May Home Sales: Homewood Sales on the Rise - Real Estate ...

Year-over-year, Homewood saw a boost in the number of homes sold during the month of May. Median home prices decreased, however, according to the Mainstreet Organization of Realtors.

The 33 single, detached homes sold in Homewood during May 2013 represented a 200-percent increase?over May 2012, when 11 homes were sold, according to the Mainstreet Organization of Realtors (MORe).

There were?19 homes sold in?Homewood?during April.

Homewood median home prices, however, dropped a bit from May 2012, from $131,000 to $130,000.

Sales of single-family, detached homes in suburban Chicago increased 29.1 percent in May 2013 compared with the same period a year ago, MORe reported. Sales in the 200 communities MORe gathers information on in DuPage, Lake and suburban Cook counties?experienced notable sales gains last month.

Sales momentum is expected to continue in those communities, as the number of detached homes under contract in May grew by 45 percent in those same communities, according to MORe.

Competition in the housing market is going to continue as the market works through a backlog of distressed properties, said Tonya Corder, president of MORe and managing broker of Keller Williams Preferred Realty in Orland Park.

?Buyers need to come in aggressively with their first price, especially on moderately priced homes in good condition,? Corder said ?We are seeing multiple offers and people writing contracts on properties the day they come onto the market. ... There is a buzz going on in real estate right now. People want to take advantage of this market.?

Patch's Mary Ann Lopez contributed to this report.

?By Ryan Fitzpatrick

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Source: http://homewood-flossmoor.patch.com/groups/real-estate/p/may-home-sales-homewood-sales-on-the-rise

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Bombs in Iraq hit protesters, minibus, killing 12

BAGHDAD (AP) ? Bomb blasts in Iraq on Tuesday struck a gathering of demonstrators in an ethnically disputed northern city and a minibus carrying Shiite pilgrims to the holy city of Karbala, killing at least 12 and wounding dozens in the latest in a wave of attacks roiling the country.

Iraq is weathering its deadliest outburst of violence since 2008, with more than 2,000 people killed since the start of April. The bloodshed appears to be largely the work of resurgent Sunni militants such as al-Qaida, feeding off Sunni discontent with the Shiite-led government.

In Tuesday's deadliest attack, at least one suicide bomber blew himself up near a group of Turkomen protesters who had set up tents in the city of Tuz Khormato, according to Ali Abdul-Rahman, a spokesman for the Salahuddin provincial governor. He said the protesters were demanding tighter security for the community following a deadly car bombing Sunday.

The attack killed at least seven people and wounded 52, according to head of the provincial health department, Raed Ibrahim.

Among those killed were two Turkmen leaders, Ahmed Abdel-Wahed and Ali Hashem Mukhtar Oglou, according to the United Nations mission to Iraq.

"Such attacks aim to heighten tensions in this particularly sensitive region of Tuz Khurmatu," U.N. envoy Martin Kobler said in a statement.

Tuz Khormato sits in a band of territory contested by Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen about 200 kilometers (130 miles) north of Baghdad.

In the other attack, five Shiite pilgrims were killed after their bus was struck about 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Baghdad while it was traveling between the towns of Musayyib and Iskandariyah, according to police and hospital officials.

Tens of thousands of Shiites are gathering in the holy city of Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, for the annual festival of Shabaniyah marking the anniversary of the birth of the ninth-century Shiite leader known as the Hidden Imam.

Earlier Tuesday, gunmen in a speeding car fired on a church in Baghdad's southeastern al-Amin neighborhood, wounding three guards, police officers and a health official said.

The officials provided details of the attacks on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to journalists.

Tuesday's attacks struck as Iraqis were still cleaning up from a wave of evening bombings that targeted markets in and around Baghdad. Those attacks, which mainly hit Shiite or religiously mixed areas, and other blasts north of the capital Monday killed at least 42 people and wounded dozens of others.

The United States and Britain condemned the previous day's bombings in statements Tuesday. The U.S. Embassy called attacks during the Shiite festival of Shabaniyah "particularly reprehensible."

"We call upon the leaders and people of Iraq to work together to combat terrorism, and we are committed to assisting in these efforts to bring the attackers to justice," the U.S. Embassy said.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the latest attacks. Al-Qaida's Iraq branch, which has been gaining strength in recent months, frequently targets Shiites, security forces and civil servants in an effort to undermine the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

___

Associated Press writers Adam Schreck and Sinan Salaheddin contributed reporting.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bombs-iraq-hit-protesters-minibus-killing-12-141459082.html

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Japan's Seibu and Cerberus in boardroom showdown

By Junko Fujita

TOKYO (Reuters) - Private equity giant Cerberus Capital Management LP and Japan's Seibu Holdings will square off in a shareholder vote on Tuesday over the U.S. firm's drive to shake up the board and win more influence.

The standoff between Cerberus and Seibu has been seen by some investors as a test of Japan's receptivity to foreign capital as popular Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promises to deregulate the economy to stoke growth.

At the meeting to be held near Seibu's headquarters outside Tokyo, investors in the property and railway company will vote on a Cerberus proposal for a new slate of directors, including former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle and former U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow, to bolster corporate governance.

Tuesday's vote is the latest salvo in a months-long war of words over Seibu's planned relisting on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, expected to be worth several billion dollars.

Cerberus says Seibu must improve governance and earnings performance first to ensure it gets a fair value for its shares. Seibu President Takashi Goto has said the fund's actions are hurting the company's corporate value and hindering its plans to relist.

The American fund injected more than 100 billion yen ($1.06 billion) into Seibu by 2007, leading to a bailout of the railway and hotel operator after it was delisted in the wake of a scandal centered on the falsification of financial reports.

CERBERUS RAISES STAKES

Cerberus is Seibu's largest single investor but analysts see little chance for its dissident slate to win a majority backing.

In March, Cerberus launched an unsolicited bid to boost its stake in Seibu from 32.4 percent to 44.7 percent to exert additional leverage over Seibu management. The bid only allowed Cerberus to increase its stake to 35.48 percent.

That is a big enough margin to allow Cerberus to veto decisions at future shareholder meetings. But Seibu management retains support among other large investors, analysts said.

"From the result of the tender offer, it is obvious Seibu shareholders are supporting Seibu management," said Kengo Nishiyama, senior strategist at Nomura Securities Co, the main unit of Nomura Holdings Inc .

"Cerberus's proposal will probably be rejected and its challenge to win understanding from the shareholders will start from now."

Ahead of Tuesday's meeting, Cerberus sent a 22-page letter with detailed questions for Goto, asking him to explain how the current board was being held accountable for the company's performance and disclosure.

The relationship between Goto and Cerberus broke down last year as the company prepared to relist that could have allowed Cerberus to cash out on some of its investment of more than $1 billion.

Cerberus has been in the process of cutting its exposure to Japan. Earlier this year Cerberus sold a controlling stake in a Tokyo-based Aozora Bank in the public market. It had invested more than 101 billion yen in the bank.

Aozora Bank, formerly known as Nippon Credit Bank, was temporarily put under government control during Japan's financial crisis in the late 1990s. ($1 = 97.4750 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japans-seibu-cerberus-boardroom-showdown-210123277.html

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White House wants Moscow to send Snowden home

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S. assumes National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden remains in Russia, and officials are working with Moscow in hopes he will be expelled and returned to America to face criminal charges, President Barack Obama's spokesman said Monday. He declared that a decision by Hong Kong not to detain Snowden has "unquestionably" hurt relations between the United States and China.

Snowden left Hong Kong, where he has been in hiding, and flew to Moscow but then apparently did not board a plane bound for Cuba as had been expected. His whereabouts were a mystery. The founder of the WikiLeaks secret-spilling organization, Julian Assange, said he wouldn't go into details about where Snowden was but said he was safe.

Snowden has applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries, Assange said.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. was expecting the Russians "to look at the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden back to the United States to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged."

"The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust," he added. "And we think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem. And that is a point we are making to them very directly."

Snowden has given highly classified documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information on American citizens. He also told the South China Morning Post that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data."

Snowden still has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend.

He had been in hiding in Hong Kong, a former British colony with a degree of autonomy from mainland China. The United States formally sought Snowden's extradition but was rebuffed by Hong Kong officials who said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws. The Justice Department rejected that claim, saying its request met all of the requirements of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong.

Said Carney: "We are just not buying that this was a technical decision by a Hong Kong immigration official. This was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the U.S.-China relationship."

The dual lines of diplomacy ? harsh with China, hopeful with the Russians ? came just days after Obama met separately with leaders of both countries in an effort to close gaps on some of the major disputes facing them.

Snowden arrived in Moscow on Sunday, but his whereabouts were thrown into question Monday when a plane took off from Moscow for Cuba with an empty seat booked in his name. The U.S. has revoked his passport.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it would be "deeply troubling" if Russia or Hong Kong had adequate notice about Snowden's plans to flee to a country that would grant him asylum and still allowed him leave.

"We don't know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be," Kerry said, responding to a question during a news conference in New Delhi where he was discussing bilateral issues between the U.S. and India.

U.S. officials pointed to improved cooperation with the Russians in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and to assistance the U.S. has given Russia on law enforcement cases.

"We continue to hope that the Russians will do the right thing," Kerry told NBC News. "We think it's very important in terms of our relationship. We think it's very important in terms of rule of law. These are important standards. We have returned seven criminals that they requested for extradition from the United States over the last two years. So we really hope that the right choice will be made here."

"We don't know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be," Kerry said during a news conference in New Delhi.

Carney said the U.S. was in touch through diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries through which Snowden might travel or where he might end up.

"The U.S. is advising these governments that Mr. Snowden is wanted on felony charges and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him here to the United States," Carney said.

An Aeroflot representative who wouldn't give her name told The Associated Press that Snowden wasn't on flight SU150 to Havana, which was filled with journalists trying to track him down.

In Moscow, security around the aircraft was heavy prior to boarding and guards tried to prevent the scrum of photographers and cameramen from taking pictures of the plane, heightening the speculation that Snowden might have been secretly escorted on board.

After spending a night in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, Snowden had been expected to fly to Cuba and Venezuela en route to possible asylum in Ecuador.

Some analysts said it was likely that the Russians were questioning Snowden, interested in what he knew about U.S. electronic espionage against Moscow.

"If Russian special services hadn't shown interest in Snowden, they would have been utterly unprofessional," Igor Korotchenko, a former colonel in Russia's top military command turned security analyst, said on state Rossiya 24 television.

The White House's tough response to Hong Kong's decision to let Snowden leave came just two weeks after Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for two days of personal diplomacy in a desert retreat in California.

Carney said that after the U.S. sought Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong, authorities there requested additional information from the U.S.

"The U.S. had been in communication with Hong Kong about these inquiries and we were in the process of responding to the request when we learned that Hong Kong authorities had allowed the fugitive to leave Hong Kong," Carney said.

Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said his government had received an asylum request, adding Monday that the decision "has to do with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world."

Ecuador has rejected some previous U.S. efforts at cooperation and has been helping Assange avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.

But Assange's comments that Snowden had applied in multiple places opened other possibilities of where he might try to go.

WikiLeaks has said it is providing legal help to Snowden at his request and that he was being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from the group.

Icelandic officials have confirmed receiving an informal request for asylum conveyed by WikiLeaks, which has strong links to the tiny North Atlantic nation. But authorities there have insisted that Snowden must be on Icelandic soil before making a formal request.

___

Associated Press White House Correspondent Julie Pace and Associated Press writers Philip Elliott, Matthew Lee and Frederic J. Frommer in Washington, Lynn Berry and Vladimir Isachenkov and Max Seddon in Moscow, Kevin Chan in Hong Kong and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-urges-moscow-expel-snowden-us-173013205.html

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For Sharpest Views, Scope The Sky With Quick-Change Mirrors

Before And After: These near-infrared images of Uranus show the planet as seen without adaptive optics (left) and with the technology turned on (right).

Courtesy of Heidi B. Hammel and Imke de Pater

Before And After: These near-infrared images of Uranus show the planet as seen without adaptive optics (left) and with the technology turned on (right).

Courtesy of Heidi B. Hammel and Imke de Pater

It used to be that if astronomers wanted to get rid of the blurring effects of the atmosphere, they had to put their telescopes in space. But a technology called adaptive optics has changed all that.

Adaptive optics systems use computers to analyze the light coming from a star, and then compensate for changes wrought by the atmosphere, using mirrors that can change their shapes up to 1,000 times per second. The result: To anyone on Earth peering through the telescope, the star looks like the single point of light it really is.

The reason the atmosphere blurs light is that there are tiny changes in temperature as you go from the Earth's surface up into space. The degree to which air bends light depends on the air's temperature.

With adaptive optics systems, telescopes on Earth can see nearly as clearly as those in space. What's more, you can build bigger telescopes on Earth than can be sent into orbit. The bigger the telescope, the smaller and fainter the objects it can see.

"Adaptive optics has really revolutionized so many fields of astronomy," says Andrea Ghez, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles. But such systems did not start out as tools for astronomers. "It was part of the strategic defense thinking of the nation, of what we could do to get better images of what was out in space," says Robert Duffner, author of The Adaptive Optics Revolution: A History.

During the Cold War the United States became concerned that the Soviet Union might be developing weapons that would be put into orbit. "The Air Force was interested in using telescopes on the ground to look up through the atmosphere to get clearer images of space objects ? mainly satellites and missiles," says Duffner.

Adaptive optics technology sharpens images by changing the shape of telescope mirrors up to 1,000 times per second. Here, the planet Uranus is seen without (left) and with adaptive optics.

Courtesy of Heidi B. Hammel and Imke de Pater

Adaptive optics technology sharpens images by changing the shape of telescope mirrors up to 1,000 times per second. Here, the planet Uranus is seen without (left) and with adaptive optics.

Courtesy of Heidi B. Hammel and Imke de Pater

The Air Force had other ideas for adaptive optics besides looking at satellites. One of them involved shooting down missiles.

The notion was to aim a laser beam from the ground toward a relay mirror in space. "The mirror could then deflect the laser beam and send it to an incoming missile," says Robert Fugate, a scientist with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M.

The hitch with such a plan, Fugate says, was that the atmosphere would smear out the laser, diluting its destructive power. Adaptive optics offered a solution. You can think of it as the reverse of compensating for the atmosphere in a way that makes starlight appear to be a single point. In this case, instead, the scientists would smear out the laser light so the countering distortions in the atmosphere would then bring it back to a narrow beam. That was the theory. In practice, the system was never built.

In 1991, the military agreed to declassify most of the work it had been doing with adaptive optics, so astronomers could take advantage of what the Air Force had learned. In the last two decades, the technology has brought some remarkable achievements.

"One of the most exciting recent ones is the study of planets outside our own solar system," says UCLA's Ghez. "Just 15 years ago, we didn't know about any planets around stars outside our sun. Now, not only do we know about them, but we can take a picture of them with this technology."

The technology is also valuable for looking at objects closer to Earth. "It's really interesting to look at planets within our own solar system. We send satellites out to study these planets in detail. And yet if we can point a telescope from the ground at these planets, like Saturn, or the moons of Jupiter, we can study them in equal detail to what the satellites might be doing," says Ghez.

She doesn't study planets. Ghez studies the giant black holes that exist in the center of galaxies. Adaptive optics has blown that field wide open, too. "You can actually see the stars that reside right around the black hole, and you can see matter falling into the black hole thanks to this technology," she says.

This pair of images of the Galactic Center, the rotational center of the Milky Way galaxy, shows how adaptive optics technology can sharpen a telescope's view.

Courtesy of the Keck Observatory

There's just one problem. For adaptive optics to work, you need a bright enough star to make the corrections on. So, until recently, if you wanted to explore a patch of sky with no bright star, you were out of luck. But scientists have figured out a workaround ? they create artificial stars using a laser. "We shine a laser up into the atmosphere, and there's conveniently a very thin layer of sodium atoms up at 90 kilometers," Ghez says. "And this laser can stimulate those atoms to shine like a star. And then we can look at that star ? that artificial star ? and make the corrections."

The use of adaptive optics is also transforming vision research. Austin Roorda is at the optometry school at the University of California, Berkeley, and says that the cornea, lens and fluid inside the eye distort light, just as the atmosphere does. By analyzing that distortion, he says, scientists can use optics to "un-distort" the light, so the cells at the back of the eye no longer appear blurry during eye exams.

Adaptive optics could let a doctor see individual damaged cells at the back of the eye, Roorda says, and offer an important new tool for diagnosing and treating eye diseases like macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. And there's more, he says. "We may have a tool that will allow us to measure the efficacy of a treatment, [and] that may slow the degeneration of those cells, and even restore those cells' function."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/06/24/190986008/for-sharpest-views-scope-the-sky-with-quick-change-mirrors?ft=1&f=1007

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Suntory set to price up to $4.8 billion IPO, bolstering M&A warchest

By Taiga Uranaka and Ritsuko Shimizu

TOKYO (Reuters) - Suntory Holdings Ltd's food and soft drinks unit is set to price on Monday an initial public offering that could raise as much as $4.8 billion, making it Asia's biggest IPO this year and bolstering the company's warchest for overseas acquisitions.

The IPO of the unit, Suntory Beverage and Food Ltd , is a test of investor appetite for new listings at a time of high volatility in Japanese stock markets. The benchmark Nikkei <.n225> has lost about 17 percent since hitting a 5-1/2 year high in late May.

The maker of Boss canned coffee will use the funds to ramp up its acquisition drive with a focus on fast-growing Southeast Asia, although it and Japanese peers like Kirin Holdings Co Ltd are facing intensifying competition for beverage-company acquisitions in that region.

"There are a host of enthusiastic buyers, and sellers tend to be bullish," said Masaaki Kitami, an analyst at Merrill Lynch Japan Securities Co.

Suntory Beverage said last week that it had set an indicative range of 3,000 yen to 3,800 yen per share, a relatively wide band in reflection of the recent stock market volatility. About 40 percent of its outstanding shares are on offer.

At the top of the range, it would raise 470 billion yen ($4.8 billion) including the overallotment. That would be more than double the $2.1 billion raised by the infrastructure fund of Thailand's BTS Group Holdings Pcl , which has been the biggest IPO in Asia so far this year.

At that price, it would give Suntory Beverage a market capitalization of 1.17 trillion yen, behind Kirin's 1.6 trillion yen and Asahi Group Holdings' 1.2 trillion yen.

OVERSEAS EXPANSION

Privately held Suntory Holdings is led by President Nobutada Saji, the 67-year-old grandson of the company's founder. Although the company is known for its Premium Malt's beer and whisky, its non-alcoholic drinks unit Suntory Beverage generates half of the group's revenue.

Suntory Beverage said it expects its net profit to rise 50 percent to 35 billion yen and its revenue to increase 14 percent to 1.13 trillion yen this year. It has set a target for annual revenue growth of at least 5 percent over the next three years.

In Japan, Suntory is the second-largest soft drinks maker after Coca-Cola Co and the gap in their market share has been narrowing. "In terms of domestic share, Coca-Cola is 27.9 percent and Suntory 19.6 percent. The gap used to be much bigger," said Kazuhiro Miyashita, editor of a trade magazine.

Still, Suntory and its rivals see little room for growth in their saturated home market and have set their sights overseas in recent years.

Suntory acquired soft drinks maker Orangina Schweppes and New Zealand's No. 2 beverage firm Funcor Group, both in 2009. In 2011, it entered into a joint venture with Indonesian food and beverage group GarudaFood. Suntory has said that it is also eyeing the Middle East, Africa and Latin America through acquisitions.

But industry officials and analysts say that acquisitions, especially in Southeast Asia, are increasingly costly and difficult to execute.

Such concerns came to light earlier this year when Kirin lost the chance to buy Singapore-listed Fraser and Neave Ltd's (F&N) food and beverage business after Thailand's TCC Assets Ltd and Thai Beverage PCL successfully acquired the control of F&N.

Kirin sold its 15 percent stake in F&N to TCC Assets after a Thai beer baron won a two-month bidding war with an Indonesian group, a major setback for the Japanese company to gain quick access to the market. ($1 = 97.4750 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Taiga Uranaka, Emi Emoto and Ritsuko Shimizu; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suntory-set-price-4-8-billion-ipo-bolstering-040509583.html

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'That 70s Show' actress arrested in Southern Calif

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) ? "That '70s Show" actress Lisa Robin Kelly has been arrested in Southern California on suspicion of drunken driving.

The California Highway Patrol says officers noticed signs of possible intoxication when they helped move the 43-year-old actress' stalled car off Interstate 5 in Burbank late Saturday.

The CHP said that after an investigation, officers arrested and booked her on suspicion of DUI. Kelly was released on $5,000 bail.

An email to her agent was not immediately returned.

It was not her first brush with the law. Kelly and her husband Robert Joseph Gilliam were arrested last November in connection to a disturbance at their home in the Charlotte, N.C., suburb of Mooresville.

Kelly portrayed Laurie Forman, sister of Topher Grace's lead character Eric, on the FOX series, which ended in 2006.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/70s-show-actress-arrested-southern-calif-024350384.html

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