Pew Research Center Staff

That's the number of times the word "surge" appeared in media stories about President Bush's plan for increasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq, according to a database search for the week of Jan 10-Jan 17 conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. That frequency was close to double the number that used the word "escalate" or "escalation" (10,112).

That's the percentage of internet users who have looked online for information about a place to live - double the overall number of Americans who had done so in 2000.

That's the percentage of white evangelicals who express support for continuing stem cell research. Although less than half still oppose such research, the latest number represents a 12-point increase over the past year and is easily the highest level of support recorded among evangelicals in the past five years.

That's the number of Americans who now have a close relative married to someone of a different race.

That's the number of Americans who now describe microwave ovens as a necessity in their lives -- more than double the number who said so 10 years ago and a higher percentage than those who now deem a TV essential (64%).

That's the number of American adults who say the state of Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophesy about the second coming of Jesus. A still larger number, 44%, believe God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people.

That's the number of Americans who now say that the U.S. should "mind its own business internationally," up from 34% in 2004, and just 30% in 2002.

What do Bill O'Reilly, Anderson Cooper and Jim Cramer have in common? The three cable news personalities are all hawking their own line of gifts -- from varsity jackets to fitness kits to bobblehead dolls. If you're wondering how to spend those holiday gifts of cash you may have gotten, here's a chance to declare your loyalty in the fierce cable news wars.

That's the number of Americans, about one-in-five, who think the economy will be better off a year from now, while 18% say it will be worse off, and most Americans (56%) say it will be about the same as now.

That's the portion of registered voters who received recorded telephone messages in the final stages of the 2006 mid-term election. These so-called "robo-calls" were the second most popular way for campaigns and political activists to reach voters, trailing only direct mail as a key tool of political communication.