| Traveling Iraq:
Business travelers griping about flight delays should try getting around Iraq.
To get around this country as an American civilian, you often have to improvise. Travel here is a nightmare. Driving any distance is still too risky. Commercial aviation is non-existent. So any chance at flying means asking the U.S. military for an open seat on one of their helicopters, usually a cramped, noisy Blackhawk. Often youre grateful to wedge into a middle seat.
Over the weekend, we were stuck at a military airstrip in Mosul, in northern Iraq. That's not a good situation for anyone with someplace to go. Our trip up to Mosul from Baghdad had involved three separate Blackhawks, 11 hours of travel, and a good bit of luck just to make it that far, that fast.
Everything about our chances of returning to Baghdad looked grim.
The Lost Queen
Her massive obelisks in the Luxor Temple were bricked over. Her statues were broken and buried in a pit. The queens name was removed from official histories and her mummified remains, except for one canopic jar, were lost. A little more than a year ago, Discovery Channel contacted Dr. Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. They wanted to make a documentary about Hatshepsut that would hopefully end with the discovery of her mummy. The concerted effort between several teams of archaeologists and forensic scientists must have been one of the largest teams ever assembled to answer one specific question. The Find of the CenturyMuch of the search for Hatshepsuts mummy was the stuff of Indiana Jones films: descending into tombs reaching hundreds of meters into the ground, deciphering hieroglyphs, and finding lost burial places.
World Markets, Bank of Hawaii and Airline Price Hikes
It didn't look so good earlier, when Asia markets took another dive. The Nikkei fell 4% and Shanghai fell 7%. All the Asian markets took a bath except Sydney, which took a day off. But European markets fell less than 2%, despite more details surfacing about the rogue trader at the second largest bank in France. Prosecutors have revealed that the trader never took a franc for himself, and that the bank was basically onto him two months ago but didn't stop him. In the news background here in the United States, profits are down at McDonalds, the CEO at Sears is out, but the bottom line is up nicely at Black and Decker and Halliburton. Bad news -- new home sales in December fell to a 12-year low. The national median price came in 10% below year-before levels. But the market swallowed the news without ill-effects, apparently because it already figured the report would be that yucky.
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