Hard Numbers: Amazon deforestation, South Sudan famine, COVID vaccine protection, Lebanese inflation

Hard Numbers: Amazon deforestation, South Sudan famine, COVID vaccine protection, Lebanese inflation
An aerial view shows a tree at the center of a deforested plot of the Amazon near Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil.
REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

16: Brazil's new plan to save the Amazon promises to curb deforestation, but not too much. Although it would reduce annual forest loss to the average recorded over the past five years, next year's target is still 16 percent higher than the Amazon's total deforestation in 2018, the year before President Jair Bolsonaro — who favors economic development of the rainforest — took office.

7.24 million: Up to 7.24 million people in South Sudan will likely suffer acute food insecurity in the coming months, according to the World Food Programme. The country is one of the UN's top 10 projected global hunger hotspots for this year.

0.008: Fully vaccinated people in the US have a 0.008 percent chance of getting COVID, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials have always warned that vaccination is not 100 percent effective against infection, but that the benefits of inoculation far outweigh the risks.

5: Basic food items in Lebanon are now five times more expensive than two years ago. Lebanon's economic collapse, which began in late 2019, has seen the value of the local currency plunge, raising the prices of everyday items in a nation that imports around 80 percent of the goods it consumes.

More from GZERO Media

Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage gestures as he attends the party's national conference at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, United Kingdom, on September 5, 2025.
REUTERS/Isabel Infantes

Right-wing populist parties are now, for the first time, leading the polls in Europe’s three largest economies.

Graph showing the rise of the missing persons in Mexico from 2000-2024.
Eileen Zhang

Last Saturday, thousands of Mexicans marked the International Day of the Disappeared by taking to the streets of the country’s major cities, imploring the government to do more to find an estimated 130,000 missing persons

Jeff Frampton

Seven warships, a nuclear submarine, over two thousand Marines, and several spy planes. Over the past week, the United States has stacked a serious military footprint off Venezuela’s coast.