Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose in November to their highest level in 2-1/2 years, an industry group said on Friday, further evidence of a strengthening housing market recovery.?
The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, increased 1.7 percent to 106.4 - the highest level since April 2010 when the home-buyer tax credit expired.?
Economists polled by Reuters had expected signed contracts, which become sales after a month or two, to rise 1.0 percent after a revised 5.0 percent increase in October. It was the third straight month of gains.?
"Home sales are recovering now based solely on fundamental demand and favorable affordability conditions," said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.?
Pending home sales were up 9.8 percent in the 12 months through November.?
The housing market has turned the corner after a dramatic collapse, which dragged the economy through its worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.?
Home sales and prices are rising, encouraging builders to undertake new construction projects.?
Home resale contracts were up in three of the country's four regions. They were unchanged in the South.?
LAS VEGAS (AP) ? Blood was found inside a car borrowed by a Las Vegas Strip card dealer last seen with a missing 10-year-old girl and later arrested in the razor blade slashing of a co-worker at the posh Bellagio resort, a prosecutor said Friday.
Brenda Stokes Wilson was identified in court Friday as the prime suspect in the slaying, although prosecutor Robert Daskas told a judge that authorities haven't positively identified the girl found dead Thursday in an undeveloped housing tract in North Las Vegas.
"It's no secret the defendant is the suspect in the murder of 10-year-old Jade Morris," Daskas said as he convinced Senior Clark County District Court Judge Joseph Bonaventure to increase Wilson's bail from $60,000 to $600,000 pending the filing of kidnapping and murder charges.
Daskas said a weapon was used in the slaying, but he didn't elaborate.
Clark County Coroner Michael Murphy said it could be Friday afternoon before DNA testing is complete and he can positively say the body is Jade Morris. The girl was last seen by her family Dec. 21, when Wilson picked her up to go Christmas shopping. She never returned.
Wilson, 50, was arrested later that night after she was wrestled to the ground with razors in each hand following a face-slashing attack on a female co-worker, Joyce Rhone, at the Bellagio.
Wilson has been jailed on felony battery with a weapon, burglary and mayhem charges that could get her decades in prison. Police said she has offered no help in the search for the missing girl. Murder and kidnapping charges could get her life in prison without parole or the death penalty.
Wilson stood in court flanked by eight police officers as her lawyer, Tony Liker, clutching a Bible and a copy of the charging documents, asked the judge to postpone arraignment until Wednesday to give him time to meet with Wilson.
Liker declined comment outside court.
Police went public with the search for Jade Morris on Christmas Day, and the case received increasing attention after the relationship between the girl and Wilson became known. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson watched the proceedings in court Friday and called the case important for the community.
Wilson, who had been identified by police and prosecutors as Brenda Stokes, told the judge Friday that her full name was Brenda Stokes Wilson.
She used to date the missing girl's father, Philip Morris, and had a long and trusted relationship with Jade Morris, according to the missing girl's grandfather, Philip Tucker.
Philip Morris was removed from court Wednesday by armed court officers after shouting questions about his daughter's whereabouts to Wilson. He did not attend Friday's hearing.
Tucker said Philip Morris lived in Billings, Mont., and worked at a Flying J truck stop for more than a year. He would stay with Wilson when he visited Las Vegas, Tucker said.
Tucker said Rhone was Wilson's best friend and also knew Philip Morris.
Authorities have not disclosed a motive for the slaying. But Tucker said Wilson appeared to believe that Rhone and Philip Morris had become romantically involved. Tucker said he didn't know if Wilson's jealousy was well-founded.
"But whatever was going on with them didn't concern Jade," Tucker said. "How do you take a kid who loves you so much and hurt her?"
Jade Morris' family last saw the girl when Wilson picked her at about 5 p.m. Dec. 21. About two hours later, Wilson returned to another friend the red 2007 Saab sedan that she borrowed for the shopping trip.
Wilson allegedly had a razor in each hand when she attacked Rhone as Rhone dealt blackjack about 9:30 p.m.
Daskas said police have the vehicle and are testing blood found on the driver's door and steering wheel to see if it matches Jade Morris. Stokes later got a ride with a friend to the Bellagio, police said.
Rhone, 44, was hospitalized with deep cuts on her face, including one from her ear to the edge of her mouth. A police arrest report said Rhone also had several smaller cuts around her right eye.
Tucker said Rhone called him Saturday, speaking with difficulty and expressing surprise at the attack.
"She said, 'I can't believe she would do something like this to me,'" Tucker recalled. "I said, 'Was Jade with her?' She said she didn't know Jade was involved."
A police report said Wilson told investigators following her arrest that she visited her doctor last week, seeking to be admitted to a hospital "due to feeling like she wanted to hurt someone."
Anyone who loves to do a range of crafts and hobbies knows just how difficult it can be to find room for everything inside your home. Once you start developing hobbies, the materials and resources you have for that hobby just seem to manifold all on their own. And this makes it very frustrating for you and your house too. You love your hobby and can?t resist buying new things for it every time you come over great materials and sales, but your home is overflowing so much that you feel like you can barely walk nearby everything sometimes.
And this is where storage sheds can be a wonderful addition to your home. Using an outdoor storage shed for your craft materials not only opens up room in your home, it also gives you fullness of space to help keep all your materials more organized. There are many distinct types of hobbies we all have though, so here are any ideas for how a storage shed can help with one or more of your own, or your family?s beloved hobbies.
Whether you love to crochet, knit, sew clothing, create quilts, or embroidery, if you?re like the rest of us you have tons of extra supplies. It?s just not potential to resist a sale on beautiful yarns or fabrics, and you know you?ll use everything sooner or later, right?
My Craft Shed ? Ideas For Using an Outdoor warehouse Shed As a Craft and Hobby center
Well using a storage shed to keep these materials is an excellent way to keep it from over running your home, and it also does wonders for helping you to keep things organized. When you use a storage building to keep your craft and hobby materials, you can set up small bins on shelves to hold buttons, threads, and scrap materials for instance.
You can also have larger bins and packaging to hold your crochet or knitting yarns ? in fact you can separate yarns into bins based on projects, or based on colors, then just label the bins so you?ll be able to no ifs ands or buts find the yarns you want at any time.
Use other bins to hold your fabrics for sewing, scrapbooking or other hobbies too, and again separate these by color, fabric type, or scheme you plan to use them for.
Try putting in a filing cabinet, shelves, or small bins to hold your scheme patterns and instructions too. You could have individual binders on shelves for instance, which hold your crochet or knitting patterns, clothing sewing patterns, and Scrapbooks you create too.
My Craft Shed ? Ideas For Using an Outdoor warehouse Shed As a Craft and Hobby center
The factor that could influence future breast cancer treatmentPublic release date: 27-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bryan Ghosh bghosh@plos.org 44-122-344-2837 Public Library of Science
Australian scientists have shown in the laboratory how a 'transcription factor' causes breast cancer cells to develop an aggressive subtype that lacks sensitivity to estrogen and does not respond to known anti-estrogen therapies. The research, which has significant implications for breast cancer treatment, is published December 27 in the open access journal PLOS Biology.
Transcription factors are molecules that switch genes on or off. In this case, the transcription factor known as 'ELF5' inhibits sensitivity to estrogen very early in the life of a breast cancer cell. In 2008, Professor Chris Ormandy from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, showed that ELF5 was responsible for the development of breast progenitor cells into the estrogen-receptor-negative cells that produce milk in the breast during pregnancy.
In the current study, a team led by Ormandy in collaboration with Drs Maria Kalyga and David Gallego-Ortega, has shown that the same molecular decision occurs in breast cancer and that ELF5 has the ability to change an existing tumour into an estrogen-insensitive tumour.
"This work tells us that cancers which become refractory to anti-estrogen treatment often do so by elevating their levels of ELF5 and becoming functionally estrogen receptor negative," said Ormandy.
The team has also described the genetic mechanisms by which ELF5 opposes the action of estrogen, and has shown that it is possible to alter the subtype of breast cancer by manipulating ELF5 levels in cancer cells in the laboratory.
"This raises the therapeutic option of manipulating ELF5 levels to treat breast cancer. As ELF5 is intracellular, this could possibly be done with small molecule therapies that penetrate cells and target protein-to-protein interactions, or with small inhibitory RNAs. There is also the possibility of testing ELF5 levels in tumours to predict response to treatment and therefore guide treatment decisions."
"Our key discovery here is that by simply manipulating one transcription factor we can change the subtype of breast cancer."
###
Funding: This work was funded by The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, New South Wales Cancer Council, Cancer Institute New South Wales, Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas Australia and New Zealand, RT Hall Trust, Australian Cancer Research Foundation, Prostate Cancer Foundation Australia, Cure Cancer Foundation Australia, Breast Cancer Campaign UK, and the National Breast Cancer Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Kalyuga M, Gallego-Ortega D, Lee HJ, Roden DL, Cowley MJ, et al. (2012) ELF5 Suppresses Estrogen Sensitivity and Underpins the Acquisition of Antiestrogen Resistance in Luminal Breast Cancer. PLoS Biol 10(12): e1001461. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001461
CONTACT:
Christopher Ormandy
Garvan Institute
Sydney, AUSTRALIA
c.ormandy@garvan.org.au
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The factor that could influence future breast cancer treatmentPublic release date: 27-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bryan Ghosh bghosh@plos.org 44-122-344-2837 Public Library of Science
Australian scientists have shown in the laboratory how a 'transcription factor' causes breast cancer cells to develop an aggressive subtype that lacks sensitivity to estrogen and does not respond to known anti-estrogen therapies. The research, which has significant implications for breast cancer treatment, is published December 27 in the open access journal PLOS Biology.
Transcription factors are molecules that switch genes on or off. In this case, the transcription factor known as 'ELF5' inhibits sensitivity to estrogen very early in the life of a breast cancer cell. In 2008, Professor Chris Ormandy from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, showed that ELF5 was responsible for the development of breast progenitor cells into the estrogen-receptor-negative cells that produce milk in the breast during pregnancy.
In the current study, a team led by Ormandy in collaboration with Drs Maria Kalyga and David Gallego-Ortega, has shown that the same molecular decision occurs in breast cancer and that ELF5 has the ability to change an existing tumour into an estrogen-insensitive tumour.
"This work tells us that cancers which become refractory to anti-estrogen treatment often do so by elevating their levels of ELF5 and becoming functionally estrogen receptor negative," said Ormandy.
The team has also described the genetic mechanisms by which ELF5 opposes the action of estrogen, and has shown that it is possible to alter the subtype of breast cancer by manipulating ELF5 levels in cancer cells in the laboratory.
"This raises the therapeutic option of manipulating ELF5 levels to treat breast cancer. As ELF5 is intracellular, this could possibly be done with small molecule therapies that penetrate cells and target protein-to-protein interactions, or with small inhibitory RNAs. There is also the possibility of testing ELF5 levels in tumours to predict response to treatment and therefore guide treatment decisions."
"Our key discovery here is that by simply manipulating one transcription factor we can change the subtype of breast cancer."
###
Funding: This work was funded by The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, New South Wales Cancer Council, Cancer Institute New South Wales, Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas Australia and New Zealand, RT Hall Trust, Australian Cancer Research Foundation, Prostate Cancer Foundation Australia, Cure Cancer Foundation Australia, Breast Cancer Campaign UK, and the National Breast Cancer Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Kalyuga M, Gallego-Ortega D, Lee HJ, Roden DL, Cowley MJ, et al. (2012) ELF5 Suppresses Estrogen Sensitivity and Underpins the Acquisition of Antiestrogen Resistance in Luminal Breast Cancer. PLoS Biol 10(12): e1001461. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001461
CONTACT:
Christopher Ormandy
Garvan Institute
Sydney, AUSTRALIA
c.ormandy@garvan.org.au
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Amazon is running a promotion that has many popular apps for free through its Appstore today. It has always run a free app of the day promotion, but Amazon is feeling a bit more generous today by dropping several different apps -- from TuneIn Radio Pro to OfficeSuite Pro -- to the nice price of $0.00. Some of these are regularly upwards of $15, so this is a pretty nice post-Christmas deal. This will surely help Amazon grab the eyes of users that are getting their first Android phone or tablet over the holidays.
Use the Appstore and interested in picking up some good apps? Hit the source link below for a search listing of the apps on sale.
ROME (AP) ? Italy's borrowing costs rose slightly Thursday in an auction of six-month bonds held in the wake of Premier Mario Monti's resignation and uncertainty about his participation in the campaign for February's elections.
The Italian Treasury sold the ?8.5 billion ($11.24 billion) in paper Thursday, but the interest rate charged on the bond was 0.949 percent, up from 0.919 percent in November's auction. Demand was 1.57 times the amount on offer.
Italy's borrowing costs have fallen over the past year thanks to a combination of the reforms introduced by Monti's technical government and the European Central Bank's offer to buy up bonds in countries struggling with their debts. However, Monti resigned last week after Silvio Berlusconi's party yanked support for his technical government. He remains on in a caretaker role.
In his end-of-year press conference, Monti excluded running for office but said he would consider leading the next government if politicians who back his reform agenda request it. In the days since, he has published a detailed, 25-page political platform and urged like-minded politicians to back it. He sent his first tweet boasting of having saved Italy "from disaster" and calling for politics to be renewed.
All of which has led to widespread speculation that it's just a matter of time before he becomes an official candidate, in one form or another. Italian newspapers on Thursday were full of speculation about Monti's behind-the-scenes jockeying, whether he'll head a ticket of likeminded politicians, his role in selecting other candidates to run, possible alliances and feuds that will be formed in the next two months.
"No one understands if he'll remain neutral, if he'll head a Monti ticket linked to other like-minded tickets, or if he will lead a single ticket that absorbs all the centrist parties," analyst Luca Ricolfi wrote in Thursday's La Stampa, adding that it is unlikely that Monti himself has decided on what course to take.
The center-left Democratic Party is ahead in the polls with about 30 percent of the vote, and is eager to see Monti fade from the political scene for fear that he will take away votes. Berlusconi's People of Liberty party trails in the polls and is even more openly hostile to Monti's jockeying after the he spurned Berlusconi's offer to lead a center-right ticket.
The Democratic Party got a boost Thursday with the decision by the country's respected anti-mafia prosecutor, Pietro Grasso, to run for office under the party ticket. The ANSA news agency said Grasso would make the announcement official at a press conference Friday with the center-left's candidate for premier, Pierluigi Bersani.
Berlusconi, meanwhile, has been on TV over the past few days, promising that if elected he would remove the property tax on primary residences that Monti re-imposed as part of his austerity measures. Berlusconi had cut the unpopular tax soon after taking office in 2008, at the start of his third stint as premier.
Monti has defended the tax as both necessary and reasonable, given that most industrialized countries impose such a tax on homeowners' primary residence.
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Public release date: 27-Dec-2012
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