Numbers in the news.

• Position: NEWS & TRENDS - Brief article

84% VOTER TURNOUT IN France for this year's presidential election; for the 2004 U.S. presidential election, turnout was 64 percent.

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES

1,000 ESTIMATED NUMBER OF years that it takes for a plastic grocery bag to decompose; about 100 billion such bags are distributed annually worldwide.

SOURCE: TIME

$5.8 billion VALUE OF CHINESE toys sold to the U.S. in 2005. China has become the world's Leading toy exporter.

SOURCE: TIME

7.2 PERCENTAGE OF U.S. households that used only a cell phone in 2006, up from...