on 18th December, 2019, breaking an earlier record of 40.9 degrees Celsius set the previous day): 41.9 degrees Celsius
Source: Via Guardian

 

19th December, 2019
Amount the original Olympic Games Manifesto – an 1892 speech given by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin – has sold for at a New York auction: $US8.8 million
Source: Reuters

 

18th December, 2019
Number of Indigenous languages dying every month: Two
Source: Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, president of the UN General Assembly

 

17th December, 2019
Proportion of people, globally, who are overweight: Almost 2.3 billion
Source: WHO study

 

16th December, 2019
Number of people in South Sudan the World Food Programme fears could be going hungry in early 2020: More than 5.5 million
Source: WFP

 

13th December, 2019
Depth of an ice-filled canyon in East Antarctica, under the Denman Glacier (the deepest point on continental Earth): 3.5 kilometres below sea level
Source: Via BBC

 

12th December, 2019
Percentage of the world’s population who live in mountains: 15 per cent
Source: International Mountain Day

 

10th December, 2019
Estimated number of people who have died, in addition to the 3,000 instantly killed, as a result of conditions related to the Union Carbide factory explosion in Bhopal, India, on 2nd December, 1984: 20,000
Source: The Guardian

 

9th December, 2019
Estimated number of people taking part in anti-government protests in Hong Kong on Sunday (the largest since last month’s elections), according to the Civil Human Rights Front: 800,000 (police estimated the crowd at 183,000)
Source: Reuters

 

6th December, 2019
Number of homes destroyed by bushfires in the Australian state of New South Wales this fire season so far: More than 680
Source: NSW Rural Fire Service (via ABC)

 

5th December, 2019
Amount of soil eroded every five seconds, globally: Equivalent of a soccer field
Source: World Soil Day

 

4th December, 2019
Number of people expected to receive food aid in Zimbabwe by January thanks to an ongoing drought: 4.1 million
Source: WFP

 

3rd December, 2019
Amount the Indian island nation of Comoros, one of the world’s poorest countries, is seeking to raise at a conference for investors this: €4.2 billion
Source: Reuters

 

2nd December, 2019
Estimated cost of humanitarian aid to the international community if the war in Yemen continues for another five years: $US29 billion
Source: NGOs via The Guardian

 

29th November, 2019
Amount of money sent back to their homes by migrants around the world in 2018: $US689 billion
Source: IOM

 

28th November, 2019
Number of Islamic State militants accused of Yazidi massacres in northern Iraq which have been identified by UN investigators so far: 160
Source: Via Reuters

 

27th November, 2019
Number of diplomatic posts China has around the world (the most of any nation): 276 posts and 96 consulates
Source: 2019 Lowy global diplomatic index

 

26th November, 2019
Number of countries which have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: 196 (with the US a signatory)
Source: UN

 

25th November, 2019
Proportion of women and girls worldwide who experience physical or sexual abuse in their lifetime: One in three
Source: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

 

22nd November, 2019
Number of people who have died this year in the world’s largest measles outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Almost 5,000
Source: WHO

 

21st November, 2019
Proportion of children, globally, that live in cities: 55 per cent (compared with 43 per cent in 1989)
Source: UNICEF

 

20th November, 2019
Number of people displaced due to violence in the Sahel nations of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso: Almost one million
Source: WFP

 

19th November, 2019
Increase in deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest in the 12 months to July, 2019 (compared with the previous 12 months): 29.5 per cent (to 9,762 square kilometres)
Source: Brazil’s INPE space research agency (via Reuters)

 

18th November, 2019
Number of people globally who die in road accidents annually: More than 1.3 million
Source: UN

 

15th November, 2019
Number of confirmed cholera cases recorded in Haiti in the past nine months (following a nine year outbreak): Zero
Source: UN Special Envoy Josette Sheeran

 

14th November, 2019
Size of the US household debt: $US13.95 trillion (a record)
Source: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data

 

13th November, 2019
Number of people in Latin America and the Caribbean who die annually from diet-related diseases including diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular illnesses: 600,000
Source: FAO

 

12th November, 2019
Estimated number of young refugees and migrants who arrived in Italy as unaccompanied children between 2014 and 2018, and who have since turned 18 and now require support: 60,000
Source: UNICEF

 

11th November, 2019
Number of biodegradable poppies released over the white cliffs of Dover to mark Remembrance Sunday in the UK: 750,000

 

8th November, 2019
Number of climate scientists who have signed a scientific paper in the journal BioScience declaring a climate emergency: More than 11,000
Source: Via ABC

 

7th November, 2019
Proportion of veterans who experienced homelessness after leaving the Australian Defence Forces between 2001 and 2018: 5.3 per cent
Source: AHURI

 

6th November, 2019
Number of Cameroonians affected by a fast-growing humanitarian crisis as a result of ongoing fighting in the country’s northwest and southwest: Some 1.9 million
Source: UNICEF

 

5th November, 2019
Distance the two Voyager spacecraft have now travelled from Earth: More than 16 billion kilometres
Source: Via BBC

 

4th November, 2019
Amount won by Australian – and world women’s tennis number one – Ash Barty at the WTA Finals in China: $US4.42 million (the biggest winner’s cheque in tennis history
Source: Via ABC

 

1st November, 2019
Number of people in southern Africa who are projected to be “food insecure” in the next six months: About 45 million (a record level)
Source: WFP/FAO/IFAD

 

31st October, 2019
Amount mental health issues and suicide is costing Australia every day in lost productivity: Estimated $A500 million
Source: Productivity Commission draft report

 

30th October, 2019
Number of days it took 36-year-old Nepalese man Nirmal Purja to climb the world’s 14 highest peaks (a new record): 189
Source: Via ABC

 

29th October, 2019
Increase in the number of women in the workforce in Latin America ocer the past 30 years: 11 per cent
Source: International  Labour Organization

 

28th October, 2019
Number of pregnancies found to be unplanned in a study involving 10,000 women across 36 low and middle income countries: About a quarter
Source: WHO

 

25th October, 2019
Drop in number of children, worldwide, affected by polio since 1988: By 99 per cent
Source: UNICEF

 

24th October, 2019
Number of Chilean workers who earn $US550 a month or less: Half
Source: National Statistics Institute via Reuters

 

23rd October, 2019
Number of people displaced in north-eastern Syria as a result of the Turkish offensive: About 180,000 including 80,000 children
Source: UNOCHA

 

22nd October, 2019
Number of millionaires worldwide: About 47,000,000
Source: Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, 2019

 

21st October, 2019
Average number of civilians killed each day during fighting in Yemen in September: 13
Source: Mark Lowcock, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator

 

18th October, 2019
Number of people who died from tuberculosis (TB) in 2018: 1.5 million
Source: WHO

 

17th October, 2019
Speed at which silver ants in the northern Sahara (the fastest ants in the world) travel: Close to one metre per second
Source: Via Guardian

 

16th October, 2019
Proportion of children, worldwide, who are either undernourished or overweight: One in three
Source: UNICEF

 

15th October, 2019
Estimated number of children newly displaced in north-eastern Syria following the launch of a Turkish offensive last week: 70,000
Source: UNICEF

 

14th October, 2019
Percentage of seabirds, worldwide, estimated to have consumed plastic: At least 40 per cent
Source: UN

 

11th October, 2019
Number of women who crowded into an Iranian stadium to watch a World Cup qualifier match between Iraq and Cambodia after being allowed to buy tickets for the first time in 40 years: More than 3,000
Source: The Guardian

 

10th October, 2019
Number of people globally with eye conditions that could have been prevented or are still to be addressed: A billion
Source: WHO

 

9th October, 2019
Reduction in number of MPs in Italy as numbers are cut to save money: From 630 to 400 (and the number of senators has been reduced from 315 to 200)
Source: BBC

 

8th October, 2019
Number of moons now identified orbiting Saturn (seeing it surpass Jupiter, which has 79, as hosting the most in the solar system): 82
Source: The Guardian

 

7th October, 2019
Number of reports received by the Australian Cyber Security Centre since July: More than 13,500
Source: Australian Cyber Security Centre

 

4th October, 2019
Number of people who have died from a vaping-related illness in US (as of 2nd October): 18
Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

 

3rd October, 2019
Value of tariffs the US is imposing on European Union exports: $US7.5 billion
Source: BBC

 

2nd October, 2019
Number of people in the Bahamas still listed as missing in the wake of Hurricane Dorian (as of 28th September): About 600
Source: CNN

 

1st October, 2019
Size of iceberg – called D28 – which has broken off the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica (the biggest in 50 years): 315 billion tonnes
Source: BBC

 

30th September, 2019
Proportion of native European trees which are “threatened”: 58 per cent
Source: International Union for the Conservation of Nature report

 

27th September, 2019
Number of hours it would take a proposed hypersonic ‘space plane’ to fly between the UK and Australia: Four
Source: UK Space Agency via CNN

 

26th September, 2019
Number of people who have recovered from Ebola in the latest outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo: 1,000 (out of 3,150 cases while more than 2,100 people have now died)
Source: WHO

 

25th September, 2019
Percentage of US adults who think members of Congress act unethically “some of the time”: 64 per cent
Source: Pew Research

 

24th September, 2019
Number of jobs at risk worldwide following the collapse of UK travel company Thomas Cook: 22,000
Source: BBC

 

23rd September, 2019
Number of heads of state expected in New York for the UN Climate Summit: More than 90
Source: CNN

 

20th September, 2019
Estimated number of birds lost since 1970 in the US and Canada: 2.9 billion
Source: Cornell lab of Ornithology and the American Bird Conservancy study

 

19th September, 2019
US Federal Reserve’s cut to its key interest rate on Wednesday (only the second cut since 2008): 25 basis points to between 1.75 and 2 per cent.

 

18th September, 2019
Number of people killed in the last decade in the context of conflicts over the use of Amazon land and resources: More than 300
Source: Human Rights Watch report

 

17th September, 2019
Number of people still facing food shortages in Mozambique after devastation caused by Cyclones Idai and Kenneth in March and April: Almost a million including 160,000 children under five
Source: UNICEF

 

16th September, 2019
Number of children of primary school age who will never set foot inside a school, globally: 12 million
Source: UNESCO

 

13th September, 2019
Number of people detained in the Al Hol camp in Syria, most of whom are women and children under 12: Up to 70,000
Source: UN Human Rights Council

 

12th September, 2019
Number of people listed as missing in the Bahamas following the impact of Hurricane Dorian: 2,500
Source: Bahamian Government

 

11th September, 2019
Decline in volunteering in Australia, from 2010 to 2014: From 36 per cent of Australians to 31 per cent
Source: ABS

 

10th September, 2019
Number of deaths in France attributed to this summer’s heatwave: About 1,500
Source: French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn

 

9th September, 2019
Number of “living languages” spoken around the world today: About 7,000
Source: UNESCO

 

6th September, 2019
Proportion of Americans who report knowing someone who goes by a gender-neutral pronoun: About one in five
Source: Pew Research Center

 

5th September, 2019
Proportion of young people, across 30 nations, who report being bullied online: About one in three
Source: UNICEF

 

4th September, 2019
Estimated number of people expected to be “food insecure” in Somalia by the end of 2019 due to drought: 6.3 million
Source: FAO

 

3rd September, 2019
Estimated number of civilians killed in conflict in Syria since April this year: More than 500
Source: Mark Lowcock, UN emergency relief coordinator

 

2nd September ,2019
Proportion of refugee children, worldwide, who get a secondary education (compared with generally): 20 per cent (compared with more than 80 per cent)
Source: UNHCR

 

30th August, 2019
Number of nuclear weapons tests carried out, worldwide, since 16th July, 1945: Almost 2,000
Source: UN

 

29th August, 2019
Estimated number of giraffes left in the wild in Africa: A “few tens of thousands”
Source: CITES

 

28th August, 2019
Estimated amount of money the Islamic State, also known as Da’esh, still has as its disposal: Up to $US300 million
Source:  Vladimir Voronkov, of the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, in a briefing on the threat IS still poses.

 

27th August, 2019
Amount pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson have been fined in regard to its part in fuelling Oklahoma’s opioid addiction crisis (which the company has said it will appeal): $US572 million
Source: BBC

 

26th August, 2019
Amount Scotland’s University of Glasgow has said it will put to making amends for the historic financial support it received from people who profited from the slave trade: £20 million
Source: Reuters

 

23rd August, 2019
Number of years Nigeria has been free of wild, endemic polio: Three (with expectations the whole of Africa could be declared free of polio next year)
Source: WHO

 

22nd August, 2019
Number of humanitarian programs closing in the next two months in conflict-torn Yemen if funding doesn’t become available: 22
Source: UN

 

21st August, 2019
What is believed to be the depth of a body of water on Europa, an ice-encrusted moon orbiting Jupiter (to which NASA is planning to travel from 2025): 170 kilometres
Source: BBC

 

20th August, 2019
Number of accounts, now deleted, which Twitter says China used to undermine Hong Kong protestors and calls for political change: 936
Source: Twitter

 

19th August, 2019
Percentage of Australians who experienced high or very high levels of psychological distress in 2017-18: 13 per cent (or about one in eight)
Source: ABS

 

16th August, 2019
Rise in drug-related deaths due to misuse in England and Wales in 2018 compared with 2017: 17 per cent (to 2,917)
Source: UK Office of National Statistics

 

15th August, 2019
Number of countries where religiously unaffiliated people reported harassment by governments, private groups or both in 2017: 23 (up from 14 in 2016)
Source: Pew Research Center report

 

14th August, 2019
Proportion of the global population whose education happens in a language they don’t speak or fully understand: 40 per cent
Source: UN DESA Population Division

 

13th August, 2019
Amount spent by Australia’s richest four schools on new facilitues and renovations, 2013 to 2017: $A402 million (the country’s poorest 1,800 schools spent just $A370 million over the same period)
Source: ABC

 

12th August, 2019
Number of trees lost from US cities, annually, 2009-2014: About 36 million
Source: US Forest Service

 

9th August, 2019
Number of people who live in areas affected by erosion linked to climate change: 500 million
Source: IPCC

 

8th August, 2019
Proportion of the world’s 7,000 Indigenous languages which are at risk of disappearing: 40 per cent
Source: UN-appointed experts

 

7th August, 2019
Loss of natural area in the US between 2001 and 2017 due to due to agriculture, energy development, housing sprawl and other human factors: 9712455.41 hectares
Source: Center for American Progress report

 

6th August, 2019
Amount of money generated by North Korean cyber attacks for its weapons of mass destruction programs: $US2 billion
Source: Reuters, citing a leaked UN report

 

5th August, 2019
Proportion of the world’s population caught up in a humanitarian crisis: One in 70
Source: UNOCHA

 

2nd August, 2019
Additional amount the UK Government said this week it was spending on plans for a ‘no deal’ Brexit: £2.1 billion
Source: Reuters

 

1st August, 2019
Proportion of adult Twitter users in the US who follow US President Donald Trump compared with former President Barack Obama: 19 per cent/26 per cent
Source: Pew Research

 

31st July, 2019
Number of civilians killed by fighting in Afghanistan during the first half of 2019: 1,366
Source: UNAMA

 

30th July, 2019
Highest temperature ever recorded in UK (at Cambridge Botanic Garden on 25th July, 2019): 38.7 degrees Celsius
Source: UK Met Office

 

29th July, 2019
Amount won by 16-year-old Kyle ‘Bugha’ Giersdorf at a Fornite tournament held at the Arthur Ashe tennis stadium in New York (the largest ever payout to a single player in an esports tournament): $US3 million
Source: CNN

 

26th July, 2019
Rise in the number of Australian households renting their homes, from 1997-1998 to 2017-18: 27 per cent
Source: ABS

 

25th July, 2019
Record temperature in Bordeaux in France on Tuesday as Europe swelters in a heatwave: 41.2 degrees Celsius
Source: AccuWeather

 

24th July, 2019
Weight of elephant ivory in a record seizure made by authorities in Singapore: 8,800 kilograms (from an estimated 300 elephants)
Source: BBC

 

23rd July, 2019
Percentage of Americans who believe trust in the Federal Government has been shrinking: 75 per cent
Source: Pew Research

 

22nd July, 2019
Number of guns handed in during the first week of a buyback scheme introduced in New Zealand in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings earlier this year: More than 10,000
Source: Reuters

 

19th July, 2019
Number of people killed in homicides in 2017, globally, compared to those killed in armed conflicts: 464,000 and 89,000
Source: UNODC

 

18th July, 2019
Number of gay and transgender people murdered in Honduras since 2009: More than 300
Source: Cattrachas (via Reuters)

 

17th July, 2019
Change in support among US Republicans for President Donald Trump in the wake of a racially charged attack on four Democratic congresswomen of colour: Up five points to 72 per cent (with support among both Democrats and independents moving down)
Source:  Reuters/Ipsos poll

 

16th July, 2019
Number of deaths from the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo where the first case has now been reported in the city of Goma: 1,650
Source: WHO

 

15th July, 2019
Death toll from floods in Nepal and India: At least 50 with more than a million displaced
Source: Via The Guardian

 

12th July, 2019
Number of countries or areas in which populations have dropped by one per cent or more since 2010: 27
Source: UN

 

11th July, 2019
Estimated proportion of Pacific Islanders who live below “basic needs poverty lines”: A quarter
Source: UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development

 

10th July, 2019
Estimated number of people living in “extreme” poverty, worldwide: About 420 million people
Source: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

 

8th July, 2019
Magnitude of an earthquake to affect much of southern California on 5th July (the largest in the region in 20 years): 7.1
Source: USGS

 

5th July, 2019
Monthly pay packet of the world’s poorest 10 per cent of workers: $US22
Source: ILO

 

4th July, 2019
Rate at which the Amazon underwent deforestation last month: One-and-a-half soccer fields every minute
Source: Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (via CNN)

 

3rd July, 2019
Number of years since a solar eclipse has been seen from Chile’s Atacama Desert (where a total eclipse was seen on Tuesday): 427

 

2nd July, 2019
Number of refugees who need urgent resettlement in 2020, according to UNHCR: More than 1.4 million

 

1st July, 2019
Number of years since Japanese fishermen last commercially hunted whales (and are about to resume after the nation withdrew from the International Whaling Commission): More than 30

 

28th June, 2019
Arrests in Ethiopia following an attempted coup attempt, according to state TV: Almost 250
Source: Reuters

 

27th June, 2019
Proportion of global drug deaths caused by opioids in 2017 (the latest figures available): Two-thirds
Source: World Drug Report

 

26th June, 2019
Expected temperature in France this week (a record high) as Europe experiences a heatwave: 45 degrees Celsius
Source: Météo-France (via The Guardian)

 

25th June, 2019
Number of asylum applications in the EU from Venezuelans between January and May: 18,400 (roughly twice that of the previous year)
Source: European Asylum Support Office (via Reuters)

 

24th June, 2019
Proportion of schools now closed in conflict-affected English-speaking areas of Cameroon: More than 80 per cent
Source: UNICEF

 

21st June, 2019
Proportion of people with epilepsy in developing countries who UN health experts say are not getting the care they need: More than seven in 10
Source: WHO

 

20th June, 2019
Number of people forced to flee their home every minute during 2018, globally: 25
Source: UNHCR

 

19th June, 2019
Number of people who have gained access to drinking water since 2000, globally: 1.8 billion
Source: UNICEF-WHO report

 

18th June, 2019
Number of children who have died in India’s Bihar state after an outbreak of suspected viral encephalitis: More than 90
Source: BBC

 

17th June, 2019
Number of women and newborns who are dying every two hours from complications and childbirth and pregnancy in conflict affected Yemen: One and six
Source: UNICEF

 

14th June, 2019
Number of votes received by Boris Johnson, candidate for Conservative Party leader and next UK Prime Minister in first ballot of Tory MPs: 114 (compared to 43 given to nearest rival Jeremy Hunt)
Source: BBC

 

13th June, 2019
Number of suspected cases of measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the first four-and-a-half months of 2019: 87,000
Source: DRC Health Ministry (via Al Jazeera)

 

12th June, 2019
Score in the FIFA Women’s World Cup game between the US and Thailand (the competition’s biggest ever victory): 13-0 to the US

 

11th June, 2019
Number of plant species lost from the wild in the last 250 years: 571
Source: Scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Stockholm University (via BBC)

 

7th June, 2019
Number of new but curable sexually transmitted disease infections every day, globally: A million
Source: WHO

 

6th June, 2019
Number of Allied men landed on the beaches of Normandy during the D-Day landings in June, 1944: Almost 175,000 in 5,333 ships and landing craft
Source: History on the Net

 

5th June, 2019
Number of measles cases in the US so far this year (this highest since 1994): 971
Source: CDC

 

4th June, 2019
Temperature in Churu, in the Indian state of Rajasthan, on Sunday, as the country faces a heatwave: 50.8 degrees Celsius
Source: Via BBC

 

3rd June, 2019
Number of women in South Africa’s new cabinet (a new record): Half
Source: Via CNN

 

31st May, 2019
Number of children aged under five who die annually of lower respiratory infections caused by second-hand smoke: More than 60,000
Source: WHO

 

30th May, 2019
Rise in Australia’s minimum wage: $21.60 a week
Source: Fair Work Commission

 

29th May, 2019
Number of teachers involved in a mass walkout in New Zealand on Wednesday: 50,000
Source: Guardian

 

28th May, 2019
Number of people who have died trying to climb Mount Everest in Nepal in this year’s climbing season: 11 (the latest on Monday)
Source: CNN

 

27th May, 2019
Number of people eligible to vote in European Union parliamentary elections: More than 400 million

 

24th May, 2019
Size of the payout awarded to Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush after he won a defamation case over allegations published in an Australian newspaper (a record for the country): Almost $A2.9 million

 

23rd May, 2019
Proportion of some 13,000 companies worldwide that say gender diversity in management improved their business: About six in 10
Source: ILO report

 

22nd May, 2019
Percentage of Australian men, aged 16 to 24, who believe many women who’ve said they’d been raped had instead led the man on and subsequently had regrets: Almost a third
Source: National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS) Youth report

 

21st May, 2019
Rise in the percentage of British people from ethnic minorities who face discrimination from January, 2016, to February, 2019: From 58 per cent to 71 per cent
Source: Opinium poll via The Guardian

 

20th May, 2019
Percentage of Americans who say there is at least some discrimination against evangelical Christians/Muslims/Jews in their country: 50 per cent/82 per cent/64 per cent
Source: Pew Research

 

17th May, 2019
Number of pieces of plastic rubbish found on the remote Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean, according to a scientific survey: Estimated 414 million
Source: Nature

 

16th May, 2019
Amount needed for post cyclone reconstruction in Mozambique: $US3.2 billion
Source: Government officials quoted in Mozambique media

 

15th May, 2019
Percentage of people in eight EU states who think “all is well” with regard to immigration in Europe: Three per cent
Source: YouGov poll via Reuters

 

14th May, 2019
Percentage of Japanese people who support the idea of a woman becoming the country’s emperor: 76 per cent
Source: Nikkei Business Daily poll

 

13th May, 2019
Number of human rights defenders and activists killed in Colombia in the first four months of 2019: 51
Source: OHCHR

 

10th May, 2019
Number of people suffering “chronic undernourishment” in the ‘Near East and North Africa’ region which spans the area from Morocco to Oman: More than 52 million
Source: FAO

 

9th May, 2019
Years since Britain last passed a week without using coal power (it did so again on Wednesday): 137
Source: Via The Guardian

 

8th May, 2019
Percentage of South Africans who are dissatisfied with their country’s democracy: 64 per cent
Source: Pew Research

 

7th May, 2019
Amount Australian taxpayers give to charities: 0.36 per cent (down from 0.4 per cent in 2014-15)
Source: Community Council for Australia report

 

6th May, 2019
Projected size of the food crop in North Korea in 2018-19: 4.9 million metric tonnes (the lowest since 2008-09)
Source: FAO/WFP

 

3rd May, 2019
Rise in number of sexual assault cases across the US military in 2018: Almost 38 per cent
Source: Pentagon report (via CNN)

 

2nd May, 2019
Number of Venezuelans who fled into Brazil on foot on 30th April alone: Some 850 (compared to an average of 250 to 300)
Source: Brazilian Government (as quoted on Reuters)

 

1st May, 2019
Number of people facing a food security crisis in Angola: 2.3 million
Source: UNICEF

 

30th April, 2019
Number of people infected by measles in US this year (the highest total since the disease was eliminated in 2000): More than 700
Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

 

29th April, 2019
Number of Indonesian electoral staff who have reportedly died due to overwork in the wake of voting in the country’s presidential election on 17th April: More than 270
Source: ABC

 

26th April, 2019
Number of publicly listed US companies now valued at $US1 trillion (after Microsoft joined the club): Three
Source: Guardian

 

24th April, 2019
Number of years United Arab Emirates woman Munira Abdulla spent in a coma after being injured in a road traffic accident before waking up: 27
Source: BBC

 

23rd April, 2019
Number of classrooms damaged or destroyed in Mozambique due to the impact of Cyclone Idai in April: 3,400
Source: UNICEF

 

18th April, 2019
Proportion of England which is owned by less than one per cent of the population, some 25,000 landowners: More than half
Source: Guardian

 

17th April, 2019
Number of people who have fled Nicaragua in fear of their lives during the past year as the country faces a “deep sociopolitical crisis”: More than 60,000
Source: UNHCR

 

16th April, 2019
Increase in the number of measles cases seen worldwide in the first three months of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018: Triple
Source: WHO

 

15th April, 2019
Number of times the first trailer for the ninth and final film in the Star Wars saga, The Rise of Skywalker, was viewed in the first 24 hours of its release: More than 16 million
Source: ABC

 

12th April, 2019
Proportion of women who feel they have no choice but to agree to their partner’s sexual demands in a survey of women across 51 countries: More than four in 10
Source: UNFPA

 

11th April, 2019
Cost of lack of sleep to the Australian economy, annually: $A26.2 billion
Source: Inquiry into Sleep Health Awareness in Australia

 

10th April, 2019
Amount by which cherry blossom tourism boosts the Japanese economy: $US2.7 billion
Source: Bloomberg

 

8th April, 2019
Increase in global average life expectancy since the year 2000: From 66.5 years in 72 years
Source: WHO

 

5th April, 2019
Number of overseas-born people living in Australia in 2018: More than seven million
Source: ABS

 

4th April, 2019
Percentage of Russian households who cannot afford to own two pairs of shoes (figures which are disputed by the Kremlin): 35.4 per cent
Source: Russian statistics agency Rosstat via BBC

 

3rd April, 2019
Depth of the “world’s deepest pool” expected to open in Mszczonow, Poland, later this year: 45 metres
Source: Via CNN

 

2nd April, 2019
Percentage of people, globally, facing food crises who are living in countries with conflict: 60 per cent
Source: UN

 

1st April, 2019
Percentage of Nigerians who plan to emigrate from their country in the next five years: 45 per cent
Source: Pew Research Center

 

29th March, 2019
Percentage of 28.8 million Venezuelans who live in poverty: 94 per cent
Source: Reuters citing UN document

 

28th March, 2019
Amount of a settlement agreed by OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma with the US state of Oklahoma following accusations it fuelled the opioid abuse epidemic in the US: $US270 million
Source: NBC

 

27th March, 2019
Number of confirmed planets detected around stars, known as exoplanets: Almost 4,000
Source: NASA Exoplanet Archive

 

26th March, 2019
Number of UN staff members from various agencies currently under arrest or being detained in various countries around the world (including several being held with charges being made explicit): About 20
Source: UN

 

25th March, 2019
Number of people who have signed a petition asking the British Government to revoke Article 50 and reconsider its plans to leave the EU: More than 5.3 million (as of 12am AEST)
Source: UK Government

 

22nd March, 2019
Economic costs of damage caused by Fall armyworm across Africa since 2016: Up to $US3 billion
Source: FAO

 

21st March, 2019
Size of the third fine given to Google by the EU for hindering competition: €1.5 billion
Source: CNN

 

20th March, 2019
Number of years before England runs ourt of water thanks to factors including population growth, poor water management and climate change: 25
Source: James Bevan, chief executive of the Environment Agency

 

19th March, 2019
Number of music tracks uploaded to MySpace which have been lost as the social media network lost every piece of content uploaded before 2016: More than 50 million
Source: The Guardian

 

18th March, 2019
Number of countries where student “climate strikes” took place on Friday, 15th March: More than 100
Source: Reports

 

15th March, 2019
Change in the proportion of Australians who live as a “couple family with children”, 1996-2016: 54 per cent to 49 per cent
Source: ABS

 

14th March, 2019
Amount of money the UN is seeking to help Syrians living a “razor-edge existence” inside and outside the war-torn country: $US8.8 billion
Source: UN

 

13th March, 2019
Number of species facing “almost certain extinction” without conservation intervention: More than 1,200
Source: Australia’s University of Queensland and the Wildlife Conservation Society project (as quoted on The Guardian)

 

12th March, 2019
Number of children estimated to be killed annually due to the use of shoddy or “fake” drugs for malaria, pnuemonia and other diseases: At least 300,000
Source: Dr Joel Breman, co-author of a report published in American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (as quoted in CNN)

 

8th March, 2019
Proportion of girls in Australia staying in school until Year 12 (final year) in 2018 compared with 1969: 89 per cent compared with 24 per cent
Source: ABS

 

7th March, 2019
Number of youth living in fragile and conflict affected states, worldwide: Estimated 600 million
Source: UN

 

6th March, 2019
Number of migrants who crossed the US-Mexican border without authorisation in Febraury (the highest number in that month for 12 years): More than 76,000
Source: US Customs and Border Protection (via Newsweek)

 

5th March, 2019
Number of children living with disabilities, worldwide: Estimated 93 million
Source: UN

 

4th March, 2019
Amount of global gross domestic product spent on health: 10 per cent
Source: WHO

 

1st March, 2019
Number of states that have been able to declare their lands mine-free since the UN Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention came into force on 1st March, 1999: 31
Source: UN

 

28th February, 2019
Estimated umber of children who identity as being in gangs in England (a figure believed conservative): 37,000
Source: Children’s Commissioner for England

 

27th February, 2019
Number of visa applications refused by the US in 2018 due to US President Donald Trump’s travel ban: More than 37,000
Source: US State Department (via Reuters)

 

26th February, 2019
Percentage of UK university students who say they had encountered unwelcome sexual behaviour ranging from receiving explicit messages to rape: 53 per cent
Source: Brook/Dig-In survey (via The Guardian)

 

25th February, 2019
Amount Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in a pre-election promise, has pledged to a 10 year program to reduce Australia’s emissions: $AUD2 billion

 

22nd February, 2019
Rise in number of anti-Semitic attacks in France, 2017-2018: Up 74 per cent (from 311 to 541)
Source: BBC

 

21st February, 2019
Rate at which the population of Egypt is growing (sparking a new campaign to encourage people to have less children): 2.6 million annually (it’s now estimated at 97.5 million)
Source: Via Reuters

 

20th February, 2019
Estimated amount Australians spent on illegal drugs including methylamphetamines, cocaine, MDMA and heroin in the year to August, 2018: More than $AUD9.3 billion
Source: ACIC

 

19th February, 2019
Number of people, worldwide, who work in small scale gold mining, often dangerous work: 15 million (including 4.5 million women and more than 600,00 children)
Source: UNEP

 

18th February, 2019
Number of former Islamic State fighters captured by US-backed forces in Syria that US President Donald Trump has asked the EU to take and put on trial: 800

 

15th February, 2019
Number of young adults and children in Madagascar who have died of the measles since October: At least 922
Source: WHO

 

14th February, 2019
US national debt: More than $US22 trillion
Source: US Treasury Department via TIME

 

13th February, 2019
Estimated number of people who die from eating contaminated food annually worldwide: 420,000
Source: WHO

 

12th February, 2019
Estimated number of Islamic State fighters in the small area the terror group still controls in Syria: 1,000 to 1,500
Source: US General Joseph Votel, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, as quoted in TIME.

 

11th February, 2019
Proportion of insect species which may face extinction in the next few decades, globally: More than 40 per cent
Source: Study published in Biological Conservation

 

8th February, 2019
Amount of debris in the Iraqi city of Mosul alone which must be “made safe” from explosives following its recapture from the so-called Islamic State: 7.6 million tonnes
Source: UN Mine Action Service

 

7th February, 2019
Number of children killed by their parents or guardians in Australia between 2000-01 to 2011-12: 284
Source: Australian Institute of Criminology report

 

6th February, 2019
Proportion of young people aged 15 to 24 globally who are online: 70.6 per cent (94 per cent in developed countries/more than 65 per cent in developing countries)
Source: UNICEF

 

5th February, 2019
Number of women killed by cervical cancer, worldwide, annually despite it being one of the most preventable and curable forms of the disease: More than 300,000
Source: WHO

 

4th February, 2019
Number of human trafficking cases recorded worldwide in 2016 (latest data available): More than 25,000
Source: UNODC

 

1st February, 2019
Number of months in which Australia’s mean temperature exceeded 30 degrees Celsius since records began in 1910: 1 (January, 2019)
Source: Bureau of Meteorology

 

31st January, 2019
Number of unprovoked shark bites, worldwide, in 2018: 66 (down from 88 in 2017)
Source: International Shark Attack File

 

30th January, 2019
Number of disabled Afghans who sought assistance for the first time at physical rehabilitation centres in Afghanistan run by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2018: More than 12,000 (a record number)
Source: ICRC

 

29th January, 2019
Number of people still missing following the collapse of a tailings dam at a mining complex in Brazil on Friday (as of Monday afternoon): 292
Source: The Guardian

 

25th January, 2019
Amount of electronic waste being thrown away each year: 50 million tonnes
Source: Joint UN report – ‘A New Circular Vision for Electronics – Time for a Global Reboot’

 

23rd January, 2019
Homicides recorded in Mexico in 2018 (a new record): 28,816 (up 15 per cent on the previous year)
Source: The Guardian

 

22nd January, 2019
Number of international tourists, worldwide, in 2018: 1.4 billion (two years ahead of forecasts)
Source: UNWTO

 

21st January, 2019
Proportion of Australians with a psychological or intellectual disability who experienced physical violence in 2016: One in eight
Source: ABS

 

18th January, 2019
Proportion of UN staffers who say they experienced sexual harassment in the past two years: One in three
Source: TIME

 

17th January, 2019
Number of people killed in ethnic violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo over just three days in mid-December: At least 890
Source: UN

 

16th January, 2019
Number of people in Yemen who received emergency food aid and vouchers from the UN in December: 9.5 million
Source: WFP

 

15th January, 2019
Amount coffee farmers in Ethiopia receive from each cup of coffee consumed in the West after a slump in prices: Less than one cent
Source: Reuters

 

14th January, 2019
Proportion of Americans who believe most immigrants are in the US legally (which is true): 45 per cent
Source: Pew Research

 

11th January, 2019
Number of new permanent residents Canada is looking to add in the next three years: More than one million
Source: CNN

 

10th January, 2019
Amount by which the annual national mean temperature in Australia was above the average in 2018 (making it the country’s third hottest year on record): 1.14 degrees Celsius
Source: Bureau of Meteorology

 

8th January, 2019
Number of times a 5th January tweet by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, set to become the first private passenger in space, was retweeted (setting a new record): At least 4.3 million
Source: ABC

 

7th January, 2019
Number of blind people worldwide: 39 million
Source: WHO

 

4th January, 2019
Amount raised in Australia by street fundraisers in 2018: More than $120 million
Source: ABC

 

3rd January, 2019
Number of Americans dying from an opioid overdose every day: More than 115
Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse via USA Today

 

2nd January, 2019
Size of the global debt from 2017: $US184 trillion
Source: IMF

 

31st December, 2018
Percentage of Americans who personally own a gun: Three in 10
Source: Pew Research

 

24th December, 2018
Number of babies celebrating their first Christmas in Australia: 311,104
Source: Via McCrindle

 

21st December, 2018
Number of migrants deported from Europe to Libya since early 2017 and placed in detention there: About 29,000
Source: Joint UNSMIL/OHCHR report

 

20th December, 2018
Change in proportion of the world’s Catholics who live in Europe: From 65 per cent in 1910 to 24 per cent in 2010
Source: Pew Research

 

19th December, 2018
Increase in crimes committed by over 65s in South Korea in the past five years: 45 per cent
Source: CNN

 

18th December, 2018
Number of people killed in clashes between farmers and semi-nomadic herders since 2016 in Nigeria: More than 3,600
Source: Amnesty report

 

17th December, 2018
Number of children in Syria who have only known war since their birth: About four million (half of the nation’s children)
Source: UNICEF

 

14th December, 2018
Amount of cash accidentally destroyed or lost in Australia: Estimated up to $AUD7.6 billion
Source: Reserve Bank of Australia

 

13th December, 2018
Benefit to the economy in the Australian state of Victoria for every person that walks 20 minutes to work and back: $AUD8.48
Source: Victoria Walks (based on a Queensland Government study)

 

12th December, 2018
Speed with which the Dracula ant can snap its mandibles (in the fastest animal movement on Earth): Up to 90 metres per second (more than 200mph)
Source: The Guardian

 

11th December, 2018
Amount lost in bribes and stolen through corruption globally every year: $US3.6 trillion
Source: UN

 

10th December, 2018
Rise in number of Chinese nationals applying for asylum in Australia, 2016-17 to 2017-18: Up 311 per cent (from 2,269 to 9,315)
Source: ABC

 

7th December, 2018
Number of migrant workers, worldwide: 164 million
Source: ILO

 

3rd December, 2018
Drop in the number of missing from the Californian wildfires: To 25 from a high of more than 1,200
Source: BBC

 

30th November, 2018
Number of adolescents who will die each day of AIDS by 2030 despite a slowdown in the epidemic: About 80
Source: UNICEF

 

29th November, 2018
Decline in Australia’s platypus population since European settlement: Up to 30 per cent
Source: UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science

 

28th November, 2018
Number of verified children casualties – killed or maimed – in the Syrian civil war: At least 7,000
Source: UN

 

27th November, 2018
Number of Australian public servants who say they witnessed corrupt behaviour in a single year: 4,395
Source: Australian Public Service Commission via ABC

 

26th November, 2018
Percentage of people living with HIV, globally, who were aware of their status in 2017: 75 per cent (up from 66 per cent in 2015)
Source: UNAIDS

 

23rd November, 2018
Proportion of young women in the UK who have a mental illness: Almost one in four (23.9 per cent)
Source: NHS

 

22nd November, 2018
Number of children aged under five who have died from extreme hunger in Yemen since 2015: Estimated 85,000
Source: Save the Children

 

21st November, 2018
Weight of plastic waste found in the stomach of a dead whale washed ashore on Indonesia: Six kilograms (including 115 cups, four bottles, 25 bags and footwear)
Source: BBC

 

20th November, 2018
Percentage of human trafficking victims worldwide who are female: 71 per cent
Source: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

 

19th November, 2018
Number of people still missing following wildfires in the US state of California – the worst in the state’s history (as of 18th November): Almost 1,300 (with 79 confirmed deaths)
Source: ABCNews

 

16th November, 2018
Number of people in sub-Saharan Africa who die each year due to substandard or fake anti-malarial drugs: Between 64,000 and 158,000
Source: Reuters

 

15th November, 2018
Temperature reached by scientists at China’s Institute of Plasma Physics in developing an artificial sun: 100 million degrees Celsius
Source: ABC

 

14th November, 2018
Current death toll from Californian wildfires, the worst in the state’s history: 42 (and expected to rise)
Source: New York Times

 

13th November, 2018
Proportion of Americans who met Federal Government’s new physical health guidelines: Less than one in three
Source: USAToday

 

12th November, 2018
Amount of time it took Chinese internet giant Alibaba to hit $US1 billion in sales after opening on it’s annual ‘Singles Day’: 85 seconds
Source: BBC

 

9th November, 2018
Number of mass shooting events in US this year: 307
Source: Gun Violence Archive

 

8th November, 2018
Profits amassed by international crime gangs in conflict zones: $31.5 billion
Source: Tuesday Reitano, Deputy Director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, in an address to the UN Security Council.

 

7th November, 2018
Number of accounts suspended by Twitter in the fight against terrorism in the past 20 months: More than 1.2 million
Source: Via ABC

 

6th November, 2018
Globally, number of people killed in tsunamis, 1998-2017: More than 250,000
Source: UNISDR

 

5th November, 2018
Increase in number of Australians aged over 65 years: From 14 per cent in 2011 to 16 per cent in 2016
Source: ABS

 

2nd November, 2018
Percentage of people in Armenia and Latvia who say being a Christian is at least “somewhat important” to their national identity: 82 per cent/11 per cent
Source: Pew Research Center

 

1st November, 2018
Number of children remaining on Nauru as part of Australia’s offshore immigration detention program: 40 (down from 52 last week)
Source: Australian Government sources quoted on the ABC

 

31st October, 2018
Number of people migrating to cities around the world every week: About 1.4 million
Source: UN

 

30th October, 2018
Decline in global wildlife populations over the past 40 years: 60 per cent
Source: WWF

 

29th October, 2018
Size of a new fund for water infrastructure and drought-related projects proposed by the Australian Government: $A3.9 billion
Source: Prime Minister Scott Morrison

 

26th October, 2018
Proportion of major peace treaty mediators between 1990 and 2017 who were women: Two per cent
Source: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

 

25th October, 2018
Estimated cost to economies of the Ebola outbreak that ravaged parts of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia in West Africa in 2014 and killed at least 11,000 people: $US53 billion
Source: Study quoted on Reuters

 

24th October, 2018
Number of children aged under five who died every day of “extreme hunger and disease” in Yemen last year: 130 (almost 50,000 across the year)
Source: UNOCHA

 

23rd October, 2018
Length of the world’s longest bridge which connects Hong Kong to Macau and mainland China (and opens this week): 55 kilometres
Source: SBS

 

22nd October, 2018
Percentage of Australian mortgage holders who are experiencing “mortgage stress”: 20.8 per cent (About 949,000)
Source: Roy Morgan

 

19th October, 2018
Death toll in Florida, US, after Hurricane Michael struck the state’s “panhandle” last week: At least 20
Source: TIME

 

18th October, 2018
Amount by which the world population is expected to grow by 2050: 2.2 billion
Source: UNFPA

 

17th October, 2018
Number of children aged under five who are chronically malnourished around the world: About 155 million (23 per cent)
Source: UN

 

16th October, 2018
Price achieved by a 73-year-old bottle of Romanee-Conti Burgundy at an auction in New York (the highest price ever paid for a bottle of wine): $US558,000
Source: CNBC

 

15th October, 2018
Percentage of sub-Saharan Africans who see the increasing use of the internet as having a “good influence” on education: 79 per cent
Source: Pew Research Center

 

12th October, 2018
Size of Syria’s wheat crop this year (the lowest in three decades, thanks to war and drought): 1.2 million tonnes (compared with a pre-war average of 4.1 million tonnes a year)
Source: FAO

 

11th October, 2018
Range of the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight, which takes off from Singapore and heads to New York, on Thursday: More than 15,000 kilometres (in just under 19 hours)
Source: BBC

 

10th October, 2018
Number of people who are undernourished in North Korea: More than 10 million (almost 40 per cent of the population)
Source: WFP

 

9th October, 2018
Number of postal outlets located worldwide: More than 600,000
Source: Universal Postal Union

 

8th October, 2018
Number of civilians killed and injured in Afghanistan between 1st January and 30th September this year whose death was caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs): 3634
Source: UNAMA

 

5th October, 2018
Number of international NGOs reportedly being expelled from Pakistan: 18
Source: Reuters

 

4th October, 2018
Median percentage of people in 25 nations who said they had “no confidence” in US President Donald Trump: 70 per cent
Source: Pew

 

3rd October, 2018
Percentage of items that we purchase that are thrown away within six months: 99 per cent
Source: UN-Habitat

 

2nd October, 2018
Number of people who have fled Venezula since 2015: Almost two million
Source: UNHCR

 

1st October, 2018
Number of people in South Sudan now facing “crisis levels of hunger”: More than six million
Source: FAO

 

28th September, 2018
Proportion of the world’s deaths which are due to preventable chronic illnesses each year: About 70 per cent (41 million people)
Source: WHO

 

27th September, 2018
Number of nuclear weapons, worldwide: About 14,500
Source: UN

 

26th September, 2018
Number of Syrians who have returned from Lebanon so far this year: 50,000
Source: Reuters

 

25th September, 2018
Number of elections for jobs ranging from city councillor to MP Canadian John Turmel has contested since 1979: 95 times (he’s now contesting his 96th election)
Source: The Guardian

 

24th September, 2018
Number of people, globally who died from alcohol abuse in 2016: About three million (one in 20 deaths worldwide)
Source: WHO

 

21st September, 2018
Proportion of world’s out-of-school youth who live in conflict and disaster zones: About a third
Source: UNICEF

 

20th September, 2018
Rise in cocaine production in Colombia in 2017 to record levels: About 31 per cent to almost 1,400 tonnes
Source: UNODC

 

19th September, 2018
Drop in US refugee intake in 2019: From a cap of 45,000 in 2018 to 30,000 in 2019
Source: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

 

18th September, 2018
Rate at which a child under 15 died somewhere in the world from preventable causes in 2017: One every five seconds
Source: UN report

 

17th September, 2018
Number of children found to be living in poverty in UK: 4.5 million
Source: Social Metrics Commission

 

14th September, 2018
Amount Amazon head Jeff Bezos is reportedly putting into a charitable fund he’s established to help the homeless and set up a network of schools: $US2 billion
Source: BBC

 

13th September, 2018
Number of new cancer cases expected worldwide this year: More than 18 million
Source: IARC

 

12th September, 2018
Proportion of Australians who say they have been sexually harassed at some point in their lifetimes: 71 per cent
Source: Australian Human Rights Commission

 

11th September, 2018
Ordered to evaucate from coastal communities in South Carolina and Virginia as Hurricane Florence bears down on the coast: More than a million people.

 

10th September, 2018
Amount Australians lost gambling in 2015-16: Almost $24 billion
Source: Queensland Government data

 

7th September, 2018
Proportion of US adults who use Facebook who say they have taken a break from the service for several weeks or more in the past year: 42 per cent
Source: Pew Research Center

 

6th September, 2018
Proportion of adults worldwide who are physically inactive: 28 per cent (1.4 billion people)
Source: WHO

 

5th September, 2018
Amount which China has said it will spend in Africa in investment, aid and loans over the next three years: $US60 billion
Source: The Guardian

 

4th September, 2018
Proportion of Australian women who said they had been diagnosed by a doctor of psychologist with anxiety or depression: 46 per cent
Source: Women’s Health Survey by Jean Hailes for Women’s Health.

 

3rd September, 2018
Number of asylum seekers and migrants living in shelters on the Greek island of Lesvos which were built to accommodate 2,000 people: More than 7,000
Source: UNHCR

 

31st August, 2018
Official interest rates in Argentina after they were raised in a measure to help restore confidence in the country’s plunging currency: 60 per cent
Source: FT

 

30th August, 2018
Proportion of Australians who smoked in 2014-15 compared with 2001: 14.5 per cent/22.4 per cent
Source: ABS

 

29th August, 2018
Rise in Puerto Rico’s official death toll from Hurricane Maria which struck the US island territory in September, 2017: From 64 to 2,975
Source: BBC

 

28th August, 2018
Number of Australians dying every month in accidental drug overdoses: A record 142
Source: The Penington Institute

 

27th August, 2018
Amount of time during his presidency US President Donald Trump has spent at Trump properties: A third
Source: Newsweek report

 

24th August, 2018
Percentage of Americans who believe US President Donald Trump has definitely set a “high moral standard for the presidency”: 27 per cent
Source: Pew Research Center

 

23rd August, 2018
Estimated number of people who could die from tobacco-related diseases this century: Up to a billion
Source: WHO/UNDP report

 

22nd August, 2018
Number of fake pages, groups and accounts deleted by Facebook with ties to Russia and Iran for attempting to exert political influence in the US, UK, Middle East and Latin America: 652
Source: Facebook

 

21st August, 2018
Number of people infected with measles in Europe in first half of 2018 (a record high): More than 41,000
Source: WHO

 

20th August, 2018
Cost to Australia’s public and private hospitals of patient complications: At least $5 billion a year
Source: The Grattan Institute

 

17th August, 2018
Number of displaced people living in sub-Saharan nations in 2017 who forced to leave their homes due to conflict: 18.4 million (up from 14.1 million in 2016)
Source: UNHCR via Pew Research

 

16th August, 2018
Number of news organisations which are set to publis editorials on 16th August, 2018, pushing back against US President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media and defending freedom of the press: Almost 350
Source: The Guardian

 

15th August, 2018
Number of so-called Islamic State fighters who remained in Iraq and Syria: 20,000 to 30,000
Source: UN report

 

14th August, 2018
Drop in the value of the Turkish lira (compared to the US dollar) so far this year: 45 per cent
Source: The Guardian

 

13th August, 2018
The closest the Parker Solar Probe will be from the Sun during its seven year mission (the closest any man-made object will have yet been): 3.8 million miles
Source: NASA

 

10th August, 2018
Revised death toll from Hurricane Maria which struck Puerto Rico in September last year: More than 1,400 (up from the initial toll of 64; some experts have claimed more than 4,600 deaths occurred).
Source: BBC

 

9th August, 2018
Proportion of the world’s population who belong to Indigenous people groups/proportion of world’s poorest people who are Indigenous: Five per cent/15 per cent
Source: UN

 

8th August, 2018
Size of the Mendocino Complex fire which has ravaged northern California in the US: 117,639 hectares (making it the biggest in the state’s history)
Source: Via BBC

 

7th August, 2018
Expected population of Australia at about 11pm on 7th August: 25,000,000
Source: ABS

 

6th August, 2018
Amount of a new Australian Government package to help farmers who are facing severe drought in eastern Australia: $140 million

 

3rd August, 2018
Market value of tech company Apple on the US stock market: More than $US1 trillion (the first publicly-listed company in the US to pass this mark).

 

2nd August, 2018
How often the average Briton checks their mobile phone: Every 12 minutes
Source: Ofcom study (via The Guardian)

 

1st August, 2018
Number of asylum claims lodged by Nicaraguans in Costa Rica since April: Almost 8,000 (with an additional 15,000 being given appointments for later registration)
Source: UNHCR

 

31st July, 2018
Amount of time Australian men and women spend on housework each week: 13.3 hours/20.4 hours
Source: The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey.

 

30th July, 2018
Proportion of people killed, worldwide, in selfie-related incidents who died by drowning: 42 per cent 
Source: Study in Journal Agent

 

27th July, 2018
Drop in market value of Facebook shares in the US on 26th July, 2018: $US120 billion (down 19 per cent)
Source: BBC

 

26th July, 2018
Number of new biosphere reserves around the world designated by UNESCO on 25th July: 24
Source: UNESCO

 

25th July, 2018
Highest ever temperature recorded in Japan: 41.1 degrees Celcius (105.98F) – recorded on 21st July.
Source: Japan Meteorological Agency via CNN

 

24th July, 2018
Increase in homicides in Mexico in the first half of 2018: Up 16 per cent to 15,973
Source: Mexican Government via The Guardian

 

23rd July, 2018
Percentage of Americans who say the Senate should confirm the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court: 41 per cent
Source: Pew Research

 

20th July, 2018
Number of people evacuated from the Syrian towns of Foah and Kafraya this week after enduring an almost three year siege there: 6,900
Source: OCHA

 

19th July, 2018
Number of children infected with HIV last year: 180,000
Source: UNAIDS

 

18th July, 2018
Global drop in investment in renewable energy last year: Down seven per cent to $318 billion
Source: IEA

 

17th July, 2018
Possible cost of rising trade tensions between the US and the rest of the world to the global economy: $US430 billion
Source: IMF via The Guardian

 

16th July, 2018
Number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in first six months of 2018 (a record high): 1,692 (3,430 injured)
Source: UNAMA

 

13th July, 2018
Increase among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females aged 15 years and over who have achieved a certificate, diploma or degree, 2008 to 2014-15: Up 45 per cent
Source: ABS

 

12th July, 2018
Percentage of North Korean population that need humanitarian assistance: 40 per cent (more than 10 million people)
Source: UN

 

11th July, 2018
Current world population: 7.6 billion
Source: UN

 

10th July, 2018
Believed age of an African coin found off the coast of Australia’s Arnhem Land (which if confirmed would make it among the oldest foreign artefacts ever found in Australia): Estimated 1,100 to 1,200-years-old
Source: Via ABC

 

9th July, 2018
Proportion of Australians who suffer ‘social jet lag” due to a lack of sleep: Almost one in three
Source: Sleep Medicine study (via SBS)

 

6th July, 2018
Drop in US teens, aged 16 to 19 years, with summer jobs: From 58 per cent in 1978 to 35 per cent in 2017
Source: Pew Research

 

5th July, 2018
Number of children now in need for humanitarian aid in war-torn Yemen: 11 million (more than the population of Switzerland)
Source: UNICEF

 

4th July, 2018
Rise in sexual assault victims in Australia, 2016-2017: Up eight per cent (to almost 25,000 – an eight year high)
Source: ABS

 

3rd July, 2018
Death toll of would-be migrants who have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea so far in 2018: More than 1,000
Source: IOM

 

2nd July, 2018
Value of the four year deal signed by US basketballer LeBron James as he moves from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the LA Lakers: $US154 million
Source: ABC

 

29th June, 2018
Additional amount which the International Labour Organization says needs to be invested in caring for people, including children and older people, by 2030: $US7 trillion
Source: ILO (via The Guardian)

 

28th June, 2018
Number of children recruited or used as combatants in 2017, globally: More than 8,000
Source: CAAC

 

27th June, 2018
Rise in opium production, globally, from 2016-17: 65 per cent
Source: UNODC

 

26th June, 2018
Number of reptiles killed annually by feral cats in Australia: An estimated 649 million
Source: The Conversation

 

25th June, 2018
Decline in Chinese investment in the US during the first five months of 2018: Down 92 per cent on same period in 2017
Source: CNN Money

 

22nd June, 2018
Number of police officers serving with 16 UN missions around the world: More than 11,000
Source: UN

 

21st June, 2018
Number of children reported as suffering from stunted growth due to malnutrition in North Korea in 2017: One in five
Source: UNICEF

 

20th June, 2018
The number of jobs to be lost at Australian telco giant Telstra by the 2022 financial year: 8,000
Source: Telstra

 

19th June, 2018
Value of Australia’s ‘natural capital’ as of 30th June, 2017: $AUD6,413 billion
Source: ABS

 

18th June, 2018
Number of people still listed as officially missing following the eruption of Guatemala’s Fuego volcano in which at least 110 people were killed: 197
Source: CONRED

 

15th June, 2018
Proportion of people, globally, who say they are concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to news: About 54 per cent
Source: 2018 Reuters Institute Digital News Report

 

14th June, 2018
Amount by which global sea levels have increased since 2012 due to a tripling of ice losses from Antarctica : three millimetres
Source: NASA

 

13th June, 2018
Percentage of Americans who believe it is essential the US remain a world leader in space exploration: 72 per cent
Source: Pew Research Center

 

12th June, 2018
Number of people who required humanitarian assistance, worldwide, as at the end of 2017: 141 million
Source: UNOCHA

 

8th June, 2018
Number of alleged drug dealers killed by security forces in a three week crackdown in Bangladesh: 130
Source: UN

 

7th June, 2018
Amount of land now covered by lava as a result of the eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano: About 7.7 square miles (almost 20 square kilometres)
Source: CNN

 

6th June, 2018
Value of edible food waste in Australia annually: $20 billion
Source: Australian Government (via ABC)

 

5th June, 2018
Number of nations which are taking action to address plastic pollution: 50
Source: UN report

 

4th June, 2018
Fine proposed to be levied against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia for breaches of money-laundering and anti-terrorism financing laws in the largest civil penalty in the country’s corporate history (the settlement has still to get court approval): $700 million
Source: AUSTRAC

 

1st June, 2018
Price achieved for the world’s largest freshwater pearl, known as The Sleeping Lion, at an auction in The Netherlands: €374,000
Source: Media reports

 

31st May, 2018
Number of children around the world at risk of poverty, conflict and discimination against girls: More than 1.2 billion (with 153 million facing all three)
Source: Save the Children report

 

30th May, 2018
Number of people who were killed when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico last September (despite the official death toll still standing at 64): More than 4,600
Source: Harvard University study

 

29th May, 2018
Number of people who quit smoking daily in France in 2016-17: A million
Source: Public Health France (via BBC)

 

28th May, 2018
Number of people reportedly killed in Bangladesh in a government anti-drug operation launched this month: At least 70
Source: BBC

 

25th May, 2018
Percentage of Americans who say the US does not have a responsibility to accept refugees: 43 per cent
Source: Pew

 

24th May, 2018
Average distance Australians travel to get to work: 16 kilometres
Source: ABS

 

23rd May, 2018
The number of people leaving the North of Central America as refugees and asylum seekers in 2017: More than 294,000 (up 58 per cent on previous year and 16 times more than in 2011)
Source: UNHCR

 

22nd May, 2018
Increase in land used in opium poppy cultivation in Afganistan, 2016 to 2017: Up 63 per cent (to 328,000 hectares)
Source: UNODC

 

21st May, 2018
Growth in “cyber-abuse” cases reported by adults to the Office of the eSafety Commissioner in Australia: a 95 per cent month-on-month increase since October
Source: ABC

 

18th May, 2018
Height of the ash plume from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano: 9.1 kilometres
Source: UGS

 

17th May, 2018
Estimated number of people who have fled Venezuela between 2015 and 2017: 1.6 million
Source: IOM

 

16th May, 2018
Number of billionaires worldwide, 2017: 2,754 (up 15 per cent)
Source: Wealth-X

 

15th May, 2018
Increase in homelessness in Australia between 2011 and 2016: 14 per cent
Source: Australian Homelessness Monitor

 

14th May, 2018
Proportion of the 11,000 bird species on Earth which are under threat of extinction: One in eight
Source: UN

 

11th May, 2018
Number of babies, worldwide, who are not breastfed following their birth despite its benefits: 7.6 million
Source: UNICEF

 

10th May, 2018
Age of Mahathir Mohamad, shock victor of Malaysian elections and now the oldest elected leader in the world: 92

 

9th May, 2018
Amount of money sent home by migrant workers from Asian nations in 2017: $US256 billion
Source: IFAD

 

8th May, 2018
Number of undocumented migrants from Venezuela who have registered in neighbouring Colombia: More than 200,000
Source: Colombian Government via Reuters

 

7th May, 2018
Magnitude of an earthquake which struck the island of Hawaii on 4th May: 6.9
Source: USGS

 

4th May, 2018
Number of Twitter users, the social media giant is urging to change their passwords after the discovery of a bug: 336 million (all of them)
Source: Twitter

 

3rd May, 2018
Rate of incarceration of Americans at end of 2016: 860 jail inmates for every 100,000 adults (a 20 year low)
Source: Pew Research

 

2nd May, 2018
Estimated number of people worldwide who die every year as a result of exposure to fine particles in polluted air: Seven million
Source: WHO

 

1st May, 2018
Proportion of the world’s workforce which earn livelihoods in the ‘informal’ sector: More than 61 per cent
Source: ILO

 

30th April, 2018
The amount estimated to have been taken by the film Avengers: Infinity War in its opening weekend (which, if true, would set a new global record): $US630 million
Source: BBC

 

27th April, 2018
Number of international students in Australia, as of February: 542,054 enrolments (up 12 per cent on previous year)
Source: Department of Education (via ABC)

 

26th April, 2018
Rise in estimated number of malaria cases, worldwide – 2016 to 2017: From 240,613 to 406,000
Source: WHO

 

24th April, 2018
Number of people given asylum in Europe in 2017: More than 500,000 (with Germany taking 60 per cent)
Source: Eurostat

 

23rd April, 2018
Amount offered by former New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, to cover the lapsed US financial commitment to the Paris agreement on climate change: $US4.5 million
Source: BBC

 

20th April, 2018
Age of Celino Villanueva Jaramillo, believed to be the world’s oldest man when he died in Chile this week: 121 years
Source: The Guardian

 

19th April, 2018
Number of Starbucks stores closing in the US on 29th May for company-wide “racial bias” training: About 8,000
Source: Starbucks

 

18th April, 2018
Percentage of the world’s population who live in areas where air quality is “unhealthy”: At least 95 per cent
Source: State of Global Air report 2018

 

17th April, 2018
Number of Australian companies targeted as part of worldwide suspected Russian state-sponsored cyber attacks last year: Up to 400
Source: Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne (via ABC)

 

16th April, 2018
Number of children abducted by terror group Boko Haram in north-eastern Nigeria since 2013: At least 1,000
Source: UNICEF

 

13th April, 2018
Number of people – drivers, passengers and pedestrians – who die each each on the world’s roads: About 1.3 million
Source: UN

 

11th April, 2018
Amount of C02 emissions, worldwide, accounted for by shipping: 2.2 per cent
Source: International Maritime Organization

 

10th April, 2018
Number of Australian adults in custody including prisons on 30th June, 2017: 41,202 (up six per cent on previous 12 months)
Source: ABS

 

9th April, 2018
Number of people crossing from Venezuela into Brazil daily, many of whom are seeking asylum: Almost 800 a day
Source: UNHCR

 

5th April, 2018
Number of people whose data Facebook may have improperly shared with consultants Cambridge Analytica: Up to 87 million
Source: Facebook via BBC

 

4th April, 2018
Number of children killed or injured, on average, every day due to the conflict in Yemen since March, 2015: Five
Source: UNICEF

 

3rd April, 2018
Volume of space junk estimated to be in Earth’s orbit: More than 7,500 tonnes
Source: ESA

 

29th March, 2018
Number of UN peacekeepers killed last year: 59 (the highest annual toll)
Source: UN

 

28th March, 2018
Age at which compulsory schooling will now begin in France: Three-years-old (down from six)
Source: ABC

 

27th March, 2018
Rise in use of antibiotics, worldwide, between 2000 and 2015: 65 per cent
Source: Washington-based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (via The Guardian)

 

26th March, 2018
Cost of ‘wasted light’ in the US alone: More than $AUD4.1 billion
Source: International Dark Sky Association via ABC

 

23rd March, 2018
Number of people who are living with permanent, war-related impairments as a result of the war in Syria: More than 1.5 million (including 86,000 people who have lost limbs)
Source: UNICEF

 

22nd March, 2018
Number of anti-government protestors killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo over a 13 month period ending in January, 2018: At least 47
Source: UN human rights report

 

21st March, 2018
Predicted growth in the amount of plastic in the ocean by 2030: Three times as much
Source: UK Government’s Foresight Future of the Sea Report

 

20th March, 2018
Loss in value of Facebook stock in US on Monday after news Cambridge Analytica had reportedly accessed information of some 50 million users: About $US37 billion
Source: CNN