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With automakers patenting more parts to enhance dealers' service and repair revenues, the knockoff business is taking a big hit. The patenting of more run-of-the-mill auto part designs is roiling small body shops, many of which make their living by fixing cars with knockoffs of original equipment parts such as grilles, hoods, lights, mirrors, side panels and fenders. Such pieces are anywhere from 10% to 50% cheaper than the real McCoys, but increasingly, the law forbids their use. Automakers have long sought patents on certain extra-stylish ornamentation to prevent other automakers from cribbing the design for their vehicles. But the...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — The road to economic prosperity south of Baghdad is being paved by Soldiers of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga. With assistance from the 2nd BCT embedded provincial reconstruction team, local government councils and Iraqi contractors, the task of restoring roads and improving roads damaged by war is in full swing. “It’s all about … helping the agricultural market in our area,” said Capt. Brian Love, ePRT military liason. The area, comprised of Arab Jabour, Hawr Rajab, Al Buaytha and Adwaniyah, is mainly agriculturally-based. The improvements, which began in October,...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070922/METRO/109220035/1001 The Army is proposing to replace the Tomb of the Unknowns' 48-ton white marble monument because of non-structural cracks. A senator has introduced legislation that would prohibit the Army from replacing the 71-year-old marble sarcophagus marking the Tomb of the Unknowns before submitting to Congress a report on the feasibility of repairing the monument. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, Hawaii Democrat and chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, introduced the measure Thursday as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. "The senator wants to make sure before anything irrevocable is done, that we cross all our t"s and dot...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA decided Thursday that no repairs are needed for a deep gouge in Endeavour's belly and the space shuttle is safe to fly home. Mission Control notified the seven shuttle astronauts of the decision right before they went to sleep, putting an end to a week of engineering analyses and anxious uncertainty — both in orbit and on Earth. "Please pass along our thanks for all the hard work," radioed Endeavour's commander, Scott Kelly. Mission Control replied, "It's great we finally have a decision and we can press forward." The astronauts had spent much of the...

LONDON - Big Ben's bongs fell silent Saturday as workers rappelled down Parliament's iconic clock tower, beginning a month of maintenance work on the clock and its world-famous bell. Time briefly stood still as the clock's hands were frozen shortly after 8 a.m. They then were wound to 12 o'clock as a team of specialist "industrial rope-access technicians" descended to clean the clock's four latticework faces, part of maintenance ahead of its 150th anniversary in 2009. Although the clock soon will be ticking again, the famed bell that sounds the hour at Britain's Houses of Parliament will be silent for...

Even as the cost of addressing disrepair in the state parks tops $1 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to take back money that had been earmarked for the backlog. The list of deferred maintenance items in the 278 state parks, including several in the Bay Area, now includes nearly 8,000 leaky roofs, broken water lines, faulty sewer systems, brush fire hazards and other problems. A full 10 percent of the backlog — $123 million worth — is at Angel Island State Park in San Francisco Bay, where buildings from a military installation dating to the Civil War and a later...

BP announced Monday it will replace miles of key pipelines across the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field, and executives admitted the company's program to find and prevent corrosion-caused leaks is seriously flawed. The announcements came a day after BP decided to shut down the nation's largest oil field, news that drove up crude oil and gasoline prices across the country and raised financial, supply and labor worries in Alaska. BP executives said the oil outage could last weeks or even months. One member of Congress, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., blasted BP for allowing sludge and corrosion to mount inside pipelines,...

President Bush on Thursday signed a $94.5 billion emergency spending bill to fund hurricane relief and the Iraq war that includes $30.4 million for Sacramento flood protection and levee repairs. The money includes $23.3 million targeted for 29 levee sites that state officials say represent an urgent risk. Last month, the state and federal governments agreed to allow expedited environmental reviews so those projects can be completed by Nov. 1. State officials now estimate the total cost of repairing those levees at less than $150 million. The remaining $7.1 million is for stream repairs in south Sacramento. The total was...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Jan. 11, 2006) -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is closing out the “Operation Blue Roof” program in Florida, with more than 42,000 homes receiving temporary roofing repairs since Hurricane Wilma made landfall in October. The Corps began the program on behalf of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Operation Blue Roof provides homeowners free temporary blue plastic roof coverings for eligible homes damaged by Hurricane Wilma. The program enables those affected by the hurricane to get back into their homes so that they can return to their routines as quickly as possible, Corps officials said....

11/3/2005 - BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Age, weather and more than 3,000 operations every week take their toll on the busiest runway in Afghanistan. Without a continual effort to repair the runway here, the mission would virtually come to a halt. A nine-man spall-repair team from the 455th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron spends more than two hours every day maintaining the runway. A spall is a shallow break in the concrete, usually found along a joint. “We’ve made more than 200 repairs in the last two months,” said Tech. Sgt. Jason Benbrook, the noncommissioned officer in charge of...

HOUSTON SPACE CENTER, Texas - Two spacewalking astronauts armed with caulking guns, putty knives and foam brushes practiced fixing deliberately damaged shuttle heat shields Saturday, a job they hope they won't have to do for real. Although Discovery suffered some scrapes and chips during liftoff, none of the damage appears to warrant orbital repairs, space agency officials said. As the two astronauts completed the mission's first spacewalk, NASA was on the verge of extending Discovery's visit at the international space station. With future shuttle flights grounded because of Discovery's fuel-tank foam loss during liftoff, the space agency would like to...

My computer crashed today. Again. The third time in a year. The news of a computer problem comes as a shock to absolutely no one because every one of us has experienced a major computer crisis within the last year. Like death and taxes, computer crashes are as common as Paris Hilton home videos — if you don't already have one, you will soon. The problem is — I'm a writer. If my computer doesn't work, I don't get paid. This is difficult to explain to the geeks who "fix" my unruly laptop. They have all the time in the...

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Florida residents with roof damage caused by the four hurricanes that struck the state this year may have a very long wait before someone can start work on their property, a county official said. Many out-of-state roofers who arrived after Hurricane Ivan struck last month are finding they can't operate in Florida because of the high cost of workers' compensation insurance. Factor in a serious shortage of shingles, and homeowners may have to wait a couple of years to have roof repairs done, said Escambia County chief building inspector Danny Weeden. David Peaden, executive director of the...

NASA (news - web sites)'s chief is urging his Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites) team to press ahead with plans for a robotic repair mission to the aging observatory, saying, "Let's go save the Hubble." Administrator Sean O'Keefe says he will ask Congress for money to accomplish the job. He estimates it will take about $1 billion to $1.6 billion to develop and launch a robot to make the needed upgrades to keep the popular telescope running and to get it out of orbit once its work is through. In a meeting with more than 200 Hubble engineers...

<p>In the "City of Bridges," more than half of them are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, a research group has reported.</p> <p>The Road Information Program, called TRIP, a construction industry-supported group based in Washington, D.C., reported that 29 percent of Pittsburgh area bridges were deficient and another 29 percent were obsolete. The group held news conferences in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Philadelphia yesterday to call attention to a situation it estimates would cost $7 billion to correct statewide.</p>