Word: fleeting
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...Just as quickly as the House added $330 million to bolster the luxury jet fleet it uses for global jaunts, its leaders have stripped the four aircraft from next year's defense-spending bill after public outrage began to rear its head. "If the Department of Defense does not want these aircraft, they will be eliminated from the bill," Representative John Murtha, chairman of a House panel on defense appropriations, said late Monday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose staff has scrapped with the Air Force over planes for congressional delegations, concurred with Murtha's decision...
...favored acquiring the new planes argued that they were needed replacements for aging aircraft, and would be less costly to fly. The current Gulfstream C-20 costs $6,100 an hour to operate, compared with $2,700 for the more modern Gulfstream C-37. The Air Force VIP fleet is usually reserved for work-related foreign travel, which is a double-edged sword for lawmakers. While some boast they avoid it to save taxpayers money, others argue it is needed to visit foreign leaders and conflict zones to get a firsthand look at the impact of U.S. foreign policy...
...House also had instructed the Air Force that two of the new planes be stationed at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside the capital. Andrews, of course, is home to Air Force One and the élite fleet of 16 additional executive jets flown by the Air Force's 89th Airlift Wing (there are dozens of other aircraft sometimes used to ferry lawmakers and other VIPs). Hard data on the 89th is tough to dig out and, obviously, both the military and Congress like it that way. The go-to source for public reports on government spending - the Government Accountability...
...cove, that suggests the task isn't exactly easy for them. Some would argue that dolphin-fishing is their cultural right and that foreigners should stay out of their business (i.e., the sale of dolphins for meat, at about $600 a head). The film counters with a fleet of scientists flown in (more money!) to unearth evidence that no one should be eating dolphin meat; samples were toxic with mercury. The filmmakers hope The Cove will spark a change in Japanese policy, but they'll need help from audiences willing to do more than applaud. (At Sundance, the film...
...flaming orange coloring of a bad dye job, the orangutan doesn't look like the most agile of primates. But in fact these great apes, native to the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia, climb and swing nimbly through the canopy more than 100 feet in the air, their fleet-footed acrobatics allowing them to make their home in the treetops and access remote food sources, like the fruit at the very ends of branches. (Read "Kalimantan's Camp Orangutan...