Full Name* Tags Photo illustration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (Getty, iStock/Illustration by Kevin Rebong for The Real Deal)After Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued another executive order, the status of the ban on commercial evictions and foreclosures is unclear.On Monday, Cuomo issued an order that some real estate attorneys, who declined to be named because they said they did not want to publicly contradict the governor, believe extended the state’s existing ban.A spokesperson for Cuomo said he did “not believe” the executive order extended the ban, but did not clarify whether that is the case.If the attorneys’ interpretation is correct, the latest executive order — the governor’s 100th in response to the pandemic — would prevent those actions from taking place until March 24. The move would also represent a departure from Cuomo’s statement earlier this month to Eater, in which he said he had “no intention” of signing another executive order to prolong the ban.According to the publication, he would instead focus on legislation to forestall those actions until May 1.The lack of clarity comes at a time when some members of the legislature have pushed for Cuomo to be stripped of the broadened executive powers it granted him last spring in an effort to bring the pandemic under control. The state Senate proposed a bipartisan commission to review Cuomo’s orders, and Assembly Democrats have also called for the revocation of those powers.That move follows a scandal that has erupted over top aide Melissa de Rosa’s admission that the administration withheld data on Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes.Read moreCommercial eviction and foreclosure ban extended until JanuaryHow landlords get around the commercial eviction moratoriumLA County sued over commercial eviction moratorium Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare via Email Share via Shortlink Email Address* Share via Shortlink Andrew CuomoEvictionsNew York State Assemblynew york state senate Message* In late January, the state legislature passed a bill to ban commercial evictions and foreclosures until May 1. Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Cuomo said his administration was working on “slight modifications” to the bill “to ensure that the spirit” of the executive order would be carried into law.In contrast, when the state legislature passed the residential eviction bill in late December, Cuomo signed it into law the same day.The state legislature’s bill, sponsored by Long Island Sen. Anna Kaplan, would allow businesses with 50 or fewer employees to file a hardship declaration in order to stave off evictions until at least May 1. All pending commercial eviction cases — including those filed before the pandemic, until 30 days after the enactment of the legislation — would be stayed for at least 60 days.Businesses with 50 or fewer employees and landlords with 10 or fewer units could also claim hardship to prevent a foreclosure until May. The legislation would prohibit lenders from using a stay of commercial foreclosure to determine whether to lend to landlords with 10 or fewer units, if the borrower files a hardship declaration. It also bans negative credit reporting for borrowers who filed those declarations.Landlords could still evict commercial tenants if they “engage in unreasonable behavior,” but in order to do so, the landlord would have to submit documentation to prove that the behavior infringes on other tenants’ rights or is a safety hazard.Contact Georgia Kromrei read more
Email Address* Tags Full Name* brooklyncampaign donationsCommercial Real EstatedonationsEric Adamsmayoral racepolitical donations Share via Shortlink Those contributors include Two Trees Management, which is redeveloping the massive Domino Sugar Refinery site in Williamsburg. Around 2016 and 2017, when Two Trees needed Adams’ support to install artificial turf at its new condo development at the Domino site, a foundation controlled by the Walentas family, which owns Two Trees, gave between $25,000 and $80,000 to the One Brooklyn Fund, according to The City.The following year, Two Trees employees and the Walentas family donated and raised $17,800 for Adams’ political campaign. One $5,100 donation exceeded the $2,000 limit and Adams had to return the difference. Two Trees did not immediately respond to a request for comment.And in August 2019, RXR Realty gave $10,000 to One Brooklyn Fund as the developer sought Adams’ support for its residential tower project on top of Long Island University’s Downtown Brooklyn campus.RXR Senior Vice President David Garten told the outlet that the firm donates to a number of nonprofits in Brooklyn as part of its long-term community engagement strategy.For his mayoral campaign, Adams had the biggest war chest — $7.8 million as of last week. Comptroller Scott Stringer was second with $7.4 million, followed by Andrew Yang with $5 million and Ray McGuire with $3.6 million.Adams’ campaign told The City, “In no way do contributions to the campaign or One Brooklyn affect the borough president’s decisions as a public official.”[The City] — Akiko MatsudaContact Akiko Matsuda Message* Eric Adams (Getty, iStock/Illustration by Alexis Manrodt for The Real Deal)In the crowded mayoral race, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is one of the candidates viewed as being more friendly to real estate — as evidenced by donations to his current campaign for mayor, as well as previous donations to a nonprofit overseen by his office.It’s the latter that have recently come into question; a new report by The City linked donations to the nonprofit, the One Brooklyn Fund, to developers and lobbyists who had business in the borough. The fund took in $322,750 between 2015 and 2019 from various sources who, per the report, “were at the time seeking favors from [Adams] involving various projects.”Read moreWhere mayoral candidates stand on real estateMayoral candidates tackle affordability, cancel rent in housing debateVoters agree on building housing, not on mayoral candidates Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare via Email Share via Shortlink read more
South Georgia, at present governed as a Dependency of the Falkland Islands, has an interesting history of human activity extending back nearly two centuries. The sealers who visited the island in considerable numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries (Jones, 1973) almost certainly left gangs of men on the island for considerable periods, but not until the 20th century were permanent settlements established there. Published accounts of the initial stages of this colonisation (Matthews, 1931; Christie, 1951) contain various important errors, and give only the simplest outline of an interesting political problem. A more accurate account of some of these events has recently been published (Tonnessen and Johnsen, 1982). Material preserved in the Falkland Islands Government’s (FIG) archives at Port Stanley has allowed a detailed account to be built up of this important period of South Georgia’s history. read more
Populations of the only two flowering plants native to the Antarctic have recently increased in number and size possibly due to climate warming. We have undertaken a preliminary study of the population genetics of one of these species by surveying variation in amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) within the Antarctic Hairgrass, Deschampsia antarctica. Populations of D. antarctica from two widely separated regions of the maritime Antarctic, namely Signy Island in the north and Léonie Islands 1350 km farther south, were characterized by low genetic diversity (only 15.95% of total genetic variation found within populations). Populations from the northern and southern maritime Antarctic were genetically distinct from each other (FCT = 37.10%), and low levels of historical gene flow occurred among them (Nm = 0.05). This genetic structure suggests that new populations of D. antarctica are founded by one or few individuals, which mainly reproduce by self-fertilization and/or vegetative propagation. Vegetative reproduction and selfing are, therefore, likely to have been key factors in the establishment of D. antarctica at new sites in the Antarctic during recent years. read more
In an earlier study, melt/freeze rates beneath most of the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica, were estimated using an assumption of a steady-state ice shelf applied to a velocity field derived from RADARSAT and ERS-1 interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data and an ice-thickness map inferred from ERS-1 satellite radar altimeter data. Here, we use these basal accumulation rates and the InSAR velocity data to estimate the distribution and thickness of marine ice beneath the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf. These estimates are compared with a marine-ice thickness map derived from radio-echo sounding (RES) data and airborne radar altimetry. In general, we find close agreement between these estimates. In the few locations where there are significant differences, the discrepancies are largely attributable to artifacts in the radar-altimeter thickness map. With improvements such as a much smaller footprint, the next generation of altimeters should overcome many of these limitations, leading to improved marine-ice accumulation estimates. Overall, the good agreement with the RES data validates the InSAR-based estimates over much of the Ronne Ice Shelf. read more
Geosynchronous Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL-97A) satellite particle data, riometer data, and radio wave data recorded at high geomagnetic latitudes in the region south of Australia and New Zealand are used to perform the first complete modeling study of the effect of substorm electron precipitation fluxes on low-frequency radio wave propagation conditions associated with dispersionless substorm injection events. We find that the precipitated electron energy spectrum is consistent with an e-folding energy of 50 keV for energies <400 keV but also contains higher fluxes of electrons from 400 to 2000 keV. To reproduce the peak subionospheric radio wave absorption signatures seen at Casey (Australian Antarctic Division), and the peak riometer absorption observed at Macquarie Island, requires the precipitation of 50-90% of the peak fluxes observed by LAM+NL-97A. Additionally, there is a concurrent and previously unreported substorm signature at L< 2.8, observed as a substorm-associated phase advance on radio waves propagation between Australia and New Zealand. Two mechanisms are discussed to explain the phase advances. We find that the most likely mechanism is the triggering of wave-induced electron precipitation caused by waves enhanced in the plasmasphere during the substorm and that either plasmaspheric hiss waves or electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves are a potential source capable of precipitationg the type of high-energy electron spectrum required. However, the presence of these waves at such low L shells has not been confirmed in this study. read more
Antarctic ecosystems are fascinating in their limited trophic complexity, with decomposition and nutrient cycling functions being dominated by microbial activities. Not only are Antarctic habitats exposed to extreme environmental conditions, the Antarctic Peninsula is also experiencing unequalled effects of global warming. Owing to their uniqueness and the potential impact of global warming on these pristine systems, there is considerable interest in determining the structure and function of microbial communities in the Antarctic. We therefore utilized a recently designed 16S rRNA gene microarray, the PhyloChip, which targets 8741 bacterial and archaeal taxa, to interrogate microbial communities inhabiting densely vegetated and bare fell-field soils along a latitudinal gradient ranging from 51 degrees S (Falkland Islands) to 72 degrees S (Coal Nunatak). Results indicated a clear decrease in diversity with increasing latitude, with the two southernmost sites harboring the most distinct Bacterial and Archaeal communities. The microarray approach proved more sensitive in detecting the breadth of microbial diversity than polymerase chain reaction-based bacterial 16S rRNA gene libraries of modest size (similar to 190 clones per library). Furthermore, the relative signal intensities summed for phyla and families on the PhyloChip were significantly correlated with the relative occurrence of these taxa in clone libraries. PhyloChip data were also compared with functional gene microarray data obtained earlier, highlighting numerous significant relationships and providing evidence for a strong link between community composition and functional gene distribution in Antarctic soils. Integration of these PhyloChip data with other complementary methods provides an unprecedented understanding of the microbial diversity and community structure of terrestrial Antarctic habitats. read more
Three hundred and fifty specimens of the endemic Southern Ocean octopus genus Pareledone, were sequenced for the barcoding gene COI. Geographic coverage comprised the South Shetland Islands, the Ross Sea, Adélie Land, George V Land, the Weddell Sea, under the site of the former Larsen B ice shelf, Prydz Bay, the South Orkney Islands and the Amundsen Sea. The greatest number of specimens was captured at the three first-mentioned localities. At least 11 species were represented in the samples and the analyses revealed cryptic species. Six species were found to have extended distributions. Circumpolarity is supported for at least one species. Evidence is presented for a barrier to gene flow to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, with haplotypes of P. aequipapillae becoming progressively more diverse in a clockwise direction from the South Shetland Islands to the Amundsen Sea. This pattern is akin to that seen in ring species, although we suggest that comparatively warm bottom water acts as a physical barrier preventing completion of the ring. read more
We present an automated process for determining the annual layer chronology of an ice-core with a strong annual signal, utilising the hydrogen peroxide record from an Antarctic Peninsula ice-core as a test signal on which to count annual cycles and explain the methods. The signal is de-trended and normalised before being split into sections with a deterministic cycle count and those that need more attention. Possible reconstructions for the uncertain sections are determined which could be used as a visual aid for manual counting, and a simple method for assigning probability measures to each reconstruction is discussed. The robustness of this process is explored by applying it to versions of two different chemistry signals from the same stretch of the NGRIP (North Greenland Ice Core Project) ice-core, which shows more variation in annual layer thickness, with and without thinning to mimic poorer quality data. An adapted version of these methods is applied to the more challenging non-sea-salt sulphur signal from the same Antarctic Peninsula core from which the hydrogen peroxide signal was taken. These methods could readily be adapted for use on much longer datasets, thereby reducing manual effort and providing a robust automated layer-counting methodology. read more
Unlike the rapid sea-ice losses reported in the Arctic, satellite observations show an overall increase in Antarctic sea ice concentration over recent decades. However, observations of decadal trends in Antarctic ice thickness, and hence ice volume, do not currently exist. In this study a model of the Southern Ocean and its sea ice, forced by atmospheric reanalyses, is used to assess 1992—2010 trends in ice thickness and volume. The model successfully reproduces observations of mean ice concentration, thickness, and drift, and decadal trends in ice concentration and drift, imparting some confidence in the hindcasted trends in ice thickness. The model suggests that overall Antarctic sea ice volume has increased by approximately 30km3/y (0.4%/y) as an equal result of areal expansion (20×103km2/y, or 0.2%/y) and thickening (1.5mm/y, or 0.2%/y). This ice volume increase is an order of magnitude smaller than the Arctic decrease, and about half the size of the increased freshwater supply from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Similarly to the observed ice concentration trends, the small overall increase in modelled ice volume is actually the residual of much larger opposing regional trends. Thickness changes near the ice edge follow observed concentration changes, with increasing concentration corresponding to increased thickness. Ice thickness increases are also found in the inner pack in the Amundsen and Weddell seas, where the model suggests that observed ice-drift trends directed towards the coast have caused dynamical thickening in autumn and winter. Modelled changes are predominantly dynamic in origin in the Pacific sector and thermodynamic elsewhere. read more