In 2011, the poorest 20 percent of Americans gave 3.2 percent of their income to charity. The wealthiest 20 percent were far stingier, donating just 1.3 percent. Researchers say those with less to share may have “higher empathy” because they’re more exposed to need.
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Timeliness, after scientists unveiled an atomic clock so accurate that it won’t lose or gain a single second in 15 billion years, which is roughly as long as the universe has existed.
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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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An Australian man hid naked inside a top-loading washing machine to surprise his girlfriend, and had to be freed by police, who used olive oil as a lubricant.
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Colony collapse disorder, the mysterious scourge that has been killing off honeybees since 2005, has suddenly become a lot more deadly. This past winter, as many as half of all hives succumbed to the disorder—up from one third annually in recent years, and between 5 and 10 percent when hives were healthy. “It is a catastrophe in progress,” beekeeper Steve […]
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Danielle Shea, 22, was charged with trying to cancel Quinnipiac University’s graduation ceremony by calling in a bomb threat. Shea, police said, didn’t want her parents to find out she had dropped out and was pocketing their tuition money.
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Lake Mead, the main reservoir on the Colorado River, is now just 38 percent full — lower than at any time since it was filled in the 1930’s. If the lake sinks lower still during summer months, officials may cut water allotments to Arizona farmers by 50 percent.
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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.
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A Tennessee woman was banned from her lifelong church after she refused to publicly condemn her lesbian daughter. The Ridgedale Church of Christ said it was exiling Linda Cooper for the sin of condoning homosexuality. “They’re exiling members for unconditionally loving their children,” said Cooper’s gay daughter, Kat.
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“In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.” – Paul Brooks
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