Free Republic

It appears that Page, Plant and Jones are planning a reunion with Bonham's son, Jason, on drums.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela launched a Zeppelin on Thursday to patrol Caracas, seeking to fight crime in one of Latin America's most dangerous cities but also raising fears that President Hugo Chavez could be turning into Big Brother. Around the hot-dog stalls of the run-down suburb where the airship took its first flight, most people felt the unmanned eye-in-the-sky could help counter routine hold-ups, shootings and carjackings. "It is a necessity," said street vendor Pedro Marin when asked about the 15-meter helium-filled blimp that had been looming silently over his stall beside a busy highway. The $465,000 Zeppelin, built by...

Thirty-seven years after Led Zeppelin's debut, their albums continue to sell in the millions, while their music inspires everyone from Aussie metalheads to Nashville punks The studded leather bracelets and Napoleon Dynamite merchandise at Hot Topic target customers between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two—kids who weren't born when Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980. Nonetheless, the all-time top-selling band T-shirt at the chain's 700-plus mall stores is Zep's Swan Song tee—the one bearing the image of a naked, winged Apollo. "It's not like with the CBGB or Ramones T-shirts, where it was a fashion trend," says Cindy Levitt, vice...

Hollywood star and aviation enthusiast John Travolta has bought himself an €8m Zeppelin airship for Christmas. Travolta, who is a qualified pilot, told wife Kerry Preston he "had to have" one of the eight-ton flying machines after spotting it in a festive catalogue. The airship will be the third plane 49-year-old star owns. He already has a Boeing 707 and a Gultstream executive jet at his Florida home, which is designed to look like an old-fashioned airport with runways, arrivals hall and a departure lounge.

Japanese Customer Takes First Delivery of New-Look Zeppelin Winfried Rothermel/Associated Press Jun 12, 2004 FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, Germany (AP) - Makers of the revived Zeppelin airship delivered their first helium-filled craft to a commercial user Saturday, a Japanese company that plans to use the 12-seat craft for sightseeing trips and advertising. The granddaughter of the original airship's inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was on hand as Japan's Nippon Airship Corporation took delivery of the 247-foot ship, destined for sightseeing and advertising flights in Japan and a starring role at the 2005 world's fair in the city of Aichi. The new craft designed...

BERLIN (AP) _ As the gleaming white-and-blue airship takes off from a freshly mown field at Berlin's Tempelhof airport, the notion of using the 150-year-old technology in defense of the United States seems as impossible as Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's dream of using his cumbersome creations as fighting machines. But with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. military has been forced to reassess threats, and two major defense contractors are pitching the zeppelin as a potential piece in the homeland security puzzle. Military planners envision unmanned airships as high-altitude radar platforms keeping watch for anything trying to penetrate U.S....