Pleading Guilty
Percentage of all criminal defendants in the United States who forgo a trial by pleading guilty: 97 Percentage of U.S. convicts exonerated last year who had previously pleaded guilty without a trial: 17
Read moreCategory: Facts & Trends
India’s Dangerous Smog Problem
Toxic air pollution in the Indian capital of Delhi has given some 2.2 million children irreversible lung damage, according to a 2010 study from the Kolkata-based Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute that surfaced this month. The report has raised fresh concerns in a country where carbon emissions are forecast to increase for decades.
Read moreCORAL-REEF DECLINE
Heat and acidity are also bad for coral reefs, which have declined by 40% in some areas since the 1970s. Coral organisms reproduce just once a year, making it hard for reefs to bounce back.
Read moreGreat Art
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum is already home to an artist’s rendition of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” made from burned toast, and now comes a recent version by Laura Bell of Roscommon, MI — da Vinci’s masterpiece made with clothes-dryer lint. Bell said she did about 800 hours of laundry of various-colored towels to obtain lint of the […]
Read moreNot Becoming A Statistic
Trameka Pope has a lot to be proud of. The 19-year-old was homeless as a child and had a daughter right before she entered ninth grade, but next week she’ll graduate as valedictorian of Chicago’s Wendell Phillips Academy High School. The teen mom is a cheerleader and member of the National Honor Society, and in the fall she’ll attend Western […]
Read moreAIR TRAVEL
THE PROBLEM Flight delays, a large share of which are caused by weather, cost the U.S. economy $31 billion annually. Regulators have been slow to approve technology that could provide pilots access to weather data. THE INNOVATION Mobile technology can keep pilots abreast of the latest weather information and plan ways to avoid bad weather in advance, even if they’re […]
Read moreAverage American Income
The average American’s income declined almost 1 percent in 2014, to $64,432.The income of the poorest fifth of the population fell by 3.5 percent, to $9,818, while the income of the wealthiest fifth rose by nearly 1 percent, to $166,048.
Read moreExecutions in Saudi Arabia
88: Number of executions carried out in Saudi Arabia so far this year, already surpassing the total number in 2014; Amnesty International called the increase under Saudi’s new King Salman a “macabre spike”.
Read moreIt Was A Good Week For . . .
Knowing your limits, after Molly Schuyler, a 120-pound mother of four, won a Texas eating competition by wolfing down 13 pounds of steak in four minutes, 18 seconds. Schuyler said she had room for more steak but got sick of the taste.
Read moreMilitia terror plot
Four U.S. Army soldiers stockpiled $87,000 in guns and bomb components, which they planned to use to kill President Obama and overthrow the federal government, prosecutors said this week. The anarchist militia group of active duty and former soldiers then allegedly murdered a comrade and his teenage girlfriend to protect the secrecy of its plots. The gang drew up plans […]
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