| Our view: Dealing with Halloween
Those in charge will be the first to tell you that Halloween can be done better in Salem. But give Mayor Kim Driscoll and her staff credit for a willingness to try new things and a determination to learn from their mistakes as they look back at another October and start planning for the next one.
No question the weeks leading up to Oct. 31 are trying ones for those who live in Salem, and more so for those who live in the downtown neighborhood where most of the attractions are located. But to paraphrase a former ward councilor, if you don't like the fast pace and occasional hyperactivity of city life, you ought to be living someplace like Boxford, not Salem.
Much of the pre-Halloween controversy this year focused on the decision to bring in carnival rides. We've yet to hear exactly how much money this yielded for the city, but even without that revenue, the money the city brings in from parking receipts, Witch House admissions, and fees charged vendors more than offsets the cost of policing the event.
China tops India again
For some years now, many Indians have taken solace from the idea that China may be ahead in manufacturing, but can't compare to India when it comes to R&D. Or, as Sunil Jain writes in India's Business Standard, “Tradition has it that while China is the factory of the world, India is going to be the laboratory of the world." But, Jain adds, a top science body in India, the Scientific Advisory Council, last week caused jitters among Indians after assessing a recent U.S. military report comparing the research output of scientists in China, India and other developing countries. Not only was India behind China in number of papers published, Jain notes, but far more Chinese research papers are landing in top Western journals. More worrisome still for the Indians – and encouraging for the Chinese – is the likelihood that the trend is going to continue: Jain writes that the World Bank's “Knowledge Index," a ranking that looks at a country's scientific fundamentals including Internet and PC usage, patents, and IT adoption by local companies, also skews heavily toward China.
GOP, especially Richardson, at high risk in the House
For Republican legislators, it's a loser either way. Vote in favor and the hordes of interest groups and individuals lined up in opposition will find the challengers. Vote against and the opponent will come from those who think their property taxes are too high and that illegal immigrants and others are escaping the fair-share taxation they'd get with an expanded sales tax. Either way, incumbents lose. It's not surprising that the speaker lacks the votes to pass it. The effort to oust Evans is another move that has the potential to ricochet. Evans was among those who supported Gena Abraham as the Department of Transportation commissioner last October. He and Raybon Anderson of Statesboro, who represents the 12th Congressional District on the DOT board and who also supported Abraham, are up for re-election.
Wall Street off to glum 2008 start
Only weeks old, the new year is already nudging its way into Wall Street's record books. Far from welcome news, however, the stats only underscore the nervousness investors are feeling about the economy. A week that began with a 172-point jump in the Dow Jones industrial average gave way to a 277-point plunge Tuesday and a 307-point slide on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's 500 index, the index closely watched by market professionals, is on track to show its worst-ever performance in January. With the stock market having stumbled badly in the last three months of 2007 amid the escalating housing and credit crisis, no one predicted 2008 would have a robust start. But few expected the string of bad news that has made January nothing short of miserable. Last week's economic readings pointed to little else but a broad slowdown.
Dollar's drop gives foreign investors edge
The weak dollar has given foreign investors strong incentive to buy property in Hawai'i's slowing housing market, which just capped a second year of declining sales. Australian, Canadian and European currencies have risen sharply in recent months to give real estate investors from those countries their strongest buying power in more than a decade. In addition, though Japan's currency has been stronger in recent years, a rise in the yen is making Hawai'i attractive again for Japanese, who historically have been the dominant foreign force in local real estate acquisition. The international currency leverage which also extends to South Korea, China and other countries is expected to help maintain stability in Hawai'i's cooling real estate market, mostly in the luxury home and resort condominium areas less dominated by local buyers.
IV. The Forensic Evidence
What little is known today about the mass graves in Iraq has come from individual Iraqis who miraculously survived mass executions, witnessed killings, or came across freshly dug graves in the course of their daily activities. In September 2003, a shepherd led Aid Rashid Ido, a lieutenant in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corp (ICDC), to two mass graves located in the al-Jazeera desert west of Mosul. The witness was unsure of the exact month, but he recalled discovering the graves sometime in 1988, shortly after he observed Iraqi military and civilian vehicles transporting what appeared to be Kurdish women and children on the road that passes his village. Lt. Rashid Ido took Human Rights Watch researchers to the site on February 24, 2004, where they found toys, childrens clothing, and remnants of clothing traditionally worn by Kurdish women.
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