Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Monday, November 10, 1997
Honolulu is safest big U.S. city -- magazine
Honolulu is the safest large city in the country, according to an analysis of FBI crime statistics done for Money magazine.The most dangerous big city -- among those with a population of 500,000 or more -- is Detroit, the magazine said in its December issue.
The Money article quotes Michael Nakamura, Honolulu's police chief, as saying the city "lacks a gun-toting Western philosophy," illustrated by its mandatory waiting period to get a handgun license.
Honolulu also has a high number of participants (46,000) in community watch programs, he said.
U.S. home values rising faster than inflation
WASHINGTON -- The value of most Americans' homes is rising much faster than inflation, with a handful of cities in the South and Midwest reporting double-digit increases over the past year.Nationally, the median price of an existing home increased 5 percent over the year ended in September to $126,500, meaning half sold for more and half for less, the National Association of Realtors said today. Consumer prices overall rose just 2.2 percent over that period.
Honolulu, meanwhile, maintained its position as the most expensive U.S. metropolitan housing market. For the the July-September quarter, Honolulu's median home sale price was $315,000, but that was a drop of 6 percent from the same quarter last year.
After Honolulu, the most expensive metro markets were: San Francisco, $300,600; Orange County, Calif, $233,000; New York, $212,500, and Boston, $204,400.
The five with the lowest prices were Ocala, Fla., $65,700; Beaumont, Texas, $67,100; Waterloo, Iowa, $68,200; Davenport, Iowa, $71,700, and Daytona Beach, Fla., $73,600.
IBM increases storage capacity for desktops
NEW YORK -- International Business Machines Corp. has developed a disk drive for personal computers with up to eight times more storage capacity than new desktops today.The Armonk, N.Y. company today will announce drives with storage capacity of up to 16.8 gigabytes. Today's least expensive PCs, $1,000 and under, now have about 2 gigabytes of space to store data, while PCs above $2,000 hold 6 gigabytes or more.
IBM said the technology will enable PC users to store the equivalent of 16 pickup trucks full of printed information. It also improves how computers run software featuring video, picture and sound.