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