Facts & Trends

60% - Share of the planet’s largest herbivores, including elephants, gorillas and rhinos, at risk of extinction, according to a new study ...

Students at a Bolivar,Tenn., high school last week elected a classmate with Down syndrome to be homecoming queen.  Kara Marcum, 19, easily beat three other candidates in a victory one teacher chalked up to her considerable personal charm.  Kara also ...

The suicide rate in South Korea has more than doubled in the past decade, the government said this week.  South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world; for citizens in their 20s and 30s, suicide is ...

A home-brew club in Oregon will soon start making beer from treated sewage water.  Clean Water Services, which runs four wastewater treatment plants in the Portland area, will let the Oregon Brew Crew use recycled sewage to make batches of ...

Percentage of black U.S. children under the age of five who live in poverty: 43 ...

Appetite for meat is growing as the developing world becomes more prosperous. But meat—especially beef-can be polarizing, on health, environmental, and ethical grounds. Chicken outpaced beef in the U.S. in 2010. Total U.S. meat consumption peaked in the mid-2000's and ...

Number of U.S. States that allow the death penalty:  31 Proportion of U.S. police departments that are using body cameras: 1 in 3 ...

A new study has calculated that there are 5.25 trillion small and large pieces of plastic, weighing a total of 269,000 tons, floating in the world's oceans ...

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and its supporters produce as many as 90,000 tweets and other social media posts every day. The U.S. State Department is now assigning 80 people to counter ISIS's propaganda on Twitter and Facebook ...

According to the U.N., India has 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities. Low vehicle-emission standards, booming industrialization, crowded cities and the burning of trash means that the vast majority of Indians breathe unsafe air ...