| Luxury Home Prices Fall in New York's Long Island (Update2)
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Luxury home prices slid in New York's Long Island and Queens in the first quarter as more property came onto the market and took longer to sell, appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said. The median sales price fell 5.3 percent to $900,000 from a year earlier and houses took 25 percent more time to lure a buyer, the companies said today in a report. An oversupply of expensive houses for sale is reducing demand, Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel, said in an interview. ``You're just not seeing the demand level that you had been seeing in prior years,'' Miller said. ``You just reached a saturation point to what the economy could support.'' The decline in the luxury market in these areas outside Manhattan mirrors a drop in prices across the U.S.
Tribe reopening historic Nanih Waiya Park
The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians will regain possession of the venerated Nanih Waiya Mound and the surrounding park under legislation signed into law by Gov. Haley Barbour.
Senate Bill 2732 authorizes the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks to convey to the tribe the approximately 150-acre park located in Neshoba and Winston counties. The park has been closed for lack of state funds.
"We are going to reopen this park as a tribal heritage site and make sure this is a place people want to visit," said Tribal Chief Phillip Martin. "The Nanih Waiya Mound has been recognized by the Choctaws for centuries as central to our origins."
Barbour described the legislation as a win for the people of Mississippi and a win for the tribe.
New Jersey Democrats Organize for Obama
NEW YORK -- The vast majority of local elected Democrats have been urged to support Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, but the first signs of a Barack Obama organization in the New York metropolitan area are starting to take shape, according to NewsChannel 4's Angela Freeburg. Thursday night at the Quays Restaurant in Hoboken, N. J., about 80 people, including local council members and college students, attended a meeting sponsored by the grassroots organization New Jersey for Obama. Damian Bednarz, the groups state director, said the group has hundreds of members from all over New Jersey. .
NYC mayor scolds suggestion of arming students
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday scolded the suggestion that students killed in Virginia Tech shooting could have defended themselves if they were armed. "I can't think of anything dumber than to say let's give all students on campus a gun," said the mayor at an event in Jersey City, in response to one gun rights advocate group's remarks that Monday's tragedy at Virginia Tech may have been avoided if the students were able to arm themselves on campus. "In some senses, I hate to even answer the question because it's sick," Bloomberg said. The mayor is one of the nation's most prominent advocates of getting rid of illegal guns. Bloomberg has also testified several times on Capitol Hill on the issue. He also spearheaded an undercover sting in several states, including Virginia, to try to crackdown on the number of illegal guns being sold and brought to New York.
Transition of an artist
When asked about the response to his second solo exhibition Safe Passage at Dhaka's Alliance Francaise Zoom Gallery, artist Mohammed Solaiman Kabir Reeshe smilingly says that, "It elicited the expected reaction from my contemporaries." He talked through the paintings, but what is more fascinating is Reeshe's take on life and how it has affected his work, which he considers "poetry with elements of art." Reeshe transferred from Charukala to Indiana State University in 1989. To leave Bangladesh for Terrehaute seemed a natural progression. Following a couple of semesters funded by driving a cab, he moved on to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the America's first art school. A place at Cornell had to be rejected due to lack of funds, but this did little to deter Reeshe, who promptly moved to New York.
|
