Numbers In The News, Vol. 1:
- THREE MILLION. Number of Americans who could lose unemployment benefits if Congress doesn’t get its shit together soon.
- $335 MILLION. Amount paid by Bank of America to settle federal charges that its Countrywide Financial unit carried out discriminatory lending practices against African-Americans and Hispanics — in particular, charging higher fees to minorities than to whites who posed the same credit risk.
- 160. Number of defecting soldiers, civilians and activists killed by soldiers loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on the eve of Arab League observers arriving in the Middle Eastern nation.
- 95. The percentage of “black males” in Washington, D.C. that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul once wrote were “semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” Paul has, in the past, not denied — and even disavowed — that he wrote such racist screeds: he now denies writing them entirely.
- EIGHT. The number of U.S. soldiers charged in connection with the apparent suicide of Private Danny Chen in Afghanistan.