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NAVAIR PATUXENT RIVER, Md., Jan. 9, 2006 – A new heavy lift helicopter is now officially in the pipeline for the Marine Corps following a Dec. 22, 2005 decision by the Honorable. Kenneth R. Krieg, under secretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to authorize the Heavy Lift Replacement program here to begin a $4.4 billion development program for the aircraft. A "Cost Plus Award Fee" contract for the System Development and Demonstration phase, estimated to be approximately $2.9 billion, is expected to be signed with Sikorsky in March 2006. An Initial System Development and Demonstration contract worth $8.8...

Jan. 3, 2006 -- Currently 29% of U.S. manufacturing companies are outsourcing part of their new product development process, with 41% reporting that they are evaluating outsourcing options within the next 12-24 months. According to a recent survey by Boston, Ma.-based AMR Research Outlook authored by Lance Travis and David O'Brien, these outsourced services include not only the low-value activities that many would expect, but also encompass the complete spectrum of product engineering. Software-related activities are growing the fastest, but mechanical design and engineering analysis are also showing strong growth. One reason for the growth of these outsourcing activities is...

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Russian Economy Minister German Gref said a final agreement on investment zones next year will help wean Russia, the world's largest energy producer, from its dependence on oil and gas for economic growth. President Vladimir Putin's government is working on the last details of a plan to create by 2007 special economic zones that will give companies lower tax bills and other incentives and encourage growth in sectors not related to energy, including the automotive, computer and appliance industries. Gref, 41, said disputes since 2000 have waned about how Russia can reduce the influence of oil...

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION, Canada — Growing up with smokestacks on the horizon, Ada Lockridge never thought much about the pollution that came out of them. She never worried about the oil slicks in Talfourd Creek, the acrid odors that wafted in on the shifting winds or even the air-raid siren behind her house whose shrill wail meant "go inside and shut the windows." Now Lockridge worries all the time. A budding environmental activist, she recently made a simple but shocking discovery: There are two girls born in her small community for every boy. A sex ratio so out of whack,...

OLIVEHURST – Warm rains falling atop a heavy snowpack eight years ago swelled rivers tumbling out of the northern Sierra Nevada, turning pastureland north of Sacramento into a massive accidental lake. The flooding inundated hundreds of homes and left three dead. If ever there were a place housing developers would want to avoid, this would seem to be it. But memories of the New Year's flood in 1997 are short. In recent years, thousands of new houses have mushroomed on the land that was under water then, part of a wave of suburban development in California's vast Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley....

NASA and the Business of Space STATUS REPORT Date Released: Friday, November 18, 2005 Source: NASA HQ American Astronautical Society 52nd Annual Conference Michael D. Griffin NASA Administrator 15 November 2005 When President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration in January 2004, he made many specific points, including one which has been little noted, but which we here all believe; that the pursuit of the Vision will enhance America's economic, scientific and security interests. He also made it clear that the first step in the plan was to use the Space Shuttle to complete the assembly of the International...

According to economic historian Angus Maddison, in 1500, China and India together accounted for 49.3 percent of world's gross domestic product. Each country took up about a quarter of world's output. But ever since then, European countries have gained world power, and the two countries began their long relative decline. For much of the 19th century, they were dominated by Western powers. By 1870, their combined GDP fell to 29.2% of world's total output. In the 20th century, their decline continued, and by 1973, China and India took up only 7.7 percent of global output. China accounted for 4.6 percent...

Calif. City Could Become U.S. Solar Leader By TERENCE CHEA, Associated Press Writer Mon Nov 7, 2005 3:54 AM ET LIVERMORE, Calif. - Here in the sunny suburbs east of San Francisco, voters get a chance to make their community a national leader in solar power at a time of soaring energy prices and global warming. A measure on Livermore's ballot Tuesday would grant a housing developer the right to build what it claims will be the country's largest completely solar community, with 2,450 new homes equipped to harvest the sun's energy. "This is an incredible opportunity to create a...

There are a lot of candidates for biggest misuse of tax-increment financing. Enter a new contender: the pending approval of a TIF to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter and a Lowe's in Belleville. It's bad enough that the world's largest retailer argues that it needs a tax break or it won't build. It's worse when a city, now dependent on Wal-Mart's sales taxes, feels that it can't turn down the request.

For years, environmentalists have petitioned government officials about preserving open space and designing eco-friendly neighborhoods, but it turns out that cost-conscious developers should be the ones advocating change. New research reveals that building "conservation communities" can be 15 to 54 percent cheaper than traditional suburban developments, according to Wisconsin-based Applied Ecological Services (AES). The difference between traditional and conservational development is in the design principles. Typical subdivisions tend to have wider streets, turf lawns, gutters and storm sewers, but those cause less water to be absorbed into the ground and more runoff, which can erode soil and pollute local water...

AXcess News) Washington - Max Keiser is a new kind of terrorist. He uses the Internet and boycotts to manipulate stock prices. In that way he forces corporations to comply with his brand of radical environmentalism and Sustainable Development. He puts his hands around corporate throats and squeezes until they comply with his demands. Max Keiser and his ilk hate business and they hate free enterprise and are using these tactics to redistribute wealth and cause chaos in the market place. Keiser's operation is called "KarmaBanque." That new age-focused name alone should give readers an idea of the wacky worldview...

CALGARY (CP) - Former U.S. president Bill Clinton had a stern message for oil-rich Alberta about the effects of global warming when he ventured into the heart of Canada's energy industry Wednesday. Energy-producing nations shouldn't keep their "heads in the sand" and allow the world's climate to change to the point where it could have catastrophic results, Clinton told 5,000 people gathered for a motivational seminar. "In the long run, rich countries and emerging countries are going to have to be much more discriminating about what we use oil and coal for," Clinton said at the final stop in a...

Saying he questions a sovereign Indian tribe’s role in a local government process, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger late on Friday vetoed the bill that would have made the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians an official partner in managing Conaway Ranch, if Yolo County officials acquire it through eminent domain. The legislation, AB 1747 by Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, would have made the tribe a member alongside Yolo County officials and others of the joint powers authority created for Conaway Ranch. The tribe has offered to loan the county money for the acquisition. The county and tribe say the veto does not...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Twenty environmental groups sued the Bush administration over a decision to repeal Clinton-era regulations that blocked road construction, logging and industrial development on more than 90,000 square miles of the nation's last untouched forests. In the lawsuit filed Thursday, the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, Greenpeace and other groups challenged the U.S. Forest Service decision earlier this year to reverse the 2001 "roadless rule" that protected 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest. "These are the last wild areas of North America, and there is overwhelming public support for their protection from development," said Kristen Boyles,...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday fired all six members of the state Reclamation Board, an agency that oversees flood control along California's two biggest rivers and had recently become more aggressive about slowing development on flood plains. The Republican governor replaced the members — who serve indefinite terms at the governor's pleasure — with seven of his own appointees, most with ties to agriculture and the engineering profession. One board seat had been vacant since spring. Five of the fired members had been appointed by Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, and one had first been appointed by Gov....

...[T]he Supreme Court agreed to hear campaign-finance and tax cases whose outcome could hinge on the candidate filling the court's second vacancy.... Campaign-finance cases have revealed a philosophical split on the court, with more conservative justices, such as Antonin Scalia, considering political expenditures the functional equivalent of speech, and thus beyond state restriction. More liberal justices, such as Stephen Breyer, have viewed such regulations as lawful means to fight political corruption and keep moneyed interests from drowning out other voices. One of the political cases challenges a provision of the McCain-Feingold law that prohibits corporations from direct expenditures on electioneering...

TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 1130 AM EDT TUE SEP 27 2005 FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO... A VIGOROUS TROPICAL WAVE CENTERED A COUPLE HUNDRED MILES SOUTHEAST OF JAMAICA IS PRODUCING CLOUDINESS AND THUNDERSTORMS OVER MUCH OF THE CENTRAL CARIBBEAN SEA. THIS SYSTEM HAS BECOME BETTER ORGANIZED TODAY... AND UPPER-LEVEL WINDS HAVE ALSO BECOME MORE FAVORABLE FOR A TROPICAL DEPRESSION TO DEVELOP DURING THE NEXT DAY OR SO. AN AIR FORCE RESERVE UNIT RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT IS SCHEDULED TO INVESTIGATE THE SYSTEM TOMORROW... IF NECESSARY. INTERESTS IN JAMAICA... THE CAYMAN ISLANDS... AND...

In the past four weeks we have seen two different governmental responses to disaster, one efficient, the other, frankly, disastrous. Providence has spared Houston and much of urban east Texas, but that city's response to Hurricane Rita--and the comparison with New Orleans--should give us pause in thinking not only about how we deal with the mess left behind by Katrina, but also the future of the Gulf Coast. In 2001, the director of Louisiana State University's hurricane center described New Orleans' establishment as "lulled to sleep" in the face of a predictable, looming disaster. In the months before Katrina, big...

BIMINI, Bahamas — The bulldozers moved slowly at first. Picking up speed, they pressed forward into a patch of dense mangrove trees that buckled and splintered like twigs. As the machines moved on, the pieces drifted out to sea. Sitting in a small motorboat a few hundred yards offshore on a mid-July afternoon, Samuel H. Gruber — a University of Miami professor who has devoted more than two decades to studying the lemon sharks that breed here — plunged into despondency. The mangroves being ripped up to build a new resort provide food and protection that the sharks can't get...

WEST BAY, Fla. - What is a striving Florida developer to do when most of its vast holdings are not beach chic but rural, remote and mosquitoey? The St. Joe Company, which owns 800,000 mostly inland acres here in the scrubby pine forests of the Panhandle, is invoking Thoreau. The company, Florida's largest private landowner, is pushing "new ruralism," a concept it hopes will entice city and suburban dwellers who are weary of civilization and long to own a tractor, a pickup truck, or at least a kayak and a few large dogs. At developments called RiverCamps, where homes in...