Apologies. The Thursday Jan. 9th Daily Digest is slightly late due a mandatory two-hour Wikipedia browsing catch-up:
The national job market might be showing signs of improvement, the Associated Press writes. The weekly number of people seeking unemployment benefits “plummeted” to 5,000 last week – fewest claims in about four years. Meanwhile, Minnesota gained 7,900 jobs in December, and 25,300 jobs overall in 2011, according to the Star Tribune. The state unemployment rate in now at 5.7 percent.
A second will be taking up some time on the United Nations’ agenda today, as hundreds of delegates from 70 countries deliberate whether to drop it from the global watch. The leap second is added to the world’s atomic clocks every few years to account for slight wobbles in the planet’s rotational cycle. But a few courtiers, including United States and Japan, are arguing the 40-year practice is potentially disastrous to the today’s satellite-controlled networks, the New York Times reports. United Kingdom meanwhile is keeping a very British stance of preserving the tradition. The last leap second was added in 2008, with another adjustment scheduled for June 30th.
