U.S. spending
By 2021, the White House forecasts, the U.S. will be spending more on interest for the national debt than on the entire defense budget.
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Something Fishy Going On
A Chinese fishmonger found a 3-pound live bomb inside a squid he was cutting up. Police took the squid away and blew it up in a controlled explosion.
Read morePrisoners Exonerated
Number of U.S. prisoners exonerated last year: 125 Percentage of those exonerations in which no crime had occurred: 44
Read moreWartime bomb defused
Residents were evacuated, trains diverted, and flights briefly suspended this week as police experts defused a 220-pound bomb left over from World War II. The Soviet ordnance was found at a construction site near Berlin’s main train station, which is located in a relatively sparsely inhabited quarter close to the former dividing line between East and West Berlin. Such finds […]
Read moreFriendship – Men and Women
Men kick friendship around like a football but it doesn’t seem to break. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.
Read moreOscar Romero on path to sainthood
Pope Francis has declared Oscar Romero a martyr of the faith, paving the way for the murdered Salvadoran archbishop to be beatified, a step toward sainthood. A right-wing death squad executed Romero in a hospital chapel in 1980 while he was celebrating Mass just a day after he preached a sermon asking government soldiers to stop their repression. No one […]
Read moreMarijuana Usage
College graduates account for only about 17 percent of marijuana use. About 76 percent is consumed by adults who never attended college or dropped out. “Most of the marijuana market is more Walmart than Whole Foods,” says Carnegie Mellon University professor Jonathan Caulkins, author of a new analysis of weed use.
Read moreFamily in Korea
“Family” is traditionally the most important part of Korean life, but families are now falling apart. The national divorce rate has tripled from 2013 to 2014. South Korea has had the highest suicide rate among developed countries for eight consecutive years. In 2012, 39 people per day killed themselves. Suicide is the leading cause of death for 10- to 30-year-old […]
Read moreIt was a bad week for . . .
. . . 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 for them to change allegiance.”
Read morePhones vs. Toilets
Of the world’s 7 billion people, 6 billion have access to mobile phones, but only 4.5 billion have access to a working toilet.
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