by Blasphemy on Tue Mar 14, 2006 8:47 am
1. The average Japanese woman can expect to live until she’s 84; her counterpart in Botswana could die at 39.
2. Black men born in the U.S stand a one in three chance of going to jail. For white men the odds are one in seventeen.
3. One in five of the world’s population – 1.25 billion people – is undernourished.
4. Nearly half of British 15 year olds have tried illegal drugs and nearly a quarter are regular cigarette smokers.
5. Children living in poverty are three times more likely to suffer from a mental illness than children from wealthy areas.
6. Eight-one percent of the world’s executions in 2002 took place in just three countries: China, Iran and the USA.
7. Every cow in the EU is subsided by €2.10 a day – three out of four Africans have less than that to live on.
8. Same-sex relationships are illegal in more than 70 countries. In nine the penalty is death.
9. Every hour, UK households throw away enough rubbish to fill the Royal Albert Hall.
10. There are 27 million slaves in the world.
11. A third of the world’s population is at war. In 2002, 30 countries were fighting in armed conflicts – a combined population of 2.29 people.
12. The UK has the second-highest rate of teen pregnancies in the developed world, behind the US. There are 30.8 births for every 1,000 teenagers. Teenage mothers are twice as likely to live in poverty.
13. One in five people live on less then 80c a day.
14. There are 44 million child labourers in India, some working 16 hour days.
15. Golfer Tiger Woods is the world’s highest-paid sportsman, earning €66 million a year, including €45,000 a day for wearing Nike caps – which Thai workers get €3.30 a day to make.
16. Every week an average of 88 children are expelled from the US schools for carrying a gun.
17. Landmines kill or maim one person every hour.
18. There are at least 300,000 prisoners of conscience, often held in appalling conditions, sometimes tortured, simply for peacefully expressing their own beliefs.
19. Cars kill two people every minute.
20. The US owes the United Nations $1biillion in unpaid dues. Yet it spends the same amount on its military program every 23 hours.
21. In Kenya, bribery payments make up a third of the average household budget.
22. The world’s trade in illegal drugs is estimated at €338 billion – about the same as the pharmaceutical industry.
23. To fly a kiwi fruit from New Zealand to the UK means five times its weight in greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere.
24. More than 150 countries are known to use torture.
25. Americans spend €8.9 billion on pornography every year – the same amount their government spends on foreign aid.
26. Eighty-two percent of the world’s smokers live in developed countries.
27. The world’s oil reserves could be exhausted by 2040. More than 70 percent of the world’s population has never heard a dial tone. In Africa just one in 40 people has a phone.
28. A quarter of the world’s armed conflicts of recent years have involved a struggle for natural resources.
29. Almost 30 million Africans are HIV-positive. By 2050 that disease may have claimed as many as 280 million lives.
30. Ten languages die out every year.
31. More people die from suicide than from armed conflicts. In the past 45 years, suicide rates have grown by 60 percent worldwide.
32. Seven million American women and one million American men suffer from an eating disorder.
33. Since 1977, there have been 80,000 acts of violence or disruption at abortion clinics in North America.
34. There are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world.
35. A third of the world’s obese people live in the developing world. Campaigners blame Western countries for dumping cheap, processed, fatty foods on poorer nations.
36. In 2003 the US spent $379 billion on its military. This was 22 times the combined military spending of the seven ‘rogue states’ – Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
37. More than 12,000 women are killed in Russia every year as a result of domestic violence.
38. Two millions females are subjected to genital mutilation every year.
39. In China, as a result as of the preference for sons over daughters and the country’s one-child-per-family law, there are 44 million fewer women than men.
40. Some 120,000 women and girls are trafficked into Western Europe every year. The UN estimate that the trade is worth €6 billion a year.
So what do you guys think of this?