Hard Numbers: Sudan’s grim milestone, Vietnam’s deadly typhoon, China’s space plane, Canada’s historic soccer victory
20,000: The United Nations announced Sunday that at least 20,000 people have died during the ongoing war in Sudan, which has raged for over 16 months. It is also the world’s largest displacement crisis, with some 13 million people forced to flee their homes.
14: Super Typhoon Yagi killed at least 14 people in Vietnam after making landfall on Friday, packing heavy rain and high winds. The important port of Hai Phong suffered severe flooding and was without electricity on Sunday, and at least a dozen people are still missing at sea.
268: A mysterious re-launchable Chinese spacecraft returned to Earth on Friday after 268 days in orbit, according to Chinese state media. What exactly it was doing up there isn’t clear, but it appears to have been working on grabbing and releasing small objects in zero-gravity — harder (and more useful for grabbing enemy satellites) than it might sound.
2-1: On Saturday, Canada’s men’s soccer team beat the US 2-1 in a friendly in Kansas City – its first victory on American soil since 1957. It’s another notch in the belt for the Canadian side, which came in a surprise fourth at this year’s Copa America — and another sign of weakness for the US, which crashed out of the Copa in the first round.