Facts & Trends
Undocumented Immigrants
About 690,000 of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.—or about 6.3 percent—have been convicted of a felony or serious misdemeanor, according to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.These immigrants, along with the ...
Hello, I’m Johnny Cash
A 60-year-old Dutch man received a brain implant to cure his obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suddenly became a fanatical Johnny Cash fan. The patient said his doctors, “kept listening simply and solely to Johnny Cash.” ...
Partisan consolation
JetBlue said it would offer a chance to win free, round-trip tickets to other countries for disgusted customers whose preferred presidential candidate loses the election. The company is planning to give away more than 1,000 tickets ...
Outsmarting the NSA
Russia’s secret service ordered dozens of electric typewriters, saying that recent revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency’s online surveillance program made them distrust computer communications ...
The secrets of supermassive black holes
Astronomers have spotted the most enormous black holes ever detected, inspiring new theories about how such pockets of extreme gravity form. Together, the two objects, which are roughly 300 million light-years away, have more mass than 30 billion suns, University ...
Prisoners Exonerated
Number of U.S. prisoners exonerated last year: 125 Percentage of those exonerations in which no crime had occurred: 44 ...
ASTEROID MAPPING
Amateur astronomers can now put their observations to good use through the new Asteroid Data Hunter app. The software, which works on almost any Windows or Mac computer, is a collaborative effort between NASA and Planetary Resources, a company that ...
Helping Out Our Neighbors
Homeowners in Centennial, Colo., woke up to a pleasant surprise last Sunday morning: a group of teens who went around shoveling their neighbors' sidewalks and driveways free of charge. "They did everything: the whole driveway, the stoop, the whole sidewalk," ...
Sportsmanship At Its Finest
A Spanish long-distance runner showed exemplary sportsmanship last month when he helped a confused rival finish before him. Iván Fernández Anaya was in second place to Olympic bronze medalist Abel Mutai in a race in Navarre, Spain, when he noticed ...
It Was A Good Week For . . .
Bird calls, after firefighters in Idaho rushed into a burning building when they heard voices calling “Help! Fire!” only to discover a pair of “talking” parrots. “There was nobody besides the birds inside,” said one fireman. “Smart birds.” ...