A day after violent protests erupted in the restive city of Daraa, security forces opened fire at protesters in the coastal city of Latakia, witnesses said.
Anti-government demonstrations in Latakia had started peacefully before several people were wounded in a hail of gunfire as security forces tightened their control on access to the city, witnesses said. However, presidential spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban told state media that an unidentified group of gunmen opened fire at citizens and security forces.
Although the group allegedly entered Latakia "breaking and burning shops," security forces did not return fire, Shaaban told SANA, the country's official news agency.
FULL STORYThe ocean floor off the Florida Keys never seems to stop giving.
Diver Bill Burt with Mel Fisher’s Treasures was looking for a section of the sunken Spanish galleon, Nuestra Senora de Atocha, this week. Instead, he came across a 40- inch gold chain shimmering on the sandy ocean floor about 30 miles from Key West.
The chain, which is believed to have come from the Atocha, contains a gold medallion and a gold cross. The cross appears to be, according to the salvors, inscribed with Latin letters. It is estimated to be worth $250,000.
Mel Fisher’s team found a portion of the Atocha and $450 million worth of artifacts and treasure in 1985. But the contents of the Atocha’s sterncastle, a wooden, fort-shaped area at the back of ship, have never been recovered. The Atocha sank during a hurricane in 1622. A second hurricane is believed to have torn the sterncastle from the Atocha and carried it miles away.
More on the discovery on Mel Fisher's website1982: Groundbreaking at Vietnam Memorial – On March 27th 1982 a group of 125 veterans gathered between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument to break ground at the future site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs spearheaded the movement to lobby congress and raise money through private funds to build the memorial. The black granite wall holds the names of 58,267 men and women who were killed or remain missing in action.
Breakfast at a Tripoli hotel housing international journalists took a decidedly grim turn Saturday when a desperate Libyan woman burst into the building frantic to let the world know she had been raped and beaten by Moammar Gadhafi's militia.
Her face was heavily bruised. So were her legs. She displayed blood on her right inner thigh.
She said her name was Eman al-Obeidy. She was well-dressed and appeared to be a well-to-do middle-aged woman. She spoke in English and said she was from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and had been picked up by Gadhafi's men at a checkpoint east of Tripoli.
FULL STORYGeraldine Ferraro, a former congresswoman and vice presidential candidate, has died, according to a family statement. She was 75.
In 1984, Ferraro became the first female vice presidential candidate from a major U.S. political party when she ran with Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale.
The two lost by a landslide to the Republican ticket - President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush.
FULL STORYA magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit northern Japan on March 11, triggering tsunamis that caused widespread devastation and crippled a nuclear power plant. Are you in an affected area? Send an iReport. Read the full report on the quake's aftermath and check out our interactive explainer on Japan's damaged nuclear reactors.
[5:30 a.m. ET Saturday, 6:41 p.m. Saturday in Tokyo] An official with the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, apologized Saturday and said the exposure of three workers to highly radioactive water could have been avoided with better communication.
Hideyuki Koyama said tests of water found in the basement of the No. 1 reactor's turbine building on March 18 showed high levels of radiation.
That fact - and a general sense that water accumulating in turbine and others buildings around the plant may be dangerously radioactive - did not appear to resonate on March 24 during an operation in the No. 3 reactor's turbine building. On that date, three workers were exposed to between 173 and 181 millisieverts of radiation, including two with direct exposure on their skin, while laying cable.
Koyama said that radiation alarms went off while the men were working, but they continued with their mission for between 40 and 50 minutes assuming it was a false alarm.
[1:55 a.m. ET Saturday, 2:55 p.m. Saturday in Tokyo] Airborne radiation levels continue to fall outside the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, though concerns remain about potentially ominous breaches in reactor cores after water showed alarming radiation levels in tests at two locales.
An official with the Tokyo Electric Power Co. - which operates the facility - told reporters Saturday that water samples from the turbine buildings for the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors similarly found high levels of radiation.
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