Free Republic

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes dipped slightly in September to remain in very low territory, according to an index released Monday. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index fell by a point to 14, on a seasonally adjusted index where readings above 50 are considered good. The index, which correlates closely with single-family housing starts, has held between 13 and 16 for the last six months.

Vladivostok Teeming with N.Korean Laborers In the scorching afternoon heat last Thursday, two Asian laborers sat in front of a grocery store near a building site in Vladivostok, Russia, cooling themselves with mugs of draft beer. When asked if they were North Koreans, the men asked, "Are you from South Korea?" One of the laborers, who was in his 40s, then said there were around 50 workers from all over North Korea, including Pyongyang and Nampo, at this particular site alone, and they can be seen at practically every construction site in Vladivostok. The entire Siberian city has turned into...

/begin my excerpts N. Korean Colleges in 'Shutdown,' and Did Not Even Admit Freshman Class Yang Hee-jung, Washington 2011-08-03 Last week, after returning from his visit to N. Korean colleges, a Russian expert on Korean affairs criticized the extended shutdown of colleges in Pyongyang from June this year to April next year in an attempt to build 'Strong and Powerful Nation,' calling it a waste of human resources unheard of even in socialist Russia(Soviet Union?.) Yang Hee-jung reports: Georgy Toloraya, Director of Korean Programs at Russian Academy of Sciences, said that it does not help producing N. Korea's professional talents...

N.Korean Students Forced into Construction Labor Some 100,000 North Korean college students have been press-ganged into construction work. "The regime is trying to finish redevelopment of the Mansudae District in Pyongyang by April next year," a source familiar with North Korean internal affairs said on Monday. "Because it couldn't finish construction before the deadline, the regime ordered colleges in Pyongyang and other major cities last month to close for 10 months and drafted students to construction sites." The regime twice before changed the academic calendar for a "200-day struggle" in 1988 and an "Arirang" mass calisthenics performance in 2008. But...

Arizona lawmakers want to erect a fence along the border with Mexico - whether the federal government thinks it's necessary or not. They've got a plan that could get a project started using online donations and prison labour. If they get enough money, all they would have to do is get cooperation from landowners and construction could begin as soon as this year. Governor Jan Brewer recently signed a bill that sets the state on a course to building a permanent barrier along its borders, and a website is being launched to raise money for the work.

The federal government is stepping up efforts to relieve overcrowding in public schools, and it is merging those efforts with a concomitant infusion of educational technology and equipment—on behalf of the Ministry of Education (MOE), that is, in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

~ EXCERPT ~ Both short and long-term confidence in the U.S. housing market continue to fall, with homeowners now expressing the highest level of pessimism in two years. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 15% of homeowners expect the value of their home to go up in the next year while 33% expect the opposite and think the value of their home will decline. The current figures reflect more pessimism than a month ago when 19% were optimistic and 30% pessimistic about the value of their home over the next year. Looking longer term, only 39%...

Sam Zell: Obamacare And Dodd-Frank Are Economy-Killing Monstrosities, And There Won't Be New Construction For Years Joe Weisenthal Mar. 3, 2011, 7:39 AM Billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell is on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning. Like many guests, he's furious at the Obama administration over Dodd-Frank and Obamacare, both of which he regards as economy-killing, uncertainty-creating monstrosities that ought to be repealed. He considers the odds of repeal to be 0%. As for commercial real estate, his wheelhouse, he doesn't see any significant construction for the next 2-3 years, at least. Update: He continues to slam US policy, saying...

SIERRA VISTA — The importance of Fort Huachuca can be seen with the number of new construction projects which will start soon and future ones planned for upcoming years, Brig. Gen. Gregg Potter said Thursday. New facilities, worth $15 million for the Army’s Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial System training, is a year out from opening and a $6 million replacement fire station will be occupied in May 2012, said Potter, who commands the Intelligence Center of Excellence and Fort Huachuca. Making his comments at a dinner of the Fort Huachuca 50, an organization which for the past 23 years has...

President Barack Obama unveiled a $37 billion budget blueprint that calls for $640 million in military construction projects at installations in Texas, including $315 million for Army and Air Force projects at Fort Sam Houston, Lackland AFB and Randolph AFB in San Antonio.The amount of Pentagon-proposed military projects in the state is far below the $1.1 billion sought last year, but represents the end of a building boom created by the 2005 base closure process and the transfer of Army troops from overseas installations to Fort Bliss and Fort Hood.

Dallas-based Primoris Services Corp. announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, James Construction Group LLC, has been awarded five contracts — worth about $89 million — for highway infrastructure work and projects related to the construction of natural gas production facilities in Louisiana and Texas. Primoris moved its headquarters to Dallas from California earlier this month.

Bones delay Blue Island stadium By Steve Metsch smetsch@southtownstar.com Jan 18, 2011 02:31AM Blue Island Park District Commissioner John Spizzirri isn’t joking when he calls the hill at Blue Island’s Memorial Park, “Curse Hill.” Over the past year, the construction of a new stadium there has been delayed by weather, building woes and, yes, bones. Human bones. “We didn’t find any full skeletons,” said park board president Fred Bilotto. “It’s all pieces. A femur here. A rib there.” Construction workers discovered the bones in September while excavating for the foundation of a new football stadium at the park. When the...

The stretch of U.S. 65 between Ozark and Branson (MO)has some of the Ozarks’ most impressive scenery. There are lush, rolling hills, distant horizons and, if you look east, one of the biggest homes in the United States. A house currently under construction near Highlandville spans almost a full acre from wall to wall, on a 500-acre site. The ambitious project, nearly three years in and barely at the first floor, totals 72,000 square feet. Putting that figure in perspective might require a few comparisons. According to the Census Bureau, the average new home size over the last five years...

Fort Walton Beach - Authorities believe that between 30 and 40 illegal aliens were employed in the construction of the 7th Special Forces Complex, but by the time the very thorough 3-month investigation was wrapped up, so was most of the work, and the great majority of the workers were unaccounted for. Fort Walton Beach - Authorities believe that between 30 and 40 illegal aliens were employed in the construction of the 7th Special Forces Complex, but by the time the very thorough 3-month investigation was wrapped up, so was most of the work, and the great majority of the...

The McMansion, the mass-produced, super-sized home that saw its heyday earlier this decade, is poised to resurrect itself from the ashes of the real estate collapse. A few months ago, real estate site Trulia declared, "The McMansion Era is Over." Just 9 percent of the people surveyed by the site said their ideal home was more than 3,200 square feet. That news came on top of data from the National Home Builders Association that the median size of new homes dropped from 2,268 square feet in 2006 to 2,100 square feet in 2009. The implication is that the recession has...

A 15-story hotel in Shanghai, China was built in six days, according to ArchDaily. What's even more impressive is that this building is apparently "Level 9 Earthquake Resistant." CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR VIDEO OF ITs CONSTRUCTION

  For union officials who wanted to line their pockets with benefit payments intended for members, Joseph Olivieri was the man to see. Now they will have to go elsewhere. This Wednesday a Manhattan federal jury found Olivieri, ex-executive director of the Long Island-based Association of Wall, Ceiling & Carpentry Industries (WC&C), guilty of perjury in a case that underscored the extent of Genovese crime family control of New York City-area construction contractors and unions. As part of the Justice Department racketeering probe, former Carpenters & Joiners District boss Michael Forde and eight other defendants already had pled guilty....

A plan to install what would have been North America’s largest living wall on the west facade of the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building in Portland has been deemed too risky, and too expensive, by the General Services Administration. Portland’s SERA Architects and Cutler Anderson Architects of Bainbridge Island, Wash., received international attention for proposing 250-foot-tall vegetated “fins” to shade the federal building’s west side. The building’s energy performance is tied to the amount of shade it receives throughout the day, according to Don Eggleston, president of SERA Architects. However, because of concerns about high costs of installation and potential...

And here you thought bedbugs were the biggest source of anxiety for hotel guests. Yes, guests at Vdara hotel in Las Vegas now have something else to worry about: being burned alive by the glare of the building's "death ray." What the heck's a "death ray," you ask? Well, first off, it's not as deadly as it sounds, since no one has actually died from it -- at least not yet. But according to the U.K. Daily Mail, the powerful beams of Nevada sunlight reflecting off the glass hotel onto sections of the hotel's swimming pool area have burned some...