Monday, Oct. 01, 2007
Numbers
Correction Appended: Oct. 1, 2007
CHILD MORTALITY
9.7 million
Number of children under age 5 who died in 2006 worldwide--a record low, down from almost 13 million in 1990
19%
Percentage of children under age 5 who died of pneumonia between 2000 and 2003. Undernutrition is the root cause of 53% of deaths in that age group
GAY RIGHTS
195
Number of major U.S. businesses that earned the highest score in the Corporate Equality Index, a Human Rights Campaign metric that rates how employers treat lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees on a scale of 0 to 100. UPS, Yahoo! and MasterCard were among the companies that received top marks
13
Number of businesses that received the top rating when the index was first released, in 2002
MOTORCYCLES
10%
Percentage of motorcyclists in the U.S. who are female. Women make up the fastest-growing segment in the $9.7 billion industry
41
Average age of motorcyclists today, up from 32 in 1990
SKYSCRAPERS
2,625
Expected height in feet (800 m) of the Burj Dubai, a hotel, business and residential complex under construction in the United Arab Emirates. It just surpassed the CN Tower in Toronto, which stands at 1,814 ft. (553 m), as the world's tallest freestanding structure
$4.1 billion
Cost of the Burj Dubai. Workers have already completed 145 of 165 floors, working at a pace of one floor every three days
Sources: UNICEF (2); Human Rights Campaign Foundation (2); Seattle Times (2); CTV News (2)
The original version of this article incorrectly cited FedEx as being one of the companies that received a top score in the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. The company was in fact UPS.