Forums: Properties Foreclosed

Vacancy rates in office buildings exceed 10 percent in virtually every major city across the United States and are rising rapidly, a sign of economic distress that could lead to yet another wave of problems for the beleaguered financial sector. With job cuts rampant and businesses retrenching, more empty space is expected from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles in the coming year. Rental income would then decline and property values would slide further. The Urban Land Institute predicts 2009 will be the worst year for the U.S. commercial real estate market "since the wrenching 1991-1992 industry depression." Banks...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is instructing state fire officials to begin fining rural homeowners who fail to clear their properties of brush, trees and dry grass. Schwarzenegger says clearing around homes is particularly important because of this year's dry conditions throughout the state. A 2005 law required that homeowners who live near forests or grasslands increase the so-called "defensible space" around their houses from 30 feet to 100 feet. State Fire Marshal Kate Dargan says inspectors have issued few citations to homeowners who ignore the law. Instead, firefighters have focused on educating them about the dangers of overgrown properties. During a...

Science Daily — For two generations of physicists, it has been a standard belief that the neutron, an electrically neutral elementary particle and a primary component of an atom, actually carries a positive charge at its center and an offsetting negative charge at its outer edge. The notion was first put forth in 1947 by Enrico Fermi, a Nobel laureate noted for his role in developing the first nuclear reactor. But new research by a University of Washington physicist shows the neutron's charge is not quite as simple as Fermi believed. Using precise data recently gathered at three different laboratories...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The state's largest teachers union has dropped an initiative that would have poured billions of dollars into schools by raising property taxes on businesses, union officials said Thursday. Instead, the California Teachers Association will work with the opponents of the "Tax Fairness Act" to craft long-term solutions to school funding in the state, CTA president Barbara Kerr said. The CTA had gathered enough signatures - more than 900,000 - to qualify the initiative for the June 2006 ballot, Kerr said. It would have exempted California commercial and business properties from Proposition 13's rule that property value, upon...

9 French troops and a U.S. citizen were killed when Ivory Coast fighter planes bombed a rebel position in the north of that country. The French have hit back, destroying 5 Ivorian helicopters and 2 bombers near the capital city of Yamoussoukro. Ivorians aren’t happy with France’s reprisals. Angry mobs are rioting, looting French properties, and yelling “Everybody get your Frenchman!” and “French go home!” Well, well, well, isn’t France’s criticism of the U.S. Coalition presence in Iraq a bit like the pot calling the kettle black? Listen to the French government’s words, as reported by the BBC: President Jacques...

<p>Caltech researchers have made a metallic glass-based foam that is stronger than traditional metal alloys, providing industry with a revolutionary lightweight material.</p><p>Although bubbloy (bubble-alloy) is entering a crowded field of metallic foams, it has the advantage of a smooth plastic or glasslike consistency where others are grainy.</p>

The Iraqi Governing Council is considering returning properties that were confiscated from departing Jews after the establishment of Israel, a senior source within the council told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. He said a 1951 law, which had deprived fleeing Iraqi Jews of their properties, is now under review. The aim of the revision is to restore the properties to their rightful owners. "We are determined to return all the properties that were taken from the Iraqi Jews and all the others," he said. In the meantime, he said he had assured representatives of Iraqi Jews who want to visit...

ENGINEERS often admire the ways in which living creatures solve problems. The difficulty with man-made fibre-optic cables, says Joanna Aizenberg of Lucent Technologies in Murray Hill, New Jersey, is that they often crack and break. For a solution, Dr Aizenberg and her colleagues have turned to the exquisitely structured siliceous skeleton of a deep-sea sponge known as the Venus flower basket. This sponge, they say, can do things better. As they explain in a paper published in this week's issue of Nature, the sponge has a lattice of spiny outgrowths, or “spicules”, at its base, which provide structural support. These...