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1.7 percent fall
Verizon is going to buy AOL for $4.4 billion, but you probably knew that already. Not saying you should read into this all too much — daily stock moves are rarely significant digits — but Verizon stock did fall 1.7 percent yesterday on the news. AOL stock, on the other hand, jumped 18 percent in morning trading. [The Wall Street Journal]
2 times the national average
2.5 percent
That’s how much alcohol consumption is down overall in wealthy countries in the last 20 years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But the OECD says there’s a newer “major public health and social concern” of binge drinking among young people. [Associated Press]
5 moons
NASA’s New Horizon probe is close enough to Pluto to snap images that capture each of the planet’s five known moons. Sure, Charon is the main object in Pluto’s life — and vice versa — but the four smaller moons Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra (I just checked, only “Nix” has not been taken by a band with sweet taste in names) are now somewhat in clear view. [NASA]
27 percent
40 percent
46 percent
99 cents
$7.85 million
A University of Virginia dean filed a defamation suit against Rolling Stone magazine over a discredited story by Sabrina Rubin Erdely that claimed a horrific sexual assault occurred on the dean’s watch. [The Guardian]
37 million metric tons
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And, as always, if you see a significant digit in the wild, tweet it to me @WaltHickey.