Bell & Ross came to the market in 1992 determined to offer high quality Swiss timepieces to professionals in extreme working environments (see Bell & Ross: Watches for Professionals). Now with the instantly recognizable square design of the Instrument collection (the cases literally look like gauges lifted directly off of fighter jets or submarines), Bell & Ross may have found the individuality it needs to keep competing with better known and long-established brands. Bell & Ross continues to push forward with a Breitling-like passion for professional timepieces, and a combination of avant-garde style and Swiss watch making tradition.
All the watches in the Bell & Ross Instrument collection have automatic ETA movements, anti-reflective sapphire crystals, luminescent hands and markers, and are water-resistant to 100 meters (about 330 feet). There are 11 different models available with the following complications:
No date.
Small date.
Big date.
Chronograph.
Power reserve.
Across these five basic versions, you can get all kinds of variations, including:
Stainless steel, black carbon finished steel, pink gold, or titanium cases.
Leather, canvas, rubber, or alligator straps.
Limited edition orange or blue accents (blue version pictured here).
Diamond encrusted with mother-of-pearl dials.
The Instrument Collection has become the symbol of the company's brand image, and will likely be their calling card for many years to come. While Bell & Ross may want you to believe that their Instrument collection is for serious professionals, I believe that these watches will be very intriguing to the enthusiast who appreciates style and passion over brand and history. The cornerstone of this business is quality and character -- something that Bell & Ross seems to have come to understand very well.
BROKEN BOW, Neb.--(FOX NEWS) Thomas McCaslin might never know for sure why General Motors called two weeks ago to say his 80-year-old dealership in the heart of Nebraska cattle country wouldn't close after all.
He has a feeling that a hamburger cookout and an old-fashioned brand of political lobbying had something to do with it.
"There's no doubt in my mind" it helped, McCaslin said Thursday as about 200 residents gathered to celebrate the town's only GM dealership continuing to sell Chevrolets. "You have all these elected officials who make things happen because they depend on votes."
GM's reversal followed a massive letter-writing campaign and lobbying of elected officials that started with a cookout in the town square just days after Gateway Motors was told in May it would be among 1,300 in the country to close.
In some rural areas, GM dealerships once set to be casualties of the company's financial freefall find themselves part of its reformation after sending handwritten pleas and barbecue invites including one that used GM's own "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet" slogan.
GM says its change of heart on about 50 dealerships it called underperforming wasn't based on those kinds of factors or any political arm-twisting.
Instead, GM spokeswoman Susan Garontakos said, the company realized it erred when analyzing the finances of the dealerships and reconsidered the distances between some dealers. Closing Gateway Motors, for example, would have meant people had to drive 60 miles to the closest GM dealer.
"In some cases, it may have been too far of a distance for customers to travel," Garontakos said. "Lobbying did not have anything to do with it."
Chrysler dealers set to close down, though, didn't have the same options. Not one decision to eliminate 789 franchises has been reversed, Chrysler spokeswoman Kathy Graham said, because the closures were a result of bankruptcy proceedings.
GM's shift on some dealerships isn't likely to undo what it tried to achieve in bankruptcy proceedings, either. It still plans to close 200 more dealerships than originally estimated.
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho--(FOX NEWS) Police are investigating the death of a tourist who died in a fall from a 12th floor balcony at the Coeur d'Alene Resort in Idaho.
Coeur d'Alene Police Sgt. Christie Wood says the 36-year-old woman from Baton Rouge, La., died early Thursday when she fell from her guest room balcony and landed on the deck of the main floor of the resort.
The woman's name wasn't released.
She was visiting Coeur d'Alene with a 38-year-old male companion.
BAGHDAD--(FOX NEWS) Bombs exploded near five Shiite mosques in Baghdad, killing at least 29 people, in an apparent coordinated attack that targeted worshippers leaving Friday prayers, Iraqi police and hospital officials said.
The bombings shattered a period of relative calm in the Iraqi capital, raising to at least 303 the number of Iraqis killed in what has been one of the least deadly months for both Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops since the war began. Seven American troops have been killed the lowest monthly total since the war started in March 2003, according to a count.
The attack also underscores concerns about the abilities of Iraqi security forces to maintain security gains now that U.S. troops have withdrawn from major urban areas. Some Sunni insurgents still seek to re-ignite sectarian violence with the majority Shiites and reverse Iraq's security gains in the past two years.
The deadliest attack Friday came when a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab, killing at least 24 people and wounding 17 others, said two Iraqi police officials and a medical official.
At about the same time, almost simultaneous explosions struck near the al-Rasoul mosque near the Diyala bridge, in southern Baghdad, killing four worshippers and wounding 17 others, the two police officials said.
A roadside bomb exploded near al-Hakim mosque in Kamaliyah area in eastern Baghdad, wounding six worshippers. A bomb near Imam al-Sadiq mosque in the religiously mixed neighborhood of Ilam in southwestern Baghdad wounded 4, while a bomb near the al-Sadrain mosque in the Zafaraniyah area in southeastern Baghdad killed one and wounded seven worshippers.
The officials giving the toll all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
There were 242 deaths in January and 225 deaths in May.
Meanwhile, Iraqi police Friday announced they had recovered millions of dollars stolen from a state-run bank in a robbery that left eight guards dead.
Interior ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said all the money was recovered and added that police have detained some of the robbers.
He did not provide further details.
Gunmen killed eight security guards at the Rafidain Bank, making off with nearly $7 million. Police said the robberies appeared to be the work of militants seeking money for operations after their funding was severely curtailed in U.S.-Iraqi military crackdowns.
Police found the money Thursday when they raided the house of an Iraqi soldier, said an interior ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
(FOX NEWS)--Men's hunter-gatherer past has made them better at seeing objects in the distance, while women see better close up, a British study finds.
The study traced how men's and women's brains evolved differently over thousands of years, Agence France-Press reported.
Researchers asked a group of 48 men and women to use a laser pointer to mark the midpoint of lines on a piece of paper at different distances.
Men were more accurate than women when the paper was placed about 3.3 feet away, while women were more accurate when the target was within arm's reach, about 1.6 feet away.
"Evidence already exists that separate pathways in the brain process visual information from near and far space,'' said psychologist Helen Stancey from Hammersmith and West London College.
"Our results suggest that the near pathway is favored in women and the far pathway is favoured in men,'' she said, in a study published online in the British Journal of Psychology.
SEATTLE--(FOX NEWS) It may not be quite as hot as Wednesday, but the National Weather Service is forecasting more 100-degree heat in the Northwest.
Forecasters say some marine air may start to cool off the region Friday, but above-normal temperatures are expected into early next week.
An excessive heat warning is in effect Thursday in the Puget Sound area and parts of southwest Washington and the north interior of western Oregon.
And a heat advisory is in effect for parts of Eastern Washington including Yakima and the Tri-Cities and the eastern Columbia River Gorge.
All-time records highs were set Wednesday with 103 degrees in Seattle, 104 in Olympia and 96 in Bellingham. Portland topped out at 106 degrees, 1 degree shy of its all-time record.
SAN DIEGO--(FOX NEWS) The FBI is offering $10,000 for help finding the gun of a Border Patrol agent who was slain last week in a rugged area outside San Diego.
The reward offered Wednesday is in addition to a $100,000 payment for information leading to arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for killing 30-year-old Agent Robert Rosas. His body was found in the community of Campo with several bullet wounds.
The FBI says Rosas carried a black Heckler & Koch P2000, a .40-caliber gun.
Mexican authorities have detained five men in connection with the case. They say one of them 36-year-old Ernesto Parra Valenzuela carried a 9 mm pistol when he was captured.
(FOX NEWS)--In a first, but likely not last for Facebook, a retailer is setting up shop inside the popular social-networking site.
1800-Flowers.com has launched a store from within Facebook, a first for the online hangout. The development highlights the increasing focus businesses are putting on social networking sites.
Flower and gift retailer 1-800-Flowers.com plans to announce Wednesday it has opened a retail store to let people shop for its products directly through Facebook.
The Carle Place, N.Y.-based company was already a pioneer in using a 1-800 number as its name. The company went online in 1991 and three years later it became the first merchant on AOL.
Now that it gets the majority of its orders online, CEO and founder Jim McCann calls mobile applications and the Facebook store a natural step. The company launched an application for the BlackBerry last fall, and one for the iPhone followed shortly.
Of course, there are still hurdles. It's hard to find the company's fan page on Facebook, for example, unless you remember to include the hyphens and the ".com." This is something 1-800-Flowers.com says it is aware of. But to fix it, Facebook would have to tweak its search capabilities.
It's difficult to put a dollar figure on Facebook's benefits to businesses like 1-800-Flowers.com. But what is clear is that more and more companies are keeping up with their customers using social networks. There are roughly 300,000 active fan pages on Facebook, for businesses ranging from Target to McDonald's.
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire--(FOX NEWS) A veteran newspaper sports reporter was charged Wednesday with running a prostitution ring in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and possibly into Canada.
Kevin Provencher advertised his prostitution ring's services on Craigslist and other Web sites and rented hotel rooms in Andover, Massachusetts, and in New Hampshire where the women would have sex for money, prosecutors said. The ring may have operated in Canada, they said.
Provencher, a sports writer at the New Hampshire Union Leader for more than two decades, was arrested at his Manchester home early Wednesday and was taken to Massachusetts, where he was ordered held on $10,000 cash bail during his arraignment in Lawrence District Court. He pleaded not guilty to two counts of deriving support from prostitution.
Provencher, 50, has been suspended from the Union Leader, where he has been its primary motor sports reporter since 1990. He also has been the newspaper's beat reporter covering the Manchester Monarchs since the American Hockey League franchise's 2001 inception.
The newspaper's management issued a statement calling Provencher "a valued employee for many years."
"He is innocent until proven guilty," it said. "However, given the nature and seriousness of the charges, he is suspended until further notice."
Provencher's lawyer, Jessica Thrall, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Wednesday.
(FOX NEWS)--One of the great political mysteries what was said by President Nixon during a suspicious 18-minute gap on the Watergate tapes could soon be solved thanks to a keen-eyed amateur sleuth and modern crime-fighting technology.
The missing section of a 79-minute conversation between Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H. R. Bob Haldeman, was erased. It had been recorded during a meeting on June 20, 1972, three days after operatives connected to the White House broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex.
The U.S. National Archives, which holds the Watergate files, has tried to fill in the blanks. In 2001 it set up a panel to see if new technology could bring back what was said on the tape, but nobody could.
An amateur Watergate sleuth, however, has convinced the archives that there could well be another way to solve the puzzle: using notes taken by Haldeman at the meeting.
Haldeman was a meticulous note taker who wrote in longhand on yellow legal notepads.
Phil Mellinger, a former analyst at the National Security Agency who has delved into the notes, reports, testimony and evidence relating to Watergate, said he had a eureka moment in October last year when he visited the National Archives and asked to see Haldeman’s notes from the June 20 meeting.
An assistant brought them out but there were only two pages. They had four sets of holes in the top left-hand corner, suggesting that staples had been taken out and new ones inserted later.
“Wow I suddenly realized that at the top of page two, the discussion of Watergate was ending, Mellinger told The Times of London, The first page of notes went right up to the time they started discussing Watergate. I believe page two was about the last minute of the 18-minute discussion.
Mellinger believes that in 1973, when the Watergate scandal began heating up, Haldeman destroyed the pages that covered the gap in the tape, then re-stapled the remainder.
Mellinger has convinced the archives to subject the existing notes to electrostatic detection analysis, which can capture indentations on paper. The hope is that what was written on the allegedly missing pages can be recreated.
Haldeman usually wrote in felt tip pen but on this day he used a ballpoint, greatly improving the chances of success. I’m pretty confident this will work, Mellinger said.
(FOX NEWS)--Cyber criminals are reportedly turning to Twitter to target their latest victims.
They are launching attacks hidden in "tweets" and tiny URL addresses, according to internet security group McAfee.
It claims that the accounts of celebrities such as Britney Spears, politicians including President Barack Obama and even Twitter itself have been hacked on multiple occasions.
More than 14 million computers have been hacked into this quarter, says McAfee, a 16 percent increase over last quarter's rise meaning an average of 150,000 are infected every day.
Twitter's growth in popularity has made it a new target for the cyber criminals.
Facebook and MySpace, meanwhile, remain strong attack targets for web hackers.
"Cyber criminals are like traditional criminals in that they want to make money," McAfee's security analyst Greg Day told Sky News Online.
LONDON-- (FOX NEWS) International cancer experts have moved tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category, deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.
For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as "probable carcinogens."
A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. Experts also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused worrying mutations in mice, proof the radiation is carcinogenic. Previously, only one type of ultraviolet radiation was thought to be lethal.
The new classification means tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation are definite causes of cancer, alongside tobacco, the hepatitis B virus and chimney sweeping, among others.
The research was published online in the medical journal Lancet Oncology on Wednesday, by experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization.
"People need to be reminded of the risks of sunbeds," said Vincent Cogliano, one of the cancer researchers. "We hope the prevailing culture will change so teens don't think they need to use sunbeds to get a tan."
Most lights used in tanning beds give off mainly ultraviolet radiation, which cause skin and eye cancer, according to the International Agency for Cancer Research.
The classification of tanning beds as carcinogenic was disputed by Kathy Banks, chief executive of The Sunbed Association, a European trade association of tanning bed makers and operators.
"The fact that is continuously ignored is that there is no proven link between the responsible use of sunbeds and skin cancer," Banks said in a statement. She said most users of tanning beds use them less than 20 times a year.
But as use of tanning beds has increased among people under 30, doctors have seen a parallel rise in the numbers of young people with skin cancer. In Britain, melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the leading cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s. Normally, skin cancer rates are highest in people over 75.
Previous studies found younger people who regularly use tanning beds are eight times more likely to get melanoma than people who have never used them. In the past, WHO warned people younger than 18 to stay away from tanning beds.
Cogliano cautioned that ultravoilet radiation is not healthy, whether it comes from a tanning bed or from the sun. The American Cancer Society advises people to try bronzing or self-tanning creams instead of tanning beds.
