RISING OCEAN TEMPERATURES
The oceans, like the rest of the planet, set a temperature record in 2014, at 60.9°F (16°C), or 1.03°F above the 20th century average. Acidity is up as well—a bad combination for sea life.
Read moreCategory: Facts & Trends
Lack of Psychiatrists
After eight years of war, bombings, and brutal sectarian violence, Iraq’s civilian population is now suffering an epidemic of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental illnesses, health officials there say. But there are only 100 psychiatrists to serve a population of 39 million.
Read moreDeprivation
“Women deprived of the company of men pine; men deprived of the company of women become stupid.” – Anton Chekhov
Read moreBungling British Burglar
A bungling British burglar who volunteered to be fitted with a police GPS tracker was arrested after he carried out a string of burglaries while wearing the device. Nicholas Broadley, 33, wore the tracker as part of a program to help career criminals go straight. But when police checked his movements, they discovered that he’d been at the scene of three […]
Read moreWomen Know
“I hate women because thy always know where things are.” – Voltaire
Read moreIt Was A Good Week For . . .
Bird calls, after firefighters in Idaho rushed into a burning building when they heard voices calling “Help! Fire!” only to discover a pair of “talking” parrots. “There was nobody besides the birds inside,” said one fireman. “Smart birds.”
Read moreNew York In Texas
Percentage of the world’s population that could fit in Texas by living with the population density of New York City: 100
Read moreJoining Jihadist Groups
Young Muslims are still flocking to radical jihadist groups in record numbers. A United Nations study found that at least 25,000 people from more than 100 nations have left home to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other radical groups. The number of foreign terrorist fighters worldwide increased by 71 percent from mid-2014 to March 2015.
Read moreRenaming Pork
The pork industry is renaming various cuts of meat to give them “consumer-friendly” names. The National Pork Board has been given approval from the USDA to rename pork chops “porterhouse chops,” “ribeye chops,” and “New York chops,” depending on the cut, while pork butt—which is from the shoulder—will be labeled “Boston roast”.
Read moreThe secrets of supermassive black holes
Astronomers have spotted the most enormous black holes ever detected, inspiring new theories about how such pockets of extreme gravity form. Together, the two objects, which are roughly 300 million light-years away, have more mass than 30 billion suns, University of California at Berkeley astrophysicist Chung-Pei Ma tells the Associated Press. “They are monstrous,” she says. The smaller of the […]
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