Facts & Trends

Students at a Bolivar,Tenn., high school last week elected a classmate with Down syndrome to be homecoming queen.  Kara Marcum, 19, easily beat three other candidates in a victory one teacher chalked up to her considerable personal charm.  Kara also ...

. . . driving with kids, after police got a 911 call about a woman’s screams issuing from a Massachusetts man’s car, and surrounded him.  Instead of finding a woman in distress, officers discovered several goats in the back seat, and ...

THE PROBLEM Congestion caused by commuters carries an annual price tag of $121 billion in wasted time and fuel costs. The average American who drives to work wastes 38 hours in traffic each year. THE INNOVATION City planning authorities increasingly ...

City officials in Chengdu, China, have been painting the city's grass green to make residents think spring is here.The ruse came to light when some residents noticed unpainted patches of yellowish winter grass, and others found the green paint coming off ...

A Paralympic medal winner who spent half her life in a wheelchair has made a miraculous recovery, and now hopes to represent her country in the Olympics.  Monique van der Vorst had been paralyzed from the waist down since the ...

In 2011, the poorest 20 percent of Americans gave 3.2 percent of their income to charity.  The wealthiest 20 percent were far stingier, donating just 1.3 percent.  Researchers say those with less to share may have "higher empathy" because they're ...

The species of bacteria that dominate our guts may strongly affect whether we’re thin or fat. Researchers at Washington University collected samples of gut bacteria from pairs of twins in which one was obese and the other thin. Then they ...

12-year-old Jaxxyn Wood of Kentucky stayed up to 3 a.m. playing computer games and smelled an electrical fire in the kitchen.  He woke his family and got all nine people to evacuate, thus saving their lives ...

The odds are 1 in 4 million that you’ll be on a bridge when it collapses at some time during your life ...

A volcano in the Galapagos Islands erupted for the first time in 33 years, threatening the unique ecosystem that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The island is home to the world’s only colony of pink iguanas; officials said they ...