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Source was anonymous e-mail so I cannot vouch for accuracy. If anyone has any knowledge I'd like to know. This brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sits just outside it's hangar in Toulouse, France , without a single hour of airtime on the clock.... Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine run-ups prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all Four engines to takeoff power with...

BELGRADE (AP)--Serbia rejects any plan to partition Kosovo, an official said Monday, stressing it would never give up the disputed province even if the cost was being denied membership in the European Union. Serb and Kosovo officials will hold the next round of talks with international envoys Aug. 30 in Vienna, Austria, as part of a 120-day effort to break the impasse over Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian negotiator said Monday. Last week, envoys from the U.S., E.U. and Russia visited the region for three days to launch the diplomatic push after Russia threatened to block a U.N.- negotiated plan to...

More pieces of hidden bog book found More fragments of an ancient manuscript concealed in a Co Tipperary bog over 1,000 years ago with a view to later recovery, have been found by the National Museum of Ireland, writes Seán Mac Connell The discoveries also include a fine leather pouch in which the manuscript was originally kept. Museum experts have excavated the site at Faddan More, in north Tipperary, since the discovery of the manuscript last month by excavator driver Eddie Fogarty. He found the book on July 20th while digging peat on a bog owned by brothers Kevin and...

Scientists Pick Up Pieces of Space Capsule 1 hour, 47 minutes ago By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah - Scientists with tweezers picked through the twisted wreckage of a space capsule that crash-landed on Earth, hoping that microscopic clues to the evolution of the solar system weren't completely lost in Utah's salt flats. NASA engineers were stunned Wednesday when neither parachute deployed aboard the Genesis capsule and the craft plummeted to the ground at 193 mph, breaking open like a clamshell and exposing its collection of solar atoms to contamination. "There was a big pit in...

Workers Taped Together Explosive Pieces By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Workers at the only U.S. factory for dismantling nuclear weapons risked an explosion this month by taping together broken pieces of high explosive being removed from the plutonium trigger of an old warhead, federal investigators said. The unorthodox handling of the unstable explosive increased the risk that the technicians would drop it and set off a "violent reaction," the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said Tuesday in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites). Such a reaction could have "potentially unacceptable consequences," board...

<p>The National Park Service, which manages Alcatraz as one of San Francisco's most popular tourist attractions, has started selling boxed chunks of concrete from the federal prison that once housed Al Capone, George ``Machine Gun'' Kelly and Robert ``Birdman'' Stroud.</p>

Hamas vows to 'tear Israel to pieces' after Gaza attack By Sa'id Ghazali in Jerusalem and Rupert Cornwell in Washington 13 June 2003 Hamas vowed yesterday to "blow up the Zionist entity and tear it to pieces" as Israeli helicopters patrolled the skies over Gaza to hunt down Palestinian militants in one of the most crowded cities in the world. Speaking after an Israeli rocket attack that killed seven people, including a senior Hamas militant, Mahmoud al-Zahar, the Hamas leader, said the movement would "launch a series of new attacks against the Israeli people by the youths of Palestine. This...

Theft of Shuttle Pieces Hard to Prevent By Craig Timberg Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 4, 2003; Page A01 NACOGDOCHES, Tex., Feb. 3 -- About 100 pieces of debris from the space shuttle Columbia are missing from unguarded sites across heavily wooded Nacogdoches County, including a piece of computer equipment that may hold clues as to why the spacecraft disintegrated as it roared over Texas Saturday morning, authorities said today. Police were visiting a private home late this afternoon in search of the computer component, but federal and local officials acknowledged there was little they could do to prevent...