Preţurile locuinţelor vor continua să crească în următoarea perioadă, din cauza menţinerii dezechilibrului dintre cerere şi ofertă, însă vor exista scăderi ale costului de achiziţie a locuinţelor achiziţionate pentru a fi revândute, au declarat, miercuri, reprezentanţii mai multor bănci comerciale.

“PreÅ£urile nu au cum să scadă. Pot exista însă corecÅ£ii pe anumite segmente”, a declarat, într-un seminar pe tema finanţărilor imobiliare, preÅŸedintele Alpha Bank, Sergiu Oprescu.

El apreciază că evoluţia crescătoare a preţurilor locuinţelor va continua pe termen mediu, în special din cauza decalajului dintre cerere şi ofertă, şi că piaţa imobiliară are nevoie de un grad de transparenţă mai ridicat în ceea ce priveşte stabilirea preţurilor.

Citeste toata stirea pe mediafax.ro

written by Andrew

(CNN) — Ambitious plans to build a revolutionary 420-meter shape-shifting skyscraper in Dubai have been unveiled by architects.

The 80-story Dynamic Tower, described as the “world’s first building in motion,” will also be the first skyscraper constructed from prefabricated units, according to a press statement released by New York-based architect David Fisher’s Dynamic Group.

Each floor would be capable of rotating independently, powered by wind turbines fitted between each floor.

“You can adjust the shape the way you like every given moment,” Fisher said. “It’s not a piece of architecture somebody designed today and that’s it. It remains forever. It’s designed by life, shaped by time.”

Apartments will sell for around $3,000 per square foot, making each unit range in price from about $4 million to $40 million. Work on the tower is due to be completed by 2010, according to Dynamic’s Web site.

Read more on CNN.com

written by Andrew

(Sunset) — Come home from your next trip relaxed and smarter. Where to learn Spanish, whitewater rafting, astrophysics and more

Sedona, Arizona

Find your path in Arizona

In Sedona, the path to enlightenment involves hiking boots and yoga mats. Sedona Spirit Yoga & Hiking offers four-day retreats where you’ll take guided hikes through red rock wilderness to vortex sites, places where the Earth’s energy is supposedly strongest. You’ll also learn meditation, experience a Native American sweat lodge and maybe even nail that eagle pose. Abbreviated three- to six-hour yoga hikes are also offered.

Play hooky: In between downward dogs and trail switchbacks, check out uptown Sedona’s restaurants, which include vegan and raw choices, or browse art galleries.

Info: September-June; from $995, including lodging and breakfast; yoga hikes from $90; 888/282-9901. –Nora Burba Trulsson

Oaxaca, Mexico

Mix up moles south of the border

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written by Andrew

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Global warming could destabilize “struggling and poor” countries around the world, prompting mass migrations and creating breeding grounds for terrorists, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council told Congress on Wednesday.

Climate change “will aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions,” Thomas Fingar said. “All of this threatens the domestic stability of a number of African, Asian, Central American and Central Asian countries.”

People are likely to flee destabilized countries, and some may turn to terrorism, he said.

“The conditions exacerbated by the effects of climate change could increase the pool of potential recruits into terrorist activity,” he said.

“Economic refugees will perceive additional reasons to flee their homes because of harsher climates,” Fingar predicted. That will put pressure on countries receiving refugees, many of which “will have neither the resources nor interest to host these climate migrants,” he said in testimony to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Read more on CNN.com

written by Andrew

NEW YORK - With all the recent attention on the new Firefox 3 Internet browser, it’s easy to miss two strong, innovative rivals. Add it all up, and Microsoft Corp.’s market-leading Internet Explorer has some impressive challengers.

Opera 9.5, for instance, lets you share bookmarked Web pages and notes among several computers. And another browser, Flock 2, brings Firefox 3’s improvements to an already strong system for sharing photos and blog entries and linking friends on social-networking sites like Facebook.

Developed by the Mozilla open-source community, mostly volunteers, Firefox 3 showcases the “awesome bar.” Start typing anything into the address bar, and you’ll find letters and words jump around as Firefox 3 attempts to suggest up to 12 sites, with priority given to those you most recently visited or manually typed in.

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written by Andrew

WASHINGTON - Scientists unearthed a skull of the most primitive four-legged creature in Earth’s history, which should help them better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land.

The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. Even though Ventastega is likely an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds and mammals.

“If you saw it from a distance, it would look like a small alligator, but if you look closer you would find a fin in the back,” said lead author Per Ahlberg, a professor of evolutionary biology at Uppsala University in Sweden. “I imagine this is an animal that could haul itself over sand banks without any difficulty. Maybe it’s poking around in semi-tidal creeks picking up fish that got stranded.”

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written by Andrew

WASHINGTON - President Bush and Iraq’s president expressed cautious optimism Wednesday about prospects for completing a complex agreement that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires at year-end.

Bush said the U.S. was working on an agreement that “suits” the Iraqi government. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, speaking in the Oval Office after meeting with Bush, cited recent progress and said he hoped it could be finished “very soon.”

U.S. and Iraqi authorities are trying to meet a July target date for completing the security agreement. Talks bogged down over several key issues, which Iraqi lawmakers said violated the nation’s sovereignty. Recently, however, Iraqi authorities said prospects for a deal had brightened after the Americans submitted new, unspecified proposals.

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written by Andrew

Adrienne So este o reprezentantă a sexului frumos pasionată de tehnologie şi foarte frumos şlefuită de către mama natură. Posesoarea unor “balcoane” de lux se gândeşte însă că dimensiunile generoase ale sânilor nu sunt exploatate aşa cum trebuie de către femei şi că doar câţiva ani din viaţă se bucură de aspectul şi utilitatea lor.

Într-o noapte de intensă meditaţie, a dat naştere conceptului care, speră Adrienne, va revoluţiona lumea: energie electrică generată cu ajutorul sânilor. Ideea nu este 100% originală, am aflat că anumiţi cercetători studiază fizica mişcării sânilor de mai bine de 20 de ani. Lucrul mecanic apărut datorită mişcării sânilor pe cele trei axe poate fi transformat în energie, cu ajutorul unui dinam spre exemplu.

Întrebarea firească este, câtă energie poate să producă o pereche de sâni? Depinde. Cu cât dimensiunile podoabelor feminine sunt mai mari, cu atât mişcarea pe verticală este mai amplă şi drept urmare se generează mai multă energie.

Citeste toata stirea pe go4it.ro

written by Andrew

WASHINGTON (AP) – Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world’s only hope is drastic action.

James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the “dangerous level” for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels.
He said Earth’s atmosphere can stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for only a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

“We’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path,” said Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science. “This is the last chance.”

Hansen brought global warming home to the public in June 1988 during a Washington heat wave, telling a Senate hearing that global warming was already here.

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written by Andrew

George W. Bush, who has never chosen to take responsibility for addressing the mess he created in Iraq, has now been given permission by the U.S. House to finish his presidency without doing so.

After the House voted 268-to-155 to provide $162 billion in additional “emergency” funding for the Iraq war last week, Bush was effectively assured that he will be able to finish his presidency next Jan. 20 and head back to Texas without taking any steps to conclude a conflict that has killed and permanently disabled tens of thousands of Americans, killed and dislocated millions of Iraqis and destabilized one of the most complex and dangerous regions in the world.

“The president basically gets a blank check to dump this war on the next president,” says Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, who voted against letting Bush off the hook — and against setting up a situation where the next commander in chief, be he Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, will be “a war president.”

Read more on seattlepi.nwsource.com

written by Andrew