Etc...

AND I'D LIKE IT BY TOMORROW

Sometimes, police have serious trouble tracking down criminal suspects. At other times, the bad guys make the job easy. Consider the fellow who barged into the post office in Halmstad, Sweden, earlier this month, announced he had a weapon, and demanded cash, plus a wire transfer of additional tens of millions of dollars to his bank account. And just so the teller wouldn't make a mistake, he helpfully left behind the account number on a piece of paper. Within hours, he was in custody.

Now picture the scene as police in Omaha, Neb., chase another robbery suspect. Eventually, he abandoned his car, climbed over a fence, and took off on foot across a golf course, perhaps reasoning that the cops were too out of shape to run him down. Ah, but they didn't have to. They scaled the fence, too, and commandeered a couple of motorized carts. When the culprit ran out of breath, they coasted in and made the arrest.

The US attracted $124 billion last year from foreign investors, more than any other nation. Yet, a study for the UN's 2002 World Investment Report ranks the US only 74th – behind even Zimbabwe. The study compared foreign investment with a country's share of global gross domestic product for 1998-2000. (Belgium and Luxembourg are linked because they shared the same currency during that period.) The top 10 nations for foreign investment, relative to economic size (with the 1988-'90 ranking of each in parentheses):

1. Belgium and Luxembourg (13)
2. Hong Kong (4)
3. Angola (129)
4. Ireland (71)
5. Malta (28)
6. Sweden (57)
7. Netherlands (19)
8. Azerbaijan (3)
9. Nicaragua (123)
10. Bolivia (54)
– Associated Press