Economy
Fed to start tapering bond purchases this year: Bernanke
The Federal Reserve maintains its $85 billion-a-month asset purchase program, but says it could begin scaling back later this year.
22
L/RAIN
When Google chose New Zealand to unveil secret plans for a balloon-driven Wi-Fi network last weekend, it cemented the country’s reputation as a trial site for global tech companies looking to test their latest innovations. Industry experts said New Zealand, tucked away deep in the Southern Hemisphere, offers a tech-savvy, ...
An Australian woman who now speaks with a French-sounding accent after a head injury eight years ago has revealed the ...
Google revealed top-secret plans Saturday to send balloons to the edge of space with the lofty aim of bringing Internet ...
Paleontologists have made the surprising evolutionary discovery that ancient Australian fish may have had abdominal muscles, previously thought to have only developed in land animals. Researchers mapping the oldest fossilized vertebrate muscles ever seen — in gogo fish 380 million years old — worked ...
In the harsh desert steppe of far northwestern China, five prehistoric-looking Przewalski’s horses, once classified as extinct in the wild, emerge from the endless plains. The horses — named after a Russian officer and explorer who spotted them around 1880 — bear a striking ...
China successfully launched its longest-ever manned space mission — 15 days — on Tuesday, with the nation’s second female astronaut among the crew, in the next step for the ambitious space program, a symbol of the country’s growing might. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived ...
New research from sunny Australia provides some of the strongest evidence to date that near-daily sunscreen use can slow the aging of skin. Ultraviolet rays that spur wrinkles and other signs of aging can quietly build up damage pretty much anytime a person is ...
A simple vinegar test slashed cervical cancer death rates by one-third in a remarkable study of 150,000 women in the slums of India, where the disease is the top cancer killer of women. Doctors reported the results Sunday at a cancer conference in Chicago. ...
Over three-quarters of smokers surveyed in India believe that cigarette smoking does not have health consequences, according to the results of a survey by an insurance company released Friday. The results of the survey by ICICI Lombard General Insurance Co., the country’s largest private ...
South Korea’s obsession with plastic surgery is shifting from standard eye and nose jobs to embrace a radical surgical procedure that requires months of often painful recovery. A stream of celebrities boast on TV shows how it gave them a “new life,” while advertisements ...
A hot cup of Ceylon tea is better known as being soothing and relaxing, but Sri Lanka is now marketing its most profitable export as a luxury boost for the libido. The tea industry is increasingly plugging Ceylon’s supposed aphrodisiac qualities in a bid ...
Gigantic animals that once roamed Australia were mostly extinct by the time humans arrived, according to a new study that suggests climate change played the key role in their demise. For decades, debate has centered on what wiped out megafauna such as the rhinoceros-size, ...
Australia was first settled by between 1,000 and 3,000 humans around 50,000 years ago, but the population crashed during the Ice Age before recovering to a peak of some 1.2 million people five centuries ago, a study said Wednesday. Estimating the early population of ...
What if hospitals were run like a mix of Wal-Mart and a low-cost airline? The result might be something like the chain of “no-frills” Narayana Hrudayalaya clinics in southern India. Using prefabricated buildings, stripping out air conditioning and even training visitors to help with ...
A 15-month-old Indian girl whose head has swollen to nearly double its normal size is “doing well,” a doctor said Friday, but treatment could be complicated by the extreme nature of her case. Roona Begum, who suffers from hydrocephalus, a rare disorder that causes ...