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Within architecture theres discrimination in thinking thats something men are better at than women. Actually a lot of women are very good at it, but whether theyre given the opportunity is a different question."

On average male architects can earn between 37-42,000 while women earn 27-32,000 a year, the study showed.

The gender disparity begins at university, according to the study, where more than half of architecture students had experienced gender discrimination.

While 44 per cent of women win places to study the subject at university, only 34 per cent qualify.

Ms Murray said schools and universities should teach pupils about women architects and there need to be more female role models.

At the moment the only prominent female architect is Dame Zaha Hadid, who designed the London Aquatic Centre for the London 2012 Olympics, Ms Murray said.

Apart from Zaha all famous architects are men. I think a greater awareness of the work of women architects needs to be taught in schools.

When most people think of architecture, they think of an old man behind a desk and that needs to change," she said.

The study also found 88 per cent of women think having children puts them at a disadvantage in architecture.

One respondent said she had hidden the fact she was a mother from her employer, for fear it would hinder her career.

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'Lack of respect' and sexism is daily reality for female architects, survey finds

Six-month-old baby Elai smiles and kicks his little feet when people speak. "The doctors say it's the sick children who are most friendly," Elai's mother Tatyana Fornoff says, despite the constant prodding and pricking of needles.

Elai has lived in the intensive care unit in Cologne's Children's Hospital all his life. After an emergency C-section, Elai was born four weeks premature. His esophagus wasn't formed, and today he breathes, wheezing rhythmically, through a valve that protrudes from his throat. Within days of Elai's birth last July, the Fornoff family had packed its bags and moved into the Ronald McDonald House in Cologne.

Tatyana Fornoff, 28, said the Ronald McDonald House literally helped keep her family together

"When you're in a situation where you think your own child might die, or you don't know how to keep going, then a place like this is truly a second home," Fornoff says. "You can't imagine how much a house like this relieves some of the burden by offering a place to shower, to do laundry, to rest."

Tatyana cradles the baby from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, now and then placing him in his bassinet, to which he is connected to by a series to tubes that drain the fluid from his esophagus.

Her "second home" at the Ronald McDonald House in Cologne is one of 19 such facilities in Germany that offer families with sick children on-site accommodation at the hospitals where their children are being treated. Each of the 19 houses has its own character: Cologne's looks like a fortress, nicknamed the "castle of protection."

Goodwill meets good design

Manfred Welzel, right, chairman of the Children's Aid Foundation, visits the Hamburg exhibition

Families like the Fornoffs are precisely who the Kinderhilfe Stiftung, McDonald's Children's Aid Foundation, had in mind when it teamed up with AIT ArchitekturSalon in Hamburg. The goal was to design a Ronald McDonald House for the Hamburg district of Altona with an emphasis on how aesthetics foster healing.

"As we know from various projects in the healthcare sector, it is specifically the feeling of well-being and a pleasant atmosphere that have an influence on the healing process and the mental state of patients," said Thomas Willemeit of German architecture firm GRAFT, which helped organize the call for blueprints. "Especially in medical care, the atmospheric quality is usually underrated."

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Ronald McDonald House garners star architects, criticism

Las Vegas battered commercial real estate market is showing signs of life but remains a long way from full recovery.

Last year, investors snapped up properties, landlords signed new tenants, industrial buildings sprouted and developers pushed ahead with big retail projects.

Much of the same is expected this year, although the valley still faces big obstacles. Lease rates are low, vacancy rates are far above the national average, and despite some notable projects, development is relatively limited. New businesses are moving to Las Vegas and taking over empty real estate, but most local companies arent expanding and dont need additional space.

And the valleys unemployment rate remains high. In November, it was 8.6 percent, well above the 6.6 percent national average.

What more is in store for 2014? Here is a look at how the office, retail, apartment and industrial sectors might fare:

Despite meager improvements last year, Las Vegas still has one of the worst office markets in the country.

The city had a 21 percent vacancy rate during the fourth quarter of 2013, down slightly from 22 percent a year earlier, according to brokerage firm Colliers International. Research firm Reis Inc. put the valleys fourth-quarter vacancy rate at 26 percent, the second-highest in the country.

In 2005, during the boom, the rate was 8 percent.

The average asking rent was $1.87 per square foot last quarter, unchanged from a year earlier, Colliers said.

The market is far from dead, though.

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2014 real estate predictions: What’s on tap for housing, retail, office and industrial space this year

Authorities: Missing SW MO infant found, 2 in custody Authorities: Missing SW MO infant found, 2 in custody

Updated: Monday, January 13 2014 6:29 AM EST2014-01-13 11:29:10 GMT

Authorities in southwest Missouri say a 6-month-old baby missing since Jan. 2 has been found in Florida.

Updated: Monday, January 13 2014 6:31 PM EST2014-01-13 23:31:22 GMT

NEWPORT, AR (KAIT) Extra medical staff have been called in to monitor the flu at the McPherson Unit in Newport. Weekend visitations were cancelled at the prison after the death of one woman inmate Saturday

Extra medical staff have been called in to monitor the flu at the McPherson Unit in Newport.

Updated: Monday, January 13 2014 12:29 PM EST2014-01-13 17:29:04 GMT

IMBODEN, AR (KAIT) A self-described "big marijuana dealer" owed hundreds of dollars reportedly took matters into his own hands Sunday and wound up in jail for his efforts. Dylan Smith, 18, of Imboden

A self-described "big marijuana dealer" owed hundreds of dollars reportedly took matters into his own hands Sunday and wound up in jail for his efforts.

More here:
Cash boyhood home restoration project earns state recognition

Posted on: 6:09 pm, January 13, 2014, by Jonathon Gregg, updated on: 04:49pm, January 13, 2014

MILWAUKEE (WITI) The freeze and thaw continues to wreck havoc on water pipes throughout southeastern Wisconsin. Restoration and cleaning companies in Milwaukee are swamped with calls!

Paul Davis, a national company with a location in Milwaukee is a 24-hour business thats been getting call after call after call for service!

This, after we saw a deep freeze last week and milder temperatures this week.

Weve never seen anything on this scale like it happened this year nationwide, Dan Gramann, Paul Davis Division Manager said.

We continue to see more damage and more pipes break, Paul Davis President Daniel Druml said.

FOX6 News spotted crews carting out bags filled with family belongings, soaked and near ruined. The bags hold everyday items like a living room rug but also things that mean a little more like a sons favorite pair of sneakers and a daughters favorite teddy bear.

The bags represent just four recent calls handled by Paul Davis.

At first, the calls coming in were form commercial buildings, businesses and schools but then as the meltdown continued, more calls began coming in from peoples homes.

So many people who were away are coming home and we continue to see damage, Druml said.

Excerpt from:
Restoration companies very busy after deep freeze and thaw

One of President Barack Obama's longest serving advisers, who joined his team a decade ago when he was running for the Senate, is leaving the White House this month to work as a lawyer in private practice.

Danielle Gray will step down as White House Cabinet secretary after the president delivers his State of the Union address on Jan. 28. She is looking to join a law firm and teach.

Gray is among a handful of Obama's aides to announce resignations in the new year, as fatigue sets in after five years of all-consuming work. Their departures are leaving the president without some of his most trusted advisers.

Gray, 35, has handled a variety of tasks for Obama, including helping to write his health care law to protect it from inevitable legal challenges. Obama said in a statement that he's grateful that Gray put her legal career on hold to work for him for a decade.

Gray wanted to leave a year ago, but Obama asked her to stay on as his Cabinet secretary to start his second term. Disputes over policy and communications can erupt between the White House and Cabinet members, such as the first term debate over the Afghanistan war effort that came to light from a memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said Gray deepened interactions with members of the Cabinet and made sure their concerns were being heard by the president in the weekly reports. "We'll continue to prioritize that," McDonough said. He said her replacement has not been chosen.

Obama's statement said Gray has been instrumental in helping shape his administration's policy. "And over the past year, as Cabinet secretary and a close adviser to me, she has not only helped make sure every agency in the federal government remains focused on giving hardworking Americans a fair shot at opportunity, but that our policies reflect the values we have always fought for," Obama said.

Gray, like Obama, is a graduate of Harvard Law School who was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. One of her professors at Harvard was future Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, and Gray helped Kagan and fellow Justice Sonia Sotomayor through their confirmation process in the first Obama term. Some in the White House wouldn't be surprised if Gray, who also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, is a judicial nominee herself one day.

Gray, a native of Riverhead, N.Y., got a bachelor's degree from Duke and worked briefly at a New York law firm after graduating from Harvard in 2003. But she gave up that lucrative career path to work on Obama's 2004 campaign for Senate and was one of the early staffers on his presidential campaign as a policy adviser.

When Obama took office in 2009, she came to the White House counsel's office and later worked for the Justice Department's Civil Division. She returned to the White House in 2011 as deputy director of the National Economic Council.

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Long-Serving Obama Aide Is Leaving White House

Prague - Czech President Milos Zeman evidently does not strive for an accommodating approach to enable the birth of a new government but he intentionally takes dissident stands thwarting the political mainstreams efforts, Petr Fischer writes in daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) today.

This political strategy enables Zeman to attract the publics attention, control the political debate and also push through his will effectively, irrespective of the majority opinion, Fischer writes.

Zemans public appearance on Friday showed that he will insist on the replacement of some candidates for ministers proposed to him by possible new PM Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD), Fischer writes.

Zeman indicated that he would nod to the Sobotka-proposed cabinet lineup if Zemans people, or members of the outgoing caretaker government, occupied the posts of deputy ministers in the new government, but this is unacceptable for the new coalition, judging mainly by the CSSDs reaction, Fischer writes.

Zeman will therefore step up his pressure. Sobotka asserts he will make no concessions, as a result of which Zeman might further protract the Sobotka cabinets appointment, Fischer says.

It would probably be the best if the dispute ended up at the Constitutional Court, whose verdict would indicate whether the president or prime minister-designate should have the upper hand in forming the cabinet, Fischer says.

It is laudable that President Milos Zeman wants to hold regular separate meetings with the new cabinet members in order to discuss their plans and mainly financing of the steps promised by the government, but he cannot do so without appointing the cabinet first, Alexandr Mitrofanov writes in Pravo.

He points to a fresh public opinion poll showing that three-quarters of Czechs want Zeman to use his presidential powers cautiously and to take constitutional habits into account.

This is demanded not only by a majority of those who supported Zemans rival, conservative TOP 09 head Karel Schwarzenberg, in the direct presidential election a year ago, but even by a majority of Zemans supporters, Mitrofanov writes.

It would be naive to expect Zeman to meet this demand of people. The possible new prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, and the candidates for ministers whom Zeman intends to grill in the weeks to come know what they can expect and they are probably psychologically prepared for it, Mitrofanov writes.

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Czech press survey - January 13

By NEDRA PICKLER Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - One of President Barack Obama's longest serving advisers, who joined his team a decade ago when he was running for the Senate, is leaving the White House this month to work as a lawyer in private practice.