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Building permits in Orange County fell 56 percent last month compared with a year ago, figures released today show. However, proposed construction is up about 15 percent for the year as a whole, spurred by a burst of new apartment and condo construction in the county. The numbers, released by the California Building Industry Association, show that Orange County's overall construction activity is humming along at a faster pace than in the state, which has seen total building permits fall 16.7 percent during the first eight months of the year. Single-family home construction, however, has fallen locally, the figures show. In Orange County, 138 single-family building permits were issued in August, down 43 percent from August 2005. For the year so far, single-family permits are down 6.7 percent from the first eight months of 2005.
An investigation into an accident at the city-run Oi pool in Fujimino, Saitama Prefecture, in which a 7-year-old girl died in July after being sucked into an intake pipe, has concluded the city was responsible for the accident by leaving the pool's management to a contractor. The city's board of education submitted a report by the accident investigation committee to the city assembly on Tuesday. According to the report, the panel concluded that sloppy management by the city and the contractor resulted in the accident. In response to the report, Mayor Yukio Shimada said the city lacked crisis-management awareness and overlooked the contractor's poor management. However, the mayor only said he would like to wait for the conclusion of a police investigation before passing judgment on the city's own culpability in the accident.
Norcross, GA, October 17, 2006 - On 8 September 2006, Leica Geosystems and Hexagon announced the acquisition of Mikrofyn A/S in Denmark. The company is one of Europes leading suppliers of machine automation and laser leveling and alignment equipment for the building construction and civil engineering industries. Mikrofyns product range consists of a portfolio of automatic and manual machine control systems for excavators, graders, dozers and paving machines, as well as a broad line of laser rotators, laser receivers and pipe lasers. The acquisition of Mikrofyn is part of Hexagons growth strategy and commitment to global expansion within machine automation technology. Mikrofyn is the largest European manufacturer of one and two dimensional solutions for construction machine automation and ideally complements Leica Geosystems product range of GPS, TPS and laser-based machine automation systems that maneuver infrastructure machines with increased efficiency and precision.
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