No Electricity
About 25 percent of the world’s population, or 1.6 billion people, do not have electricity in their homes.
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Good week for . . .
Smarty pants, after Google developers announced that they were teaming up with Levi’s to make jeans with conductive fibers that could be used as touch screens, allowing users to answer the phone or send a text just by swiping their thighs.
Read moreRich America
The 400 richest Americans have as much wealth as all 41 million African Americans.
Read moreSuicide rate in South Korea soars
The suicide rate in South Korea has more than doubled in the past decade, the government said this week. South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world; for citizens in their 20s and 30s, suicide is the leading cause of death. Some analysts say the act has become normalized by a spate of high-profile suicides, including […]
Read moreAlternative Healing
Nearly 50% of American adults now use some form of alternative medicine, spending an estimated $27 billion a year on herbal and other supplements and on such treatments as acupuncture, chiropractic, and energy healing.
Read moreWitch Hunt
Minimum number of murders committed in India since 2000 whose motive was witch hunting: 2,257
Read moreCan’t Afford To Post Bail
Some 480,000 suspects are currently locked up in American jails awaiting trial. About 75 percent of them are low-level offenders accused of nonviolent infractions, and are in jail simply because they can’t afford to post bail.
Read moreIt was a good week for . . .
. . . a reptile experience, after a Michigan firefighter who’d handled snakes as a teen ran into a burning home and carefully rescued a 6-foot-long python. None of the other firefighters “wanted anything to do with it.”
Read moreElephant slaughter
After decimating the Tanzanian elephant population, poachers have now killed half of the elephants in neighboring Mozambique in just five years. A survey by Mozambique’s government and the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society found that the herd has shrunk from 20,000 in 2010 to just over 10,000 animals today. “This decline is due to rampant elephant poaching in the country’s most important […]
Read moreCalorie Information
Chance that an American fast-food customer uses posted calorie information to make food buying decisions: 1 in 6
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