Exclusive: California city could face SEC lawsuit

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In a case that illustrates the mounting risks facing cash-strapped California cities and their lenders, the desert city of Victorville is bracing for possible litigation amid allegations that it improperly shifted funds among different city-controlled entities.

The Victorville city council was told by its attorney last week that it faced "significant exposure to litigation" relating to a little-publicized Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into its financial practices, the city attorney acknowledged in a statement to Reuters.

City attorney Andre de Bortnowsky denied that Victorville had violated any laws, and said "it almost appears as if the SEC is on a fishing expedition."

The exact focus of the SEC investigation is not known. The SEC declined to comment.

In late June, a civil grand jury report alleged that Victorville may have violated state laws by transferring property taxes dedicated to its sanitation department to its general fund budget. Civil grand juries are investigative bodies that are not empowered to bring charges.

Harvey M. Rose Associates, a San Francisco-based public sector management consulting firm, said in its report to the civil grand jury that Victorville had mismanaged projects, made poor decisions on contracts and loaned $38 million to its municipal utility and its local airport. The report said repayment of those loans was "highly questionable."

The report said the utility is insolvent, with $32 million in assets and $108 million in liabilities.

Bortnowsky, in an email to Reuters, said the city "takes issue with respect to many of the statements contained in the Grand Jury report, especially those pertaining to purported violations of state and local laws and resolutions."

He said a full response to the grand jury allegations would be "forthcoming shortly."

Victorville, with a population of about 115,000, had a total of $407 million in bond debt as of June 30, 2011.

The city's auditors said in February that there "was substantial doubt about the city's ability to continue as going concern" due to "recurring losses" in its general fund and lack of liquidity in funds for its utility and the airport.

The city council in late June adopted a $47 million budget for its general fund that included a $74,992 surplus.

Three California cities have filed or said they would file for bankruptcy since June 28, when Stockton filed for Chapter 9 protection to restructure more than $700 million in debt.

On July 2, the city of Mammoth Lakes filed to shield itself from a $43 million court judgment. The San Bernardino city council voted on July 18 to seek bankruptcy protection.

In both Stockton and San Bernardino, poor financial controls and shuffling of money among different city entities appear to have contributed to their respective financial crises.

(Reporting by Jim Christie and Ronald Grover; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Lisa Shumaker and Matthew Lewis)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-california-city-could-face-sec-lawsuit-151620494.html

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Hunt for Joseph Kony lacks troops, equipment

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) ? The head of a planned African Union force to hunt warlord Joseph Kony said on Wednesday that he can't start his task because he doesn't have troops, equipment or the necessary funding.

Ugandan Col. Dick Olum spoke to The Associated Press from Yambio, South Sudan, as AU and United Nations officials gathered in Uganda to consider regional efforts to catch Kony and dismantle his infamous Lord's Resistance Army.

"We don't yet have the force to start the mission," said Olum, whose appointment was announced in February. "The problem is logistics, facilitation and personnel."

Olum said the Kony hunt was still in the hands of some 2,000 Ugandan soldiers and 500 South Sudanese troops. The AU force, however, was meant to start operating in March with up to 5,000 troops contributed by Uganda, South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic ? the countries affected by Kony's rebellion over the past years. The funding for the mission, meant to come from the affected states and the international community, has yet to materialize, he added.

Kony became the first suspect to be indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2005. In March, the fugitive warlord became the subject of renewed international attention after U.S. charity Invisible Children released an online video that quickly went viral aimed at raising awareness of crimes attributed to the LRA.

Uganda's Foreign Minister Okello Oryem said Wednesday's meeting of AU and U.N. officials in Uganda had been called amid fears that the LRA might take advantage of chaos in eastern Congo to regroup and wreak havoc. The officials are examining the latest intelligence on the LRA, whose members have traditionally moved freely through the region's porous borders, he said.

"This matter of the LRA could escalate and become bigger in the region," he warned. "The meeting will look into this and come up with intelligence to be shared with the Americans."

Last year President Barack Obama sent 100 troops to Central Africa to help regional governments eliminate the LRA, which is notorious for forcibly recruiting boys and girls who then become soldiers or wives for commanders. The Americans are acting as advisers and are not involved in physically tracking the rebels. Although the hunt for Kony has intensified in recent months, Ugandan officials say they lack reliable evidence of his possible whereabouts because he has stopped using electronic communication devices.

Only about 200 LRA fighters are still left in a vast swath of jungle in Central Africa, according to Ugandan army officials. The rebels are scattered in small groups in South Sudan, Congo, and the Central African Republic, where Kony himself is thought to be hiding. There is no LRA presence in Uganda where it originated in the 1980s as a rebel movement, officials say.

Olum said most of the LRA rebels are hiding in Congo, where military officials arrested a rebel lieutenant and handed him over to Ugandan authorities last month.

The Congolese government has denied Uganda permission to enter its territory in pursuit of LRA rebels.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-07-25-Uganda-Kony/id-c4ea42d183d341648dc7e71f403e51f5

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Real-estate Marketing: Some Tips You Haven't Deemed | The ...

Marketing your own home might not be as easy as it once was with today?s housing market. You will need to develop an competitive marketing strategy to draw in several prospective buyers as you can. Competitors for consumers is tough. You need to get in touch with as numerous men and women as you can. A number of the tips beneath will assist you to produce your strategy and sell your property easily.

Offer you to complete a wide open home when marketing your house. Have your real estate agent create all the details and spread the word. In this way, you can have numerous possible buyers looking at your house . as opposed to only getting one at time on various different time and occasions.

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When you very own a website the place you promote your property, discharging a hit release is the best way to boost your presence. Whenever you launch a push release and discuss information with the customers, you improve your online search engine presence and advertise your solutions in the long term.

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Just about the most crucial sides when selling your real-estate is definitely the color about the property. This is probably the least complicated fixes you can do to help you with all the curb appeal from the home. When purchasers push by and find out a put on and fatigued color work in the house, they could never ever get in touch with to discover more on your property as a result inadequate perception.

Use various solutions to acquire or promote your real-estate. With adding the web, you access an entirely new global marketplace spot. When classic imprinted fliers and newspaper item listings can assist you to promote, it might by no means hurt to look all the way and collection on websites at the same time.

Whether you may have already commenced the entire process of offering your property or are going to, the info here can be a good tool to acquire by way of it unscathed. It doesn?t really need to be difficult and it also doesn?t must be confusing. Use what you have learned on this page to really make it by way of, using a grin in your face.

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Feces fossils show connection between Native-Americans, diabetes: Did fat-hoarding genes develop from the nature of ancient feasts?

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2012) ? Why do Native Americans experience high rates of diabetes? A common theory is that they possess fat-hoarding "thrifty genes" left over from their ancestors -- genes that were required for survival during ancient cycles of feast and famine, but that now contribute to the disease in a modern world of more fatty and sugary diets.

A newly published analysis of fossilized feces from the American Southwest, however, suggests this "thrifty gene" may not have developed because of how often ancient Natives ate. Instead, researchers said, the connection may have come from precisely what they ate.

The research, which appears in the latest edition of the journal Current Anthropology, suggests that the prehistoric hunter-gatherer civilizations of the Southwest lived on a diet very high in fiber, very low in fat and dominated by foods extremely low on the glycemic index, a measure of effects food has on blood sugar levels. This diet, researchers said, could have been sufficient to give rise to the fat-storing "thrifty genes."

"What we're saying is we don't really need to look to feast or famine as a basis for (the genes)," said Karl Reinhard, professor of forensic sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's School of Natural Resources and the study's lead author. "The feast-or-famine scenario long hypothesized to be the pressure for 'thrifty genes' isn't necessary, given the dietary evidence we've found."

Natives have some of the highest rates of Type 2 diabetes of any group and are more than twice as likely to develop the disease as are Caucasians. The notion the gene's origin goes back to feast-and-famine cycles among prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors has been discussed for nearly a half-century.

To fully understand the basis of the high rates, Reinhard said, "one has to look at the best dietary data one can find. That comes from coprolites (the official term for fossilized feces). By looking at coprolites, we're seeing exactly what people ate."

The coprolites are from Antelope Cave, a deep cavern in northern Arizona where, over several thousands of years, was home to various cultures. That includes the Ancestral Pueblan peoples, who are believed to have lived there seasonally for at least 450 years.

Reinhard and Keith Johnson, an archeologist at California State University, Chico, studied 20 coprolites found in the cave and combined it with analysis from other sites for hints of ancient Natives' diets. They found clues to a food regimen dominated by maize and high-fiber seed from sunflowers, wild grasses, pigweed and amaranth. Prickly pear, a desert succulent, was also found repeatedly in the samples.

By volume, about three-quarters of the Antelope Cave coprolites were made up of insoluble fiber. The foods also were low on the glycemic index; some research suggests that high-GI foods may increase risk of obesity and diabetes.

The analysts' findings led them to deduce that the nature of the feast, and not necessarily its frequency, was enough to lock the "thrifty" genes in place -- and leave modern Natives more susceptible to diabetes as their diets evolved to lower-fiber, higher-GI foods.

"These were not just famine foods," the authors wrote. "These were the foods eaten on a day-by-day basis during all seasons in both feast and famine. They continued to be eaten even after agriculture was developed. Antelope Cave coprolites show that this high-fiber diet was eaten during the warmer seasons of food abundance."

In addition to UNL's Reinhard and California State Chico's Johnson, the study was authored by Isabel Teixeira-Santos and Monica Viera of the Escola Nacional de Saude Publica in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120724104434.htm

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Land sales in Southwest WI increase again | Wisconsin Real Estate ...

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Like real estate stats for the state of Wisconsin, rural land sales in Southwest Wisconsin are also on the rise, according to information from Rural Property Pro Jay Frazier.

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According to Jay?s blog post ?Five of the seven counties in this area saw an increase in the number of sales with Sauk County leading the way. Overall land transactions were up for the 2nd quarter compared to 2011. ?

?The average price per acre for the whole area of Southwest Wisconsin increased 3.5% since last year so prices are slowly strengthening. We can confidently say the market is recovering nicely, although it will probably be some time before we return to a market like we saw in 2006. In my own business, I am seeing multiple offers as well as shorter days on market. These are two more characteristics of an improving market.?

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?Land Sales Grant County

# sales 2nd quarter of?2012:?7?vs 2011 sales:11

Price per acre 2012:?$3,417?vs?$2,278?2011

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Land Sales Layfayette County

# sales 2nd?quarter of?2012:?9?vs 2011 sales:?3

Price per acre 2012:?$3,961?vs?$3,177?2011

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Land Sales Richland County

# sales 2nd?quarter of??2012:?10?vs 2011 sales:?11

Price per acre 2012:?$1,965?vs?$2,509?2011

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Land Sales Sauk County

# sales 2nd quarter?2012:?12?vs 2011 sales:?5

Price per acre 2012:?$3,544?vs?$4,437?2011

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Land Sales Crawford County

# sales 2nd?quarter of?2012:?10?vs 2011 sales:?3

Price per acre 2012:?$2,288?vs?$2,530?2011

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Land Sales Vernon County

# sales 2nd?quarter of?2012:?3?vs 2011 sales:?2

Price per acre 2012:?$1,960?vs?$1,870?2011

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Land Sales Iowa County

# sales 2nd?quarter of 2012:?7?vs 2011 sales:?4

Price per acre 2012:?$4,146?vs?$3,861?2011

?Source SCWMLS. Jay analyzed rural land so properties smaller than 15 acres and commercial land are not included.

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Per Jay?s research, rural land in WI may have turned a corner. ?See much more details at his?Southwest Wisconsin real estate blog. You can search for?rural land for sale in Wisconsin at Jay?s site?or?firstweber.com.

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?Jay Frazier,?First Weber Group Muscoda

Thanks for reading the First Weber Wisconsin real estate and Wisconsin living blog for information on rural land sales in Southwest Wisconsin

Chart courtesy of Jay Frazier

Photo credit :?http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitterroot/199570537/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/deed.en

Source: http://blog.firstweber.com/2012/07/24/land-sales-in-southwest-wi-increase-again/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=land-sales-in-southwest-wi-increase-again

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Guest Post: Managing Logistics Outsourcing Relationships | Mini ...

There has been a significant rise in competition in the logistics service industry over the past decades with the logistics markets growing steadily. As competition in the emerging global economy continues to get higher, majority firms, particularly those involved in manufacturing and retailing are turning towards outsourcing logistics functions.

Most logistics firms consider outsourcing as a feasible business strategy, as they believe contracting out certain functions will help companies have full control over their resources. The major benefit of outsourcing warehousing and distribution operations is that companies will be in a better position to fully concentrate on vital issues and take steps to improve future growth of the organization.

In order to improve the overall image of the organization, it becomes increasingly important for firms to effectively manage logistics outsourcing relationships. Before proceeding on this topic, it is vital to know the meaning of logistics outsourcing.

The term outsourcing refers to a process when a firm contracts out some of its operations to a third party that works independently. Logistics firms resort to outsourcing in order to reduce costs and increase profit margins. Logistics outsourcing has gained immense importance today.

It is vital to maintain good relation between service providers and customers in order to boost logistics performance. Here are a few reasons about the importance of maintaining good relationships when outsourcing.

? Maintaining a good logistics outsourcing relationship is highly important for the success of any business. It is crucial for the competitiveness of a supply chain.

? Customer satisfaction and loyalty will only be achieved when service providers and customers maintain a good rapport.

? Service processes become mutually dependent and inhibited at times. This is one major reason for the importance of maintaining good relationship between service providers and customers in order to effectively co-ordinate service processes well.

Most of the logistics firms believe outsourcing their logistics and supply chain operations to third party logistics (3PL) will help in cost reduction and bring profitability in business. This belief holds true in the current economic scenario, where costs continue to rise. Non-core functions of organizations are being outsourced to improve competence and boost customer service.

Logistics firms try to maintain long-term relationships with 3PLs for better business. The relationship between logistics firms and 3PLs will remain good as long as the third party logistics providers meet the expectations of firms.

Once a logistics firm outsources some of its core operations to a 3PL, the third party logistics provider becomes an integral part of the business. The 3PL not only becomes an integral part of business, it also becomes an important part of customer operations. The 3PL becomes fully aware about the needs and wants of customers and manages to fulfill these needs by utilizing its own expertise. This helps relationship strengthen and grow further.

Prior to selecting firms for outsourcing, it is vital to fully understand business goals and settle on issues pertaining to company?s competence. At times the company you are outsourcing your business to, may not have good logistics functions such as warehousing and transportation. Keep this in mind before you plan to outsource certain operations to firms.

Source: http://www.ministoragemessenger.com/blog/?p=1504&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=guest-post-managing-logistics-outsourcing-relationships

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Free Webinar ? Using Ele?, a Free Online Tool, to Incorporate ...

Date: September 12, 2012

Time: 2:00 ? 3:30PM Eastern Time

Register Here!!!

In this session you will learn how to use an exciting new resource, the Early Learning Environment?, (Ele) in ways to promote professional development, classroom learning, and school-home connections. Ele is a free innovative online space where adults can find high-quality digital resources that support early literacy, media literacy, and other learning and development for children for birth to age five. This new online resource helps early childhood educators and families learn to use media in developmentally appropriate ways. Ele highlights ways to turn media into language-rich, adult-child interactions and provides a set of fun and engaging activities, resources, and other materials for adults that move beyond ?tip sheets.? Ele resources are designed to answer not just how to support early print and media literacy, but also why.

This webinar will include a live demonstration of Ele that will introduce participants to the site, In this practical webinar, you will learn:

- about the print and technological literacy needs and challenges facing children, families, and educators, and learn how Ele is addressing those needs.
-? how to incorporate specific resources into learning in schools, early childhood programs, and family child care homes, and extend the impact into homes.
- how to use Ele effectively
- the array of free resources available on the site.

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Source: http://machildcareresourcesonline.org/2012/07/free-webinar-using-ele-a-free-online-tool-to-incorporate-principles-from-naeyc-the-fred-rogers-center-into-your-program/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=free-webinar-using-ele-a-free-online-tool-to-incorporate-principles-from-naeyc-the-fred-rogers-center-into-your-program

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