Free Republic

China's largest private property developer warned on Wednesday of default risks if its financial performance continues to deteriorate, and said it "felt deeply remorseful" for its record loss in the first half. Country Garden (2007.HK) posted a net loss between January and June of 48.9 billion yuan ($6.72 billion), versus a 6.7 billion yuan net loss in the second half of 2022 and a 612 million yuan net profit in the first half of 2022. The results come as Chinese authorities take steps to revive the troubled property market, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the economy. The sector's...

The Canadian-based company principally responsible for building the busted Obamacare website also bags $50 million a year managing the technology governing payments for over 25% of America's Section 8 low-income apartments and houses. According to a Newsweek investigation, CGI Federal, which stands for Conseiller en Gestion et Informatique, has a stock market value of $11.6 billion. "American taxpayers are among the main drivers of earnings at CGI," states the Newsweek report. CGI Federal Senior Vice President Toni Townes-Whitley was a Princeton University classmate of First Lady Michelle Obama and donated to President Barack Obama's reelection campaign and the Obama Victory...

Justo Gallego Martinez has worked on the building at Mejorada del Campo near Madrid since the early 1960s He had no architectural training and no construction experience and had never laid a brick before in his life The former Trappist monk vowed to build the cathedral after surviving a bout of tuberculosis With its giant spires and magnificent dome to rival that of St Peter's Basillica, Mejorada del Campo's impressive cathedral looks like it has been skilfully crafted by a team of architectural experts. It's impossible to believe that it has been single-handedly built by a former trappist monk...

September 10, 2007 Builder found Vikings washed up at pubJack Malvern Archaeologists believe they have found the only intact Viking boat in Britain beneath the patio of a Merseyside pub. The 10th-century vessel was discovered in the 1930s by builders excavating the basement of the Railway Inn on the Wirral peninsula, but they covered it up because they feared an archaeological dig would disrupt their work. The boat would have been forgotten had one of the builders not reported his discovery to his son, who passed the information on to academics at Nottingham University. Stephen Harding, of the university’s archaeology...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13, 2007 – A California-based home builder has donated a 10-passenger, wheelchair-accessible minibus to the Armed Forces YMCA and the Warrior Foundation to be used to transport wounded servicemembers around San Diego. Sandy Lehmkuhler, center, chairwoman of the Warrior Foundation, poses with servicemembers in front of a new wheelchair-accessible minibus in San Diego. Barratt American home builders donated the bus to the foundation and the Armed Services YMCA to help transport servicemembers recovering at Naval Medical Center San Diego around town. Courtesy photo  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “We are very pleased and proud to be...

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- A Southern California fence-building company, its founder and another executive have pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. They'll pay a combined penalty of $5 million. Prosecutors will ask for sentences of six months, but prison time is rare in such cases. The fine, however, is one of the biggest ever imposed in an immigration case. The company will pay most of it. Founder and president Mel Kay will forfeit $200,000. Manager Michael McLaughlin will pay $100,000. The two men admitted hiring at least ten illegal immigrants. The immigration service has said there were many more....

The Bay Bridge retrofit contractor's new spokesman is a political public-relations heavy hitter with a national reputation for digging up dirt on embattled clients' critics. Chris Lehane, 37, helped the Clinton White House spin the Whitewater investigation, spoke for Vice President Al Gore on the 2000 presidential campaign trail and advised former Gov. Gray Davis during the 2001 energy crisis and 2002 gubernatorial campaign. Now he's working for KFM Joint Venture, the contractor building the Bay Bridge's new eastern span. The Oakland Tribune has reported welders' accusations that many of the project's welds are defective and that unsafe working conditions...

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) - One of the nation's biggest home builders will pay $1.05 billion to buy a former Marine base in Orange County after winning a six-week online auction. Lennar Corp. will build 3,400 homes on the land, while a section of the base is also slated to become one of the largest urban parks in the nation. The Miami-based developer will pay $649.5 million for the base and an additional $400 million that the city of Irvine will use to create the planned "Great Park." The company estimated that it will pay $1.2 million per developable acre, which...

Saline County home builder is constructing a new home, with the profits designated for the local Boys and Girls Club. The Ken Young Co., its subcontractors and suppliers are building the home. Several weeks ago, Cindy Doramus, chief professional officer of the club, said she was surprised when she received the call from Young expressing that he wanted to build the house for the club. "He said, 'My subs, suppliers and I want to build a house on one of my lots and give you the profit.'" She said her "first reaction was that this must be some type of...

A robot for "printing" houses is to be trialled by the construction industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs. The precision automaton could revolutionise building sites. It can work round the clock, in darkness and without tea breaks. It needs only power and a constant feed of semi-liquid construction material. The key to the technology is a computer-guided nozzle that deposits a line of wet concrete, like toothpaste being squeezed onto a table. Two trowels attached to...

Homestead racked up thousands in travel 2-5-04 By Lex Alexander, Staff Writer News & Record Posted 7:30 a.m. GREENSBORO — More than a dozen cruises, with expenses topping $112,000, were paid for with credit cards belonging to nonprofit home builder Project Homestead between 1997 and 2001, city records show. The records, compiled during the city’s recent audit of Homestead and released this week, also document other non-cruise travel purchases for places such as St. Thomas and the Bahamas with corporate credit cards issued to senior employees of the nonprofit. Some of the travel paid for by Homestead involved people who...