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After six years of design, development and testing in Amarillo, the Bell V-280 Valor is now in residence at the company’s flight research center in Arlington. The aircraft, designed primarily to carry troops into combat, is Bell’s entrant to replace the more than two thousand Blackhawk helicopters now in service with the U.S. Army. Bell, headquartered in Fort Worth, is competing against a Sikorsky/Boeing design in the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration. The two designs are radically different. The Valor is a tiltrotor, similar to the V-22 Osprey, which has been in service with the Marines for more than a decade....

Although Kristen Bell absolutely loves reading to her kids before bed, she admits she's sometimes skeptical about the "lessons" her girls — 3-year-old Delta and 5-year-old Lincoln — are learning from Disney princesses. "[Story time is] truly my favorite part of the day," Kristen told Parents. "I glance away from the book and see their brains working while we're all cuddled up like meerkats." The 38-year-old actress says that despite playing Anna in Frozen, she has reservations about some of the messages in the older princess stories. This is a modal window.The media could not be loaded, either because the...

The Intercept’s parent company, First Look Media, has taken steps to provide independent support for the legal defense of Reality Winner, the NSA contract employee who was recently arrested in the first instance of the Trump administration using the 100-year-old Espionage Act to prosecute an alleged journalistic source. Winner, who has pleaded not guilty, is accused of having anonymously mailed a document to The Intercept relating to a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The NSA report, which was the basis of a story published by The Intercept on June 5, describes efforts by Russian military...

<p>It’s hard to put into words just how appalling it is that the New York Board of Parole has ordered a domestic terrorist and serial cop-killer turned loose.</p> <p>It’s a decision so indefensible that a former parole board chairman — now an advocate for inmates — says he was shocked.</p>

A small town in southwestern Germany has voted to keep a controversial church bell dedicated to former Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler. The bell, which is inscribed with a Nazi swastika and words that state “Everything for the Fatherland – Adolf Hitler,” serves as a memorial in a Protestant church in Herxheim am Berg. According to the DPA news agency, the council in the small town voted 10-3 on Monday to preserve the bell, which were widespread during the Nazi era but mostly removed after the war.

A new documentary called “The Heretic,” which centers on false teacher Rob Bell, is set to be released on March 1, and features a number of statements that are already raising concern, such as, “The Bible has caused so much damage” and “Jesus would be absolutely mortified that someone started a religion in His name.” Bell explained in a Facebook post on Feb. 1 that he had been approached by filmmaker Andrew Morgan about creating a film surrounding his work and controversial views, which many decry as being apostate and heretical. “A few years ago, the filmmaker Andrew Morgan approached...

2-min YouTube video showing V-280 Valor well out of hover. Nacelles are not yet fully rotated forward, as pictured above, but clip shows project coming along nicely. Nacelles feature rotational gear overlaid with video MOSAIC, apparently this feature is still technically sensitive; Osprey nacelles rotate as an integrated unit, Valor nacelles are bisected into fixed and rotational subcomponents.

This is the last two chapters of the Bell Curve. I have read them several times over the years and consider them the two most prescient and gently thoughtful chapters on policymaking ever. I am delighted to share them with you. Remember these chapters were written in 1994, almost a quarter of a century ago. They discuss the two different options afforded to our society, in dealing with intelligence, social connections, and poverty; one being harsh and totalitarian, and the other being inclusive in the best of ways, and highly textured. I highly recommend reading these chapters. I am delighted...

Nearly 61 years to the day since its first flight, the legendary UH-1 is still being exported to militaries abroad. Of course the newest variant of the UH-1, the UH-1Y "Venom," is very much a different helicopter than its grandfather, having far more in common with the more modern but still dated Twin Huey Super Cobra. Nonetheless, with the news that the US Government approved the sale of UH-1Ys to the Czech Republic, it's safe to say that Hueys are still in demand in an age when the field of light to medium militarized utility helicopters is crowded to say...

The U.S. Marine Corps is progressing with a new project to arm its MV-22 Osprey aircraft with new weapons such as laser-guided 2.75in rockets, missiles and heavy guns - a move which would expand the tiltrotor's mission set beyond supply, weapons and forces transport to include a wider range of offensive and defensive combat missions, Corps officials said. "Currently, NSWC (Naval Surface Warfare Center) Dahlgren explored the use of forward firing rockets, missiles, fixed guns, a chin mounted gun, and also looked at the use of a 30MM gun along with gravity drop rockets and guided bombs deployed from the...

I am a big fan of late-nite radio. About 50/50 between Art Bell (who I prefer, but whose show is shorter) and George Noory whose show on KFI is a whole-night background, which is pretty good. I was listening to Art Bell, then switched over to Noory when it was over. Noory is now interviewing a lady who is talking about numerology. Glynis McCants does predictions sometimes based again on numerology. What Noory did was to ask Glynis to do predictions on the presidential candidates. Then Noory did something I didn't expect, he asked her about himself as a presidential...

DENTON - Many people will go about their lives on Labor Day unaware that it’s the golden anniversary of the first flight of an aircraft that played a huge role in the Vietnam War. “The Cobra saved hundreds if not thousands of lives in Vietnam by flying as an escort to Hueys,” said Mike Folse, 81, of Denton. Folse, a Bell Helicopter engineer from 1954 to 1971, said he designed the Bell AH-1 Cobra in an act of desperation. After Bell lost a contract to Lockheed for production of an attack helicopter, Folse said he started working on a conceptual...

LAHORE - US Department of Defence (DoD) announced on Wednesday night that it has awarded Bell Helicopter a $581 million contract that includes the delivery of AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters to Pakistan. Although Pakistan had requested the sale of 15 AH-1Z helicopters in April, it is not clear how many of the 15 helicopters have been signed for at this stage. The notification by the US DoD stated that 10% ($57. 9 million) of the overall contract value covered the sale to the government of Pakistan. This suggests that this is an initial deal for the first two helicopters only,...

Art Bell and Keith Rowland have made it official: There will be July fireworks in 2015 .. the talk show legend is going to go his own way.. A podcasting style as opposed to the terrestrial or even satellite radio he did previously. This time he is greeting the 21st century with open arms, working out private deals to play music, hoping that fans sign up in big numbers to help his return, and beaming himself to every smart phone that wants him. The show will be called MIDNIGHT IN THE DESERT.

It seems that Rob Bell and Oprah Winfrey are pretty good friends these days. Bell has appeared on Oprah’s show numerous times, and just recently appeared, along with his wife Kristen, on her “Super Soul Sunday” episode over Valentine’s Day weekend. Their appearance was designed to promote their new book, The ZimZum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage (HarperOne: 2014). Now, I have to confess that I have no idea what the main title means. But, the subtitle is pretty bold. Given that marriage dates back to the very creation of mankind in Genesis, do we really need...

FIFTY years ago this month, the Irish physicist John Stewart Bell submitted a short, quirky article to a fly-by-night journal titled Physics, Physique, Fizika. He had been too shy to ask his American hosts, whom he was visiting during a sabbatical, to cover the steep page charges at a mainstream journal, the Physical Review. Though the journal he selected folded a few years later, his paper became a blockbuster. Today it is among the most frequently cited physics articles of all time. Bell’s paper made important claims about quantum entanglement, one of those captivating features of quantum theory that depart...

Within the growing body of work in the field of Comically Erroneous Political Comparisons, Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell just distinguished himself as a rising star. Here’s a Sept. 1st cartoon by Bell, an artist who clearly doesn’t want his creative expression to be fenced in by stubborn political and geographic realities.We’ll take a wild stab, and work under the assumption that Bell’s cartoon is inspired by the recent row concerning Israel’s announcement that it’s taking control of 1000 acres of land near Gvaot in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank.Now, here’s a size comparison between Israel and Russia.  This of course doesn’t...

Jeff Bell was a reform conservative before it was cool. He’s spent his career arguing with a risk-averse Republican establishment. He pushed Ronald Reagan to embrace the supply-side doctrine of tax cuts before deficit reduction. He spent the 1990s warning the GOP that its tax policy favored investment capital over human capital, corporate interests over working families. He designed a family-friendly flat tax that reduced payroll taxes, increased the child tax credit, taxed capital gains and regular income at the same rate, and ended business expensing. Payroll tax relief and a generous child tax credit are elements of today’s reform...

IRWINDALE>> Sriracha maker David Tran was succinct when it came to his requirements for any place where he might expand his popular hot sauce business. “(We) must have chilies,” Tran said at a news conference where he announced he was considering an expansion to the Lone Star State. Last week, a delegation of Texas politicians, who have actively courted Tran via social media and open letters, toured the Azusa Canyon Road factory. Texas is known as a pepper-growing region, however, Craig Underwood, who grows all of the jalapeños that are crushed into the iconic roster sauce, said it would take...