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New era in East Liberty housing

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The only reminder left of East Liberty's high-rise legacy -- a bare space at the neighborhood's western gateway -- is being reclaimed by the construction of a four-story complex of 52 new apartments and 11,000 square feet for retail.

The $14.2 million East Liberty Place South, at Penn Avenue and North Beatty Street, will complete the redevelopment of the former site of the East Mall high-rise, which was razed in 2005.

Work began more than a month ago, but the official groundbreaking ceremony is 10:30 this morning because the site, which once held a gas station and dry cleaner, had to be capped and sealed and old foundations stabilized, said Jim Eby, senior project manager for Community Builders.

The nonprofit also has redeveloped and is managing other former public housing high-rises in East Liberty. They include Pennley Commons, New Pennley Place, Penn Manor and East Liberty North.

They are all mixed-income communities. East Liberty North was completed two years ago directly across Penn Avenue from the current construction site.

"This has been a long time coming," Mr. Eby said.

East Liberty Place South, whose completion is expected by next October, is almost anti-climactic after the drama of East Liberty Place North's development. When North got underway in 2009, the parties involved remarked on the arduous effort it took, largely because financing was extracted at the height of the economic crisis.

"Probably only a thousand people had to work very hard to make this happen," Rob Stephany, who was then executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, said at the time.

In 2001, Community Builders bought three East Liberty high-rises -- East Mall, Liberty Park and Penn Circle Tower -- from a multipartnership group led by Federal American Properties in a foreclosure arrangement.

East Mall was 17 stories and had 160 units. Liberty Park was 20 stories with 158 units. Along with their demolition, another 174 distressed townhouses and apartments were razed. The 20-story Penn Circle Tower was sold for redevelopment as a Target store.

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New era in East Liberty housing

Gujarat: Sardar Patel statue to be twice the size of Statue of Liberty – News X – Video

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Gujarat: Sardar Patel statue to be twice the size of Statue of Liberty - News X
Ahmedabad: As the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress slug it out over Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel #39;s legacy,Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will unvei...

By: newsxlive

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Gujarat: Sardar Patel statue to be twice the size of Statue of Liberty - News X - Video

Liberty Reserve co-founder pleads guilty to money laundering

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The co-founder of Liberty Reserve, a now defunct virtual currency that was widely favored by the criminal underground, pleaded guilty on Thursday to money laundering and other charges.

Vladimir Kats, 41, also pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to operating and conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitter business, receiving child pornography and marriage fraud, according to a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) news release.

The Liberty Reserve virtual currency business, launched in 2006 in Costa Rica, became a financial hub of the cybercrime world, handling more than 55 million transactions worth US$6 billion over seven years, according to the indictment against Kats.

Liberty Reserve's reputation somewhat tainted the view of other virtual currencies, including Bitcoin, for their quick embrace by the criminal world. Unlike Liberty Reserve though, Bitcoin businesses and exchangers have mostly sought to comply with global financial regulations.

Prosecutors linked Liberty Reserve with laundering proceeds from credit card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computer hacking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking.

Liberty Reserve didn't validate its customers' ID -- a key requirement in many countries -- which allowed people to register under false identities. A network of third-party exchangers in Malaysia, Nigeria, Vietnam and Russia directly handled deposits and withdrawals from customers, which kept Liberty Reserve at arm's length from traditional banking systems.

Kats was arrested in May when Liberty Reserve was shut down. More than one million people used the service, including more than 200,000 in the U.S., the indictment said.

A sentencing date has not been scheduled. Kats could face up to 75 years in prison if he's given the maximum sentence for each charge, the DOJ said.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

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Liberty Reserve co-founder pleads guilty to money laundering

Liberty schools look to close revenue gap

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As our economy slowly recovers from the 2007 financial collapse, the unfortunate after-effects of the Great Recession continue. One particularly ugly consequence is the financial meltdowns lingering effect on public school funding.

For simplicitys sake, you can think of public school funding as a pie made up of three primary pieces. The largest slice of the pie comes from revenue a school district collects from local property taxes. Then, youve got a smaller slice that comes from state funding and a tiny sliver representing federal funding.

So whats happened to these pieces of pie over the last few years? Theyve shrunk.

While the stock market may have returned most of its losses since the collapse, property values are still lagging. And state coffers are still stretched. Translation? Lower assessed property values and shortfalls in state education funding.

This puts suburban, bedroom communities, which cant rely on steady tax revenue from big businesses, in a serious bind. Take the Liberty Public School District as an example.

The Northland district has been accredited with distinction and on average performs in the top 10 percent of districts in the state of Missouri. As a result, it has seen steady increases in enrollment as families north of the river gravitate to new developments and great schools that are just a 15-minute commute from downtown Kansas City. Over the last few years the district has added hundreds of new students to its charge each year and anticipates adding 2,500 more by 2020.

However, while the number of students the Liberty Public School District is serving has grown since the financial collapse, the total assessed valuation of all property in the district, which makes up the biggest piece of the pie in terms of operating revenue, has shrunk. Homes are worth less, and the property taxes they bring in are now smaller.

To add insult to injury, the Missouri legislature is currently shortchanging school districts statewide by about $600 million a year because of its failure to meet the school funding formula it passed into law in 2005. For Liberty, that means a $4 million annual shortfall.

So whats a school district to do? Well, in the last five years the Liberty Public School District has frozen teacher wage scales twice, trimmed staff head count, rented portable classrooms in lieu of new construction and shaved $5 million from its operating budget in an effort to make ends meet.

But those cuts arent enough to fill a gap caused by demographic shifts and an economic downturn well outside of the districts control.

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Liberty schools look to close revenue gap

Virtual currency Liberty Reserve co-founder pleads guilty to money laundering

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The co-founder of Liberty Reserve, a now defunct virtual currency that was widely favored by the criminal underground, pleaded guilty on Thursday to money laundering and other charges.

Vladimir Kats, 41, also pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to operating and conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitter business, receiving child pornography and marriage fraud, according to a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) news release.

The Liberty Reserve virtual currency business, launched in 2006 in Costa Rica, became a financial hub of the cybercrime world, handling more than 55 million transactions worth $6 billion over seven years, according to the indictment against Kats.

Liberty Reserves reputation somewhat tainted the view of other virtual currencies, including Bitcoin, for their quick embrace by the criminal world. Unlike Liberty Reserve though, Bitcoin businesses and exchangers have mostly sought to comply with global financial regulations.

Prosecutors linked Liberty Reserve with laundering proceeds from credit card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computer hacking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking.

Liberty Reserve didnt validate its customers IDa key requirement in many countrieswhich allowed people to register under false identities. A network of third-party exchangers in Malaysia, Nigeria, Vietnam and Russia directly handled deposits and withdrawals from customers, which kept Liberty Reserve at arms length from traditional banking systems.

Kats was arrested in May when Liberty Reserve was shut down. More than one million people used the service, including more than 200,000 in the U.S., the indictment said.

A sentencing date has not been scheduled. Kats could face up to 75 years in prison if hes given the maximum sentence for each charge, the DOJ said.

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Virtual currency Liberty Reserve co-founder pleads guilty to money laundering


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