Senate hearing postponed after Petraeus faints

By Mike Mount and Adam Levine, CNN

Washington (CNN) -- The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was escorted from a congressional hearing room after fainting during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, his spokesman said.

Gen. David Petraeus "is feeling much better," spokesman Col. Eric Gunhus said. "It appeared that he fainted."

A doctor checked Petraeus out and he returned to the hearing room to continue, but committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin "overruled him," Gunhus said. "Looks like we will continue tomorrow. He will be OK."

Petraeus returned amid applause to the hearing room. On his way out of the building, Petraeus told CNN's Dana Bash, "I'm doing OK. I just got a little dehydrated. I ate a couple of bananas and drank some water. I didn't eat breakfast this morning."

Petraeus is the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the conduct of the U.S. wars in the Middle East and central Asia.

Before he was escorted out, key senators questioned the progress and planning for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

Opening the hearing, Levin, D-Michigan, questioned the ratio of U.S. and NATO troops to Afghan troops, urging for a faster ramping up of Afghan security forces.

"Progress towards the goal of Afghans taking the lead in operations has been unsatisfactory. Today operations in Afghanistan are excessively dependent on coalition forces," Levin said.

Levin said in the coming campaign in Kandahar, there is a plan to have one Afghan service member for every two international troops. He called instead for a one-to-one ratio, with Afghan forces in the lead.

His Republican counterpart, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said in his opening remarks that the key trends were going in a "bad direction, perhaps even signaling a mounting crisis."

"Hoping for success on the arbitrary timeline set by the administration is simply unrealistic," McCain said, calling for the president to say the U.S. will stay in Afghanistan until there is success.

Prepared remarks from Petraeus said progress is being made even as the security violence has gotten more intense.

The surge of U.S. troops into Afghanistan is ahead of schedule, but the situation on the ground will get more difficult before it gets better, he warned in the prepared remarks. "I noted several months ago ... the going was likely to get harder before it got easier. That has already been the case, as we've seen recently."

All 30,000 additional U.S. troops ordered by President Barack Obama last year will be in place in Afghanistan by the end of August, according to Petraeus. Troops had originally been scheduled to be in place by September.

In the prepared remarks, he told the congressional panel Tuesday that increasing the size and capability of the struggling Afghan National Army and police forces are back on track, but there is more work to be done.

Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy also argued that progress has been made.

"We are regaining the initiative and the insurgency is beginning to lose momentum," she said in her opening statement, but noted outcome is "far from determined."

New builders revive stalled neighborhoods Subdivision work restarts, but size and price don't match homes already built

By Michelle E. Shaw

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When Stephen Bradshaw and his wife bought their Forsyth County home in April 2009, their only neighbors in the Estates at Old Atlanta subdivision were seven unsold homes and 64 vacant lots.

That didn’t bother Bradshaw. He loved his house, a spec home that sat unsold for more than a year before he came along.

“I got an almost $600,000 house in the mid $400s,” he said. “Besides, I figured they’d wait until the market turned around to finish building it out, and I was fine with that.”

That’s not quite what happened.

With the new home market showing faint signs of a rebound, at least in pockets such as Forsyth, builders are taking advantage of lower lot prices to resume work in stalled developments. But they’re not necessarily the same builders that started the work, and the homes they’re building may not be in the same size or price range.

At the Estates at Old Atlanta, for instance, Michigan-based Pulte Homes inherited building rights in a buyout and this year started putting up homes of no more than 3,200 square feet, priced at $270,000 to $330,000. The eight original homes had an average of 3,500 square feet and sold for $335,000 to $460,000.

“When we saw the starting price, that was a jaw dropper,” said Zerly Kemalov, who followed the Bradshaws into the neighborhood in May 2009. “I’d hoped the homes that were eventually built would be more comparable to ours.”

The story of the Estates at Old Atlanta reflects another twist in the fallout from the housing bust.

During the years of ever-rising home prices, few people thought twice when new lots were cleared or foundations poured down the street. The new homes were almost certain to be priced higher than those already there.

Now the equation is flipped in some cases. As the new home market comes back, builders’ offerings -- and prices -- are generally more modest. That means people who bought the first homes in subdivisions started at the height of the market may see less expensive homes going up around them.

Forsyth and North Fulton have seen much of the new activity. More than a half dozen builders are putting up homes as quickly as they can -- and selling them. Builders are acquiring lots by the dozen, some by purchase and others by partnership.

Atlanta-based Beazer Homes is partnering with a lender to finish six subdivisions across metro Atlanta, including one in Johns Creek. The company has built and closed two dozen homes in the Gates at Johns Creek since November, said Kevin Clark, a division president.

The subdivision was originally developed by McCar Homes in 2006, according to SmartNumbers, a Marietta-based real estate data company. Lots sold at an average price of $112,034 per lot and McCar’s average sale price was $394,776, SmartNumbers data shows. In 2008 the land was foreclosed and in mid-2009, United Community Bank sold 41 lots to D.R. Horton at an average price of $50,332. Texas-based Horton built several homes, with prices that started about $220,000.

Beazer’s homes are priced from $274,990 to $300,990, Clark said, even though some of its homes are larger than existing ones.

Other builders also are keen to capitalize on lowered prices for cleared lots, which enable them to avoid clearing costs. Often, streets and sewer lines are already in place.

“This is what we’re doing in many of our markets,” said Alicia MacPhee, Georgia division president for Pulte Group, whose brands include Pulte Homes, Del Webb and Centex. “Looking for land that is already developed.”

Pulte’s buyout of Centex Homes last year gave it the option to buy lots in the Estates at Old Atlanta. The company has built and closed nearly a dozen homes since mid-March.

SmartNumbers data and public records show Pulte has bought some 20 lots for about $1.3 million, or about $65,000 per lot. In 2007, 21 of the same sized lots sold for an average of $137,000 each, according to SmartNumbers.

Construction started in Estates at Old Atlanta in 2008. The first eight homes completed sat empty with pricetags of around $500,000.

After the Bradshaws and seven other families moved in -- paying well under the original asking prices -- the subdivision sat untouched for nearly nine more months before Pulte arrived.

MacPhee, the Pulte Georgia division president, said the company tries to compliment existing homes in such situations.

“We couldn’t build exactly what was there because it wasn’t our set of (building) plans,” she said. “But you do try to match what is already there as much as you can, but you can’t lose sight of the big picture, the consumer.”

The new pricing prompted Ramesh Vaithyam and his family to buy a Pulte home in the subdivision last month.

“It was a very good price for exactly what we wanted,” he said. “We got to pick our lot, our design and we wanted to be in this school district.”

Jim Johnson, one of the “original eight,” lives a couple of doors down from Vaithyam. He said he knew the risks of buying a home in an unfinished neighborhood, but he agrees with Bradshaw that the deal he got in 2009 was worth it.

“Is what they’re building (now) the worst that could have happened to us? No, certainly not” he said. “They could have put up townhouses . . . But they had to build something they could sell, and I guess this is it.”

The tale of Estates at Old Atlanta

November 2007: First 23 lots purchased by Caliber Craft at Old Atlanta, LLC

2008: Eight homes built, with initial asking prices of about $500,000

March 2009 : Three completed homes and several lots deeded to Buckhead Community Bank

April 2009: First of the eight homes sold, at prices of $335,000 to $460,000

August 2009: Pulte Homes gains building rights through buyout of Centex Homes

Early 2010: Pulte begins building, at prices of $270,000 to $330,000

Source: ajc.com

Why Afghanistan's Lithium Discovery Excites Silicon Valley

by Charles Cooper
cbsnews.com

After all that it's suffered through since the late 1970s, Afghanistan could use a break. That's why this surprisingly hopeful discovery of vast mineral deposits could be one of the most important events in that country's history. Among the potential riches - and the one likely to excite the technology industry's interest - lithium.

The New York Times quotes a Pentagon memo suggesting Afghanistan could one day become "the Saudi Arabia of lithium."

"There is stunning potential here," the newspaper quoted Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command as saying. "There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant."

Hyperbole aside, there's a reason for that kind of optimism: In a world where smartphones and mobile computing devices increasingly are the norm, lithium is an indispensable battery technology. Future technology obviously may shift, but right now batteries based on lithium technology are the most popular rechargeable batteries around.

Fast Company has a good primer out on the topic today. An excerpt:

"Lithium, properly discovered in 1817, is a an alkali metal in the same family as sodium and it's actually a soft metal under normal conditions--you can cut it with a knife. It's also the least dense solid element and the lightest metal, meaning it can actually float on water, but it's incredibly reactive and flammable in air and water so it has to be stored beneath a sticky oil in laboratory environments. Lithium has multiple uses in the modern world, including as a mood-stabilizing drug, but its first serious industrial use was during the second World War as part of high-temperature greases that were perfect for use in aircraft engines. The U.S. was the world leader in lithium production from this era until the 1980s when vast South American deposits began to dominate"

After the PR rush passes, what about the reality? Writing in Foreign Policy Blake Hounshell is less impressed, arguing that there's "less to this scoop than meets the eye." (Among other things, he argues out that the data has been available online for quite some time.)

Considering Afghanistan's fraught political history how this discovery plays out on the country's domestic scene truly becomes the trillion dollar question. As the Times piece correctly notes, the discovery doesn't necessarily pave the way to peace and could actually lead to intensified fighting with the Taliban in the struggle to control Afghanistan's newfound mineral wealth. (By comparison, check out this superb New Yorker article on lithium and Bolivia.) And then there's the country's culture of corruption which "could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources."

But the glass half-full scenario is also just as compelling. With the tech industry developing devices that are increasingly mobile and increasingly smaller, the demand for lithium will only continue to grow.

Oz Griebel Meets With Avon Dry Cleaner; Responding To Tom Foley's Remarks About Being CEO Of A Dry Cleaner

By Christopher Keating
blogs.courant.com

Longtime business executive Oz Griebel is fighting back over remarks made by Republican gubernatorial front runner Tom Foley about his business experience.

In an interview with The Hartford Courant, Foley questioned the experience of three candidates for governor who have touted their financial backgrounds - Griebel, Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele of North Stamford, and Greenwich cable television entrepreneur Ned Lamont.

Stating that Griebel has overseen three or four fulltime employees in recent years as CEO of the MetroHartford Alliance, Foley said that accomplishment is similar to being the CEO of a dry cleaning business.

"Tom's remarks comparing my management experience to running a dry cleaning business are both elitist and insulting to the hard-working operators of the 1,279 dry cleaning businesses across Connecticut,'' Griebel said in a statement. "Small business owners, including dry cleaners, are key economic drivers for both employment and revenue.''

He added, "To lead Connecticut out of our fiscal crisis, our state needs a proven leader who is in touch with key issues facing every day people, including dry cleaners. I believe I am uniquely qualified over my Republican and Democrat opponents to do just that.''

Griebel headed out to Avon to meet with the local dry cleaner, Tom Ma, and released a web video that lasts about 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Ma, a friend of Griebel's, is supporting his candidacy.

In his interview with The Courant, Foley noted that he once owned businesses that employed a combined total of 6,000 employees. Today, he owns one company - an aviation services business. He said that Fedele and Lamont both run operations, by comparison, that are "pretty small businesses.''

Fedele says he has about 100 employees, while Lamont says he has about 40 employees at the moment - a number that has shifted through the years and does not include the hundreds of contractors who have been hired over the past 25 years to build the cable television systems on college campuses that Lamont's company oversees. For example, Lamont said he did not bring large numbers of Connecticut employees out to Berkeley, California when he was working on wiring the campus there. Instead, local contractors were hired.

Griebel's web ad is entitled, "Taking Ambassador Foley to the cleaners.''

Paul Gascoigne in hospital after car crash in Newcastle

Ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne is in a "serious but not life-threatening" condition in hospital after a car crash in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The incident, involving a Vauxhall Astra, happened on Sunday at 2145 BST at Sandhill, on the city's Quayside.

The car, in which Gascoigne was a passenger, is thought to have left the road and hit a nearby signpost.

A 36-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of drink-driving.

A spokesperson for Newcastle General Hospital, where the former footballer and another man are being treated, described the condition of the pair as "serious but not life-threatening".

1990 World Cup

The female driver of the car was also taken to the hospital but has since been discharged.

North East Ambulance Service confirmed that a passer-by had called them to the incident on Sunday evening.

Four ambulances were sent to assist the driver and three passengers.

The scene where the dark blue Astra crashed is next to Newcastle's Guildhall and close to the Tyne Bridge.

It was cordoned off by police on Monday.

A former player with Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio, Glasgow Rangers and Middlesbrough, Gascoigne was a star of England's 1990 World Cup team in Italy.

He tried his hand at management at Kettering Town in 2005, but was sacked after 39 days.

The 43-year-old, of Jesmond Park, Newcastle, has faced a long battle with alcohol and drugs.

Source: BBC News