News Scraps
By Brandon Bosworth

Washington, D.C. city officials have failed to spend $120 million of the $145 million in federal anti terror funds allocated to the city after 9/11.

 

Over 20 percent of the world’s oil is controlled by states that sponsor terrorism or are under economic sanctions from the U.S. or the U.N.

 

Parliament Coach Corporation of Florida is manufacturing luxury RVs to protect occupants from dirty bombs or chemical and biological warfare. The vehicles will cost between $1.3 and 2 million.

 

The French Human Rights Commission found a record number of violent anti-Semitic acts in France last year. The 970 attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in 2004 led the commission’s leader, Gerard Fellous, to say that anti-Semitism “has now become constant.”

 

In an attempt to stem the rising number of forced marriages in France, the French senate voted unanimously to raise the legal marriage age for women from 15 to 18. According to senator Joëlle Garriaud-Maylam, up to 70,000 young women in France may be in forced marriages. That number is tied to the nation’s growing Muslim population. . . . Hatin Surucu, a 23-year-old Turkish woman living in Berlin, was shot by her brothers in the city’s latest Muslim “honor killing.” She was apparently murdered for divorcing her Turkish husband and adopting a Western lifestyle. In recent months, at least five other Turkish Muslim women were killed in Germany by husbands, boyfriends or brothers.

 

A poll by the Center for Opinion Survey and Consultancy found that 87 percent of Saudis favor participation of women in the next elections.

 

At least a dozen Iraqi barbers have been killed by Islamic terrorists this year. Barbers are targeted because they shave beards or cut hair in Western styles.

 

Americans spend 6 percent of their income on food; in 1950 it was 17 percent.

 

The average American donates $1,600 a year to charity, reports Money magazine.

 

Officials at the University of Michigan are offering students $100 to clean up their dorm rooms.

 

Native American casinos made over $18 billion in 2004, almost double the amount of the state budget of Nevada. There are more than 400 Indian casinos in America.

 

Globally, 35 billion e-mails are sent every day. . . . The Toronto Globe and Mail reported that there are now over 4 million pornographic Web sites, with combined annual revenues of about $57 billion. At least 100,000 of those sites deal in child pornography, which pulls in around $2.5

billion yearly.

 

In China, English is learned by over 300 million people—more than the number of Americans who speak the language.

 

To deal with groping by male patrons, Tokyo rail operators began running female-only cars on local commuter trains. There were about 2,200 incidents of molestation last year on Tokyo subways, three times as many as in 1996.

 

A survey by the Filipino government found that 30 percent of Filipinos are unaware that sex can lead to pregnancy.

 

German researchers have found that cases of depression among Berliners have risen by 70 percent since 1997.

 

Eighteen-year-old Carl Murphy suffered injuries when he fell through a skylight while attempting to break into a warehouse near Liverpool, England. He was awarded £567,000 (about $1.1 million) in a liability suit. “It annoys me that people think I don’t deserve this money after all I’ve been through,” Murphy told a local newspaper.

 

The word “wedgie” is included in the most recent edition of Webster’s New World College Dictionary.

 

Of America’s 3 million teachers, only 21 percent are male, states the National Education Association; in elementary schools, just 9 percent are male.

 

“My favorite thing about Bhutan is they measure their country’s wealth not based on dollar amount but on gross national happiness,” said actress Cameron Diaz about the impoverished

nation.

 

Rapper Corey Miller changed his stage name from C-Murder to C-Miller to avoid being “misunderstood.” Miller is currently serving time for second-degree murder.