The world’s richest 1 percent
To be counted among the world’s richest 1 percent, a single individual has to earn just $34,000 a year. Members of the planet’s true middle class, meanwhile, live on just $1,225 a year.
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A bad year for winter sports
Unusually mild winter weather has prevented lakes and ponds from freezing from the Midwest to the Northeast, keeping ice fishermen, skaters, and hockey players sidelined. In normally frigid Minnesota, temperatures topped a record 60 degrees on a recent January day, while Buffalo has had less snow so far than in any year in more than 80 years.
Reuters/The Buffalo News
Number of twins born increases
The number of twins born in the U.S. has doubled since 1982, largely because of fertility treatments. One of every 30 babies born is now a twin.
Reuters
Cancer fatality rates drop
Cancer fatality rates have dropped by 23 percent in men and 15 percent in women over two decades. Even so, over 577,000 people in the U.S. will die from the disease this year.
USA Today
Fallujah sees rise in birth defects
The Iraqi city of Fallujah has seen a dramatic rise in birth defects and childhood cancer since 2004, when U.S. forces used depleted-uranium shells and white phosphorus against militants. Doctors say the city’s birth-defect rate is 14.7 percent—much higher than in Hiroshima after World War II.
GlobalPost.com
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Very rich and very poor in California, and morefeature California is home to 111 billionaires, yet it also suffers the highest poverty rate in the country.
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Arctic cold kills tree insects, and more
feature This winter’s arctic temperatures have had at least one beneficial impact: They’ve killed ash borers, gypsy moths, and other tree-eating insects.
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Congress's poor record, and more
feature The 113th Congress is on course to pass less legislation than any Congress in history.
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Gender differences in employment, and more
feature
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A first for West Point, and more
feature For the first time, two male graduates of West Point were married at the military academy’s chapel.
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A God given land?, and more
feature More white evangelical Protestants than U.S Jews believe that Israel was “given to the Jewish people by God.”
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Jailing the mentally ill, and more
feature American prisons have replaced state mental hospitals as a place to warehouse the mentally ill.
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Treating Internet addiction, and more
feature Treating Internet addiction; Freshman virgins at Harvard; A salary handicap for lefties; Prices for vintage automobiles soar; Gun permits for blind people