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Hard Numbers: Japan's tourism troubles, lockdown delays cost lives, violence in South Sudan, Nigerians lack access to water

99.9: Japan has recorded its steepest drop in tourism in over fifty years, with just 2,900 foreign nationals entering the country last month, a dip of more than 99.9 percent compared to the previous year. Consider that in 2018, the last year for which comprehensive data is available, around 7 percent of Japan's total GDP came from tourism.

300: At least 300 people were killed in South Sudan's Jonglei state in recent days amid ongoing clashes between rival communities. Violence between warring ethnic groups has intensified in recent months despite the signing of a treaty earlier this year aimed at ending the state's enduring civil war.

36,000: Delays in implementing lockdowns across the US to curb the spread of the coronavirus cost tens of thousands of lives, according to new data released by Columbia University. If residents in hard-hit places like New York City, New Orleans and Detroit were ordered to stay home one week earlier, at least 36,000 lives would have been saved, researchers say. Two weeks earlier would have spared 54,000.

60 million: Living through a pandemic is trying, but living through a pandemic when you don't have easy access to clean water is extremely difficult. Some 60 million Nigerians, a third of the population, have to leave their homes to access clean drinking water, complicating efforts to maintain effective sanitation and hygiene needed within families to curb the virus' spread.

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Supporters of the Forever Canadian group, who want Alberta to remain in Canada, wave Canadian flags as they wait for the results of a non-binding referendum on Alberta sovereignty in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada October 19, 2026.
REUTERS/Todd Korol

Alberta is staying in Canada. But the more important results may have come from the nine other questions on the referendum ballot that have received considerably less attention.