The Durham County Board of Commissioners on Monday night agreed to sell a former tobacco warehouse to Duke University for $6.8 million.

Duke hasnt identified a use for the facility, known as the Carmichael Building, said Scott Selig, associate vice president of capital assets and real estate. The county is expected to lease the building, located at 300 N. Duke St., through the end of 2012. The building will eventually support Dukes expanding footprint, which increases about 100,000 square feet a year, in a downtown with limited large office spaces, Selig said.

There are no contiguous spaces over 50,000 square feet that are currently available in the first-class office market,” in downtown, Selig said. “This will allow us to have 114,000 square feet in one location.

As unemployment remains high, there is also a mismatch between the skills of many workers and unemployed and available jobs. How well are colleges preparing students for today’s job market? Has the recession changed the learning focus?

Why not produce more oil and cut foreign imports, creating jobs and revenue? Lets use revenue from oil production to facilitate the deployment of alternatives, stated U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. She is ranking Republican senator on the Senate Energy and Resources Committee.

A recent Congressional Research Service report found that U.S. recoverable oil resources are estimated at 157 billion barrels, which doesnt include the roughly 900 billion barrels of unconventional oil resources nearing commercialization. In addition, never-explored Alaskan lands hold an estimated 40 billion barrels.

Per the Wall Street Journal, These state lands are dwarfed by the oil-heavy federal lands and waters that surround them.

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Scaffolds and cranes dot the landscape in Kunshan, the same as any other city in China.

There, a university campus is rising on 200 acres in a city of 650,000 in the Yangtze River Delta. It’s called Duke Kunshan University, and it’s being watched closely on this side of the world.

Duke has entered into a bold endeavor to plant its footprint in the fastest-growing major economy on the planet. The campus will be the largest undertaking in Duke’s quest to establish a global network for education and research.