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Thursday, May 24, 2012
Stay Off Your Boss's Radar With This Stealth-Inspired Desk [Desks]
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Police investigate mountain lion shooting
Santa Monica Police Department / Reuters
A mountain lion is seen as it is cornered in Santa Monica, Calif., on Tuesday.
By Kari Huus and Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com
Santa Monica police are conducting an internal investigation into the shooting death of a mountain lion that appeared in an office building courtyard in the city?s downtown, police Sgt. Richard Lewis told msnbc.com.
The cat, a 3-year-old male weighing about 90 pounds, had apparently wandered into the city overnight from the Santa Monica Mountains and jumped over an eight-foot wall into the building courtyard, Lewis said. At 5:45 a.m. on Tuesday morning, a maintenance worker called police, who then called in the fire department, California Fish and Game Department and a wildlife biologist from the National Parks Service.
This was an unfamiliar situation, Lewis said -- the first time in the memories of veteran Santa Monica police officers that a mountain lion had ventured into the city.
The officials decided a member of Fish and Game would shoot the mountain lion with a heavy dosage tranquilizer dart, hoping he would slump into a corner and officials could then transport him back to the mountains.
Mountain lion shot, killed
?That would cause one of two reactions,? Lewis said. ?The animal could become aggressive, or it could become docile and lay down. It chose to do what mountain lions do and it tried to escape.?
The officers acted quickly and shot pepper balls in hopes that the animal would slink back into the corner of the courtyard. They sprayed mist at the glass doors framing the courtyard so the cat wouldn?t try to go through them.
But it?did anyway, lunging at the two-inch glass doors, shattering them.
?At that point, the animal circled around, realized where it had jumped in from and started to jump over,? Lewis said. ?That?s when the order was given to use lethal force.?
Allowing the cat to jump back over the wall, near the popular Promenade by the beach, was not an option, Lewis said. The cat, injured, angry and able to run 40 to 50 miles per hour, would have encountered humans within seconds. Santa Monica, which houses about 90,000 residents, has a daytime population between 200,000 and 400,000.
Some questioned why a second dart wasn?t used, Lewis said, but that wasn?t possible either. A second dart would have killed the cat, he said, and anyway, it would have taken?15 minutes to take effect. The cat would have jumped over the wall by then.
The incident, from call to the cat?s death, lasted three hours. The internal investigation will focus on the shooting, the performance of the officers and whether they could have used different training, Lewis said.
The Fish and Game Department took its carcass and will perform a necropsy, conducting a chemical and DNA analysis to determine what it had eaten.
They will then cremate the mountain lion and a game warden or biologist will spread the ashes in a peaceful spot in the mountains.
"I call it the circle of life," Andrew Hughan?of the Fish and Game Department told msnbc.com.
The mountain lion population is under severe stress due to habitat loss and poaching, scientists say.
For a decade, the National Park Service has been tracking mountain lions in Southern California, including the 275 square miles of the Santa Monica range, which?is hemmed in by highways, urban areas, the ocean and agricultural land.
That island of habitat is?large enough to support 10 to 15 mountain lions, according to Jeff Sikich, a biologist with the project. Young adult males are forced to set out to establish their own territory or reckon with a dominant male in the area, he said.
"Most young adult males we have followed in the Santa Monica mountains have ended up getting killed on a freeway or by an adult male in that territory," Sikich said.
Wanted: Poacher who cut off cougar's paws
The park service is conducting genetic tests to determine whether the mountain lion killed on Tuesday is a part of the tiny Santa Monica population, which Sikich says is likely.
"This is regrettable," said Tim Dunbar, executive director of the nonprofit conservation group Mountain Lion Foundation. "By having this poor lion die now ? that will put even more pressure on the survivability of the species down there."
Dunbar said the Sacramento-based foundation had dispatched staff to Santa Monica to investigate the animal?s death.
"Though we tried to get information from the local police they were not forthcoming," Dunbar said. "We are presently requesting a copy of?(the California Fish and Game Department's)?incident report."
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Wednesday, May 23, 2012
For monogamous sparrows, it doesn't pay to stray (but they do it anyway)
ScienceDaily (May 22, 2012) ? It's quite common for a female song sparrow to stray from her breeding partner and mate with the male next door, but a new study shows that sleeping around can be costly.
The 20-year study, which is reported in The American Naturalist, found that offspring conceived outside sparrows' social pairs go on to have lower reproductive success than within-pair offspring. The findings throw a monkey wrench into theories about why ostensibly monogamous animals might be inclined to cheat.
Most bird species display some form of monogamy. Bonded pairs stay together for a breeding season, a few seasons, or sometimes for life. But beneath this veneer of monogamy, there's plenty of hanky-panky in most species. Why promiscuity exists in monogamous species is "one of the biggest remaining enigmas in evolutionary ecology," said Jane Reid, a research fellow at the University of Aberdeen and one of the study's authors.
One hypothesis for this is that when a female strays she makes it count by mating with a male of higher genetic quality than her social mate. The result is higher-quality offspring that have a better chance of carrying a female's genes into future generations. This study, however, turns that explanation on its head.
The researchers studied a population of song sparrows in Mandarte Island in British Columbia, Canada. Each year starting in 1993 the team drew small blood samples from nearly every hatchling in the population and used genetic markers to see who fathered each bird. They found that 28 percent of all chicks were fathered by males other than a female's socially paired mate. Thirty-three percent of broods had chicks that were fathered by multiple males.
The researchers tracked both within- and extra-pair offspring throughout their lives. They found that extra-pair offspring had 40 percent fewer offspring of their own, and 30 percent fewer grandoffspring, compared to within-pair offspring.
"These results are remarkable because they are completely opposite to expectation," Reid said. "They show that females suffer a cost of promiscuity because they produce worse offspring through extra pair mating. Rather than answering the question of why females should mate promiscuously, [these results] have blown the question wide open."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Rebecca J. Sardell, Peter Arcese, Lukas F. Keller and Jane M. Reid. Are There Indirect Fitness Benefits of Female Extra-Pair Reproduction? Lifetime Reproductive Success of Within-Pair and Extra-Pair Offspring. American Naturalist, 79:6 (June 2012)
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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MARKET NEWS: Best of real estate celebrated at EuropaProperty's 7th
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The seventh annual EuropaProperty SEE Real Estate Awards, which highlighted some of the best and most accomplished companies, projects and professionals for 2011, continued to give the region reason to cheer by giving away an impressive 26 awards.
The awards gala, held on May 17th at the five-star Athenee Palace Hilton Hotel in Bucharest, brought together some of the top-performing firms and professionals operating in the SEE region.
Chosen by members of EuropaProperty?s esteemed SEE Real Estate Awards Academy, this year?s winners were recognised for their continued market success in the region.
One of big winners of this year?s ceremony was Swan Office & Technology Park, Chayton Capital?s revolutionary green building launched in 2011 in Romania, which took home awards in three categories. The jury awarded the project: Office Development of the Year, Overall Project of the Year and the SEE Green Building Award for BREEAM Post-Construction Assessment ? Buildings A, B, C (Very Good).
?We are extremely honoured and grateful for all three awards,? commented David Allen, Head of Real Estate at Chayton Capital. ?The EuropaProperty SEE Awards are of significant importance to us, as they represent the voice of some of the most valuable real estate professionals. In response to their vote of confidence, we will continue the pursuit for high-quality, innovative, environmental-responsible building, as well as the endeavours for improving infrastructure amenities.?
Further crowning a successful evening, David Allen picked up the coveted Professional of the Year award for 2011. ?I am extremely happy and honoured to receive such recognition, based on the accomplishment of Swan Office & Technology Park,? Allen said on collecting his award. ?These awards highlight Chayton?s continuous efforts to support and improve successful investments in the SEE region,? he continued.
Other big winners on the night included Jones Lang LaSalle, which recorded a treble of agency awards in the Office, Retail and Warehouse sectors, an achievement unprecedented in previous years.
Developer GTC also received a glut of awards including Retail Development of the Year and Overall Developer of the Year as well as four further Green Building Awards for their office developments Ana Tower and City Gate and their retail developments Avenue Mall and Galleria Burgas. ?
Other popular winners included Europa Captial who collected Overall Company of the Year and Investor of the Year. EBRD also scored a brace of awards by picking Bank of the Year as well as Professional Woman of the Year for its very own Michele Small.?
For the second year running H&M proved its continuing consumer popularity and unrivalled expansion throughout the region by picking up the Overall Retailer of the Year for the second time.
Other developments awarded on the night included Baneasa Developments? Baneasa Commercial Area for Extended/Refurbished Retail Development of the Year. Alinso Group?s Ploiesti Park West won Warehouse Development of the Year and Oxford Gardens (Phase 2), by Willbrook International, collected Residential Development of the Year.
Further company awards were received by DTZ Echinox for Property Management Firm of the Year, WSP Group picked up Professional Service Provider of the Year and Project Management Firm of the Year went to Gardiner & Theobald again. Other awards were presented to Chapman Taylor as Architectural Firm of the Year and Salans was awarded Law Firm of the Year.
New for this year, recognising the growing influence of green-based ideologies in real estate EuropaProperty, in association with the Green Building Professionals Association, gave away an additional 12 SEE Green Building Awards. The 12 projects were awarded for their innovation and sustainability in green development.
The gala dinner was preceded by a series of high impact panel discussions on the main issues affecting the SEE markets in Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria. Speakers and participants agreed that although the market is still difficult in some countries, a brighter outlook is on the horizon.?
The EuropaProperty SEE Real Estate Awards for 2011 was sponsored by Premier Partner: Jones Lang LaSalle. Award Sponsors: ?Retail Development of the Year? Mk Illumination ?Overall Retailer of the Year? DTZ Echinox and ?Overall Company of the Year? CA Immo. Audit and SEE Forum Partner: Ernst & Young. Energy Software Partner: International Business Contracts. Organizer: EuropaProperty. Supporting Partners: RICS and the Association of Green Building Professionals. Venue Partner: Athenee Palace Hilton Hotel. Media Partners: IBP Real Estate, Build Green Romania, Thomas Daily, Europe Real Estate and imopedia.ro.
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Gingrich's private ventures are going bankrupt
(Reuters) - ATLANTA - When he entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in May 2011, Newt Gingrich was the prosperous head of a small empire commonly known as Newt Inc, which included both for-profit consultancies and nonprofit foundations.
Altogether, these entwined ventures pulled in more than $110 million over the past decade. Now the vestiges of this empire are mired in debt, as is Gingrich's campaign fund.
A bankruptcy proceeding under way in Atlanta will determine whether the one company still owned by Callista Gingrich, Gingrich Productions, will lose an expected payout that now constitutes the bulk of the Gingriches' net worth.
The bankrupt corporation is the Center for Health Transformation, whose revenues came from the hefty dues paid by corporations for assistance in formulating and promoting certain healthcare policies.
By the time Gingrich sold his majority stake in the center to three associates last May, it had been hemorrhaging clients and facing "cash-flow issues" for roughly a year, according to testimony on May 9 before a U.S. bankruptcy trustee in Atlanta. With the candidate poised to sever ties with the center for the sake of his run for office, it faced an even less certain future.
Nonetheless the three longtime colleagues agreed to pay Gingrich $6.4 million for his stake in the center.
The purchase of Gingrich's share was made with a promissory note to be paid in monthly installments of $100,000 over six years. Little of that debt had been paid when the center declared bankruptcy last month. As an unsecured debt, the note, it now appears, is likely to go unpaid.
SPOOKED BY PUBLICITY PROSPECT
The Gingrich Group bankruptcy proceedings spotlight the remarkable reversal of fortune of the half-dozen organizations associated with Gingrich. The presidential contender recently ended his campaign $4.8 million in debt. A political nonprofit he headed, American Solutions for Winning the Future, which raised $52 million between its founding in 2007 and its dissolution last July, also ended in debt.
The decline of the health policy center began earlier than previously realized. When Gingrich began considering a presidential bid in early 2010, "the membership began to drop off," according to Nancy Desmond, who served as managing partner of Gingrich Group LLC, which did business as the Center for Health Transformation. She was one of three owners of the company, but as the managing partner she alone testified at the May 9 meeting of creditors on the third floor of the Richard B. Russell Federal Building.
Opened in 2003, the center pulled in $59 million over nine years from more than 300 companies, some of which paid as much as $200,000 in dues. Among its activities, the center and Gingrich helped push a mandate requiring everyone to carry health insurance. At the time, the position was beneficial to the center's healthcare industry members, but Gingrich later repudiated it as a candidate.
Desmond said revenues fell from just under $7 million in 2010 to $4 million in 2011 and then to less than $300,000 in the first quarter of this year. Some $1.2 million in dues that had been expected earlier this year never materialized because those members also decided not to renew. By March the center was no longer able to pay the rent on its suite of offices in Atlanta and Washington.
In April it declared bankruptcy, leaving almost $600,000 in debts to outside vendors, half of it to Chain Bridge Bank, a boutique lending institution in McLean, Virginia, headed by former Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois. The company also owes the $6.4 million to Gingrich and his wife, Callista, neither of whom could be reached for comment.
During the creditors' meeting, bankruptcy trustee Barbara Stalzer noted that the center's tax returns showed it had been solvent as recently as the end of 2011. "How did it go from a 2011 tax return that seemed like everything was up to date and three months later it filed bankruptcy?"
Desmond replied that corporate members who were attracted to Gingrich as a policy promoter were worried about getting caught in the glare of the presidential campaign. "There were a lot of stories that began to appear in the paper, and (members) didn't necessarily want to be mentioned in a political story because they weren't political people. They were business people."
NEWT INC
Once Gingrich decided to run for president early in 2011, he legally unwound a cluster of for-profit and nonprofit entities.
The biggest transaction of this overhaul was the $6.4 million sale of Gingrich's 63 percent stake in the center to its three minority owners: Desmond, longtime Gingrich staffer Joe Gaylord and Steve Hanser. All three have been in Gingrich's orbit for decades.
Hanser taught history with Gingrich at the University of West Georgia in the 1970s. Desmond was his congressional chief of staff from 1993 to 1998. Gaylord's role in that office became part of the investigation that led to Gingrich's 1997 reprimand as House speaker for providing inaccurate information to the ethics committee. "Other than his wife and family, Joe Gaylord is the most important person in Newt's world," Frank Luntz, a pollster who has worked with both men, was quoted as saying in 1995.
In a financial disclosure report filed last July in connection with his presidential campaign, Gingrich's net worth was between $6.7 million and $30.1 million. By far his largest asset was the promissory note, which he valued at between $5 million and $25 million, selecting from the broad ranges provided on the disclosure form.
Reuters called several of the attorneys representing creditors at the May hearing. They either declined to comment or didn't respond to phone calls. Stalzer, the trustee, also did not return phone calls, along with Desmond and Gaylord. (The latter took control of American Solutions when Gingrich severed his ties to the organization last May.) George Geeslin, the bankruptcy attorney representing the center, declined to be interviewed for this story.
Hanser, who has a 19 percent stake in the company, said the center made no profit over the last two years and that all he got during that period was $17,500 in board fees - $2,500 each quarter.
Asked what happened to the $11 million the center took in during 2010 and 2011, Hanser, an 80-year-old retired history professor who lives in Ashville, North Carolina, said, "That's a very interesting question. I hope you get an answer. I really don't know."
Prior to the May 2011 sale, Hanser had a 7 percent stake in the Center for Health Transformation, and Desmond and Gaylord each had 15 percent. The remaining 63 percent belonged to Gingrich Holdings, wholly owned by the former House speaker. After the sale, Desmond and Gaylord each owned 40.5 percent of a new company called Gingrich Group Inc. Hanser had 19 percent.
OPTIMISM OVER SALE
Hanser explained that when he, Desmond and Gaylord agreed to buy the center, they expected to sell it the same year, with the new buyer picking up the payments on the promissory note to Gingrich Productions and each of them getting something for their stake in the company. But negotiations with a buyer broke down, he said, declining to say who it was.
Membership had fallen off because Gingrich was less involved, he added. "Newt was the attraction"; he had "a big, magnetic personality, especially in the board room."
Lawyer Stefan Passantino of Atlanta's McKenna, Long & Aldridge LLP designed the overhaul of "Newt Inc" a year ago and has represented most of the entities associated with it at one time or another. Today he represents Gingrich Productions and McKenna Long as creditors in the bankruptcy.
At the time the note was made, he said, all parties believed that despite the dwindling revenue and collapsing membership, somehow the Center for Health Transformation would emerge as a profitable enterprise and the note would be paid off.
"The anticipation was that Gingrich Group might have to go through something of a transformation process of its own, but there was a significant amount of optimism that it would be successful in doing so," Passantino said.
The terms of the sale called for the center to pay Gingrich Productions, owned by Callista Gingrich, $100,000 a month for six years. The payments covered the $6.4 million promissory note plus interest charges.
But the center paid Gingrich Productions only $250,000 before cash-flow problems made it impossible to continue. Desmond told the bankruptcy trustee that $100,000 of that was for management fees prior to the sale, and $150,000 went toward the promissory note after the sale. Because all of the $150,000 was applied to interest on the loan, she added, the balance owed to Gingrich Productions remains $6.4 million.
Robert Bartlett, a bankruptcy attorney representing the center's Atlanta landlord, noted at the hearing that the $6.4 million price tag for 63 percent of the company put the company's overall valuation in excess of $10 million.
How did they arrive at that figure, he asked? Gingrich Holdings set the price, Desmond replied. "They were the managers at that point."
The center also owes creditor McKenna Long $84,000. The firm has represented many of the Gingriches' political, for-profit and nonprofit enterprises.
Private jet charter company Moby Dick Airways Ltd of Sterling, Virginia, is owed $31,000. Separately, Gingrich's campaign - which is deeply in debt - owes Moby Dick $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission records. A Gingrich nonprofit political group, American Solutions for Winning the Future, paid Moby Dick Airways $6.5 million for private jet travel before it closed its doors last year.
Court documents list 64 creditors in the Center for Health Transformation bankruptcy, including the state of Missouri for income taxes ($894) and two Atlanta hotels - the St. Regis ($46,000) and Ritz Carlton ($8,500).
Benjamin Carlsen, an Atlanta attorney representing Chain Bridge Bank ($283,000), asked Desmond about the hotel expenditures.
"We had quarterly member meetings ? we tended to hold in very nice places," she explained.
The May 9 meeting is just the first step in the process of sorting out which creditors are likely to be repaid and how much. Court records show the company has about $78,000 in assets, including furniture and unsold self-published books and self-produced videos.
(Additional reporting by Lisa Schwartz; Editing by Lee Aitken and Prudence Crowther)
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Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Alabama Women's Prison Inmates Sexually Abused By Guards, Report Says
Corrections officers at the only women's prison in Alabama regularly sexually harass, abuse and even rape female inmates with few consequences, according to a new report by a civil rights organization.
Numerous female inmates at Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala., reported becoming pregnant after being raped by male correctional staff over the past five years, said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which investigated the allegations. Other sexual misconduct, including pervasive harassment, unwanted touching and invasion of privacy, is commonplace, Stevenson said.
Consensual sex between staff and inmates is strictly forbidden by prison regulations, but is also a regular occurrence, with staff requiring women to perform sexual favors in exchange for smuggled contraband goods, the report found.
"What we found is pretty shocking," Stevenson said. "We think there's widespread sex abuse and assaults of women by correctional staff."
Tutwiler, which holds more than 700 inmates, was identified by the Department of Justice in 2007 as the most dangerous women's prison in the country.
Kim Thomas, the Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner, said the agency was aware of the allegations. "This is a matter of grave concern to me," Thomas said in a statement. "Sexual misconduct of any kind, including custodial sexual misconduct, is not tolerated by this department."
Thomas did not address any of the specific allegations in the EJI report. The report's findings include allegations that inmates who reported sexual abuse by guards to senior corrections staff, including the warden, Frank Albright, say they were placed in solitary confinement, lost privileges and were subjected to verbal abuse.
"Many of them reported encounters with the warden that they characterize as abusive, threatening and intimidating," Stevenson said. "The women report that when you complain, you are placed in segregation and are subjected to very aggressive treatment by investigators and other staff. It is not an environment that encourages people to come forward with instances of abuse."
In his statement, Thomas said that the corrections department was "committed to improving security and providing for the safety of inmates and officers at Tutwiler."
The state's criminal justice system has also failed to aggressively punish guards who abuse inmates, Stevenson said. According to court records reviewed by EJI, six Tutwiler employees have been indicted on charges of sexual misconduct involving inmates since 2010. All of the charges were settled with plea bargains, and only one prison employee served more than six days in jail.
Stevenson said the Alabama attorney general's office had been alerted to the problem through lawsuits filed against the state on behalf of women raped and impregnated while they were inmates at Tutwiler. The state has aggressively fought to have the litigation dismissed. Suzanne Webb, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, said the agency had no comment on the report.
The Alabama Department of Corrections, meanwhile, has underreported sexual misconduct at the prison in official reports, according to court records obtained by EJI. In 2009, the corrections department reported no instances of sexual abuse at the prison, even as two officers at the facility were indicted for sexual misconduct.
EJI has requested a criminal and civil investigation by the Justice Department into the alleged misconduct and the failure of Alabama authorities to oversee the prison and aggressively prosecute abusers. Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in an email that the agency is reviewing the allegations.
A 2011 Huffington Post investigation found that there is widespread brutality in Alabama prisons and limited oversight by corrections officials or state law enforcement.
The report comes just days after the Justice Department finalized new regulations requiring state corrections facilities to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse. The new standards specifically call for jail and prisons to restrict the use of solitary confinement as a means to protect inmates who have reported sexual abuse. The standards are mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a federal law passed with broad bipartisan majorities in 2003.
Nearly 10 percent of former inmates in state jails and prisons reported being sexually victimized by a corrections staff member or another inmate, according to the results of a survey released earlier this year by the Justice Department.
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