Palangkaraya Post News

The property developer Kevin Wiggins fondly recalled a house on Lucille Avenue.

It was a house “no one would live in, where drug deals were being done. We put in hardwood floors, fixtures that no one thought belonged here.

“This was good intentions gone bad. We were able to come out to the neighborhood because no one else would.”

U.S. District Court Judge Jack Camp sent Wiggins to prison for more than eight years, anyway, for his role in a large-scale mortgage fraud scheme in Atlanta’s historical West End neighborhood.

Wiggins, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy, also will have to repay $6.5 million to 12 financial companies, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the quasi-governmental mortgage buyers now facing serious financial problems. Read more…

Aug. 16, when the August Atlanta Apparel Market starts, Michelle Harrison & Associates will be stationed right outside the John Portman-designed & Associates will be stationed right outside the John Portman-designed elevators on the 10th floor with a new 1,000-square-foot showroom.

The new space — looking much like a high-end salon — will be dedicated only to special occasion dresses for mothers-of-the-bride, bridesmaids and prom queens.

“We do everything but white dresses,” said Harrison, meaning she sells all but wedding gowns.

A Queens native, Harrison has built her small clothing business around AmericasMart for more than 17 years. She already has a 12,000-square-foot showroom on the ninth floor where she’ll exhibit the latest sportswear and dresses catering to Southern women’s “three C’s”: church, country club and career. She has four full-time employees and a bevy of fashion interns that help her handle the volume during the shows. Read more…

There everything from pay raises for teachers and state employees to tax cuts passed during the 2008 General Assembly session could be on the chopping block if the economy continues to stumble, a key lawmaker said Tuesday.

are looking at a whole host of options as they try to decide how to address the state’s latest fiscal crisis. Among the options are eliminating this year’s 2.5 percent teacher and state employee pay raise. Tax collections have been down for months.

The state had to use $600 million in reserves to pay bills for fiscal 2008, which ended June 30.

“The numbers are sobering,” Hill said. “The $700 million we approved in new spending for fiscal 2009, we’re fixin’ to go over that with a fine-tooth comb.”
Read more…

By ROBERT TANNER, STEVE KARNOWSKI and FRANK BASS, Associated Press Writers

MINNEAPOLIS - A year after the worst U.S. bridge collapse in a generation brought calls for immediate repairs to other spans, two of every three of the busiest problem bridges in each state — carrying nearly 40 million vehicles a day — have had no work beyond regular maintenance.

An Associated Press review of repairs on each state’s 20 most-traveled bridges with structural deficiencies found just 12 percent have been fixed. In most states, the most common approach was to plan for repairs later rather than fix problems now.

The bridges reviewed by the AP — 1,020 in all — are not in imminent danger of collapse, state engineers and highway officials say. But the officials acknowledge the structures need improvement, many sooner rather than later. Read more…

U.S. video game retail sales soared 53 percent in June, fueled by Nintendo Co.’s Wii and handheld DS gaming systems, as well as Konami Corp.’s blockbuster “Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots” — by far the month’s best-selling title.

Total sales of video game hardware, software and accessories hit $1.69 billion during the month, up from $1.1 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to data from market researcher NPD Group.

“The video games industry continues to perform in the face of an ever-increasingly difficult economic environment as many turn to more in-home entertainment,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier in an e-mail. “Even if growth slows over the back half of 2008, the industry is poised to achieve record-breaking revenues of over $22 billion for the year.”

Hardware sales grew 54 percent to $615.1 million from $399.2 million a year ago. Software sales jumped 61 percent to $872.6 million from $542.2 million. Read more…

North Korea’s phantom hotel is stirring back to life. Once dubbed by Esquire magazine as “the worst building in the history of mankind,” the 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel is back under construction after a 16-year lull in the capital of one of the world’s most reclusive and destitute countries.

According to foreign residents in Pyongyang, Egypt’s Orascom group has recently begun refurbishing the top floors of the three-sided pyramid-shaped hotel whose 330-metre (1,083 ft) frame dominates the Pyongyang skyline.

The firm has put glass panels into the concrete shell, installed telecommunications antennas — even though the North forbids its citizens to own mobile phones — and put up an artist’s impression of what it will look like.

An official with the group said its Orascom Telecom subsidiary was involved in the project but gave no details. Read more…

Apple Inc.’s new iPhone went on sale Friday to eager buyers worldwide, but there were problems getting the phones to work.

Kenny Pichardo, 24, was the first to buy an iPhone 3G at an AT&T store in the New York borough of Queens, but he said it took the store half an hour to get the phone activated.

That boded badly for the approximately 70 people after him in line. Pichardo had camped out overnight to be first.

A spokesman for AT&T Inc., the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S., said there was a global problem with Apple Inc.’s iTunes servers that prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store, as had been planned.
Read more…