Environment

Current sales and buyer traffic tumbled in February for homebuilders who downgraded their confidence index to 58 (from 61) missing expctations and at its worst level since May 2015. While futures sales hope rose very modestly, NAHB shows buyer traffic plunged to its lowest since March 2015 with every region seeing weakness (most notably The West).

All this is odd given the surge in new and existing home sales...

Once again - hope appears not to be a strategy after all.

A mysterious human-like species who died out on an Indonesian island over 15,000 years ago were real life “hobbits”, according to scientists studying their fossil remains.  The fossils of Homo floresiensis, dubbed “the hobbits” due to their tiny stature, were found on the island of Flores in 2003. Abc.net.au reports: Controversy has raged ever since as to whether they were an unknown branch of early humans or specimens of modern man deformed by disease.

One of the world’s leading think tanks claims that in the future people will be healthier and wealthier and living with dinosaurs. In the future teenagers will be living like millionaires in futuristic homes built for leisure-time and comfort with robots as servants. They would travel in driver-less cars and supersonic planes. Dinosaurs could also make a comeback around 2050 to join the euphoria, through DNA back-breeding.

A psychic who claims to have accurately predicted natural disasters in the past has recently predicted that a massive earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or greater is due to hit California in 2016. Frankie MacDonald says that California will be split into two along the San Andreas fault line, splitting up major cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles and doing damage on buildings and freeways across the cities.

 As Cocoa demand outgrows supplies and with Valentine’s Day upon us, chocolate lovers should be beware that there is a ‘chocolate deficit’ on the horizon. According to a report, poor and disorganized farming methods are leading to a deficit in cocoa crops, that is leading to shortages and could lead to deforestation, unless world farmers improve and organize their cocoa cultivation. The Daily Record reports: Demand for cocoa will soon be at an all-time high as shoppers in developing countries buy more of the sweet treat.