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Hard Numbers: Trump’s big birthday present, Sudan’s cash experiment, Iran's war on contraception, communal living in Russia

14 million: The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee on Sunday rang up their biggest single fundraising day ever, hauling in $14million – on the President's birthday.

9: As part of the debt-ridden Sudanese government's plan to reduce the need for costly government subsidies for food and fuel, officials are piloting a new program that will simply give cash payments of about $9 a month directly to its neediest citizens. The move comes as countries around the world look to reduce subsidies.

500,000: Nearly three decades after the collapse of the USSR, more than 500,000 people in St Petersburg, about a tenth of the city's population, still live in dilapidated "communal" apartments dating from the Soviet period. In these "komunalky,"up to 40 people share a single bathroom and kitchen, heightening the risk and fear of COVID-19 transmission.

1: Iran's government is limiting access to contraceptives and vasectomies at state run hospitals, in a bid to boost the country's population growth rate, which has fallen below 1 percent.

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Iran war threatens water access in Middle East
Natalie Johnson, Eileen Zhang

As missiles fly and oil prices soar, the Iran war is exposing another major resource vulnerability in the Middle East: water. Fresh water has been a scarce commodity in a region defined by a dry climate and low rainfall, but attacks on the region’s desalination plants, which convert seawater into drinking water, threaten to open a new front.