A new wave of demonstrations across Australia is planned for June after the government of Western Australia moved to close remote Aboriginal settlements, saying it could no longer afford to subsidize communities plagued by social problems such as alcohol and drug abuse.
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A British woman has abstained from smiling for the last 40 years in an extreme attempt to ward off wrinkles. Tess Christian, 50, told the Daily Mail that she adopted a permanent poker face as a child to prevent laughter lines around her mouth, eyes, and forehead. “My dedication has paid off,” she said. “I don’t have a single line […]
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A specimen of the world’s largest flower, the titan arum, is about to bloom at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. To attract carrion insects, the flower emits a stench botanists likened to “a very dead elephant.”
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Portion of Americans who live in areas harmful levels of air pollution: 1/2 Number of the top five most polluted cities in the country that are in California: 5
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Just 30 percent of Americans aged 17 to 24 are eligible to become soldiers, according to the U.S. Army. The remaining 70 percent of young people are either too obese or are disqualified because they have a criminal history or didn’t finish high school.
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The government spent $74.6 billion on food stamp benefits last year, up from $30.4 billion in 2007. With 15 percent of Americans now receiving food stamps, the program’s budget is equivalent to the combined budgets of the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Department of the Interior.
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Wearing only his underpants, a Chinese beekeeper set a new Guinness World Record this week after he covered himself in 240 pounds of bees. Organizers placed several queen bees on Gao Bingguo, 55, to attract the workers, and then dumped boxes of bees on Gao until he was wearing a buzzing coat of 1.1 million insects. He smoked a cigarette […]
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A Chinese pedestrian narrowly escaped death after a knife fell from the sky and stuck in his head. XiaoYunzhi, 57, was walking below a high-rise apartment when the wind blew a kitchen knife from an eighth story balcony. The blade became embedded on the side of his scalp, standing straight up. Xiao realized what had happened only when a storekeeper […]
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68.4 – The number of minutes Americans spend traveling each day, per capita, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number is down from 74.4 minutes in 2003.
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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 […]
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