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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Foreign holdings of U.S. debt rose in March as China ramped up its purchases and displaced Japan as the leading owner of U.S. Treasury securities. The Treasury Department says overseas ownership of U.S. debt rose 2.1 percent in March to $6.18 trillion. That is below January's record of $6.22 trillion. China added $37.3 billion ... bringing its stockpile to $1.26 trillion... ahead of Japan, which added just $2.5 billion...to $1.23 trillion. ... The U.S. deficit topped $1 trillion from 2009 through 2012. Foreign governments...account for two-thirds of the foreign holdings...rose 1 percent from the previous month to...

China Retakes Top Spot as the Biggest Foreign Owner of U.S. Debt By IAN TALLEY It was a short-lived domination. After just a month of being the top holder of U.S. Treasury debt, Japan has once again been pushed into the No.2 slot as China bulked up on Uncle Sam’s bonds and notes. As we noted last month – and several times before that – Treasury’s data is a rough guesstimate. That makes it hard for analysts sifting through the obscure sheaves of digital data to glean anything but rough trends. It also makes it difficult to draw precise conclusions....

http://media.salon.com/2015/05/hillary_warren_de_blasio.jpgEarlier this week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with a gaggle of bored reporters and some boldfaced names in the progressive movement, unveiled a “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.” Much like the media event that accompanied its unveiling, the agenda is supposed to be understood as a kind of 21st-century, liberal version of the storied “Contract with America,” the PR stunt that, as legend (erroneously) has it, rocketed Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party to power after the 1994 midterm elections. As my colleague Joan Walsh reported on Thursday, this backward-looking attempt to lay out a...

London (AFP) - Two Libyan soldiers who were in Britain on a training course were sentenced to 12 years in jail on Friday after being found guilty of raping a drunken man after a night out. A jury in Cambridge in eastern England found Moktar Ali Saad Mahmoud, 33, and Ibrahim Abugtila, 23, guilty of rape, and aiding and abetting each other in raping the man in October last year. The court was told that the pair had acted like "hunting dogs" in tracking down their victim, aged in his twenties. "This was a truly horrendous crime and I hope...

In 2006, Tressa Middleton became Britain’s youngest mother after her 16-year-old brother, Jason, raped her. She was only 11-years-old at the time but recently told the hosts of This Morning about the life-changing experience. She said, “Soon after I began noticing changes in my body. I eventually did a pregnancy test and it came up I was pregnant. I was too scared to tell my mum, so I told my aunt and then ran away. Mum was furious but she calmed down eventually.” However, Middleton didn’t tell anyone about the rape; instead, she said the pregnancy was a result of...

Labour’s former council leader in Thanet, Iris Johnston, has been caught on camera allegedly ‘helping’ a member of the public to cast their ballot during last Thursday’s election. The votes for Thanet District Council took place on the same day as the General Election, when UKIP leader Nigel Farage was attempting to be elected as the Member of Parliament for South Thanet. ... Johnston’s proximity to the voter may well qualify as compromising the secrecy of the ballot, something that worried the Conservative Party’s Paul Messenger, who took the photo. He told the BBC, “It concerned me that Iris was...

Church of Scotland Votes To Let Deacons And Ministers Have Same Sex Civil Partnerships Vote maintains Church's traditional view of marriage between a man and woman, but allows individual congregations to "opt out" By Nicola Harley 16 May 2015 The Church of Scotland has voted in favour of allowing people in same sex civil partnerships to be called as ministers and deacons. The decision was made by the General Assembly on the Mound in Edinburgh on Saturday, where the motion was passed by 309 votes in favour and 182 against. The outcome is the culmination of years of deliberation within...

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had at one stage warned foreign creditors that Athens would not repay 750 million euros due to the IMF in May unless they provided it with immediate liquidity, the Kathimerini newspaper reported on Saturday.

This statement, and others like it, are a huge deal. This isn’t how the leader of a major civilized Western so-called “democracy” speaks to the citizenry. It is how a master talks to his slaves. How a ruler addresses his subjects. Those of us who are in disbelief over David Cameron’s recent language, don’t have to just point to the quote above. There’s a lot more to it than a simple quote. For example, the Guardian reports: The measures would give the police powers to apply to the high court for an order to limit the “harmful activities” of an...

This is a massive betrayal of Israel and all free people, and an endorsement of the genocidal “Palestinian” jihad against the Jews. A “State of Palestine” will no more bring peace than did the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza: just as with Gaza, a “State of Palestine” will just become another jihad base. The Vatican has every reason to know that. The “Palestinians” on their official media outlets make no secret of their goal of wiping out Israel and killing Jews wholesale. Now the Vatican has signed on to that. —The Vatican said it would soon sign its first treaty with...

[1]Also Hitler’s corpse would like reparations for not being allowed to conquer London.Considering that British rule helped bring in Muslim illegal aliens into the historical Jewish homeland, who then refused to leave and began killing people, Israel can then demand reparations from the UK for Hamas.Or maybe the UK can just resettle Hamas in Tower Hamlets. No one would notice the difference [2]. Hamas official Essam Adwan stated Friday that Britain “paved the way” for a “Zionist takeover” by preventing Palestinians from establishing an armed resistance against Jews in 1947 and by weakening the local economy and education system.The...

Divorce Case Beauty Queen ‘Asked For £500,000 To Leave Her First Husband’ Ekaterina Parfenova’s lawyer husband has eye on a sixth marriage but admits: ‘Money can’t buy you love’ By John Bingham 15 May 2015 A Russian actress and beauty queen at the centre of a £6 million divorce battle pressed her husband to give her half a million pounds before they even officially began their relationship, the Family Court in London has heard. Ekaterina Parfenova, a former child film star and model, is said to have asked Richard Fields, an American lawyer, for the cash before she would leave...

Eyes were lifted skywards on Saturday afternoon as the evocative sight of a lone Spitfire over Forfar signalled the official start of local VE Day celebrations. The fly-past by the replica fighter aircraft began a day-long commemoration organised by Legion Scotland marking 70 years since the end of the War in Europe. Beginning with an afternoon of entertainment at the Market Muir, the day featured military bands, vehicle displays and a special performance by 1940s dance troupe, The Kennedy Cupcakes, It also included an impressive Beating Retreat ceremony at Station Park in the evening which was attended by a number...

A mother-of-three from North Carolina is the latest Westerner to volunteer to fight against ISIS in Iraq. Samantha Johnston, 25, from Emerald Island, who previously served in the US Army, is believed to have joined the Kurdish Peshmerga troops, who are battling ISIS in northern Iraq and Syria. She said she wanted to fight ISIS because: 'I decided to come fight because I felt like it was my duty. 'I couldn't look my children in the eyes and say, "I didn't do anything to help."' Ms Johnston told the site her children are in 'a safe place'. 'To me this...

Jeb Bush has an explanation for his Iraq war flub - it's that he has a 'hard time' criticizing his family. Bush made the admission on Thursday at the Republican National Committee's spring meeting, held this year in Flagstaff, Arizona, according to ABC News. Acknowledging that 'there's a lot of interest out there' from press in determining how he's different from his ex-president brother George W. Bush, the White House hopeful and son of former president George H.W. Bush said: 'I'm not going to go out of my way to say that, you know, my brother did this wrong or...

Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has withdrawn from the Labour party leadership contest, just days after throwing his hat into the ring.

In the North Sea, off the coast of Norway, Nato has been conducting its largest ever anti-submarine warfare exercise. It is seen as a response to the growing threat from Russian submarines which have stepped up their own patrols in these very same waters. It has also highlighted a gaping hole in Britain's own defences. For now though it is the hunt for U33, not Red October. The German U-boat is acting as the unseen enemy below the waves. 'Important training' U33's commander Kai Nicklesdorf and his 28 crew, who live in cramped conditions, are trying to avoid detection by...

"The world may have a polling problem." That's the headline on a blogpost by Nate Silver, the wunderkind founder of FiveThirthyEight. It was posted on 9:54 ET the night of May 7, as the counting in the British election was continuing in the small hours of May 8 UK Time. That was an hour after the result in the constituency of Nuneaton made it clear that all the pre-election polls were wrong. Nuneaton, in the Midlands just east of Birmingham, was No. 28 on a list of 42 marginal two-party contests. Projections based on pre-election polls were that Labour would...

“BBC under fire after Home Affairs Editor Mark Easton ‘compares extremist preacher Anjem Choudary to Gandhi and Mandela,’” by Steph Cockroft, MailOnline, 14 May 2015: The BBC is under fire after the Home Affairs Editor appeared to compare notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

UKIP's Nigel Farage has ruled out standing down as leader of the party despite a bitter row over his future. MEP Patrick O'Flynn earlier claimed Mr. Farage had fallen under the influence of "inexperienced" advisers, which was followed by the departure of two aides. However, Mr. Farage told the BBC's Question Time he had a "phenomenal" level of support within the party. Leaving just as the PM was addressed the UK's relationship with the EU would be a "massive mistake", he said...... The UKIP leader stood down after failing to win the Kent seat of Thanet South in the general...