Leaders of the nonprofit Music Hall Revitalization Co. seemed to have compromised last week when the group proposed a 99-year lease of Music Hall as part of a $165 million renovation. But the lease included a clause that would allow the group to acquire the historic building for $1 at the end of the lease or at the end of a second 99-year lease. The permanent sale of the building is what held up the initial plan to turn the renovation over to the nonprofit group, which says its donors will not offer the financial support without the city turning over ownership. Mayor Mark Mallory told The Enquirer that the proposal will not be approved. “I don’t care if it’s 99 years, 198 years, 500 years or 1,000 years, the city should always retain ownership,” Mallory said. “That should never change.”
The George W. Bush Presidential Library denied a request by a Democratic super PAC for documents related to Sen. Rob Portman’s work in the George W. Bush administration. The library says it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and that all are welcome to see the documents in 2014. The super PAC, American Bridge 21st Century, has been researching GOP candidates as Mitt Romney moves closer to choosing a running mate.
“When you look at the roster of V.P. candidates, each of them is significantly flawed,” American Bridge senior adviser Ty Matsdorf said in a statement. “For Portman, it is his calamitous record on fiscal issues while working at the Bush White House. It shouldn’t be a shock that he is going to want to keep that under wraps for as long as possible, but unfortunately it’s pretty hard to hide a record as terrible as that.”
CNN is live blogging from the Supreme Court to see if there are any rulings on the health care law or immigration.
Gay pride celebrations took place in New York, Chicago and San Francisco over the weekend, and Obama organizers were there to recruit volunteers.
Spain formally asked for European aid for its banks.
The sea level is rising faster along the Atlantic Coast than other places in the world.
Facebook has created a new “find friends nearby” function that will allow users to see friends and people they don’t know who are at events or social gatherings. From some Facebook engineer’s comments on the story:
I built Find Friends Nearby with another engineer for a hackathon project. While it was originally called ‘Friendshake’, we settled on ‘Find Friends Nearby’ for launch (the URL was a little bit of a homage to the previous iteration).
For me, the ideal use case for this product is the one where when you’re out with a group of people whom you’ve recently met and want to stay in contact with. Facebook search might be effective, or sharing your vanity addresses or business cards, but this tool provides a really easy way to exchange contact information with multiple people with minimal friction.
HBO’s The Newsroom premiered last night, and this guy at the Toronto Star said it kind of sucked while the New York Times says CNN could learn something from it.
