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(Correcting 6th para to show that the euro was not higher vs dollar)

LONDON (Thomson Financial) - The euro struck another new all-time high against the yen and remains close to its record against the dollar despite the US currency’s rally ahead of this afternoon’s US weekly jobless claims data.

The European single currency recorded its new yen high of 162.53 yen on expectations strong growth would lead to further interest rate rises for the 13-nation single currency euro zone.

David Jones, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, believes the yen, which has slumped in recent months on the carry trades, may fall further tomorrow.

“There’s both the Bank of Japan’s rate verdict and the bank’s half-yearly report on the economic outlook due tomorrow, so any surprises here could readily see further records fall before the month-end,” he said.

Carry trades, where money is borrowed in countries with low interest rates like Japan to be invested in higher-yielding economies, have grown increasingly popular as the BoJ has taken a cautious approach in raising interest rates.

The euro has also been firm against the dollar and is not far off another attempt at the 1.3666 usd high achieved in December 2004 despite today’s dollar recovery.

“We are seeing a little bit of a dollar rebound after declines this week but I view any pullback as a buying opportunity,” said Ian Stannard, currency strategist at BNP Paribas.

Currency players have driven the euro higher in recent months on growing expectations of further interest rate rises by the European Central Bank, with most economists forecasting a quarter point hike to 4.00 pct in June. Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve is widely expected to start cutting its key Fed funds rate from the current 5.25 pct some time this year because of soft economic data.

The narrowing of this yield differential makes the euro more attractive.

Today’s German data further reinforced the market’s view of buoyant economic conditions in the euro zone’s largest economy.

Meanwhile, this afternoon’s US weekly jobless claims data will be closely watched ahead of next week’s crucial US jobs report for April.

“Weekly jobless claims numbers will be important, with stability in the labour market viewed as the main impediment to near-term Fed easing,” said Daniel Katzive, currency strategist at UBS.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect weekly claims to have fallen to 330,000 from 339,000 in the prior week.

Elsewhere, the dollar’s recovery pushed the pound way below 2 usd despite rumours the UK’s biggest bank HSBC is having to buy up to 5 bln stg in dollars in order to meet its dividend commitments and another firm housing market survey from the Nationwide, the UK’s largest building society.

BNP Paribas’ Stannard reckons that the market has got to the point that rate expectations have moved so much that it is making it difficult for the pound to make additional headway.

The market is now fully pricing in another interest rate hike from the Bank of England next month to 5.50 pct after CPI inflation jumped to a 15-year high of 3.1 pct in March and the UK economy continues to grow above its long-run average.

London 1139 GMT London 0806 GMT

US dollar

yen 119.30 up from 118.94

sfr 1.2080 up from 1.2045

Euro

usd 1.3598 down from 1.3640

yen 162.45 up from 162.22

sfr 1.6432 unchanged 1.6432

stg 0.6822 up from 0.6806

Sterling

usd 1.9931 down from 2.0034

yen 237.91 down from 238.28

sfr 2.4077 down from 2.4135

Australian dollar

usd 0.8296 down from 0.8318

stg 0.4161 up from 0.4152

yen 99.03 up from 98.95

pan.pylas@thomson.com

pp/jag/pp/jag

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LONDON (Thomson Financial) - A dip in a key measure of US core inflation pushed the dollar lower on speculation that the US Federal Reserve may soon be in a position to cut interest rates as inflationary pressures ease.

Figures released this afternoon showed core inflation, as measured by the core personal consumption expenditures price index, was unchanged in March on a monthly basis after rising by 0.3 pct in February.

On a year-on-year basis, the core PCE deflator slowed to 2.1 pct from 2.4 pct in the year to February.

“Easier core inflation is helping raise hopes that the Fed can begin to focus more on flagging growth than on stubborn inflation,” said Jamie Coleman at Thomson IFR Markets.

He noted, however, that US rate-setters will want to see more than one month’s inflation moderation “before declaring the battle won”.

At 13.58 pm BST, the euro was trading at 1.3625 usd, up from 1.3616 just before the data were released, while the pound rose to 1.9952 usd from 1.9935 previously.

jessica.mortimer@thomson.com

jkm/ic

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Copyright AFX News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.

The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.

SCOTS and the English appear to be more closely related than many Britons may care to admit.

According to Professor Stephen Oppenheimer, of Oxford University, some 70% of Scottish males and 68% of Englishmen have DNA evidence which shows a common link to ancestors who came to Britain from the Basque country in northern Spain between 7,500 and 15,000 years ago. Based on research into DNA studies across the UK and Ireland over the past 10 years, the professor’s theory on British origins challenges mainstream historical views.

Most people in Scotland, Ireland and Wales were assumed to be descended from Celtic farming tribes who migrated here from central Europe up to 6,500 years ago, with the English largely taking their genetic line from the Anglo-Saxon invaders of the Dark Ages who supposedly wiped out the Celts in their areas of England.

That’s all part of a “Celtic myth”, says the professor, the author of The Origins Of The British: A Genetic Detective Story. “The majority of the gene pool of the British Isles is very ancient and dates to the era after the last great Ice Age. It has nothing to do with Celts or Anglo-Saxons or any of these more recent ethnic labels.

“The Ice Age made Britain a polar desert and there was nobody living here around 13,000 BC until the first settlers came to the British Isles from the Basque country of northern Spain between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago. Something like three-quarters of the ancestors of our modern gene pool arrived then.

“The ancestors of some 88% of the Irish, 81% of the Welsh, 79% of the Cornish, 70% of Scots and 68% of the English arrived here during that period. None of the later immigrations contributed anything more than 5% to the gene pool. So genetically speaking, Scots have more in common with the English than they have differences.

“There is also no evidence of Celtic languages being spoken until much later, so most of these people probably spoke something like Basque, and though it is controversial, there is structural evidence of Basque influence on later Celtic languages and English as well.”

Oppenheimer says there is still a significant 30% genetic difference between Scots and the English - “it’s that third or so which makes the English different,” he added. The genetic changes were largely due to the influx of early Norwegians to the north of Scotland, whereas the east side of England attracted tribes such as the Angles and Saxons from further south.”

Leading Scottish historian Professor Tom Devine last night dismissed his theories as “interesting but irrelevant”, saying “cultural, political and social differences” were much more significant in the development of the British peoples.

Althea Davies, environmental archaeologist at Stirling University Centre for Environmental History, said: “The last Ice Age glacier didn’t melt until 11,000 years ago and the oldest archaeological sites in Scotland date back to about 9,000 years ago, so that fits into his time bracket for the arrival of the first settlers.

“To say that those first people came from just one specific area is very restrictive, however, and a lot of people will be disputing those theories.”

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - Chinese authorities are studying data on the economy but they remain undecided as to whether more controls are necessary at this time, a central bank vice governor said.

Su Ning was speaking to reporters at a conference in Beijing.

China is due to release first quarter economic figures at 3 pm tomorrow.

will.davies@afxasia.com

WASHINGTON (AP) - An array of donors who never had given money in a federal election opened their wallets to Mitt Romney this year, drawn to him through his networks in the business world and the Mormon church.

Utah, seldom a go-to state for politicians seeking money, was Romney’s second most generous state, reflecting the ties he has built there through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his time as president of the Salt Lake Olympics Organizing Committee.

That success helped vault Romney to the top of the money race among Republican presidential candidates with more than $20 million in the first quarter of this year.

An analysis of new campaign finance reports by The Associated Press shows that in some Utah ZIP codes, Romney, a Mormon and former governor of Massachusetts, raised nearly 10 times the amounts raised by President Bush in each of the past two presidential elections.

“I don’t part with my money lightly, but I felt it was money well spent,” said Ken Leister, a Mormon and a businessman from Sandy, Utah. Leister, a first time political donor, and his wife contributed $2,000 to the Romney camp this year.

Leister is hardly alone. The geographic region that contributed the most money to Romney was a ZIP code in Provo, Utah. He had 152 donors and collected $209,105 there in just three months. By comparison, Bush had 40 donors from that ZIP code who contributed $27,000 during the entire 1999-2000 cycle. Four years later, Bush attracted 31 donors from that ZIP code for a total of $25,505 in contributions.

“Different candidates with different messages attract different donors,” Romney finance director Spencer Zwick said. “Governor Romney is bringing new people to this process. … When you start fundraising, you leverage the candidate’s personal relationships, family relationships and people who have an affinity toward the candidate.”

In Utah, but also elsewhere, Romney has plenty of extended relationships to tap. His family has a long association with Brigham Young University in Provo, Romney’s alma mater. The university’s institute of public management is named after Romney’s father, George V. Romney. Romney also ran the Olympics organizing committee from 1999-2002 and is credited with using his business acumen to make the Salt Lake Winter Games a success.

He also has widespread business ties. He has an MBA and law degree from Harvard University and for more than 20 years he worked as a management consultant and later as a venture capitalist, ultimately becoming head of Bain Capital, a firm he helped found in Boston.

“When he starts reaching out to friends and acquaintances, those tentacles reach into Utah rather quickly,” said J. Quin Monson, a political scientist at Brigham Young. Utah contributed more money to Romney than did his home state of Massachusetts. Only California contributed more.

That new donors may boil down to a simple issue: Many Utahans simply never had been asked. In presidential elections, the state does not figure prominently as a major primary. In the general election, its status as a solid Republican Red State makes it an unnecessary stop for either party nominee.

For Romney, the Mormon connection is certainly an asset. It has allowed him to expand his fundraising in other parts of the country too. One of his most generous ZIP codes in California was in Orange County, where there is a heavy concentration of Latter-day Saint church members.

But the church and Romney have had to be careful to keep a distance between the church and his political aspirations. Mormon leaders, for instance, cautioned Romney supporters not to seek support for Romney through BYU’s business alumni association because it is a church-affiliated school.

“In terms of an effort to identify Mormons and just Mormons, that certainly doesn’t happen at this campaign,” Zwick said.

Romney aides, academics who study donor behavior and even supporters such as Leister say the decision to give to Romney is more complex than simply banking on a Mormon connection. John Green, an expert on religious voters now with the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, said religion is part of a broader social relationship that candidates establish with donors.

At the same time, Green noted, Mormons belong to close knit congregations and “because of their distinctiveness and history, they have a sense of being excluded. It makes them prime targets for candidates.

“Here is a network of people that has not been tapped,” he said.

Similarly, a candidate such as Hillary Rodham Clinton will likely attract more women and Barack Obama will resonate with blacks and ethnic groups attracted to his life story.

“One of the things that has been historically true is that people who represent groups who have traditionally not seen their groups have candidates and nominees in the process get more excited and energized so that Senator Clinton is a female candidate, Mitt Romney is a Mormon candidate, Barack Obama is an African-American candidate,” Romney’s legal counsel, Benjamin Ginsburg, told a group of foreign reporters on Tuesday.

As far as Leister is concerned, Romney’s record as a successful entrepreneur, Olympic executive and governor of a largely Democratic state is one that the country needs to hear. And he’s willing to back that up with cash.

“I felt in the past that it was futile — what’s my little contribution have to do with it?” he said. “But with Mitt’s campaign, here’s a guy who at least has a shot to have his story heard and I’m willing to invest in that.

“The next home improvement project will have to wait a little bit.”

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.