If it gets unpleasant in Mt. Pleasant

The Town of Mt. Pleasant Municipal Court is installing a new translation service in Arabic, Cantonese, French, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

Green Wachovia

Last October, Charlotte- based Wachovia put into play its environmental protection strategy including a policy on forest protection and a determination to address climate change. Wachovia was recently announced as a company board member of Ceres, a network of investors and environmental groups working with companies to handle sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk, which is more than 50 institutional investors who collectively manage $4 trillion in assets.

Not- so- green Richland County

The Environmental Protection Agency is about to strengthen air- quality laws, but Richland County Council voted to ask EPA to keep air standards for ozone unchanged, complaining the tougher new air standards could hurt the local economy.

AT&T invests in the Carolinas

Over the next several years, AT&T plans to invest $250 million in S.C. and $350 million in N.C., all for fiber network upgrades, further broadband deployment, and Internet- based technologies. The new infrastructure will allow AT&T to offer U- Verse digital service, which accommodates television programming over fiber- optic lines. Over the past year, laws were passed in both S.C. and N.C. to allow competitive video services to get a state- issued franchise rather than negotiate with individual municipalities and counties.

Media

Media spending from all sources in the U.S. should pass the $1 trillion mark in 2008, according to private- equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson in its annual VSS Communications Industry Forecast. In 2011, the average consumer is expected to spend $46.44 and 154 hours on newspapers and their online offerings, which is down from $48.60 and 178 hours in 2006.

Property taxes

A constitutional amendment ratified this year by the S.C. Legislature limits property assessment increases to 15 percent every five years, unless the property is modified or sold. If two people bought two identical $300,000 homes on the same block at the same time, the most the homes' assessed value could increase after five years is to $345,000. If one house sold after five years for $500,000, the new homeowner would pay taxes on the purchase price, $500,000, while the neighbor on the same block with the identical home would pay on only $345,000.

Get a job

According to the S.C. Employment Commission, the state's June unemployment rate was 5.5 percent, up from 5.4 percent in May. The N.C. unemployment rate for June was 4.9 percent. The nation's unemployment rate stayed the same at 4.5 percent.

Hedonism on a high

Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1996 is selling for around $14,350 per case in London, up from $8,610 six months ago. The Liv- ex 100 index, an index of the top 100 investable wines (90 percent weighted to the French wineproducing region of Bordeaux) has risen 42 percent this year. The wine room of the new Ritz- Carlton Hotel in Moscow has a bottle of 1961 Chateau Petrus Grand Cru for sale at $68,000. At The Gourmet Shop in Five Points, a 2003 bottle of Lafite is $475.

Spirit of South Carolina

The educational sailing ship called the Spirit of South Carolina is available for day trips. Teachers go for free, and students pay between $25 and $30. For a group of 35 students, that's about $1,000. The ship costs $5,000 a day to operate. At 140 feet long, the two- masted ship requires 10 people to sail it and to conduct the educational programs. Teachers can sign up for day trips in Charleston Harbor by contacting Sarah Piwinski, the ship's education director: spiwinski@scmaritime.org.

Columbia's new Hilton part of national trend

Compared with a year earlier, U.S. hotels posted a 5.7% increase in room revenue for the week ended July 21. That boosted revenue per available room - a combination of room rates and occupancy - by 5.7% to $79.79.

Location

According to the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors' Multiple Listing Service, the median price of a Charleston home in June was $224,950, still a little less than the $225,000 price of a parking space in the basement of a condominium building on Manhattan's 17th Street.

Wind insurance for less wind

According to the S.C. Department of Insurance, wind pool insurance for coastal homeowners should increase by 35 percent as of October 1. Meanwhile, hurricane researcher William Gray reportedly called for 15 named storms this season, with eight becoming hurricanes. Last May, Gray predicted 17 named storms and nine hurricanes.