Facts & Trends

What happened to the Conservatives’ promise to roll back the surveillance state? said James Ball. The British are already the most-spied-upon people on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of video cameras recording our comings and goings. Junior-level bureaucrats have ...

The pork industry is renaming various cuts of meat to give them "consumer-friendly" names. The National Pork Board has been given approval from the USDA to rename pork chops "porterhouse chops," "ribeye chops," and "New York chops," depending on the ...

Percentage change since 2009 in the number of Americans who play football: -17 Who play rugby: +77 ...

As the population ages and lives longer, dementia has become one of the country's most expensive medical conditions, with $109 billion in direct medical costs in 2010, a new RAND study found. The medical cost of dementia exceeds that of ...

Of the approximately 11,000 people murdered with guns in the U.S. in 2012, just 322 were killed by an assault weapon or any kind of rifle.The vast majority of killers used handguns ...

. . . ordering a margarita, after heavy rains, tree disease, and cartel violence sent prices for Mexico’s limes soaring from to $14 a case to $100.  “We don’t buy them [anymore],” said the owner of a San Antonio Mexican ...

Portion of men in China who say they have raped a woman: 1/5 Percentage of those men who said they did it because they were bored or wanted to have fun: 57 ...

Fifteen years ago, there was little resource exploitation on the ocean floor.  Now 460,000 sq. mi. (1.2 million sq km) of sea bottom is under contract to mining operations ...

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.” ...

. . . the Ukrainian navy, after the Russian military seized control of the country’s combat-dolphin program, which had been based in Crimea.  “Dolphins get used to the people they work with,” said a Ukrainian official.  “It’s not so easy ...