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In what has become somewhat routine, the United States on Wednesday condemned Israel’s latest approval of construction in Jerusalem. According to Reuters, State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke stressed Washington's "clear and consistent opposition to construction activity in East Jerusalem." "During this sensitive time in Jerusalem, we would see such activity as inconsistent with the goal of lower tensions and seeking a path toward peace," he added. The latest criticism from Washington was made after the Jerusalem municipality approved the construction of 78 new homes for Jews in Jerusalem. Municipal spokeswoman Brachie Sprung said 50 homes will be built in Har...

The United States Wednesday sharply condemned Israeli plans to build 200 new Jewish homes in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood, according to AFP, warning such moves would only "exacerbate" spiraling tensions in the city. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki also denounced the alleged torching of a mosque blamed on suspected Jewish extremists calling it a "hateful and provocative" act and urging officials to investigate. "We are deeply concerned by this decision, particularly given the tense situation in Jerusalem, as well as the unequivocal and unanimous position of the United States and others in the international community opposing such construction in east Jerusalem,"...

A man delivering drywall to a New Jersey construction site was killed Monday when a tape measure fell 50 stories, striking him on the head, authorities said. The 1-pound tape measure became dislodged from the belt of a worker on the 50th floor and struck construction equipment about 10 to 15 feet from the ground, according to Carly Baldwin, a spokeswoman for Jersey City's Department of Public Safety. It then ricocheted and struck Gary Anderson, 58, who had just stopped to speak with another worker who was in a pickup truck just before 9 a.m. in the city's downtown section....

Building site of the first ever 3D printed estate in Gardiner, New York. New York City architect/contractor Adam Kushner begins construction of the first ever 3D printed estate, which features a 3D printed swimming pool, 4-bedroom, 2400 square foot home, and more. The 3D printer which will be a modified version of Enrico DiniÂ’s D-shape printer, will, if all goes as planned, eventually be able to automatically place rebar within the 3D printed house, as it prints. We have covered a lot of news concerning the 3D printing of houses, over the course of the last year or so. Whether...

HARTFORD - A broad coalition of environmental, economic, regional and construction groups urged Connecticut's gubernatorial candidates Tuesday to conduct a debate focused on transportation issues, and to consider higher taxes and tolls to pay for the state's dire transportation needs. The activists put out a four-point program they said the state's next governor must consider, and expressed concern about the possibility that massive federal funding for highways and mass transit might dry up in the next few years. The coalition's key issues are: •Making certain that state revenue that is supposed to be devoted to transportation - such as gas...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday marked the anniversary of the passage of comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate and slammed the House for doing nothing on the issue. “Today marks the 365th day that the Tea Party-driven House of Representatives has sat on their hands refusing to fix our broken immigration system,” Reid said on the floor. “The Senate was able to pass immigration reform 52 weeks ago because both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate understood the urgent need to mend our nation’s immigration laws.”

I went to two different local concrete ready-mix plants on Friday, looking to get a small quantity (two buckets) of fly-ash for an R&D project. Both places mentioned the shortage of fly ash.

Drivers traveling into or through Baltimore on Interstate 95 are going to encounter a construction project that will replace the highway’s concrete deck along the 4.4 miles between the Fort McHenry Tunnel and Exit 50 at Caton Avenue. Nothing like this has happened since the tunnel opened in 1985. If your summer vacation drives take you through Baltimore, if you plan to see the Orioles or Ravens, or will be visiting the Inner Harbor, Fells Point or Fort McHenry, you will want to be aware of this work, which is scheduled to end in 2016. The Maryland Transportation Authority project...

California's economy continues to experience a tepid recovery since the Great Recession. One reason why: according to CEO Magazine, California has had the worst business climate in the nation for the last eight years, due in no small part to policies out of Sacramento.Any economic growth in the Golden State is largely driven from the continued tech boom in Silicon Valley - although even it may not be immune to California's poor business climate. Depending on how one categorizes "small businesses"- typically, either fewer than either 50 or 100 employees - as of the 3rd quarter of 2012, between 96%...

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - A group of Republican California lawmakers are breaking with their party's skepticism over immigration reform and asking the U.S. Congress to give immigrants a path to citizenship to help their state's heavy dependence on migrant labor for agriculture and construction. Flanked by representatives of the state's agricultural, construction and restaurant industries, 16 Republican state senators and assembly members joined a national push to demand a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Chinese companies have been known to build major real-estate projects very quickly. Now, one company is taking it to a new extreme. Suzhou-based construction-materials firm Winsun New Materials says it has built 10 200-square-meter homes using a gigantic 3-D printer that it spent 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) and 12 years developing. Such 3-D printers have been around for several years and are commonly used to make models, prototypes, plane parts and even such small items as jewelry.

From Oreos to body parts, 3D printers have been cranking out some pretty unbelievable stuff lately. But in Shanghai, WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co. has been using a monstrous printing device to build homes at a breakneck pace — 10 homes in 24 hours. Measuring out at roughly 105 feet long, 33 feet wide, and 21 feet tall, this clearly isn’t your average retail printer. Unlike most 3D printers, this printing giant is fed with cement rather than plastic, making it especially well-suited for home construction. The best part is the houses are super cheap to make and they’re made...

Currently rising layer by layer in Amsterdam is the world's first house to be built by 3D printing technology. Dutch architectural firm Dus Architects commissioned the 20-foot tall 3D printer given the name, "Kamermaker," or room builder. The project to build the 3D house is simply called the "3D Print Canal House." Dus had Kamermaker built when it decided upsize the scale-model rooms it was already 3D-printing and turn them into the real thing. What Kamermaker does is to build a series of rooms that can be snapped together to form an entire house, Lego-brick style. So far, the printer...

Washington, D.C. may have the highest number of certified green buildings in the country, but research by Environmental Policy Alliance suggests it might not be doing much good.The free-market group analyzed the first round of energy usage data released by city officials Friday and found that large, privately-owned buildings that received the green energy certification Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) actually use more energy than buildings that didn’t receive this green stamp of approval.LEED is the brainchild of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private environmental group.

Building a 2,500-square-foot house in less than 20 hours? It sounds like a tall tale, but a professor at the University of Southern California says it is absolutely possible. He would toss out traditional building practices and replace them with a single 3D printer. It's called contour crafting, creator Behrokh Khoshnevis, the director of the manufacturing engineering graduate program USC, tells CBS News. "Construction the way its done today is very wasteful," he explained in a presentation at TEDxOjai. "Our solution benefits from advanced technology...it is essentially a way of streamlining the process of construction by benefiting from the experience...

Why Build With Straw Bales? Straw bale construction lends itself well to an owner builder project. Some of the applications well suited for straw bale include: a cottage, office, garage, studio, and an art barn. You don’t have to limit yourself to these smaller projects. Thousands of people have successfully built their own straw bale house. As a world leader in straw bale education we want to help you every step of the way. I’ve created a great introductory video on why to build with straw bales. You can watch that by clicking the play button below. Please read on...

The University of Southern California is testing a giant 3D printer that could be used to build a whole house in under 24 hours. Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis has designed the giant robot that replaces construction workers with a nozzle on a gantry, this squirts out concrete and can quickly build a home according to a computer pattern. It is “basically scaling up 3D printing to the scale of building,” says Khoshnevis. The technology, known as Contour Crafting, could revolutionise the construction industry. The affordable home? Contour Crafting could slash the cost of home-owning, making it possible for millions of displaced...

Architects in Zurich have erected an impossibly ornate room entirely from 3D-printed blocks. The designers say it's the first time anyone has used a 3D printer to design a work of architectural art from sandstone and could suggest a new way of thinking about building construction. "We aim to create an architecture that defies classification and reductionism," said the architects on the project's website. We'll attempt to classify and reduce it anyway: It basically looks like Antoni Gaudí crammed all the flourishes of La Sagrada Familia into a 172-square-feet room. Designed by "customized algorithms," the architects say the work (called...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu plans to announce extended Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria next week, Channel 2 News reported on Wednesday. The announcement is expected to come parallel to the release of another 26 terrorists as a “gesture” to the Palestinian Authority (PA). With the planned announcement, Netanyahu has essentially rejected a request by the United States, which had asked him to hold off on new construction announcements so as not to hurt the ongoing peace talks with the PA. Previous announcements on construction raised the ire of the PA, which demanded that Israel cancel any tenders it has...

Building on the Moon, 4D printing, self-repairing bridges, movement monitoring quadrocopters, 3D printed concrete houses and generating electricity from unwanted noise may all sound like science fiction. But at computing giant Autodesk’s annual convention in Las Vegas last week, it all began to look a little realistic. There was a growing movement throughout the conference that urged engineers to rethink their traditional methods, to look outside their organisations for innovative ideas and to place themselves on a higher plane of thinking to allow the computers to do the repetitive leg work. But there was another faction present that wanted to...