Facts & Trends

things we were told to avoid

Facebook can make you unhappy. Researchers texted study participants five times a day with questions about their social-networking activity and how they felt, and found that Facebook visits directly correlated with negative emotions, such as depression and loneliness. While Facebook ...

Weight of Turkeys

Percentage increase since 1960 in the average weight of a farm-raised U.S. turkey: 72 ...

It was a good week for . . .

. . . breathing deeply, after a Chinese travel company shipped bags of fresh mountain air to the smog-choked city of Zhengzhou as a treat for residents.  “I felt my baby move right when I breathed in,” said a pregnant woman ...

Obese Americans

American men are weighing in at an average of 196 pounds—16 pounds more than in 1990, a new Gallup survey has found.The average weight for women jumped 14 pounds—to 156 pounds— over the same period. Gallup estimates 62 percent of ...

When going ‘green’ makes people sick

When communities like San Francisco and Seattle began banning plastic bags, said Ramesh Ponnuru, it seemed like a public-spirited thing to do. But' benign-seeming laws often have unintended consequences— and the plastic-bag ban is now producing a sickening result. The ...

Most Indebted Graduating Class In History

The graduating class of 2015 is the most indebted in history, owing a total of $56 billion in student loans.  About 71 percent of college students graduating this year took out loans, at an average of $35,051 each.  In 1996, ...

Out Of Breath

Delhi’s air now contains twice as much toxic matter as that of notoriously smoggy Beijing. The health impact has been disastrous, with children in Delhi now three times as likely as others in India to develop severe lung disorders ...

Shot In The Back

Number of U.S. police officers who have been prosecuted in the past decade for shooting someone in the back: 28 Number convicted: 6 ...

Skiing in shorts

Parts of the Northeast received up to 18 inches of snow over Memorial Day weekend.  Snow blanketed parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, and upstate New York ...

Great Art

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum is already home to an artist’s rendition of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” made from burned toast, and now comes a recent version by Laura Bell of Roscommon, MI — da Vinci’s masterpiece made ...