INDICATORS

AP - The United Nations ranked Norway as the best country to live in for
a sixth consecutive year Thursday, prompting the country's aid minister
to tell Norwegians to stop whining about wanting more. Oil-rich Norway,
with its generous welfare state, topped the U.N. Development Program's
human development index, based on such criteria as life expectancy,
education and income. Iceland was No. 2, followed by Australia, Ireland,
Sweden, Canada, Japan and the United States. . .
According to the study, Norwegians earn 40 times more than the study's
lowest- ranked country, Niger, live almost twice as long, and have
nearly five times the literacy rate poorer countries. Norway is already
one of the world's most generous foreign aid donors per capita, giving
nearly 1 percent of its gross national product. . . The five countries
with the lowest scores were Guinea-Bissau in 173rd place, Burkina Faso
as 174, Mali as 175, Sierra Leone as 176, and Niger 177. The report was
unable to rank 17 countries, such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia,
because there was insufficient data.

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/
ap/20061109/ap_on_re_eu/norway_un_development

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AP - Total college enrollment of black men and women 18 to 24 has
increased from 15 percent in 1970 to roughly 25 percent in 2003. The
number of black students enrolling in historically black colleges also
has slowly increased -- from 190,305 in 1976 to more than 230,000 in
2001. Yet the percentage of black college students choosing black
colleges has been declining -- from 18.4 percent in 1976 to 12.9 percent
in 2001, according to the Department of Education's most recent figures
available. Twenty-six of 87 black colleges profiled by the agency
recorded enrollment declines from 1995 to 2004.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/
AR2006092200252.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

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JOSH GETLIN, LA TIMES - The average amount of time that U.S. households
had a television set on each day during the yearlong 2005-06 TV season
that ended last week increased by three minutes from the year before, to
a record of eight hours and 14 minutes, the report said. Viewers ages 12
to 17 watched 3% more television during a full day than they had the
year before, Nielsen said. Younger children, ages 2 to 11, increased
their viewing by 4%. . . In 1995-96, for example, the average household
was tuned in to television for an average of seven hours and 15 minutes
per day; that figure grew by nearly an hour during the 2005-06 survey
period.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-fi-tv22sep22,1,2130673.story?
coll=la-headlines-entnews

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