SL Green inks early extension with DZ Bank - Real Estate Weekly

10:59 am, July 24, 2013

SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE: SLG) announced today it has completed an early extension of the 29,524-square-foot lease with DZ Bank at 609 Fifth Avenue.? DZ Bank is one of Germany?s largest leading international commercial financial institutions.

The bank will continue to occupy the entire 7th and 8th floors of the 13-story, 156,700-square-foot boutique office building, located across from Rockefeller Center and Saks Fifth Avenue, for an additional ten years.

HOWARD TENENBAUM

?We are delighted that DZ Bank has elected to remain with us at 609 Fifth Avenue,? said Steven Durels, Executive Vice President and Director of Leasing and Real Property who added that, the building is ideal for financial service companies and other high profile businesses which want the international prestige and high energy of the Rockefeller Center neighborhood.

Michael Burgio of Cushman & Wakefield represented DZ Bank in the transaction and Howard J. Tenenbaum and Gary M. Rosen acted in-house for SL Green.

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Source: http://www.rew-online.com/2013/07/24/sl-green-inks-early-extension-with-dz-bank/

Susan Rice

Spanish prime minister rejects calls to step down over scandal

By Emma Pinedo and Andr?s Gonz?lez

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Monday rejected calls for his resignation over a ruling party financing scandal and said he would not allow the matter to deter his reform plans.

Pressure mounted on Rajoy as the former treasurer of his People's Party gave new testimony before a judge looking into the affair, saying he made 90,000 euros in cash payments to Rajoy and another party leader in 2009 and 2010.

Rajoy had so far managed to limit the impact of the scandal, which involves alleged illegal donations by construction magnates that were supposedly distributed as cash payments to party leaders in return for juicy contracts.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, he said: "I will defend political stability and I will fulfill the mandate given to me by Spanish voters."

Rajoy, whose party has comfortable control of Parliament, said the scandal would not derail his political reform program, aimed at combating a deep recession and a huge hole in the budget.

Spain's fiscal woes last year threatened to push the government into seeking a bailout and for months the future of the common currency looked at risk as the euro zone's fourth biggest economy teetered.

Rajoy resisted pressure to solicit aid and is now hopeful of an economic turnaround but his public image has been damaged by the Barcenas scandal.

The opposition demanded he quit on Monday, and some members of his own party also said it was time for him to go.

"The PP may have an absolute majority but it has lost moral authority," said the opposition Socialists' Deputy Secretary General, Elena Valenciano. "We are going to work with all the parties to make the prime minister step down."

At the heart of the scandal is former party treasurer Luis Barcenas, 55, who was jailed in June and charged with bribery, money laundering, tax fraud and other crimes.

High Court Judge Pablo Ruz questioned Barcenas behind closed doors for almost five hours on Monday after he was transported from jail in a white and black van.

Barcenas, a once-trusted aide, turned over documents showing how he ran a secret slush fund at the party for many years, and provided details of years of cash payouts to party leaders, according to a source with access to the court proceedings.

Over his more than 20 years handling PP finances Barcenas accumulated as much as 48 million euros in Swiss bank accounts that prosecutors say he has failed to adequately explain.

Rajoy is not charged with any crime and has repeatedly denied that he or other party leaders received illegal payments.

However, text messages between Rajoy and Barcenas published in El Mundo newspaper over the weekend showed the two were personally in touch as recently as March and that the prime minister tried to limit potential damage from the former party official, who he made treasurer in 2008.

Rajoy on Monday acknowledged the text messages were genuine and said they showed that he had not caved to blackmail from Barcenas, who left the party in 2009.

Inside the PP, politicians are increasingly convinced that Rajoy has lost credibility with voters tired of high unemployment. Support for the party has dropped to 25 percent from 44 percent in the 2011 general election, according to a poll by Metroscopia.

BEYOND REPAIR

The Spanish prime minister is known for his cautious political style in which he wears out opponents with a waiting game. But the strategy is wearing thin.

"Almost everyone in the party is convinced that the situation is beyond repair. The best option for Rajoy is to organize a process of handing over leadership to someone else in the party," said a PP parliamentarian, who asked not to be named.

Another party insider, who also asked not to be named, said Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saez de Santamaria is one person who could succeed Rajoy because she is seen as a newer generation of party leaders not touched by the Barcenas scandal.

Under Spain's constitution parliament can choose a new leader without calling an election. If the PP bench holds together and does not split over the scandal, it has enough seats to make sure that new leader comes from their party.

The Socialists, who polls show have 22 percent support, down from 31 percent in the 2011 election, have little to gain by forcing a dissolution of Parliament and an early election.

"The Socialists don't have the seats to call for a vote of no confidence," Carlos Floriano, deputy secretary of the PP said at a news conference on Monday afternoon.

Rajoy faces an unusually combative media. In the past Spanish leaders could count on support from one of the main newspapers, left-leaning El Pais or right-leaning El Mundo. But both papers have aggressively reported the Barcenas scandal and El Mundo's editorial stance has become increasingly anti-Rajoy.

Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said on Monday the Barcenas affair was not hurting Spain's reputation with foreign investors and that he was more concerned about public opinion at home.

But an International Monetary Fund report on Spain's banking sector, bailed out last year with 41 billion euros ($53.5 billion) of European aid, brought an unwelcome reminder of the challenges facing the government.

The fund said on Monday the banks' solvency rates had improved.

But economic problems meant the country's credit crunch was worsening and the government might be forced to rethink its plans for restructuring the sector, saddled with billions of euros in soured loans following a 2008 property market crash.

Spain's country risk, a reflection of the premium that the government must pay to investors to buy its bonds rather than less-risky German bonds, came down slightly on Monday, to 312 basis points. It had risen in recent sessions due to concerns about political risk in Portugal setting off the euro zone crisis again and due to credit rating cuts for Italy and France.

"For the moment the market is taking the view that the Barcenas case does not imply an immediate exit for Rajoy," said Javier Galan, a fund manager at Renta 4 in Madrid.

(Additional reporting by Fiona Ortiz and Jesus Aguado; Writing by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Clare Kane and Angus MacSwan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pressure-mounts-spanish-prime-minister-step-down-scandal-131557388.html

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Guardian journalist: Snowden says he gave no information to Russian or Chinese governments

LONDON ? The Guardian journalist at the center of a series of revelations about the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance programs says his source, Edward Snowden, told him he never gave any information to the Russian or Chinese governments.

Glenn Greenwald says in an article published Wednesday on the Guardian's website that he spoke to Snowden over the weekend and on Tuesday and that the leaker "vehemently denied" rumors that his data had been acquired by Moscow or Beijing.

Greenwald quotes him as saying that "I never gave any information to either government, and they never took anything from my laptops."

Critics of Snowden's leaks have often wondered at his relationship with Chinese or Russian authorities.

Greenwald did not say where Snowden is or where he is expected to go.

Source: http://www.startribune.com/world/214892841.html

Emmett Till

The quantum secret to alcohol reactions in space

June 30, 2013 ? Chemists have discovered that an 'impossible' reaction at cold temperatures actually occurs with vigour, which could change our understanding of how alcohols are formed and destroyed in space.

To explain the impossible, the researchers propose that a quantum mechanical phenomenon, known as 'quantum tunnelling', is revving up the chemical reaction. They found that the rate at which the reaction occurs is 50 times greater at minus 210 degrees Celsius than at room temperature.

It's the harsh environment that makes space-based chemistry so difficult to understand; the extremely cold conditions should put a stop to chemical reactions, as there isn't sufficient energy to rearrange chemical bonds. It has previously been suggested that dust grains -- found in interstellar clouds, for example -- could lend a hand in bringing chemical reactions about.

The idea is that the dust grains act as a staging post for the reactions to occur, with the ingredients of complex molecules clinging to the solid surface. However, last year, a highly reactive molecule called the 'methoxy radical' was detected in space and its formation couldn't be explained in this way.

Laboratory experiments showed that when an icy mixture containing methanol was blasted with radiation -- like would occur in space, with intense radiation from nearby stars, for example -methoxy radicals weren't released in the emitted gases. The findings suggested that methanol gas was involved in the production of the methoxy radicals found in space, rather than any process on the surface of dust grains. But this brings us back to the problem of how the gases can react under extremely cold conditions.

"The answer lies in quantum mechanics," says Professor Dwayne Heard, Head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds, who led the research.

"Chemical reactions get slower as temperatures decrease, as there is less energy to get over the 'reaction barrier'. But quantum mechanics tells us that it is possible to cheat and dig through this barrier instead of going over it. This is called 'quantum tunnelling'."

To succeed in digging through the reaction barrier, incredibly cold temperatures -- like those that exist in interstellar space and in the atmosphere of some planetary bodies, such as Titan -- are needed. "We suggest that an 'intermediary product' forms in the first stage of the reaction, which can only survive long enough for quantum tunnelling to occur at extremely cold temperatures," says Heard.

The researchers were able to recreate the cold environment of space in the laboratory and observe a reaction of the alcohol methanol and an oxidising chemical called the 'hydroxyl radical' at minus 210 degrees Celsius. They found that not only do these gases react to create methoxy radicals at this incredibly cold temperature, but that the rate of reaction is 50 times faster than at room temperature.

To achieve this, the researchers had to create a new experimental setup. "The problem is that the gases condense as soon as they hit a cold surface," says Robin Shannon from the University of Leeds, who performed the experiments. "So we took inspiration from the boosters used for the Apollo Saturn V rockets to create collimated jets of gas that could react without ever touching a surface."

The researchers are now investigating the reactions of other alcohols at very cold temperatures. "If our results continue to show a similar increase in the reaction rate at very cold temperatures, then scientists have been severely underestimating the rates of formation and destruction of complex molecules, such as alcohols, in space," concludes Heard.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/isF70kH0e8w/130630145004.htm

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Bush: Snowden damaged country (CNN)

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