The days of the stand-alone mall are numbered

As growing numbers of shoppers move online, European mall owners are looking to pull in customers by including services that can't be replicated on the Web like hospital care and government offices.

Malls must become more like full-service community centers to survive in the face of a growing list of failed retailers like HMV and Blockbuster, property experts at the annual MIPIM trade fair in Cannes, France, told Reuters. you desire to need the pipo u1

On the flip side of that retail revolution, the experts see big gains in warehousing as more goods are sent and returned via post.

"The days of the stand-alone mall are numbered," said David Roberts, the chief executive of architect Aedas, one of the five largest practices in the world. The company has been involved in city masterplan projects in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

"In 20 years time you will find stores that sell books and DVDs replaced by sites that give people a reason to go the mall ... art galleries, education centers and health and spa treatments."

Florencio Beccar, fund manager of CBRE Global Investors European shopping centre fund, cited the recent purchase of a mall in Germany, saying the fact it included a large medical centre was "a big plus".

"I once saw a clinic in a Brazilian mall where you checked in and are buzzed on a device when they are ready. In the meantime you go shopping," he said. "With the ageing population in Europe you can see that happening more and more."

CBRE Investors, which has about 14 billion euros ($18.2 billion) of retail property under management in Europe and 5,000 tenants, also owns a mall in southern Sweden with a library and a local municipal office, he said.

"More shopping centre developers will have early talks with these sorts of tenants as well as the big anchor retailers," Beccar said.

Mall owners like Land Securities, Intu, Westfield and Klepierre have increased the number of restaurants and cinemas to persuade shoppers to stay longer, and offer promotions to reward frequent shoppers who can be tracked via their mobile phones.

But these steps don't go far enough, some experts say, in light of a forecast last month that 90 percent of retail sales growth in Britain, France and Germany between 2012 and 2016, or 91.5 billion euros, is expected to be online, according to the property arm of French insurer AXA, which manages 43 billion euros of assets.

As well as changing what's inside, mall owners will need to borrow ideas from developing markets like Dubai and China where centers are part of wider mixed-use developments where people live or include open spaces where they spend leisure time, Roberts said.

"Convenience and Internet shopping has created a breakdown in community structures and there's a gap there waiting to be filled," he said.

"There is a complete lack of vision among many shopping centre owners," said Joe Valente, a managing director at JP Morgan Asset Management, who helps manage 7 billion euros of real estate in Europe.

"The big thing that's missing is that unlike almost every other industry they haven't caught on to building their own brand. Why not have a bluewater.com?" he said, referring to the large mall of the same name in southeast England.

"Landlords fear cannibalizing sales but in 10 to 15 years they won't have a choice because they will be cannibalized anyway," he said. In other words, a growing number of shoppers will move online whatever malls do.

"On a mall website you could book a parking space, a restaurant table or your car to be valeted. Why do people go to Covent Garden?" he asked of the central London district.

"There's nothing there you won't find anywhere else but I would argue it's a strong brand."

Christian Ulbrich, chief executive for Europe, Middle East and Africa at property consultant Jones Lang LaSalle, said: "Stores will get bigger and become more like adventure parks that attack all of your emotions.

"For example, Globetrotter has a climbing wall and cycle track in its Frankfurt store to try out its products," he said of the German outdoor clothing and equipment retailer.

WAREHOUSING

While retailers and mall owners struggle to find answers, all agree that warehouse property owners are the big beneficiaries of the change in retail habits.

Every additional 1 billion euros of online sales resulted in an average additional warehouse demand of approximately 72,000 square meters in Britain, Germany and France over the last five years, a report from warehouse landlord Prologis said last year.

"Logistics is the new retail," said Simon Hope, global head of capital markets at property consultant Savills, referring to the way changing consumer trends will affect the way investors see property.

"There is a trend of money moving away from all but the best and most regionally dominant malls into logistics as they are economically shielded," he said.

The fact that the Norwegian and Chinese sovereign wealth funds have recently invested in the sector, as well as a report that Brookfield, lower Manhattan's largest office landlord, is trying to do the same, shows serious bets are being made on logistics property, Hope said.

Yields for high quality logistics property can be six or seven percent versus four or five percent for top shopping centers. which you can buy it on china online store.

As another example of how retailers may re-think their operations, some are likely to club together to operate out of smaller logistics sites close to city centers to enable same-day deliveries, a service increasingly in demand, Ulbrich said.

"The issue they all face is that shopping is no longer enough of a reason to go to shopping centers."

Bergoglio's harshest critics go much further

Argentina's pope, Jorge Bergoglio, is a fearless critic of the powerful and a bold advocate of the poor, but some say he let down his country by staying silent during a "dirty war" dictatorship.

Links between some high-ranking Roman Catholic clergymen and the military regime that kidnapped and killed up to 30,000 leftists between 1976 and 1983 tarnished the Church's reputation in Argentina and the wounds have yet to heal.

Critics of Bergoglio, the Jesuit former archbishop of Buenos Aires, say he failed to protect priests who challenged the dictatorship, and that he has said too little about the complicity of the Church during military rule. You want to do something attached to door camera  split

That is reason enough for some human rights activists to question the moral credentials of Pope Francis, or Francisco as he will be known in the Spanish-speaking world.

"He has never said anything about the genocidal priests ... We've really never heard him say anything," said Taty Almeida, one of the leaders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who marched for years before the presidential palace to demand information on their missing children.

Bergoglio's harshest critics go much further.

"He turned priests in during the dictatorship," said Horacio Verbitsky, a journalist and author close to President Cristina Fernandez, with whom Bergoglio has a prickly relationship.

According to Verbitsky's book "The Silence," Bergoglio withdrew his order's protection of two Jesuit priests after they refused to quit visiting the slums, paving the way for their capture.

"I used to have the same opinion of him that most people have, of a humble, intelligent man dedicated to the poor ... but then I discovered everything that is contained in my books, in my research," he added.

Verbitsky's accusations, based on the testimony of one of the two Jesuits who were kidnapped, are controversial, however.

Bergoglio, who led the Jesuit order in Argentina at the time, gave evidence at a majorhuman rights trial that he asked junta leaders Jorge Rafael Videla and Emilio Massera to free the two priests, who were kidnapped and held for five months. And defenders of the new pope say he helped many dissidents flee.

"What Bergoglio tried to do was help where he could," said Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for defending human rights during the dictatorship

"It's true that he didn't do what very few bishops did in terms of defending the human rights cause, but it's not right to accuse him of being an accomplice," Perez Esquivel told Reuters. "Bergoglio never turned anyone in, neither was he an accomplice of the dictatorship."

In more recent years, Bergoglio's thinly veiled criticisms of those in power have been a constant of his leadership of Argentina's Roman Catholics and his willingness to speak out has made him some enemies.

"He's a real straight talker. He doesn't beat around the bush, so to speak," said Mercedes Zamuner, an assistant at a chapel where Bergoglio used to give Mass in Buenos Aires.

"When it's been necessary, he's said really tough things directed at certain quarters."

At the height of a devastating economic crisis in 2001-02 that plunged millions into poverty, Bergoglio's criticism of those in power was blunt.

Former President Eduardo Duhalde sat stony-faced as Bergoglio delivered an unusually harsh homily in 2002 as the crisis raged outside the cathedral gates.

"Let's not tolerate the sad spectacle of those who no longer know how to lie and contradict themselves to hold onto their privileges, their rapaciousness, and their ill-earned wealth," Bergoglio said in the televised sermon.

The former cardinal, the first Jesuit to become pope, was born into a large middle-class Buenos Aires family, his father an Italian immigrant railway worker and his mother a housewife.

People who know him say he shares two national passions - soccer and tango - and is endowed with the common touch, though he never worked in the ramshackle slums that encircle most of Argentina's large cities. you will going to buy it on the china wholesale

"Bergoglio is willing to mingle with the people; he has washed the feet of AIDS sufferers, of pregnant women ... he blessed the trash collectors," Eduardo de la Serna, an Argentine priest who works with the poor, told Pagina 12 newspaper.

In the run-of-the-mill Flores neighborhood where Bergoglio grew up, his former home has been knocked down, but he is well-known among neighbors who remember him from childhood.

"When we were 12 he wrote me a letter saying that if he didn't marry me, he'd become a priest," said Amalia Damonte, 76, a childhood friend and neighbor who still lives there.

At a nearby Church school where Bergoglio attended nursery and had his first communion, he played football on Sundays, a 90-year-old nun recalled.

Bergoglio's passion for the game has continued and he is a card-carrying member of leading Buenos Aires team San Lorenzo, who are nicknamed The Saints.

"He says he lives in a permanent state of suffering for San Lorenzo," said fellow fan Oscar Lucchini, although he added that Bergoglio did not attend games.

Known for traveling by bus and shunning the luxuries of high Church office, Bergoglio lived in a one-room apartment next to the cathedral and is said to wear worn-out shoes.

"When he arrives in Rome he takes the bus from the airport," said Francesca Ambrogetti, who co-authored a biography of Bergoglio that was published in 2010 after carrying out a series of interviews with him over three years.

"On one occasion, a driver from the Argentine Embassy in the Vatican asked Bergoglio if he'd please let him drive him because if he didn't he'd get told off," she said.

"He showed us his office once. It was incredibly luxurious (but) he turned it into a store room and received people in a really simple office instead."

Some think Bergoglio's bold approach will prove an asset as he takes the reins of a troubled Church shaken by scandal.

An admirer of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, Bergoglio must overcome crises caused by child abuse by priests and the leak of secret papal documents that uncovered corruption and rivalry inside the Church.

"You get the sense of someone who has the capacity to defend what needs to be defended with great intensity," his biographer Abrogate said.

CHILD ABUSE

Bergoglio became a priest at 32, nearly a decade after losing the use of one lung due to respiratory illness and quitting his chemistry studies. Despite his late start, he was leading the local Jesuit community within four years, holding the post of provincial of the Argentine Jesuits from 1973 to 1979.

He then held several academic posts and pursued further study in Germany. He was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and archbishop in 1998.

A solemn man, deeply attached to centuries-old Roman Catholic traditions, he is not expected to stray far from Church doctrine on divisive matters of sexuality, divorce and abortion, but he is seen bringing a more pastoral touch.

"He has always stayed close to priests who got married. He even told us that he had married some (former) priests," Ambrogetti said.

Bergoglio once branded priests who refuse to baptize children born outside marriage as "hypocrites."

Argentina has not faced as many high-profile scandals of priests sexually abusing children, meaning Bergoglio has not been forced to take a public position on the issue like his peers in other countries.

"He mentioned that in cases of pedophile priests he considers it a perversion that predates ordination and that 'you need to be very careful when choosing candidates for the priesthood,'" Ambrogetti said.

Almeida, from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, urged Bergoglio to make his position on abuse cases clear now that he is in the Vatican.

"I really hope he now has the power in his hands to clarify and investigate these things," she said, linking the sex abuse scandals to the Church's role in the dirty war.

In Bergoglio's former neighborhood in Buenos Aires, his childhood friend Damonte said she shared the high hopes of millions of Latin Americans celebrating the election of the region's first pope.

"He is a good man, the son of a working-class family," she said, standing on her flower-filled front porch. "I hope he can achieve all the good that he holds in his heart."

Chris Brennan posted a video to YouTube

In February, Chris Brennan posted a video to YouTube in which he decries plans to tear down a gigantic Fort Lauderdale tree to make way for a property development. And now, a month later, Brennan has been fired for speaking out about the prized tree.

As it turns out, Brennan’s former employer rents space from the same international developer who wants to tear down the rain tree (Albizia saman) that is so big, a local ordinance was passed in 1987 to protect it. you need new slide phone in 2013.

After developer Asi Cymbal saw Brennan’s YouTube video he called Brennan’s employer, Water Taxi, and asked owner Bill Walker to “handle it.”

“I thought it was strange that someone who never met me was so angry, and that he was an employee of the Water Taxi,’’ Cymbal told the Sun Sentinel. "It seemed odd that a project that is so beneficial to our city and the Water Taxi would have a Water Taxi employee that was doing all these things.”

At the beginning of the video, Brennan takes a light tone, describing the tree with details such as, “It’s a really big tree. It’s like that tree in ‘Avatar’ that they blew up. “So, why am I here today talking about the largest ‘rain tree’ in Florida? Because, there’s an Israeli billionaire named Asi Cymbal who bought all this property in 2011 at a foreclosure sale. Today, he’s in cahoots with a Danish architect who wants to build a great big condominium right on top of this tree.”

“Well guess what, you Danish freak,'' Brennan says at the end of the video.” "This ain't nothing. It's a 100-year-old, six-story-tall tree that the city of Fort Lauderdale promised to protect in 1987. I don't know about you, but in 1987, I was 7 years old, and promises meant something.''

For his part, Cymbal says he plans to move the tree to a nearby location, not destroy it. But Brennan and others say that would be impossible, citing the tree’s 20-foot-plus width at the trunk. In addition, Cymbal says he never asked Brennan’s employer to fire him.

In the comments section on his YouTube page, Brennan has urged supporters of the tree to attend a local city government meeting to protest the planned development:

“If you'd like to help, contact the Fort Lauderdale City Commissioners by or before the 19th of March. Or come to the city meeting on the 19th at 6PM and speak your mind!” when you like this kind of the car style phone

And he’s certainly not alone in his admiration for the record-setting tree. Another local resident, Derrell Thompson, says the tree has become his “best friend” since he moved to the area.

We have learned in the last 20 years

Several billion years ago, Mars may well have been a pleasant place for tiny microbes to live, with plenty of water as well as minerals that could have served as food, NASA scientists said Tuesday at a news conference on the latest findings from their Mars rover. But they have yet to find signs that actual microbes did live in that oasis. “We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,” said John P. Grotzinger, the California Institute of Technology geology professor who is the principal investigator for the NASA mission. you desire to need the sanei n86

In drilling into its first rock, a fine-grained mudstone, the scientists said, the rover Curiosity — a self-contained science laboratory about the size of a Mini Cooper — sent back to Earth convincing evidence that Mars was once awash in water.

Plus, the Curiosity scientists identified elements in the rocks — sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon — that are some of the key ingredients of life, as well as minerals, like sulfates and sulfides, that primitive microbes could eat for food. Dr. Grotzinger said these minerals are “effectively like batteries” and can provide an energy source for life.

This included the presence of clays, one of the main things that scientists were hoping that Curiosity would find on its two-year, $2.5 billion mission. Clays form in waters that have a neutral pH.

“What we have learned in the last 20 years of modern microbiology is that very primitive organisms, they can derive energy just by feeding on rocks,” Dr. Grotzinger said.

Even so, the Curiosity scientists said they had not yet definitively found the carbon building blocks needed to come together to give rise to living organisms. Two earlier NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, also found strong evidence of liquid water on the Martian surface, but in places on the planet that were highly acidic and salty — far harsher for any hypothetical organisms.

About three billion years ago, the conditions on Mars changed. With just one-tenth the mass of Earth, Mars was unable to hold on to most of its atmosphere. The inside of the planet cooled, and the volcanoes stopped erupting. The water froze or evaporated and escaped into space. Mars became cold and dry.

Curiosity landed in August in a 96-mile crater named Gale, gouged long ago by a meteor, and has been roaming in the area since then. The rover’s ultimate destination is a three-mile-high mountain at the center of the crater that caught the eye of scientists because they detected the presence of clays in observations taken by orbiting spacecraft. Now, long before getting to the mountain, scientists have already found the clays, and these rocks would be prime candidates to look for organics.

Curiosity is not carrying any instruments that can detect Martian life, past or present, but it can identify so-called organic molecules, which contain carbon and hydrogen atoms. The presence of organic molecules would not prove the presence of life, since many nonliving chemical reactions can produce organic molecules. But organic molecules are a necessary prerequisite for life — at least, life as we know it.

So far, the Curiosity scientists cannot say that the rock contained organics, but neither can they rule out the possibility. Rather, since their instruments did measure some simple organics, the researchers are sorting out whether the organics came from the Martian rock, from contamination brought from Earth or were formed in chemical reactions as the rock powder was heated. you will know the thing on the china deals.

Still, the scientists are excited by the possibilities.

“I have an image now of possibly a lake, a fresh water lake, on Mars with a thicker atmosphere,” said John M. Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science.

The answers will take a while to discern. Science operations are delayed as engineers work to diagnose and fix what went wrong with the rover’s computer last week when Curiosity failed to send back science data and then failed to go to sleep as scheduled.

Part of the rover’s computer memory had become corrupted, and the engineers switched operations to an identical backup. They are also figuring out whether the corrupted memory may clear up when the computer is restarted or whether the errors are permanent, requiring modification of computer programs to avoid that part of the memory.

In addition, the Sun will be in the way between Mars and Earth for most of April, making communications impossible. Limited science work is expected to resume in a few days, but further drilling of rocks will wait until May.