WASHINGTON — A record drop in foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury bills in December sent a reminder that the government might have to pay higher interest rates on its debt to continue to attract investors. China reduced its stake and lost the position it’s held for more than a year as the largest foreign holder of Treasury debt. Japan retook the top spot as it boosted its Treasury holdings. The Treasury Department said foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury bills fell by a record $53 billion in December. That topped the previous record drop of $44.5 billion in April 2009. Private analysts, though, were split over the significance of the decline. Some doubted that the drop in foreign holdings of short-term Treasuries signified growing unease about holding U.S. debt. They noted that net purchases of longer-term Treasury debt rose in December by $70 billion. But other economists saw the decline as a warning signal. They fear that foreigners, especially the Chinese, have begun to worry about record-high U.S. budget deficits and are looking to diversify their holdings. A sustained drop in foreign demand for dollar-denominated assets could lead to higher U.S. interest rates and falling […]
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have become the first to reconstruct the nuclear genome of an extinct human being. It is the first time an ancient genome has been reconstructed in detail. The innovative technique can be applied to museum materials and ancient remains found in nature and can help reconstructing human phenotypic traits of extinct cultures from where only limited remains have been recovered. It also allows for finding those contemporary populations most closely related to extinct cultures revealing ancient human expansions and migrations. Finally, the discovery improves our understanding of heredity and the disease risk passed down from our ancestors. The spectacular results of the research are being published in the upcoming issue of Nature. Professor Eske Willerslev and his PhD student Morten Rasmussen, from Centre of Excellence in GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, led the international team of scientists responsible for the findings. Sequencing the genome Professor Willerslev, 38, and his team grabbed international attention last year when they reconstructed the complete mitochondrial genomes of a woolly mammoth and an ancient human. However, the current discovery is the first time scientists have been able to reconstruct the 80% […]
Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected. That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures. Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. The oldest established early marine travel anywhere was the sea-crossing migration of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to Australia, beginning about 60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive trickle of evidence, notably the skeletons and artifacts on the Indonesian island of Flores, of more ancient hominids making their way by water to new habitats. Even more intriguing, the […]
52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn’t deserve reelection in 2012, according to a new poll. 44 percent of all Americans said they would vote to reelect the president in two and a half years, less than the slight majority who said they would prefer to elect someone else. Obama faces a 44-52 deficit among both all Americans and registered voters, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Tuesday. Four percent had no opinion. The reelection numbers are slightly more sour than Obama’s approval ratings, which are basically tied. 49 percent of people told CNN that they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, while 50 percent disapprove. Still, the 2012 election is still a long way’s away, with this fall’s midterm elections looming large. Republicans are hoping to make inroads into Congress, while Democrats are hoping to hold onto gains won in the 2006 and 2008 cycles. Respondents to CNN were split at 46 percent as to whether they preferred a generic Republican or Democratic candidate in this fall’s elections. At least one retiring lawmaker is confident Obama will sail to reelection, with Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) predicting […]
Wind power generation increased by 31 percent around the world last year, now totaling 157.9 gigawatts, according to a new report from the Global Wind Energy Council. The country with the biggest individual increase: China, which saw more than 100 percent growth in wind power capacity over the last year, accounting for more than a third of the new turbines installed. The news is not only good for the environment, but also the global economy. Not only does wind power now employ an international workforce of 500,000, the market has swelled to $63 billion. The increase defied analyst predictions that the economic downturn would slow wind development. China, which now derives 25.1 gigawatts from wind, wasn’t the only country in Asia placing emphasis on wind. India, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan added a combined 14 gigawatts of generation. To put this in context, the U.S. – which still leads in wind generation – added 10 gigawatts, upping its wind capacity by 39 percent. This is the year that the Asian wind market took off, after incremental increases over the last seven years. Europe also saw impressive growth in its wind capacity, adding 10.5 gigawatts, but year-over-year increases […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
