May 19
ST. LOUIS, April 23 (UPI) — The first flight for the F-15K41 Slam Eagle left from a testing ground at the Lambert St. Louis International Airport, aerospace company Boeing announced.
Boeing said the F-15K41 flew for about an hour during a test flight over St. Louis. The tested vehicle is the first in a series of 21 F-15Ks that Boeing is producing for the South Korean air force.
The F-15K is a variant of the F-15E Strike Eagle deployed with U.S., Israeli, South Korean and Saudi air force units.
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May 19
WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) — A Government Accountability Office report on debt settlement firms said the industry was deceiving U.S. consumers about reducing their debts.
At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, the GAO said companies were promising pie-in-the-sky results, illegally encouraging borrowers to stop making debt payments, and advertising their firms as if they were connected to federal agencies, The Washington Post reported Friday.
Some companies tell consumers they have a success rate as high as 100 percent in helping people reduce their debt load.
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May 19
WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) — The U.S. Commerce Department said new orders for durable goods dropped 1.3 percent in March compared to February after three months of increases.
In March, durable good orders, items intended to last at least three years, fell by $2.2 billion to $176.7 billion, the Commerce Department said Friday.
Excluding the volatile category of transportation, however, new orders rose 2.8 percent, which will make the report encouraging to investors. Winnowing out defense spending, new orders fell 1.2 percent.
Transportation led the declines with a 12.9 percent drop to $40.2 billion.
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May 19
DALLAS, April 23 (UPI) — The U.S. Army awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to provide support and training for a high-altitude defense weapon system, the company said.
Lockheed said it was awarded an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract with an initial value of $25.7 million to support fielding of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense weapon system.
THAAD is part of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s ballistic missile defense system. It is the only missile defense system that can intercept targets inside and outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Lockheed, under the Army contract, will support THAAD user testing, part of the processing needed to deliver the missile system to the military.
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May 19
WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) — Sales of new single-family homes jumped sharply in March, rising 26.9 percent compared with February, the U.S. Commerce Department said Friday.
The annual rate of home sales reached 411,000, up from February’s revised figure of 324,000. The number of new homes sold in March rose 23.8 percent higher than March 2009.
With a federal home-buyer’s tax credit scheduled to end April 30, Commerce said the median sales price for new homes in March was $214,000, down from $220,500 in February.
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