Casualty count
Twenty-five pilot whales beached themselves on Kice Island off southwest Florida in 2014. Sickness related to environmental problems can trigger beachings, which are on the rise.
Read moreCategory: Facts & Trends
When going ‘green’ makes people sick
When communities like San Francisco and Seattle began banning plastic bags, said Ramesh Ponnuru, it seemed like a public-spirited thing to do. But’ benign-seeming laws often have unintended consequences— and the plastic-bag ban is now producing a sickening result. The reusable shopping bags that people now use to bring groceries home turn out to be breeding grounds for bacteria carried […]
Read moreFISH MIGRATION
Fish flee existing habitats in search of better ones. Atlantic sea bass, for example, are migrating north to cooler waters—but the heat will chase them there.
Read moreEuropean Social Welfare Programs Expenditure
Portion of the global expenditure on social-welfare programs that is spent on Europeans: 1/2
Read moreU.S. spending
By 2021, the White House forecasts, the U.S. will be spending more on interest for the national debt than on the entire defense budget.
Read moreSomething Fishy Going On
A Chinese fishmonger found a 3-pound live bomb inside a squid he was cutting up. Police took the squid away and blew it up in a controlled explosion.
Read moreIS CLIMATE CHANGE LARGELY THE RESULT OF HUMAN ACTIVITY?
The pollster Ipsos MORI put the question to people in 20 countries. Here’s a sampling of how many said yes:
Read moreDeficit Of Female Births In India
Size of India’s annual deficit in female births, based on 2011 census data: 600,000
Read moreSelf-Storage Space
The U.S. now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space, constituting more than 7 square feet for every citizen.
Read morePrisoners Exonerated
Number of U.S. prisoners exonerated last year: 125 Percentage of those exonerations in which no crime had occurred: 44
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