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WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s economy grew at an unexpectedly brisk 3.3% annual pace from October through December as Americans showed a continued willingness to spend freely despite high interest rates and price levels that have frustrated many households. Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department said the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — decelerated from its sizzling 4.9% growth rate the previous quarter. But the latest figures still reflected the surprising durability of the world’s largest economy, marking the sixth straight quarter in which GDP has grown at an annual pace of 2%...

The U.S. economy grew at a blistering 5.2 percent annual pace in the third quarter, the government said Wednesday. This was faster than the previous estimate of 4.9 percent, which was much higher than anticipated. Excluding the rebound from the pandemic, this is the fastest pace of growth in a decade. The upward revision reflects an increase in government spending and business investment. Consumer spending was revised down as were exports. This is the government’s second estimate of gross domestic product, the official government scorecard for the economy. In the second quarter, the government grew at a 2.1 percent annual...

The economic recovery gained momentum in the spring as buoyant consumer spending and resurgent business investment helped, once again, to keep a recession at bay. Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, rose at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was up from a 2 percent growth rate in the first three months of the year and far stronger than forecasters expected a few months ago. Consumers led the way, as they have throughout the recovery from the severe but short-lived pandemic recession in 2020. Spending rose at a 1.6 percent rate,...

The U.S. economy was much stronger in the first quarter of 2023 than it initially seemed, according to data released Thursday by the Commerce Department. U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annualized rate of 2 percent in the first quarter, according to revised data released Thursday, far faster than the 1.3 percent annualized growth rate estimated by government officials earlier this year. The first-quarter growth rate has been revised substantially higher from the 1.1 percent annualized rate first reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis earlier this year. The revision is much bigger than what is normally announced...

Chicago grew by about 50,000 residents over the last decade, according to 2020 U.S. Census data released Thursday. The decennial population count put Chicago’s total at 2,746,388 residents — a 1.9% increase over the 2010 total. The Chicago number was revealed during a Washington news conference. More detailed county and regional data is expected later Thursday. Chicago’s gain in population is a stark contrast to the previous decade, when the the city lost 200,000 residents — a 6.9% decrease. The drop from 2000 to 2010 was fueled largely by a 17% decrease in the number of Black residents, many of...

Christopher Shays of Connecticut found it puzzling: over time, his friend Attorney General Richard Blumenthal kept revising how he talked about his military service during the Vietnam War. Mr. Shays, a conscientious objector who avoided the Vietnam War, has his own theory about Mr. Blumenthal’s evolving descriptions of his service: “I think that it was a way that he quickly bonded with people I am sure he admired and respected.” When Paul Kingman, a Navy veteran who lost feeling in his feet after chemotherapy, called Mr. Blumenthal’s office in 2007, he was trying to get a hearing for disability payments...

May 18, 2010 Colleague Says Blumenthal Claims Grew Gradually By MICHAEL BARBARO and DAVID M. HALBFINGER Former Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut found it puzzling: over time, his friend Attorney General Richard Blumenthal kept revising how he talked about his military service during the Vietnam War. At first, in the 1980s, he was humble. He played it down, Mr. Shays recalled, characterizing it as humdrum desk work. Over the last few years, however, more sweeping claims crept into Mr. Blumenthal’s descriptions, he said: that Mr. Blumenthal had served in Vietnam and had felt the sting of an ungrateful nation as...

Neanderthal Children Grew Up Fast ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2007) — An international European research collaboration led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reports evidence for a rapid developmental pattern in a 100,000 year old Belgian Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis).Growth lines inside a Neanderthal tooth (left - diagonally running lines) and on the outside (right- horizontal curved lines). Counts and measurements of these lines helped to determine that the child was approximately 8 years old when it died. (Credit: Tanya Smith, MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology) A new report details how the team used growth lines both inside and...

Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post thinks we have a "bauble economy" -- its all just a "giant Ponzi scheme." The facts just keep contradicting him. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that "employment grew by 215,000 in November." On Wednesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revised our national GDP for the 3rd quarter upwards to 4.3% from an initial estimate of 3.8% On the astonishing job creation, from CNNMoney.com: "This is another affirmation that we've gotten over the shock of the hurricanes and the economy is back on track to where it was before," said Mark Vitner, senior...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

SULAYMANIYAH AND ARBIL, NORTHERN IRAQ – Nothing in Qais Ibrahim Khadir's childhood hinted that he would one day be ready to kill in the name of Allah. Nothing in this young man with large brown eyes and long lashes indicated that he would embrace the most uncompromising interpretation of Islam, yearn for martyrdom, and today recoil from the handshake of any visiting "infidel." Sure, Khadir was a bit obsessive - as teenage boys often are when it comes to girls. "He would always wander around the girls' school," his mother recalls, laughing. "He loved a girl called Dahlia, and there...