Here’s a map from Mark J. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute that breaks down the U.S. share of the global economy by renaming states according to their matching GDP’s of other countries.
For example, one million residents of Rhode Island have as much money as the 15 million citizens of Guatemala. Illinois’ 12 million have as much wealth as Saudi Arabia’s 28 million. And so on …
Some of the more random headlines from the BBC News website over the last week or so:
Two months into an uprising that has claimed at least two lives and brought thousands to the streets, Ukraine’s political crisis still seems far from any resolution. President Yanukovych has refused to declare a state of emergency, though by all accounts the protests are escalating.
Amidst burned buses, tear gas and barricades, however, there is another sight that stands out on the frontline: The strong numbers of Orthodox priests who have turned out, not to protest, but rather to pray.
Earlier this month, Ukraine’s government threatened to ban prayer services at the protests, but even that didn’t keep the priests from showing up with their robes and crosses and holy books.
As one priest said about the proposed ban, “It is illegal. It is immoral. Nobody can forbid people to pray.”
Check out these incredible photos:
A Christian church in the Central African Republic is currently providing shelter to a group of 700 Muslims, who are attempting to flee the vengeful “anti-balaka” (anti-machete) Christian militia.
For months, violence between Christians and Muslims has ravaged the country, leaving more than 1 million displaced from their homes. Following a series of atrocities committed by the Muslim Seleka rebel group targeting Christian communities, Christian “anti-balaka” militias have undertaken retribution attacks against Muslims in the country.
The pastor of the church in the city of Boali, which is currently being guarded by about 70 French troops, however, wants an end to the violence. He told France 24 news,
“I am not going to let anyone hurt the people inside my church, it doesn’t matter whether they are Christians or Muslims,”
and encouraged his congregation to greet their Muslim neighbors with a “kiss of peace.”
Church and local officials are working on an evacuation plan for the Muslim families taking shelter at the church.
You could read that headline every day for the rest of your life, and it’d probably never fully sink in.
Here are some truly staggering numbers from Oxfam, who released a study on the world’s income disparity that is absolutely eye-popping. Just a run down of the bullet points is incredible:
Whilst unemployment is going down, I was horrified to read how food banks are now having to give out “kettle boxes” to clients who can’t afford to use their cooker:
Food banks have started to issue specially prepared “kettle boxes” to clients who cannot afford to switch on their cooker to boil pasta or rice, in the latest sign of the cost of living crisis facing Britain’s poorest.
The kettle boxes developed by volunteers from the Trussell Trust charity contain products that can be prepared by adding boiling water, such as instant soup, Pot Noodles, instant mash and just-add-water porridge, as well as staples such as crackers, cereal and tinned food.
For even more destitute clients, a “cold box” food parcel has been created, containing three days’ worth of mainly tinned groceries that can be prepared without the need for heating or hot water.
The boxes, which the trust accepts do not meet the nutritional standards of its regular food parcels, were developed in response to clients who had refused to take basic items such as rice, pasta, tinned tomatoes and baked beans because they had too little credit in the electricity meter to cook them, or had been cut off by their gas supplier.
The trust’s quarterly figures show 355,000 people received food parcels last year between April and the end of September – more than the total fed throughout 2012-13.
More than half its clients were referred as a result of benefit delays, sanctions or because of welfare cuts such as the bedroom tax, although ministers have insisted there is no causal link between welfare reform and charity food-aid growth.
Some of the more random headlines from the BBC News website over the last week or so: