Facts & Trends

Give That Man A Hand . . .

A British pilot momentarily lost control of his passenger plane when his artificial arm fell off during landing. The captain of the FlyBe turboprop was approaching Belfast City Airport in windy conditions with 47 passengers on board when his prosthetic ...

Alternative Healing

Nearly 50% of American adults now use some form of alternative medicine, spending an estimated $27 billion a year on herbal and other supplements and on such treatments as acupuncture, chiropractic, and energy healing ...

It was a bad week for . . .

. . . driving with kids, after police got a 911 call about a woman’s screams issuing from a Massachusetts man’s car, and surrounded him.  Instead of finding a woman in distress, officers discovered several goats in the back seat, and ...

A Knife In The Head

A Chinese pedestrian narrowly escaped death after a knife fell from the sky and stuck in his head. XiaoYunzhi, 57, was walking below a high-rise apartment when the wind blew a kitchen knife from an eighth story balcony. The blade ...

Can’t Afford To Post Bail

Some 480,000 suspects are currently locked up in American jails awaiting trial.  About 75 percent of them are low-level offenders accused of nonviolent infractions, and are in jail simply because they can't afford to post bail ...

Millennial Views

The lower you go on the generational totem pole, the more ethnically diverse you get. Young adults between 18-24 (so-called Millennial) don't like racial labels because they don't recognize the dividing lines of the past—they are the vanguard of a ...

Student With Down Syndrome Voted Homecoming Queen

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 ...

Stairway to heaven

A ladder might be installed near the peak of Mount Everest.  Authorities in Nepal say the ladder would provide a shortcut over a steep cliff, and thus ease congestion near the 29,035-foot-high summit of the world’s tallest mountain ...

Shooting His Computer

A Colorado man was given a ticket by police this week for shooting his balky computer eight times and "killing" it.  Police say Lucas Hinch, 37, had become "fed up with fighting his computer for the last several months," so ...

Mirror, Mirror

A British survey found that the average man looks at himself in the mirror 23 times a day, compared with 16 times for women.  Men like to "admire" their appearance, researchers found, while women simply make sure "they look OK." ...