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Transformational Objects

JoseEsp — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:03:07 +0000

By MELIK KAYLAN

Benaki Museum, Athens

Part of an encaustic icon of Christ from between the sixth and seventh centuries.

New York

Across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral on 52nd Street in Manhattan stands a tall, black-glass high-rise. Enter the glitzy atrium lobby, descend a flight of stairs, and quite suddenly you are enveloped by a miniature bubble of the ancient world. You have walked into the Olympic Tower’s Onassis Cultural Center, dedicated to exhibitions about the Hellenic world. Despite having been open since 2000, the center has the air of a pleasantly well-kept secret frequented by dapper elderly scholars and New Yorkers of Greek descent. It’s an ideal lunchtime escape from the nearby Fifth Avenue shopping crowds, especially with the current show. “Transition to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd – 7th Century A.D.” offers a corrective to the rampant consumerism of our day with a condign lesson in Christianity’s classical roots and intense devotions while also reminding us that a trade in objects flourished from its earliest times.

To be sure, the show’s overarching message is scarcely intended to focus on holiday shopping habits. After all, it stays open until May 14. Ancient mosaics, busts, coins, jewelry, glassware, building fragments and the like—some 170 objects in 2,500 square feet of space—have been pooled mostly (but not entirely) from Greek museums to tell us about a critical phase in our collective Western consciousness. From the Greek viewpoint (two of the three curators hail from Greece), these four centuries were not the Dark Ages, despite the Euro-centric conventional wisdom. In recent decades, scholars have used the less pejorative term “Late Antiquity” because, while Rome declined, the eastern Roman Empire known as Byzantium increasingly gathered strength. As the show’s catalog points out, “for much of this time events in Western Europe could be regarded as a sideshow. The east stood out as the more peaceful and prosperous region.”

Yet culturally it was not exactly a stable time, as the curators illustrate repeatedly with objects that are often a patchwork, an uneasy synthesis of the pagan and Christian. From a moment in history when Christians were often persecuted by pagans, the show moves through seven sections to the last gleams of the pagan consciousness as it becomes inexorably stifled under Byzantine-Christian dominance. The underlying message concerns our era: This is how it felt to phase from a stable, coherent world-view toward an unknown outcome, in a period of multicultural fusion and confusion, before the next era of coherence. As the catalog further states, “these poignant fragments of a long-lost age speak to us directly of what it was like, on the ground, to live through an era of mighty transition. . . . It is this that brings them closest to us. For we, also, live in a world of change whose horizons have opened up dramatically. We also do not know the future.”

The show’s seven thematic sections, beginning with “The End of Antiquity” and culminating in “The Genesis of Christian Art” are not strictly chronological, dwelling at times on static snapshots under such themes as “Urban Realities” or “Daily Life.” This being an argument or narrative made through objects, the displays don’t at first dazzle the eye. We have seen mosaics and marbles and coins before. Yet on closer inspection one is gripped by the cumulative effect of seeing pellucidly through a time-window into a vast cultural morphing process.

One learns that sculpture went from the three-dimensional to a kind of bas-relief because Christian doctrine disdained natural representation. As a result, busts had noses hacked off or crosses inscribed onto cheeks or foreheads. Painting, too, lost its fledgling advances in perspective and depth because images began to function as symbols rather than as realistic representations of the observed world. You didn’t need to see saints depicted in exact proportion to anything, even to other saints, because their real proportions existed in heaven.

Yet the archetypal Roman bust of the philosopher as a balding, contemplative figure served well into the Christian centuries as a boilerplate for busts of community elders or painted depictions of saints. And believers continued to hedge their bets with hybrid religious emblems, as illustrated by the extraordinary double-sided stone slab with a Medusa on one side and a cross on the other. Just as churches and basilicas often took over the sites and stones of temples, Christian relics borrowed from pagan aesthetics. The first century Egyptian funerary “Mummy Portraits,” on wood panels, so vivid and naif, inspired styles of Christian icon paintings that lasted well into the 19th century in Russia.

Byzantine authorities stamped out pagan traditions most effectively by superimposing Christian substitutes. A truly poignant object is the patinated bronze sheet with names of Olympic champions inscribed on it from the first century B.C. to A.D. 385, after which the Olympics were outlawed. Horse races in hippodromes took their place. But, as the show palpably demonstrates, the transition lasted an entire age. Pagan gods ultimately went into hiding but pagan customs in many permutations proved immortal.

Mr. Kaylan writes about culture and the arts for the Journal.

Skip The Spoon: Babies May Eat Better When They Feed Themselves

JoseEsp — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:03:07 +0000

Story By: by Nancy Shute

This kid’s got the right idea: DIY dinner.

Spooning strained peas into a baby is the traditional way to start solid food. But babies might be better off feeding themselves.

That’s the surprising result of a new study that compared the food preferences and weight of babies who fed themselves finger food with those who were spoon-fed.

Both groups of children had equal exposure to snack foods. But the babies who fed themselves preferred carbohydrates like toast, pasta or potatoes, while the spoon-fed children went for sweets when given a choice.

You’d think the children who controlled their own eating would be heavier, but not so. The spoon-fed crew was the one that was more likely to be obese as toddlers. Eight of the 63 spoon-fed children became obese, while none of the 63 self-feeding children were.

“That was interesting,” says Ellen Townsend, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham in England, who led the study. “Maybe with spoon feeding, if you’ve lovingly prepared a delicious portion, and you might want to get that portion into that child. There may be a temptation to try to get in an extra spoonful or two.”

The “self-weaning babies” might like carbs because they’re easier to chew and tend to have nice textures, the researchers say. They want to do further research to see if breast-feeding and picky eating play a role.

The study, which was published in the journal BMJ Open, was small, and based on parents’ recollections. But Townsend says it should reassure parents that it’s OK to let the child take care of food choices, as long as the parents are providing nutritious options like fruits and vegetables, proteins, and iron-rich foods like hard-boiled eggs or strips of meat.

The good news is that most of the children were of a healthy weight, regardless of how they were fed as babies.

As for Townsend, she was holding her 9-month-old daughter when I called her in England today. What’s that baby eating for dinner?

“She’ll sit down with us tonight and have pork chops, string beans, some baby sweet corn, and probably some potatoes,” Townsend says.

Like many parents with more than one child, she doesn’t have the time to cook up special baby food. And her children seem perfectly happy to eat what’s on the family table.

United Arab Emirates profile

JoseEsp — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:03:07 +0000

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven states formed in 1971 by the then Trucial States after independence from Britain.

The late Sheikh Zayed, ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE at its inception, was quick to seize on the potential of the oil industry. He oversaw the development of all the emirates and directed oil revenues into healthcare, education and the national infrastructure.

The oil industry has attracted a large influx of foreign workers who, together with expatriates, now make up more than three quarters of the population.

But the UAE's authorities also tried to reduce its dependency on oil exports by diversifying the economy, creating booming business, tourism and construction sectors.

While Abu Dhabi remained relatively conservative in its approach, Dubai, which has far smaller oil reserves, was bolder in its diversification policy.

Particularly during the credit boom that built up after 2000, Dubai sought to turn itself into the financial gateway and cosmopolitan hub of the Middle East.

It also began attracting vast amounts foreign investment for ever more ambitious construction projects, most famously the Burj Khalifa skyscraper – as of 2009, the tallest man-made structure ever built – and futuristic land reclamation projects, such as the palm-shaped artificial Palm Islands.

But the worldwide freeze in credit markets looked set to hit Dubai harder than oil-rich Abu Dhabi, prompting speculation that the balance of power in the UAE could shift back to its traditional political centre.

The UAE is one of the most liberal countries in the Gulf, with other cultures and beliefs generally tolerated, especially in Dubai.

However, politically it remains authoritarian. It was the only country in the region not to have elected bodies until 2006 December, when it convened a half-elected federal assembly, which, however, was restricted to a consultative role.

Al Hilal Bank unveils Middle East’s first-ever ‘Money Station’ bank branch

JoseEsp — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:04:20 +0000

Published February 20th, 2012 – 09:06 GMTPress Release

Al Hilal Bank, a progressive Islamic bank, has today, Monday, February 20, 2012, launched the Middle Eastâs first âMoney Stationâ branch in Dubai. Customers using the facility will be able to perform essential banking transactions from the convenience of their own cars, marking Al Hilalâs latest landmark achievement in revolutionizing Islamic banking in the UAE.

The innovative branch was inaugurated at Jumeirah Beach Road by His Highness Sheikh Majid bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. Al Hilal representatives gave a brief tour of the facility, explaining that it would accommodate common banking transactions such as cash withdrawals and deposits and the opening of new accounts for drive-thru patrons.

Under the âtube bankingâ concept, customers park beside a specially-designed money station where a teller appears on-screen to attend to their request. They then insert their document, application or money â depending on the transaction â in a see-through plastic capsule included in the station. The capsule or tube is placed back on its slot where a âsendâ button is pressed to transport the contents to the teller for processing. The tube is sent back shortly with the necessary package for the drive-thru client to collect, and inserted back to its slot after the transaction is completed.

The branch is already attracting huge interest with its promise of a unique and highly convenient banking experience that marks another Al Hilal -initiated first for the Middle East.

âAt Al Hilal Bank we always try to be distinguished through our products and services that are fresh and out-of-the-box and designed with the customer topmost in mind. Our âMoney Stationâ branch is a first in the region and affirms our commitment to innovation and customer convenience. We invite our valued customers to try out this one-of-a-kind facility and benefit from its simplicity, speed and efficiency,â said H.E. Ahmed Ateeq Al Mazroui, Chairman of Al Hilal Bank.

Fully-owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, the investment arm of the Government of Abu Dhabi, All Hilal Bank has gained a reputation for introducing innovative Islamic banking services. Last year, it rolled out the UAEâs first thumb verification system for banking transactions and the Middle Eastâs first-ever âGOLD to Goâ bank-installed gold dispensing machine. Al Hilal Bank currently has 21 local branches and 112 ATMs spread across the UAE as well as three overseas branches in Kazakhstan.

New Car Stickers Reveal More

JoseEsp — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:04:20 +0000

By EMILY GLAZER

Car shoppers have a new tool to compare the fuel efficiency and cost of new vehicles.

All 2013 model vehicles, which are starting to come out as early as this month, are required to have a revised fuel-economy sticker, says Bo Saulsbury, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which developed and maintains the fueleconomy.gov site for the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Revised fuel economy labels are required on all 2013 models, which are due out as soon as this month. They show consumers how much they’ll spend on fuel compared with the average new vehicle. Emily Glazer has details on Lunch Break.

Among the information now required on car stickers:

Comparison of energy use and cost between new-technology cars using electricity and conventional cars that are gasoline-powered.
Estimates of how much consumers will save or spend on fuel over the next five years. For instance, a sticker for a car that gets 26 miles per gallon says the driver will save $1,850 in fuel costs over five years compared with a vehicle that get an average 22 MPG.
Estimate of how much fuel—or in some cases, electricity—it takes to drive the vehicle 100 miles.
Ratings of how a model compares to others for smog emissions and emissions of pollution that contribute to climate change.

Some manufacturers already have voluntarily put the label on some 2012 models. For instance, Nissan Motor does so for its Leaf electric model and General Motors has done so with the gas-powered Chevrolet Sonic car.

For consumers shopping for 2012 models, a guide listing the most fuel-efficient cars can be found at fueleconomy.gov.

Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com

A Royal Banking Failure

JoseEsp — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:04:20 +0000

The U.K. Financial Services Authority’s report on the 2008 failure of the Royal Bank of Scotland is a strange document. On the one hand, it is a 458-page defense of the proposition that mistakes and failures of judgment can drive a company to ruin without amounting to criminal misconduct. In light of some of the scapegoat-hunts conducted against bankers since the last financial panic, it’s a conclusion that offers hope that, in the U.K. at least, business is no longer at risk of being criminalized.

Then again, the report remains stuck on the view that “banks are different,” as FSA Chairman Adair Turner puts it in his foreword. After RBS was shut out of the private markets in October 2008, the U.K. government first stepped in as lender of last resort and ultimately recapitalized the bank to the tune of £45 billion ($70 billion), an investment that at current market prices has lost about half of its value.

The report reiterates the long-held view that RBS had to be rescued because the consequences of bank failure—on depositors, on the economy, on the financial system as a whole—were unthinkable or unbearable. Thus the FSA’s post-mortem focuses almost exclusively on how regulators might prevent a failure in the future, rather than asking how to make bank failure both easier and less expensive for taxpayers.

The report goes on at length about the mistakes that both RBS and its regulators made. Its leverage was too high, its regulators were too sanguine about the stability of the financial sector as a whole, and so on. Some of these mistakes are being corrected with the benefit of hindsight: RBS’s tier 1 core equity capital was just 2% of its assets in 2007; new international banking rules will require a bank like RBS to hold 9.5% capital and make provision for emergency liquidity. The FSA also examines the possibility of introducing strict liability for bankers whose firms go bust

Some of these new rules will create greater margin for error. But none of them will eliminate error, either by regulators or by bankers, and having capital on paper is not, by itself, a guarantee against collapse. Regulators can never create a perfectly safe and stable financial system. Nor should they aspire to do so.

Perhaps out of some recognition of these limits, Lord Turner suggests two ways to induce more caution among managers and bank boards. One would be to introduce “strict liability” for management, meaning that if the bank goes bust, the people at the top suffer the consequences. The second is to further tinker with banker pay—to defer more of it, and/or have stronger claw-back provisions and the like.

Yet both of these proposals assume that the people running RBS knew the risks they were taking, or would have behaved differently given a different set of incentives. Maybe they were simply wrong. Then, too, who is to say that next time around, the regulators will be right?

Perhaps, then, the simplest approach remains the best: getting back to a place where banks can fail without giant taxpayer bailouts.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 16

Book Talk: Carol O’Connell on life with Mallory

JoseEsp — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:04:20 +0000

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO |
Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:17am EST

TOKYO (Reuters) – Green-eyed, blonde and tall, Kathy Mallory is respected and feared by the cops who work with her, described sometimes as a cat playing with a mouse and nicknamed “Mallory the Machine.”

Even her creator, author Carol O’Connell, says she’s not entirely sure how much she might actually like her own heroine in real life. Mallory, the star of a series of bestselling novels, now returns in “The Chalk Girl,” her ninth adventure, after a multi-year wait.

Mallory is being punished with desk duty after an extended leave when rats start falling from the sky in New York’s Central Park and a mysterious red-haired child appears in a t-shirt with blood on her shoulders, leading Mallory into a labyrinth of crimes and murders stretching back years.

The soft-spoken O’Connell talked about her book, which she said was inspired partly by a newspaper story on William’s Syndrome, a genetic condition, and Central Park’s notorious Ramble, a wooded area once the lair of muggers and addicts.

Q: Do you get inspiration from bits and pieces like that a lot, putting them together and letting them grow?

A: “I think things kind of simmer in the back of your mind, and then at some point they’re going to kind of come together. I’m going to be the last person to explain the creative process to anyone, but I think the only people who really examine it are people with writer’s block, and I never seem to have that.”

Q: So you have these, and then you have your characters. Do you just put them together, set your characters loose and see what happens?

A: “I’ve seen all those author interviews where the author will say to the interviewer, ‘oh, my characters have lives of their own, I just let them…’ If I had characters like that, I’d fire them immediately. I need people to do the work that I need done to get this book from cover to cover … They have to work really hard, and if there’s a problem with something being out of character, that’s massive re-writes or get rid of the character.”

Q: How do you work?

A: “Basically, every book is different. You’re learning to write a book every time you sit down to do it. I know that sounds a little strange, but in every book you’re presented with new possibilities, new environment, different people, new story lines. You’re learning how to do it all over again. I do have a basic draft, or one emerges pretty quickly. Then that’s subject to change — beginning, middle and end can all be changed. But that’s something to begin with, and then I’ve got so many drafts on top of that one, and the novel grows on a lot of levels. The nuances come in with one draft, more story lines get added with another. It’s layering.”

Q: You’ve been with Mallory for this long. How has she changed and grown?

A: “That’s the secret of Mallory, she doesn’t change at all. She never gets any older, and she doesn’t grow. But in each book you see a different facet of Mallory, and it gives people the illusion that she’s growing. I’ve kept this trick going for quite a while, because people always want the character to develop and I fully understand that. She is what she is, she’s not ageing. You’re not going to see huge strides in character improvement… but people think she’s changing.

“That’s the secret of being an obsessive neurotic, I know so much about every character I put in the book. Even the minor ones. And you only see about five percent of it in the book. I’ve always had an idea of what she was, and that it was not going to change. Because I’m not sure that people change basic elements. She has this tendency to be sociopathic, that probably won’t change.”

Q: Do you like her?

A: “That’s a hard one. I would not like to have her move in with me. I’m not sure I’d make the cut if I ever met her in person.

“When I wrote the first Mallory book, the manuscript went out to reporters in London, which is where my primary publisher was at the time. The reporters had never seen a photograph of me. I would walk into the interviews, and they were always disappointed in me. I think they were expecting tall Mallory to walk in, listing to one side, maybe, from the weight of a gun. They all liked her and they were truly disappointed to get me.

“Why people like her, I don’t know, unless it’s sort of a high school thing. When you approach her, you have to wonder if you’ll make the cut. When she notices you, is this a really bad thing, is she going to hurt you? She’s not someone I would warm up to, but people seem to like her.”

Q: And how did you first come up with her?

A: “In ‘Mallory’s Oracle’ she’s full-blown, but in the first (unpublished) book — that was wisely eaten by mice, and I’m not kidding about that, it was in my parents’ attic for a long time — she was just a peripheral character, a hacker, in the police department and not too many scruples. But the character of her foster father, Markowitz, was alive in that novel, and when I got to Mallory’s Oracle I found myself writing him again. I realized that they were both major personalities and I had to kill one. So I killed the one I liked the best, which was Lou Markowitz. The death had to mean something. I don’t want to put a body on the floor and make it a piece of dead meat. You have to be more involved than that or you won’t care how it’s resolved, or even if it gets resolved.”

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Facebook Alternatives: Less Hype, More Hope

JoseEsp — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:03:08 +0000

Facebook Inc. might be the most anticipated and hyped initial public offering in years, but as a symbol of American industry, the social network’s virtual farms, family snapshots and “pokes” aren’t exactly Ford Motor Co.

Still, Americans and investors should take heart. Though the IPO market has been slow and buyers cool to new issues, there always will be some stock offerings that are better examples of Yankee ingenuity and dynamism than others.

Last year, while Zynga Inc., Groupon Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. grabbed the headlines, a number of lower-profile IPOs also made their way to the market as part of a total of 125 debuts in the U.S.

Unlike Facebook, these lesser-knowns don’t operate in a virtual world. They make real things, sell real things and make real profits.

For example, ServiceSource Corp., based in San Francisco, is a sort of grown-up that takes care of young technology companies. It provides tech start-ups with business acumen: revenue management, analytics and service contracts.

In other words, ServiceSoource does the business part of the tech business so the nerds can create the next Twitter or Angry Bird.

As an investment, ServiceSource has been a big winner. Its shares debuted in March and are up more than 70% from the company’s $10-a-share offering price.

Another IPO success: Sagent Pharmaceuticals Inc. The stock is up 46% since April. What makes Sagent unique is its product line. Last year, the company got Food and Drug Administration approval for an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections and another antibacterial injection system that avoids latex.

Sagent, based in Schaumburg, Ill., has more in the works. The company is in partnership with other firms to create medical devices and drugs aimed at improving delivery of medicine.

Diversified machinery maker Thermon Group Holdings Inc. developed high-tech “heat tracing” for big industry. In layman’s terms, Thermon basically improved the way pipes were heated to avoid freezing.

Thermon’s stock has been hot, too. Since pricing at $12 a share in May, the shares are up 55%. The company was owned by two private-equity companies before being sold to the public.

Other companies with everyday roots also had impressive IPOs. Spirit Airlines Inc. wowed investors with its low costs and high margins, and the air carrier’s share price is up 52% since it debuted at $12 a share in May.

Dunkin Brands, the parent of Dunkin’ Donuts, is up 51% from its $19 offering price.

Investors dazzled by all the social-networking hype might not have bothered to even look at those IPO opportunities, but they’ll have other chances before Facebook hits the stock market this spring.

Ceres, which sells seeds used to produce renewable bio-energy feedstocks, is expected to price this week. The 16-year-old company, based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., had $7 million in sales in the last year.

Also expected to make its debut will be ChemoCentryx, based in Mountain View, Calif. The company is developing drugs to combat Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis in a partnership with GlaxoSmithKline PLC. Another promising bio-tech company, TVAX Biomedical, a developer of cancer-cell vaccinations and other treatments, is coming to market, too.

Does that mean investors should bet the farm on these companies? Of course not. Compared to Facebook, though, they rely far less on hype and hysteria.

It’s also a good reminder that the entrepreneurial spirit isn’t confined to ways people waste time on the Internet.

These nascent public companies employ thousands of people, and they are likely to hire more as they put their IPO proceeds to work. The same firms are creating products. Some of the biotech and pharmaceutical companies might help our loved ones live longer.

Ceres is a true 21st-century enterprise that might just help cut energy costs and keep the world cooler.

Together, they are best and brightest signs of an economy that many people wrongly see as built on diversions: social networks, iPhones and iPads, and streaming movies.

Not that those things are bad—or even bad investments. But there are some of us—and investors, too—who appreciate companies that improve our time rather than waste it.

Write to David Weidner at david.weidner@dowjones.com

Pyramid Cos.’ Carousel Plan Rides Again

JoseEsp — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:03:08 +0000

By KRIS HUDSON

Developer Robert Congel’s drive to create one of the largest malls in the country, in Syracuse, N.Y., is back in gear after almost being upended by the economic downturn and a nasty court battle with Citigroup Inc.

Mr. Congel’s Pyramid Cos. this year intends to complete an 850,000 square-foot expansion of its Carousel Center mall, already a colossus at 1.5 million square feet.

At the same time, Pyramid just landed $420 million in new loans on Carousel and its expansion from lenders led by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. The new loans allowed Pyramid to pay off a $310 million mortgage on Carousel from Citigroup, which at one point tried to cut off funding the project, describing it in court filings as “a failure.”

Pyramid and Citigroup eventually settled their dispute, allowing construction to resume last year. Both sides declined to comment on whether Pyramid repaid Citigroup its other loans on the project, including $86 million in additional construction financing.

“We reached a settlement that was mutually beneficial to Citigroup and ourselves,” said David Aitken, an executive team member at Pyramid. “In terms of moving the project forward, we deemed it most important to get a new lender.”

Mr. Congel is still a long way from achieving his full vision of expanding Carousel Center, which Pyramid intends to rename Destiny USA later this year. The plan—to include eventually 152 acres of shops, offices, hotels and a convention center—would be ambitious even by the standards of headier economic times. The 850,000 square-foot expansion is just the first phase of that effort.

At the same time, the expansion comes as the retail-property industry struggles to recover from the recession and years of overbuilding. Though occupancies and lease rates at U.S. shopping centers have stopped declining in recent quarters, new construction thus far has remained sharply restrained. Most of the new construction taking place consists of renovations and expansion of existing malls.

Pyramid says it has leased 65% of its expansion space that started to open in November. Among the new tenants: Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th, Guess? Inc. Factory Store and Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill.

This leasing activity reflects a broader trend in the retail world: Many of the most-active tenants are outlet stores, restaurants and entertainment venues. Many leading mall owners, including Simon Property Group Inc. and Taubman Centers Inc., are focusing most of their new construction on outlet centers and buttressing their existing malls by adding more restaurants and entertainment venues.

Pyramid’s original Carousel Center mall, built in 1990, is filled with traditional mall retailers such as Macy’s Inc., Pottery Barn, Abercrombie & Fitch Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. Its occupancy stands at 94%, and its annual sales per square foot exceed $500. The industry average for malls is roughly $350.

“It becomes a dynamic mix of the traditional at Carousel and then adding luxury outlets, entertainment and dining” in the new space, Mr. Aitken said. “It becomes a destination where people are looking to have an experience.”

Construction of Carousel’s expansion was halted for nearly two years due to downturn and the dust-up with Citigroup. The developer and Citigroup started feuding in 2009, when Citigroup refused to continue providing funds to Pyramid under a $155 million construction loan. The dispute went to court, and the two sides settled in late 2010.

Real-estate research company CoStar Inc. predicts that retail construction will rebound to 21.3 million square feet this year and 70.5 million in 2013 in the top 54 U.S. markets after touching a 30-year low of 6.8 million square feet last year. In comparison, the high point in that span was 160 million square feet of new retail construction in 2006.

In turn, demand for retail space from tenants is picking up, though modestly. CoStar predicts that shopping-center tenants will add a net of 64.5 million square feet of space in the top 54 markets this year, up from a net gain of 29.7 million last year and a net reduction of 21 million square feet in 2009.

Among the tenants driving the nascent revival of demand for retail space are Levi Strauss & Co., True Religion Apparel Inc. and other brands that often favor outlet centers, according to Suzanne Mulvee, a senior real-estate strategist at CoStar.

“In shopping centers, where food and service retailers help combat the drain from online shopping, restaurants also are a good source of new demand,” she said.

Write to Kris Hudson at kris.hudson@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Robert Congel was mistakenly referred to as Roger Congel and David Aitken’s last name was misspelled as Aitkin in an earlier version of this article.

Rules for the lawless land

JoseEsp — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:03:08 +0000

Rosie Garthwaite is no stranger to war zones and dangerous places. At the age of 22 she headed straight into the thick of things and became the only blonde in Basra, working at first for the English newspaper the Baghdad Bulletin. As the only permanently based Western journalist in the area, she then began to use her expertise in the area to freelance for the BBC, Reuters and The Times.

After a short stint living in Baghdad, she landed an internship at the BBC in 2004 which she then traded up into a job as a researcher and producer before leaving to join Al Jazeera in Doha in 2006.

In between her day job as the producer and presenter for Al Jazeera, Garthwaite has put together the ultimate survival guide for journalists working in war zones. How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone is a practical guide listing everything you need when based in a dangerous place — from surviving kidnapping to relationship advice.

For eight months Garthwaite researched and interviewed a wide range of people who have lived their lives in and out of war zones, piecing together a series of anecdotes and bits of advice that offer a revealing glance of close shaves and dangerous encounters.

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