Speedy Trial?
Estimated number of cases pending in India’s court system: 30,000,000
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By the numbers
141: The number of seasonal former IRS employees rehired by the agency between 2010 and 2013 despite having botched or failed to file their own tax returns, according to a February report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. 8.8 Million: The number of tons of plastic waste dumped into the oceans every year, according to a study in the journal […]
Read moreHOW HAPPY ARE YOU?
Gallup ranked 143 countries by how great a share of respondents said they had recently had positive experiences such as laughter or enjoyment. A sampling, from greatest to least: 1 – Paraguay 8 – Costa Rica 15 – U.S. 134 – Afghanistan 143 – Sudan
Read moreMonitoring your tweets
What happened to the Conservatives’ promise to roll back the surveillance state? said James Ball. The British are already the most-spied-upon people on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of video cameras recording our comings and goings. Junior-level bureaucrats have the authority to “ping” our mobile phones to find out where we are at any given moment. Now they also […]
Read moreTHE FUTURE OF RELIGION
The Pew Research Center forecast that by 2050 the number of Muslims globally will nearly equal the number of Christians. Here is how major religions are projected to grow from 2010 to 2050: Islam: +73% Christianity: +35% Hinduism: +34% Judaism: +16% Buddhism: – 0.3%
Read moreMilitary Suicide
259 – Number of U.S. military active-duty suicides in 2013
Read moreCannabis Selfie From Prison
A Polish prisoner triggered a crackdown on other inmates after he posted a photo of a large Cannabis plant that he’d grown in his cell. To boast about his green thumb, Dozy Zendarski took a selfie with the plant using a smuggled smartphone and posted it to Facebook. When it went viral, prison officials searched the entire jail and seized numerous phones and other banned items from […]
Read moreBritish Accent
A British accent is the most attractive in the world, according to a poll of 11,000 people in 24 cities around the world. An American accent came in second, followed by Irish and Australian. French, once considered the language of love, finished in fifth place.
Read moreWORLD’S MOST COMMON HEALTH COMPLAINTS
A major Gates Foundation- backed study found that over 95% of people in 2013 lived with a health problem. The leading issues varied across the 188 countries surveyed: U.S. Back pain Ireland Major depressive disorder Saudi Arabia Diabetes Iraq Iron-deficiency anemia Burma Hearing loss Qatar Opioid dependence
Read moreDefying your parents
12-year-old Jaxxyn Wood of Kentucky stayed up to 3 a.m. playing computer games and smelled an electrical fire in the kitchen. He woke his family and got all nine people to evacuate, thus saving their lives.
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