Rich America
The 400 richest Americans have as much wealth as all 41 million African Americans.
Read moreTag: trends
Protests in Australia
A new wave of demonstrations across Australia is planned for June after the government of Western Australia moved to close remote Aboriginal settlements, saying it could no longer afford to subsidize communities plagued by social problems such as alcohol and drug abuse.
Read moreGuns Used For Self Defense
Number of times guns are used in self-defense each year in the U.S.: 180,000
Read moreVoyager 1 Escaping Our Solar System
On the 35th anniversary of its launch, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is close to becoming the first man-made object to escape our solar system. The spacecraft—run by a 1977 computer 100,000 times less powerful than an iPod Nano—is currently 11.3 billion miles away. In 2004, Voyager 1 entered the turbulent boundary zone beyond Pluto, where solar winds encounter plasma pushing […]
Read moreCremation
For every deceased person who is buried, four are now cremated.
Read moreA Plastic World
A new study has calculated that there are 5.25 trillion small and large pieces of plastic, weighing a total of 269,000 tons, floating in the world’s oceans
Read moreAbstinence From Smiling
A British woman has abstained from smiling for the last 40 years in an extreme attempt to ward off wrinkles. Tess Christian, 50, told the Daily Mail that she adopted a permanent poker face as a child to prevent laughter lines around her mouth, eyes, and forehead. “My dedication has paid off,” she said. “I don’t have a single line […]
Read moreOh, That Smell
A specimen of the world’s largest flower, the titan arum, is about to bloom at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. To attract carrion insects, the flower emits a stench botanists likened to “a very dead elephant.”
Read moreIndia’s Air Quality Index
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched India’s first air-quality index in April, but pollution will keep growing unless India stems coal production, which Modi has pledged to double by 2020.
Read moreInequality in Wealth
What’s most important—and troubling— is the decades-long, systemic expansion of the economic distance between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, and the long, backward slide for the majority of those in-between.
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