News Scraps
By Brandon Bosworth

The Pentagon spends $2.5 million per year to feed those held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, or $12.68 daily per prisoner. It costs $8.85 a day to feed a U.S. soldier serving in the Middle East, and $2.78 a day to feed a convict in a U.S. federal prison.

 

The number of registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C. has more than doubled since 2000, from 16,342 to 34,785 today. The money spent on lobbying by corporations and interest groups increased from $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion between 2000 and 2004.

 

Americans with dial-up Internet connections spend an average of $868 a year on on-line purchases. Those with broadband connections spend an average of $1,244 per year.

 

Adjusted for inflation, houses in the 1980s cost about as much as they did in 1900.

 

In a speech slamming opposition leader and former European Commission president Romano Prodi, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi called the euro a “disaster” and a “ripoff” that “screwed everybody.” . . . HSBC, the world’s second-biggest bank, issued a report suggesting that Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands might be better off leaving the Euro Zone.

 

German TV reporters tested the bathrooms of the European Parliament for signs of cocaine, and found that 90 percent of them had residue of the drug.

 

A lunch meeting between Belgian parliamentarian Herman De Croon and officials from Iran was canceled when the Iranians hinted they did not want alcohol served during the meeting. “Even for the tolerant, that was a bridge too far,” said De Croon.

 

Health officials expect 40,000 prostitutes to descend on Germany next summer, when the nation hosts the World Cup soccer matches. “The World Cup naturally offers fantastic opportunities to earn money,” explained Katharina Cetin, of Hydra, Berlin’s prostitution lobbying group. Prostitution is legal in Germany. . . Berlin prostitute Renate Dolle, 63, retired from her 49-year career as a streetwalker to spend more time with her husband and granddaughter.

 

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has threatened to seize control of the nation’s idle factories from their owners, stating that it’s time for Venezuelans to choose between “capitalism, which is the road to hell, or socialism, for those who want to build the kingdom of God here on earth.”

 

Forty-eight percent of Russians see no need for political opposition to the existing government, according to an All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center poll.

 

A restaurant in Manchuria refuses to serve Japanese customers who don’t first apologize for their nation’s violent occupation of the Chinese region. According to the manager, “We totally welcome those Japanese customers who can correctly view history… But as for those customers who still refuse to admit to history, we want to say we don’t like them.”… Only half of all Chinese speak Mandarin, the national language.  

 

The majority of individuals visiting Hong Kong’s Family Planning Association do so because they are unsure of how to have sex. Director Grace Wong told the South China Morning Post that problems include married couples who “are not familiar with their body parts.” Hong Kong routinely ranks at the bottom of international surveys of sexual frequency.

 

Pem Dorjee Sherpa and Moni Mule Pati of Nepal became the first couple to be married on the summit of Mount Everest.

 

Almost 23 percent of those born in the U.S. in 2002 had a foreign-born mother, according to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies.

 

Fewer than 1 percent of all American fathers stay home and take care of their children full-time.

 

Fifty-five percent of American men— and 47 percent of women—between the ages of 18 and 24 have returned home to live with their parents.

 

Fewer than a quarter of adults ages 18 to 29 read a newspaper regularly.