Facts & Trends

Shiite death squads have killed more than a dozen young Iraqis over the past month for wearing Western-style emo clothes.  The Interior Ministry singled out the emo subculture—made up of youths who listen to Western emo music and wear tight ...

. . . 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 ...

An anonymous "Secret Santa" traveled to New Jersey and New York last week to hand out $100 bills to people who'd lost their homes and possessions in Hurricane Sandy.  The Kansas City, Mo., businessman spent a day in Elizabeth, N.J., and ...

Number of reported cases in the past decade of an Antarctic fur seal having sex with a king penguin: 4 Then eating it: 1 ...

Number of square miles of seabed in international waters that were under contract for mining operations in 2000: 0 That are today: 463,323 ...

A cybersecurity firm has traced scores of attacks on U.S. corporate and government computers to a single building in Shanghai. The security firm, Mandiant, found that the attacks originated in a 12-story building known as the headquarters of People’s Liberation ...

Russia, the world’s second biggest cigarette consumer after China, has banned smoking in most public places as well as all tobacco advertising.  Even popular Soviet-era cartoons featuring pipe smokers are to be censored. It’s unclear, though, how the ban will be ...

"Women deprived of the company of men pine; men deprived of the company of women become stupid." - Anton Chekhov ...

Percentage by which New York City’s homeless-shelter population increased under Bloomeberg: 65 Portion of the city’s shelter population who are children: 2/5 ...

A dedicated graffiti zone was set up at the Great Wall of China, in the hope it would stop visitors from scratching their names on the historic barrier.  Most of the graffiti on the wall, said the Chinese media, is ...