Saturday, March 17, 2007

Vornado Realty Trust of Paramus NJ has completed a deal to take a majority interest in the 1.8 million sq ft building at 555 California St in San Francisco, (aka The Bank of America Center) and the 2 million sq. foot building located at 1290 Avenue of The Americas in New York City.

In an announced deal worth $1.8 billion, the new investors get a 70 percent interest in both towers, alleviating the current owners, Hudson Waterfront Associates of any possible liability in a lawsuit brought against them by Donald Trump.

Built in 1969, 555 California is SF’s largest office tower, and 2nd tallest building at 779 ft. just a few feet shy of the 48 story Transamerica Pyramid at 853 ft which was completed in 1972.

The SF structure, whose current deal estimates it’s value @ $575 per sq ft, had just sold last year for $1.05 Billion all by itself ($583 a sq ft), when property magnate Walter Shorenstein sold it to Henry Cheng and Vincent Lo’s Hong Kong based Hudson Waterfront Associates, a record for a city property.

Before 2005, 555 California had been Bank of America’s World HQ, but that status ended when North Carolina based NationsBank ate up A.P Giannini’s west coast banking legacy and kept the B of A name, but made the main HQ in Charlotte NC.

For lookee loos the 52nd floor of 555 California features the popular Carnelian Room, a hang for well to do bankers, brokers, lawyers and tourists checking out wide sweeping views from what was once the tallest structure west of the Mississippi, now only the 5th Tallest Bldg on the west coast, but still impressive. For those afraid of heights and the tab for “fine dining”, the ground floor also features a Starbucks.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

At least seven mountaineers have died while climbing K2, the second highest mountain in the world. The accident was reportedly caused by a rock slide or an avalanche that severed all the ropes used for ascent and descent.

Initial reports state that seventeen climbers ascended the mountain in two groups, with both reaching the summit successfully. The reports also state that after the avalanche, some climbers attempted to return without ropes.

The summit was covered in clouds late yesterday afternoon and the conditions in the mountain continued to deteriorate. Some of the latest reports indicate that eight climbers were stuck at the summit, unable to descend. Four of these climbers are Norwegian nationals. The conditions at the summit during night are extreme and offer very limited chances for survival for people unable to descend.

In an unrelated incident, a Serbian climber and his sherpa fell down during the initial descent. This incident was, however, unrelated to the other deaths caused by the avalanche.

Friday, September 9, 2005

A look at some of the movies set to be released in North America, the week of 9 September, 2005.

Note, “fresh” or “rotten” refer to the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes rating, based on North American critical reviews. The higher the percentage, the greater the percentage of critics that liked the movie.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

A report published by the Iraq Body Count project, a British NGO, says that 24,865 civilians have been killed in Iraq in the two years following the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003. Seventy percent of the deaths occurred after the US President George W. Bush proclaimed “the end of major combat” on May 1 2003.

The study, compiled from more than 10,000 media reports, says that 37% (9,270) civilians have been killed by US-led forces. Half of all deaths (53%, 13,178) were caused by explosives, with 60% of those (7,961) being due to air-dropped bombs. Three-quarters of the deaths from air-dropped bombs were during the invasion before May 2003.

The report also states that 3,598 have been killed since May 2003 by non-Coalition bombing incidents, while 1,904 were killed by air-dropped bombs in the same period.

The study recorded that 82% of all deaths were adult males and 9% were adult women, although half of those killed by air-dropped bombs were children. In total, women and children accounted for about 18% of all civilian deaths.

Anti-occupation forces/insurgents accounted for 9% of the deaths, while criminal violence was blamed for 36%. The 28 page dossier also claimed that the situation in Iraq is getting worse. The fatalties in the second year after the invasion were twice as high as in the first year after the end of the war. At least 42,500 civilians were reported wounded.

More than a third of the report was based on the work of Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France Presse. Three-quarters of reports had at least one primary source, while 23% had two or more.

The Iraqi government disputed the figures. The Ministry of Health’s figures recorded 6,629 deaths in the year leading up to April 2005, one-third of which were due to “terrorist incidents”, with the remainder due to coalition forces. The Ministry of Interior, which also records deaths in the armed forces, reported 8,175 Iraqis were killed between July 2004 and May 2005.

Reuters noted that the figures apparently fail to note the number of people killed by suicide bombers in the last 18 months – with over 2,000 lives taken by car bombers, while the report claims that only 1,000 people have been killed by suicide bombers over 24 months. Reuters also pointed out that the report may underestimate deaths, as the media – the basis for the report – focuses mainly on Baghdad.

“The international forces try to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists target civilians and try to kill as many of them as they can,” the government said in a statement

The US military also disputed the figures and said it is doing everything to avoid civilian casualties. “Since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom until now, we have categorically not targeted civilians”, said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a spokesman for the US military in Baghdad.

“The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq. On average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since the invasion of March 2003”, said Professor John Sloboda, one of the authors of the report. He stressed that “neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed.”

The Iraqi Body Count group is based mainly in the Sheffield area of the United Kingdom. The co-founders are a human-rights campaigner, Hamit Dardagan, and Professor Sloboda, a psychologist at the University of Keele who is also a leading anti-war campaigner. The senior researcher is a retired librarian who last worked as the Head of Acquisitions in Keele University Library, and now runs an anti-war mailing list in the Sheffield area.

There have been two other studies into the number of civilians killed in Iraq since March 2003.

The first to be published was a report in the British medical journal The Lancet in October 2004, stating that there had been 98,000 “excess deaths”. The report was based on a questionnaire given to 998 households in 33 randomly-selected areas of Iraq, intended to be a representative sample. Of the total, 57,600 were given as being caused by accidents and disease, with the rest due to violence. The report had an extremely large margin of error – the 95% confidence interval (ie less than a 0.05% chance of being a fluke) range was from 8,000 up to 194,000.

The second report was the UN Development Program Iraq Living Conditions Survey, published in May 2005. This sampled 21,668 households in 2,200 areas, using similar selection and interpretation techniques as the Lancet study. This study recorded 24,000 “conflict-related deaths”, with a 95% confidence interval of 18,000 to 29,000.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s first royal wedding since 1976 took place Saturday when Crown Princess Victoria, 32, married her long-time boyfriend and former personal trainer, Daniel Westling, 36. The ceremony took place at Stockholm Cathedral.

Over 1,200 guests, including many rulers, politicians, royals and other dignitaries from across the world, attended the wedding, which cost an estimated 20 million Swedish kronor. Victoria wore a wedding dress with five-metre long train designed by Pär Engsheden. She wore the same crown that her mother, Queen Silvia, wore on her wedding day 34 years previously, also on June 19. Victoria’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, walked Victoria down the aisle, which was deemed untraditional by many. In Sweden, the bride and groom usually walk down the aisle together, emphasising the country’s views on equality. Victoria met with Daniel half-way to the altar, where they exchanged brief kisses, and, to the sounds of the wedding march, made their way to the the silver altar. She was followed by ten bridesmaids. The couple both had tears in their eyes as they said their vows, and apart from fumbling when they exchanged rings, the ceremony went smoothly.

Following the ceremony, the couple headed a fast-paced procession through central Stockholm on a horse-drawn carriage, flanked by police and security. Up to 500,000 people are thought to have lined the streets. They then boarded the Vasaorden, the same royal barge Victoria’s parents used in their wedding, and traveled through Stockholm’s waters, accompanied by flyover of 18 fighter jets near the end of the procession. A wedding banquet followed in the in the Hall of State of the Royal Palace.

Controversy has surrounded the engagement and wedding between the Crown Princess and Westling, a “commoner”. Victoria met Westling as she was recovering from bulemia in 2002. He owned a chain of gymnasiums and was brought in to help bring Victoria back to full health. Westling was raised in a middle-class family in Ockelbo, in central Sweden. His father managed a social services centre, and his mother worked in a post office. When the relationship was made public, Westling was mocked as an outsider and the king was reportedly horrified at the thought of his daughter marrying a “commoner”, even though he did so when he married Silvia. Last year, Westling underwent transplant surgery for a congenital kidney disorder. The Swedish public have been assured that he will be able to have children and that his illness will not be passed on to his offspring.

Westling underwent years of training to prepare for his new role in the royal family, including lessons in etiquette, elocution, and multi-lingual small talk; and a makeover that saw his hair being cropped short, and his plain-looking glasses and clothes being replaced by designer-wear.

Upon marrying the Crown Princess, Westling took his wife’s ducal title and is granted the style “His Royal Highness”. He is now known as HRH Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. He also has his own coat-of-arms and monogram. When Victoria assumes the throne and becomes Queen, Daniel will not become King, but assume a supportive role, similar to that of Prince Phillip, the husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II.