For Capital Region farmers looking to expand sales overseas, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent trade mission to Asia couldn’t have come at a better time. While any governor’s visit would likely attract attention, it helps to have an international film star as a spokesperson.

Despite the general doom and gloom of our state’s current economy, there are a few bright spots that may be going unnoticed.

As economic indicators go, Thanksgiving turkey sales are often a good one.

Matina Kolokotronis was on maternity leave from a local law firm when she got the phone call that changed her career. The caller said: “Hello, this is Geoff Petrie with the Sacramento Kings. I understand that you’re Greek and that you’re a lawyer. We just drafted a Greek player by the name of Peja Stojakovic, and we need some help with his contract.”

Sacramento State President Alexander Gonzalez’s tenure has been one of the most tumultuous in the university’s history.

Chris Huppe spent more than a dozen years working on better ways to use the green waste from his landscape maintenance company.

On an early September morning, federal, city and redevelopment officials, among others, gathered at the corner of 10th and R streets to celebrate the beginning of street improvements.

If everything goes as planned, the newest phase of the K Street redevelopment effort will open for business late next month off 10th Street, bringing a pizza place, dance club and  “dive bar” stocked with costumed mermaids and mermen to the downtown mix.

For decades, devising a clear solution for California’s suburban sprawl and ensuing car culture has been the Holy Grail for smart-growth advocates. One trip on any of the Golden State’s perpetually clogged roadways during peak hours shows how ineffective most of those efforts have been.

It should be the perfect prescription for an ailing housing market, but so far few buyers are taking it.

Statistics and headlines indicate doom and gloom across the country, but local developers are still building houses. In the Capital Region, Roseville leads the area in new-home construction.

Charles Rieger is building a case for going green. As the executive director of the Solano Center for Business Innovation, the umbrella organization for the newly formed Solano Green Business Council, it’s Rieger’s job to plant the seeds for a greener economy.

The proposed Shiloh III project, a 120-megawatt expansion that still requires approval by the Solano County Planning Commission this month, would place 59 new wind turbines next to the company’s existing Shiloh II project. Shiloh II, a 150-megawatt operation completed in 2008 in Montezuma Hills, provides electricity to 74,000 households.