News In Brief

He especially liked recess.

As a preteen, he fought with an older student, hurled blackboard erasers around the classroom, was caught passing notes when he should have been paying attention to the teacher, didn't do his math homework, and almost flunked art. Doesn't read like the transcript of someone with a promising future, right? Wrong. All of this turned up in the school records of Russian President Vladimir Putin, found in the attic of the house where he once lived. It was published earlier this week in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, which decided editorially that he's "one of us."

BUT I'D LIKE YOUR VOTE ANYWAY

Then there's Greg Ritchey, the Green Party candidate for a seat on city council in Columbus, Ohio. Late last week, he called a news conference at City Hall to announce his position on a key campaign issue. Reporters showed up at the appointed hour; Ritchey didn't. He'd gone to the Statehouse blocks away by mistake, wondering where everone else was.

Another No. 1 ranking for California: $1 million homes

Almost two-thirds of the 8,658 houses sold by real estate giant Coldwell Banker last year for $1 million or more were in California, a company survey showed. The priciest city, on average: San Francisco. But the most expensive home sold by a Coldwell agent (fetching $52.5 million) was in the Silicon Valley community of Woodside. Nationwide, the average luxury home sold for $1.9 million, up from $1.75 million in 1999, the survey found. The states with the most $1 million-plus homes sold by Coldwell Banker:

California 5,350

Massachusetts 416

Illinois 413

Florida 381

Connecticut 353

New Jersey 293

New York 159

Hawaii 149

Texas 139

Arizona 90

Georgia 86

Nevada 61

- Business Wire

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor