Today in Globe Business
Boston renters can find deals as rising vacancy rates depress prices
It’s a good time to be a renter in and around Boston. Apartment vacancy rates in the metro area are climbing to new highs, pushing down rents after nearly a decade of increases. The shift is tilting the balance of power, and now landlords are chasing after prospective renters, showering them with deals.
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Massachusetts employers boosted hiring for the first time in a year last month, ending 11 consecutive months of job losses for the state and providing another sign that an end to the recession is approaching.
Employment in the state grew by nearly 5,000 jobs in May, the first monthly gain since the previous May and the biggest monthly rise since January 2008, the state Executive Office of Workforce Development reported yesterday. The state unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent last month from 8 percent in April, and is at the highest level since late 1992.
Analysts cautioned that one month of gains doesn’t indicate that the economy has begun to recover. But taken with other positive signs, such as improving consumer and business confidence, the state is moving closer to an economic turning point, they said.
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Foreclosures in Mass. plummet 58.6% in May
Foreclosures in Massachusetts took a steep dive in May, the second consecutive month they have fallen, according to data released yesterday by Boston real estate tracking firm Warren Group.
There were 582 foreclosure deeds recorded in May, a 58.6 percent decrease from 1,405 during the same month in 2008, and a 24.3 percent drop from April.
So far this year, the number of foreclosure deeds statewide has gone down 26.3 percent to 4,110, compared with 5,576 during the same period last year, Warren Group said.
Timothy M. Warren Jr., Warren Group’s chief executive, called the new data “encouraging.’’ Foreclosure deeds in May were at the lowest level since April 2007, he said.
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Activists utilizing Twitter, Web proxies to sidestep Iranian censorship
Derek Lowe and his Iranian-born wife were appalled by the violence that came in the wake of Iran’s disputed presidential election, and by the Tehran government’s attempts to censor news of the upheavals. And so they joined the protest, as best they could from their home in Acton. They decided to become members of the legion of Internet activists fighting the Iranian government’s aggressive attempts at post-election censorship. Armed with their computers and Internet access, they are helping Iranian protesters get the words and images out of their country for the world to see.
Lowe, a research fellow at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, has turned his home computer into what is known as a “proxy’’ - a virtual host that substitutes for the home connection of users in Iran, allowing them to bypass the filters employed by Iranian government censors. “This is about all that I can think of to do that could have any concrete effect,’’ Lowe said. “It comes under the category of ‘better than nothing.’ ’’
The crisis, and the response of Internet users around the world, is helping to redefine the way the Internet helps people communicate. Notably, it has highlighted the value of the social networking service Twitter, which has been used by Iranian activists to share their grievances with the world, seemingly at the very moment when Twitter’s value was being questioned.
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