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Friday, May 26, 2006

In February of 2006, the Savarino Services Construction Corp. proposed the construction of a seven million dollar hotel on Elmwood and Forest Avenues in Buffalo, New York. In order for the hotel to be built, at least five properties containing businesses and residents would have to be destroyed. It was not certain whether the properties were owned by Savarino or by the landlord Hans Mobius. The hotel was designed by Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group, and is planned to be a franchise of the Wyndham Hotels group.

Elmwood Avenue is known by the community as a popular shopping center, and Nancy Pollina of Don Apparel (who is “utterly against” the construction) claims it’s the only reason why students from Buffalo State College leave campus. Additionally, Michael Faust of Mondo Video said he did not want to “get kicked out of here [his video store property].”

In 1995, a Walgreens was proposed to be built on the same land, but Walgreens later withdrew its request for a variance because of pressure from the community. More recently, Pano Georgiadis tried to get the rights to demolish the Atwater House next to his restaurant on Elmwood Avenue, but was denied a permit due to the property’s historical value. He has since been an opponent to the hotel construction.

In the process of debating the hotel, it was thought that a hotel had previously existed on the proposed site, however; research done at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society had shown that no hotel had previously existed on the site.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

On Saturday, the US military announced the arrests of two American soldiers alleged to have been involved in three separate premeditated murders of Iraqi civilians, and the planting of weapons around the crime scene to pretend the victims were insurgents.

The incidents occurred over the past two months in Iskandariyah, 50 kilometres south of Baghdad. The investigation began when fellow soldiers in the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment reported the alleged events to their superiors.

Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval, 22, was arrested Tuesday while on a 2-week leave at his family’s home in Laredo, Texas and charged with one count of premeditated murder and one count of placing a weapon on the victim.

Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, who comes from Candler, North Carolina, was arrested at a military base in Kuwait on Thursday and charged with three counts of premeditated murder, three counts of obstruction of justice and three counts of placing weapons around the victims.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — Local caterers get ready for big business, as almost three thousand fans converge on the David L. Lawrence Convention Center over the Independence Day weekend for the world’s largest ever furry convention, Anthrocon 2007.

Many hope to renew acquaintances, or meet new friends. Others look to buy from dealers and artists, or show off new artwork or costumes. Some attend to make money, or even learn a thing or two. But one thing unites them: They’re all there to have fun.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Sales of previously owned homes in the US fell at the fastest rate ever recorded last December, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

According to the association, existing home sales fell 16.7% last month, to an annual rate of 5.45 million, the largest crash since 1968. The figure was less than the 5.90 million units, or an eleven percent drop, predicted by most analysts.

Sales of homes went up for the entire of 2009 to 5.156 million units, or 4.9% for the year, and prices dropped from 2008 by 12.4%.

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun described the figures as being “probably the largest annual drop since the Great Depression”. He said that “the market is going through a period of swings driven by the tax credit. We’re likely to have another surge in the spring. Job creation is the key to a continued recovery in the second half of the year.”

Pierre Ellis, a senior economist for Decision Economics in New York, commented on the figures, saying: “The drop in home sales is the payback for the acceleration of sales that occurred with the original first-time home buyers tax credit. […] There is an issue as to whether the decline represents a fundamental weakening.”

“The housing market continues to face significant headwinds, including high unemployment, record delinquencies and foreclosures, the specter of rising mortgage rates as the Fed’s [mortgage-backed securities] purchase programs comes to a close in late March, and tight credit,” Omair Sharif, an economist for RBS Securities, noted.

“Still, the resale market showed resilience in the second half of 2009, and the expansion and extension of the tax credit to April 30 could boost purchases during the spring selling season,” he said.

“We’ll see a pickup in existing home sales in the next couple of months as people take advantage of the tax-credit extension”, economist Adam York of Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina claimed. He fore-casted a pace of 5.4 million. He said that there were unlikely to be buyers of homes, despite the fact that the U.S. was “past the bottom.”

All four regions of the country saw a decline in sales. In the Northeast, sales fell 19.5 percent, in the Midwest, they plunged 25.8 percent. The South, the country’s largest region, saw a 16.3% decline, while in the West, sales waned by 4.8%.

US stocks fell slightly after the announcement, but went back up later in the day.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Following the second full day of competition at the IPC Alpine World Championships in La Molina, Spain yesterday, Austria led the medal race with three gold medals, a silver, and a bronze. Markus Salcher won gold in the men’s standing downhill on Wednesday, with Matthias Lanzinger also making the podium in the bronze medal position. Claudia Lösch earned a gold in the women’s sitting Super-G event. Slacher and Lanzinger went gold/silver yesterday in the men’s standing Super-G to round out Austria’s medal total.

France leads in the total medal count with six, two of each kind. Yohann Taberlet won a bronze in the men’s sitting downhill. Marie Bochet won a gold and Solene Jambaque won a bronze in the women’s standing downhill. In the Super-G, Bochet and Jambaque went gold/silver. Taberlet earned a silver in the Super-G.

With only eighteen medals available a day, a number of countries have failed to make the medal podium. They include the Netherlands, with Anna Jochemsen finishing ninth in the women’s standing class in the Super-G yesterday, and Finland with Katja Saarinen finishing tenth in the same event. Australia’s Mitchell Gourley finished eleventh in the men’s standing Super-G. Czech competitor Oldrich Jelinek finished sixteenth in the men’s sitting Super-G. Arly Velasquez of Mexico finished fifteenth in the men’s sitting Super-G. New Zealand’s Adam Hall finished ninth in the men’s standing Super-G. Poland’s men’s visually impaired skier Maciej Krezel and guide Anna Ogarzynska finished thirteenth in the Super-G. South Korea’s Jong Seork Park finished twenty-fourth in the men’s sitting Super-G. Turkey’s Erik Bayindirli finished nineteenth in the men’s sitting Super-G.

Competition is scheduled to resume tomorrow with the slalom event after events were cancelled today because of predicted poor weather.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Fire broke out on Friday morning and destroyed the bottom two floors of a six-story hospital in Miryang, South Korea, killing at least 37 people, most of them elderly. More than a hundred injuries were reported, with eighteen people in critical condition. This is the highest death toll from fire in South Korea in almost a decade.

The fire is believed to have started at about 7:30 local time, according to fire chief Choi Man-woo. It originated on the ground floor in the emergency room as per various officials. The hospital has 98 beds and a medical staff of about 35, and specializes in long-term care of elderly patients. It adjoins a nursing home, all of whose 94 residents were evacuated. Staff carried some patients out of the hospital on their backs.

One patient, Jang Yeong-jae, who told his story to JoongAng Ilbo, said he escaped by removing a screen from a window to get to a ladder placed by firefighters. He described people “running around in panic, falling over and screaming as smoke filled the rooms”. The majority of the victims died from smoke inhalation and are believed to be elderly, said the head of the city’s public hospital, Chun Jae-kyung. A doctor, a nurse, and a nursing assistant have died, according to the fire service; it took three hours to put out the fire.

In a press briefing, Seok Gyeong-sik, the director of the hospital, apologized to patients and their families. Son Kyung-chul, its chairman, stated that there were no sprinklers because the facility was small. Sprinklers are being installed in the nursing home, where a new law requires them by June 30.

Last month, 29 people died in a fire in a gym in Jecheon; the owner and the manager were arrested for safety violations. In 2014, a blaze in a nursing home in Jangseong left 21 dead. The President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, responded to the Friday fire by calling an emergency meeting of his staff, and promised that the cause would be found rapidly “to prevent the recurrence of the fire in the future”.