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Image: Bell B412Bell to build new commercial helicopter in Amarillo
Breaking with its recent past, Bell Helicopter plans to produce its next new commercial helicopter, code named Magellan, at its military aircraft plant in Amarillo.
The decision to build the new aircraft model in Amarillo, rather than at Bell’s commercial aircraft production facilities in Mirabel, Canada was [...]

BBC: Iran has begun enriching uranium at a heavily fortified underground site, the UN’s nuclear watchdog has confirmed.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said medium-level enrichment had begun at the Fordo plant, in northern Iran.
Iran has said it plans to carry out uranium enrichment there - but insists this is for purely peaceful purposes.
The West argues [...]

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian court has convicted an American man of working for the CIA and sentenced him to death, state radio reported Monday, in a case adding to the accelerating tension between the United States and Iran.
Iran charges that as a former U.S. Marine, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati received special training and served [...]

(CNN) — A Florida man, arrested Saturday for allegedly plotted to bomb night clubs and the sheriff’s headquarters in Tampa, Florida, faces a federal judge on a terror charge Monday afternoon, federal prosecutors said.
Sami Osmakac, a 25-year-old naturalized American born in Kosovo, planned a car bombing that would be followed by hostage-taking and the explosion [...]

(CNN) — U.S. sailors from a carrier strike group whose recent presence in the Persian Gulf drew the ire of Iranian military officials have rescued 13 of the Middle Eastern country’s sailors from a hijacked fishing boat, a military spokesman said Friday.
The destroyer USS Kidd came to the aid of the ship Thursday in the [...]

America’s classified X-37B spaceplane is probably spying on China, according to a report in Spaceflight magazine.
The unpiloted vehicle was launched into orbit by the US Air Force in March last year and has yet to return to Earth.
The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to discuss its mission but amateur space trackers have noted how its path [...]

Reuters:
By Peter Apps, Political Risk CorrespondentLONDON | Thu Jan 5, 2012 10:35am ESTBut they could also find themselves sparking a punishing — if perhaps short-lived — regional conflict from which they could emerge the primary losers.
In recent weeks, a growing number of senior Iranian military and civilian officials have warned that Tehran could use [...]

The US is to axe thousands of troops as part of a far-reaching defence review aimed at coping with huge budget cuts over the next decade, officials say.
The changes - to be unveiled on Thursday - are likely to end a decades-old policy of maintaining the strength to fight two wars at once.
President Barack Obama [...]

Iran’s parliament said Wednesday it was preparing a bill that would prohibit all foreign warships from entering the Persian Gulf unless they received permission from the Iranian navy.
The bill, disclosed by the the semiofficial Fars News Agency, surfaced a day after Iran’s armed forces commander warned a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier not to return to [...]