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Hunting for the right plane ticket these days can be an ordeal, equal parts strategy and guesswork. For most of us, it’s more art than science.

Fortunately, we just got a lot more science to offset the art.

The good folks over at Expedia have just released a study on when you should buy your next plane ticket.

Using data from Airline Reporting Corporation, Expedia determined that “while it’s impossible to guarantee when travelers can find the lowest fares, buying at least two months in advance for domestic travel and six months in advance for international travel puts you in the best position to get a good deal.”

In some cases those “good deals” could translate into significant discounts.

According to the travel website, the average price of an international ticket is $1368. However, if you purchase your tickets anywhere between 150 and 225 days prior to the flight, prices are likely to be more than $300 below average. Very cool!

The sweet spot within that window is 171 days before travel. On that day, the average price of an international ticket is down to just $1004 — a savings of $364.

Granted, these savings require you to buy your ticket a ridiculous amount of time in advance. Six months later — by the time you travel — you may not even like your travel companions anymore. However, if you’re an

Article source: http://www.businessinsider.com/expedia-heres-when-you-should-buy-plane-tickets-2014-12

Twitter/Expliseat

Saving fuel is a key concern for airlines, and one of the main reasons United and other carriers have switched over to lighter seats on some aircraft.

Those seats, made by Germany’s Recaro, have the extra advantage of being thinner than conventional options, so rows can be closer together and more paying passengers can be packed onboard.

That’s a trend in the airline industry, as carriers try to make coach as profitable as possible.

Now, three young French guys have upped the ante with a seat that’s nearly three times lighter than Recaro’s.

Benjamin Saada, Jean-Charles Samuelian, and Vincent Tejedor created Expliseat in 2011 and have now started selling it. Made from titanium and composites, it weighs just 4 kg (8.8 lbs).

The Recaro seats used by United weigh 11 kg.

The difference is enough to cut fuel consumption to the tune of up to $400,000 per plane per year, the company says. If that’s right, putting these seats on all 300 of Ryanair’s 737-800 jets could save the budget airline about $120 million a year.

The seat, which consists of just 30 parts and is “pre-reclined” by 18 degrees, is designed for use in the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 family of aircraft. Those are the most popular planes for short- and medium-haul flights and represent a huge market potential.

Eariler this year, the European Aviation Safety Agency approved the seat for commercial use. At the same time, the startup signed its

Article source: http://www.businessinsider.com/titanium-airplane-seat-weighs-under-9-pounds-2014-12

As the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) is under fire for recent corruption in the defense industry, there are growing calls for the nation’s arms procurement agency to be made up of civilian specialists.

Currently, public officials account for the half of DAPA with the rest of them being military personnel. Given this, critics say the organization lacks specialty because the latter takes charge of all projects.

Defense watchers say that Turkey can become a role model for Korea’s arms procurement agency for its impressive performance in exports as well as specializing.

The output of the Turkish defense industry in 2013 was $5.08 billion, up 5.8 percent from the previous year, and its average annual growth rate from 2007 to 2013 reached 9 percent, according to the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET).

In addition, its amount of exports surpassed $1 billion in 2011 on its way to $1.57 billion, accounting for 31 percent of its defense industry’s total production. The gross output of Korea’s defense industry in 2013 was $11.4 billion, but its exports amounted to $1.38 billion, or 12.1 percent of production.

“The competitiveness of Turkey’s defense industry is attributed to the Under-secretariat for Defense Industries (SSM) that is made up of civilian experts,” said Ann Young-su, the head of the Aerospace and Defense Industry Team at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET).

Thirty three percent of the SSM’s workforce are engineers and 31 percent have a postgraduate degree or higher to develop specialization and raise transparency.

“It is the

Article source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2014/12/116_169847.html

Two people who pleaded guilty in an Upstate gambling case and will forfeit $20 million to the government, were investigated for a year before they were indicted.

And a 259-page affidavit filed by special agents with the U.S. Secret Service and Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit show just how elaborate that investigation was.

Although heavily redacted, the affidavit offers a window into the operation of a major sweepstakes gambling empire operating under several business names to provide gaming software and machines to cafes in South Carolina, Alabama and other states.

During the investigation, federal agents seized thousands of pages of documents, including “a multitude of spreadsheets and client lists” showing how the network operated in well over 600 internet cafes across the country.

According to the government agents:

Various groups collectively referred to in court filings as “Gateway entities,” along with multiple internet cafe owners and operators in South Carolina, and gambling parlor owners and operators in Alabama and other states, conducted or conspired to conduct an illegal gambling business.

The entities designed, sold, maintained and serviced software and machines used in illegal gambling operations. Often, the machines were set up in businesses that purported to be internet cafes but actually were illegal houses of gambling.

Machines also were found in larger casino-style locations. Typically, the entities received “a substantial portion” of the net revenue from the operation of

Article source: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/crime/2014/12/14/yearlong-investigation-led-gambling-indictment/20395241/