Today Wednesday Thursday
High: 54 High: 54 High: 51
Low: 41 Low: 43 Low: 37
Precip: 30% Precip: 0% Precip: 30%
IN BRIEF
Roman Catholic bishops
choose new president
WASHINGTON — America’s
Roman Catholic bishops chose a
new president Monday who has re
leased the names of priests accused
of molesting children and reached
out to victims, but who also plans to
seek bankruptcy protection for his
diocese because of abuse claims.
Bishop William Skylstad of
Spokane, Wash., was elected confer
ence president by his fellow bishops
on the first ballot, just days after an
nouncing his diocese will go into
Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Skylstad, who has served as con
ference vice president for the past
three years, received 120 votes, or 52
percent of the total in a field of 10
candidates. Every vice president who
has sought the top job has won.
Gunfight in Gaza City
kills two, injures five
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — From
the moment it ended, the gun battle
that sent new PLO chief Mahmoud
Abbas scrambling for cover was
clouded in confusion.
In one version, it was an assassi
nation attempt. In another, a misun
derstanding gone awry in a room
full of guns.
Either way, the incident Sunday
that killed two security officers
and injured five other people under
scored the difficulties facing the
new Palestinian leadership after
the death of Yasser Arafat and high
lighted fears Gaza could collapse
into chaos.
Islamic radicalism spreads
across the Netherlands
THE HAGUE, Netherlands —
Spurred by the first terrorist killing on
its soil, the Dutch justice minister
said Monday that authorities need
broader arrest powers to combat a
growing threat from Islamic radicals
in the Netherlands.
Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner
also suggested Islamic radicalism is
more widespread than the govern
ment previously acknowledged.
He said thejiew laws would em
power anti-terrorism investigators to
detain suspects without evidence that
they may have committed a crime.
“In those cases where we can’t
even clearly prove the existence of re
cruitment or radicalization, but only
have a suspicion, we will still use
possible administrative powers and
other powers to disrupt it as much as
possible,” said Donner, the country’s
leading terrorism official.
— The Associated Press
r
Fall recruiting season most
active since dot.com boom
Job prospects brighten for college graduates; a survey
says college hiring is expected to go up 13 percent
BY JUSTIN POPE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOSTON — The recovering econ
omy and looming retirement of the
baby boomers are making this a
very good year to be a college sen
ior looking for a job after gradua
tion. Recruiters, career counselors
and students say the fall recruiting
season has been the most active
since the dot.com boom.
Accountants are again finding in
creased demand for their services
thanks to the wave of post-Enron reg
ulation, but theirs is just one of several
hot fields. Technology companies, in
vestment banks and consulting firms
appear to be picking up the pace, as
do some defense contractors and even
smaller businesses that haven’t tradi
tionally recruited on campus.
“I haven’t been to school in the
last three weeks because of my in
terview schedule,” said Eric Golden,
a senior at Bentley College, a busi
ness-oriented school in the Boston
suburb of Waltham. He feels lucky
to be graduating this year.
Friends with similar credentials
who graduated earlier often ended up
taking positions that weren’t their top
choices “just to have a job,” Golden
said. He’s been juggling about a
dozen interviews with companies
including money managers, invest
ment banks and General Electric.
College hiring is expected to in
crease 13 percent over last year, ac
cording to a new survey from Na
tional Association of Colleges and
Employers. Seven out of 10 employ
ers said they expected to increase
salary offers to new college grads,
according to the survey released
late last week, with an average
increase of 3.7 percent.
Michigan State’s College Em
ployment Research Institute will
release a report Thursday that di
rector Phil Gardner said will show
overall campus hiring is up as
much as 20 percent this year, de
pending on the region.
Some engineers are still having a
tough time, in part because so much
manufacturing has moved off shore.
And many businesses, notably finan
cial services, learned to get by with
leaner staffs during the downturn.
But there is clear momentum. At
California State University, Fuller
ton, the number of companies at a
fall career fair was up about 40
percent from last year; at the Uni
versity of Florida, the number of
recruiting companies is up as
much as 15 percent.
And at the University of Notre
Dame in South Bend, Ind., interviews
are up roughly 30 percent. For the
first time since the dot.com boom,
competition was fierce enough that
companies were pushing students for
immediate decisions on their offers.
Don Brezinski, executive director
of corporate relations at Bentley, said
“we’re seeing companies that, instead
of looking to hire one or two, have
openings of a dozen. It’s when you
have the big companies going really
deep, then you know you’re hitting
stride with employment recovery.”
Accounting remains one of the
best backgrounds to have for a job
hunting senior. PriceWaterhouseC
oopers plans to hire about 3,100
people off U.S. college campuses
this year, up almost 19 percent from
last year. Ernst & Young, another big
accounting firm, plans to increase
hiring about 30 percent this year
and bring on 4,000 new college
grads. Jim Case, director of the ca
reer center at Cal State-Fullerton,
says regional and local accounting
firms are hiring, too.
Finance and, yet again, nursing
skills are also in demand and job
hunters willing to move have a big
advantage. Computer science jobs
are also returning after the tech
slump, said Carol Lyons, dean of the
career services department at
Boston’s Northeastern University,
though other fields, like journalism,
are still tough.
Mexico's former leading party
wins two gubernatorial races
The Institutional Revolutionary Party lost president
in 2001, but it could be a powerful contender in 2006
BY OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico —
Mexico’s former ruling party won
two gubernatorial races and held
narrow leads in two others Monday
in an election showing that could
make it a force in the 2006 national
vote, in which the party seeks to re
gain the presidency it held for more
than 70 years.
The Institutional Revolutionary
Party, or PRI, lost the presidency in
2000 after 71 years of one-party rule,
ushering in what was widely con
sidered to be the start of Mexico’s
true democracy. But the PRI has
been working to rebuild, winning
elections for governor in four states
earlier this year.
The party was fighting to win all
four seats up for grabs in Sunday’s
voting. In the Pacific Coast state of
Sinaloa, the PRI was surprised by a
close race with President Vicente
Fox’s National Action Party, or PAN.
In the border state of Tamaulipas,
with nearly all ballots counted, the
PRI’s Eugenio Hernandez, former
mayor of Ciudad Victoria, was the
clear winner with 58 percent of the
vote, nearly double that of his chal
lenger Gustavo Cardenas.
“Let’s turn the page and look for
ward because this process has end
ed,” Hernandez said, claiming vic
tory an hour after polls closed.
“We’ll wait for the official results,
but it’s apparent the people of
Tamaulipas have chosen us. ”
Cardenas, of PAN, promised to
fight the results in court, saying the
voting was marred by violations and
accusing Gov. Tomas Yarrington of
interfering in the race by campaign
ing on behalf of Hernandez.
“We won’t allow them to step on
the will of the people of Tamauli
pas,” said Cardenas, a 46-year-old
businessman and senator who ran
for governor in 1998 and lost.
In central Puebla state, the PRI’s
Mario Marin won a landslide victo
ry over the PAN’s Francisco Fraile,
a 56-year-old senator.
The PRI held slim leads in two oth
er states, where the PAN was likely to
fight the results until they are official
ly certified later this week.
As vote counting wrapped up in
Sinaloa, the PRI’s Jesus Aguilar, 42,
a state lawmaker, had 46 percent
compared with 45 percent for the
PAN’s Heriberto Felix, a business
man and former secretary for eco
nomic development in Sinaloa.
And in central Tlaxcala state, the
PRI’s Mariano Gonzalez, a senator,
had 37 percent compared with 35
percent for the PAN’s Hector Ortiz,
the mayor of the city of Tlaxcala.
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