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CIA documents from the 1950s reveal that the UK and Canada secretly developed a saucer-shaped, hovering aircraft at Avro-Canada's research facility in Malton, Canada. The Project Y aircraft was designed by British designer John Carver Meadows Frost. The CIA was initially alarmed that Nazi scientists were working on similar aircraft for the Soviet Union and that the US was falling behind on the technology. The Nazis are believed to have experimented with aircraft based on inventor Henri-Marie Coanda's discovery in 1910 that a turbo-jet would create additional lift by sucking in air to form a vacuum over the wing.

US Pres. Bill Clinton made it clear during his testimony in the Monica Lewinsky case that he was annoyed that the session was being videotaped, ostensibly for the benefit of an absent grand juror. Clinton intimated that he suspected that the tape would ultimately be made public. The tape, shown on television on Sep. 21, 1998, revealed Clinton's reliance on grammar when answering questions about the exact nature of his sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton was careful to make as few references to sex as possible, repeatedly referring his interrogators to a statement he had prepared in advance.

Five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, people in the countries of the former Soviet bloc are finding that freedom has brought mixed blessings. A Czech dissident is disappointed by an increase in greediness and selfishness while an old soldier is frustrated by what he sees as the ineffective laws in the new Czech Republic. An unemployed factory worker in Poland leads a miserable existence on pitiful social security hand-outs but another Pole has few regrets about returning to his homeland after 30 years in exile. A headhunter in Hungary and a detective in Poland are both doing well.

Claude Frizzell Bloodgood III, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of his mother, differs from other inmates at the Powhaten Correctional Facility in Virginia. Bloodgood is a chess genius, his US Chess Federation points rating making him a grandmaster. Bloodgood's version of his life story appears to be a mixture of truth and fiction. He claims to have been born Klaus Bluttgutt in Mexico, to have been involved in espionage as a member of the Nazi party during the second world war, and to have played chess with Hollywood greats such as Humphrey Bogart.

Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving on Nov. 26, 1998, knowing that they have a great deal to be thankful for. A Gallup poll in Oct. 1998 showed that 85% of Americans are satisfied with their personal well-being, compared with just 36% in the 'Camelot' years of the Kennedy era in the 1960s. Average incomes in the US are at an all-time high, while unemployment and inflation are at their lowest level since the 1960s. The murder rate is at a 30-year low and the number of serious crimes being reported to the police has fallen every year for the last six years.

Affirmative action in the US suffered the latest in a series of legal blows on Nov. 19, 1998, when a federal court ruled against the race-based admissions policy of the ancient and highly revered Boston Latin School. The court ruled that the school department had failed to prove a case for the racial admissions policy that saw a white girl, Sarah Wessman, denied a place at the school while black and Hispanic pupils with lower aptitude test scores were accepted. The ruling could prove a fatal blow for school admission policies based on positive discrimination in the US.

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr defended his case against US Pres. Bill Clinton when he appeared before the House of Representatives judiciary committee on Nov. 19, 1998. The Democrats on the committee portrayed Starr as a zealot, with John Conyers accusing him of having crossed the line into obsession. However Starr, his voice choking with emotion, suggested that his extraordinary unpopularity might stem from his devotion to the law. Starr, described by one newspaper on Nov. 19, 1998, as a Puritan Lone Ranger, argued that Clinton had lied under oath.

Peggy Salinger's view of her author father, J.D.Salinger,is examined in detail.

US National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) investigators, nicknamed the tin-kickers, may take months, even years, to determine why EgyptAir flight 990 crashed into the North Atlantic off Nantucket island on Oct. 31, 1999. However meticulous, relentless investigations by the tin-kickers have led the NTSB to identify a 'probable cause' for all but four of the nearly 400 major commercial airline accidents it has investigated during its 31-year history. Bad weather has hampered the investigation of the EgyptAir crash and the tin-kickers are refusing to speculate on its cause.

Kenyan-born historian Edmund Morris has written a controversial biography of former US President Ronald Reagan, in which Morris appears as a fictional character who engages in conversation with Reagan. The book, 'Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan,' took 13 years to write. Publisher Random House supports Morris's unique literary stance, claiming that he participates as a character in the narrative because of his intense familiarity with Reagan's life. The publisher has invested $3 million in the project.

A book published in autumn 1999 reveals that the original inhabitants of Vermont, the Abenaki, were the victims of a ruthless ethnic cleansing experiment by the euphemistically named Vermont Commission on Country Life. The book, by local historian Nancy Gallagher, describes the way in which families deemed 'genetically inferior' were sterilised in an experiment masterminded by a local zoology professor, Henry Perkins. Abenaki chief Homer St Francis discovered the names of members of his close family among the 50 or so Abenaki men and women in the Vermont eugenic survey.

Joint Military Intelligence College (JMIC) Pres. Denis Clift explains that, to his knowledge, the JMIC is unique in awarding full bachelor's and masters degrees to budding intelligence officers. The JMIC is located inside the Bolling air force base in Washington, DC, but it produces a public prospectus outlining the courses it offers. Clift points out that US espionage is a branch of the people's government but he declines to comment on recent highly embarrassing mistakes by US intelligence. Clift does not hide his pride in his students, commenting that their talent and motivation is chilling.

The dream that a John F. Kennedy reincarnate would one day become US president, an essential part of the Camelot myth that has surrounded the Kennedy family for the past 36 years, may finally be laid to rest with the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in Jul. 1999. John F. Kennedy Jr.'s funeral may prove to be a cathartic moment for the US as Princess Diana's funeral was for the UK. John F. Kennedy Jr.'s death may lead Americans to abandon their search for the holy grail of US politics as they come to realise that he may have been their last best hope of reliving the elusive dream.

All 40,000 Serb troops sent into Kosovo, Yugoslavia, by Yugoslav Pres. Slobodan Milosevic had withdrawn from the province hours before the deadline of midnight on Jun. 20, 1999, agreed with Nato. Private Gona Kostic, a Serb soldier who had somehow been left behind by his comrades, commented bitterly that the Serb forces had been betrayed by their political leaders. Kostic, who was so drunk he could barely stand, pointed out that many Serb soldiers had died for nothing. Meanwhile Kosovo Albanians took their revenge by looting and burning the homes of their former Serb neighbours.

The sound of joyous children chanting 'Nato! Nato!' when British soldiers arrived in the village of Mali Ribar, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, on Jun. 13, 1999, contrasted with the deep silence surrounding 26 graves lined up against a wire fence. The optimism sparked by Nato's arrival prompted Shemsije Vishesella to go home for the first time since Apr. 18, 1999, the day a detachment of Serb irregulars had arrived in Mali Ribar. The Serbs had killed the slow, the infirm and the unlucky, including Vishesella's husband and two sons. Vishesella herself was shot in the cheek.

Nunavut, a self-governing homeland for the Inuit people of Canada's Arctic north, will come into being on Apr. 1, 1999. Nunavut, which means 'Our Land,' will be led by Paul Okalik, a 34-year-old law graduate lacking any political or government experience. Okalik has personal experience of the alcoholism, drug abuse and suicidal despair into which Inuit culture has plunged as a result of the Canadian government's treatment of its Inuit subjects in the 1950s and 1960s. Okalik's father was forced to give up his nomadic life as a hunter when his sled dogs were shot dead by Canadian police.

The US is facing the possibility that some of its most closely guarded nuclear secrets have fallen into the hands of the country regarded as its potentially greatest enemy, China. A scientist and researcher at the University of California, Wen Ho Lee, was dismissed from his post at the US national laboratories at Los Alamos, NM, on Mar. 8, 1999, on the orders of US energy secretary Bill Richardson. Lee is suspected of having passed details of the US's nuclear weapons miniaturisation technology to the Chinese government, but the FBI lacks sufficient information to arrest him.

The Bank of Scotland has teamed up with US television evangelist Pat Robertson to create a new telephone banking operation in the US. The new bank will employ some of the telephone-based techniques that have enabled Robertson to create a $200 million business empire. Robertson's ministry attracts donations of around $150 million/yr. His Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) empire includes a Christian university and law school, a hotel and conference centre and a video business, while its television and radio programmes broadcast in 90 countries and 46 languages.

The hostility to genetically modified (GM) foods prevalent across Europe contrasts starkly with attitudes in the US. An International Food Information Council survey in Feb. 1999 showed that 62% of people in the US would be more likely to buy vegetables that had been made to test better or fresher by genetic engineering. The US currently has more than 50 million acres of farmland sown with GM foods and 75% of the processed foods on sale have been genetically engineered. In contrast, the European Union has rejected the four most recent applications for experimental growth of Genetically Modified Organisms.

US intelligence officials are certain that Iraqi officials working for Pres Saddam Hussein tried to recruit terrorist Osama bin Laden in Dec 1998. Bin Laden is the most wanted man in the West and the world's most prolific terrorist, and a link-up with Saddam would be a nightmare for the West. Attacks attributed to bin Laden include the Aug 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Activists in both the Democrat and Republican camps in the US are talking excitedly about the prospect of a presidential race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elizabeth 'Liddy' Dole. Elizabeth Dole announced on Jan. 4, 1999, that she was resigning from the top job at the American Red Cross, while New Jersey senator Robert Torricelli suggested on Jan. 3, 1999, that Hillary Clinton would run for the senate in 2000. Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton both come from Methodist middle-class families, trained as Ivy-league lawyers and could undoubtedly run for the presidency.

The House of Representatives was making history on Dec. 18, 1998, as the first full chamber to debate the impeachment of a US president in 130 years, yet both Republicans and Democrats seemed aware of the constant risk of the proceedings sliding into farce. The rhetoric rarely rose to the demands of history and Democrats, aware that the vote-counters in the media had already all but declared impeachment, soon began slipping out of the room. All but the area around the lectern started to empty after the first 20 minutes of debate and the chamber was only a quarter full after an hour.

British forces became involved in the biggest military venture of US Pres. Bill Clinton's presidency on Dec. 17, 1998, when RAF Tornado pilots took off from Kuwait to launch a second wave of strikes against Iraq. The first wave of strikes on Dec. 16, 1998, had been designed to cripple Iraq's air defences. They had also been aimed at the headquarters of Iraqi military intelligence in Baghdad, Iraq, and at barracks housing some members of Pres. Saddam Hussein's most trusted unit, the Special Republican Guard, which the US claims is directly responsible for Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

The UK joined the American armed assault against Iraq for the first time on Dec. 17, 1998, when RAF Tornado pilots took part in the second night of attacks. The Pentagon reported that the first night of attacks on Dec. 16, 1998, had involved 50 or more targets. Iraqi sources claimed that 25 people had been killed and 75 wounded in the first day of raids which had also caused serious damage to two hospitals. Meanwhile US Pres. Bill Clinton spent much of Dec. 17, 1998, on the telephone trying to rally support for Operation Desert Fox from the heads of state of Israel, Jordan, Egypt and France.

US Pres. Bill Clinton and secretary of state Madeleine Albright repeated on Nov. 13, 1998, that the aim of the military build-up in the Gulf region is to allow Unscom to resume monitoring the destruction of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capability. However many in the US Air Force doubt whether the planned air strikes will even come close to achieving the Pentagon's stated aim of destroying what the Unscom monitors have failed to find. Experts cannot agree on further goals although any military campaign would be followed by action designed to break Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein's hold on power.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's media adviser Marwan Kanafani commented on Oct. 23, 1998, that US Pres. Bill Clinton deserved the credit for the agreement reached between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu shortly before 3.15 am. Kanafani pointed out that Clinton was focused. Clinton arrived at the Wye summit in Maryland on Oct. 22, 1998, determined to overcome the remaining obstacles concerning the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the Palestinian Covenant committing the Palestine Liberation Organisation to the destruction of the Jewish state.

Just 80 people now live in Rentiesville, OK, but the town was once part of a dream to create a black utopia where freed slaves and their families could build a new society. Rentiesville was one of 27 black-run towns founded in the last decade of the 19th century, the plan being to merge them together into a black state. The black state never materialised but Rentiesville's mayor, Mildred Burkhalter, is determined to ensure her town's survival. She points out that African Americans founded the town on their own and declares that no-one is going to take it away from them.

Half a dozen men constitute the key power brokers who will tell US Pres. Bill Clinton that he has to resign should they fail to find a way of keeping him in the Oval Office. The advice of Tom Daschle, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, would count for a great deal, as would that of his predecessor, George Mitchell. Clinton would be less likely to listen to Daschle's House counterpart, Dick Gephardt, but his support is crucial. Senators Joe Lieberman and Bob Kerry will also have a pivotal role, as will Congressman John Conyers, the most senior Democrat on the House judiciary committee.

The frailty and ill-health of King Hussein of Jordan, Syrian leader Hafez Assad and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has sparked fears among Israeli and Arab strategic thinkers that a fleeting opportunity for resolving the Middle East crisis may soon be lost. Hussein, Assad and Arafat had all reconciled themselves to accepting a Jewish state in the Middle East in return for Arab territory lost in the Six Day War in 1967. The death of the three leaders at a time when the implementation of the 1993 Oslo peace accords has been stalled could result in an all-out Arab-Israeli war.

Queen Noor of Jordan seems to be the ideal person to replace Diana, Princess of Wales, in the fight against landmines. She has stated that she has no desire to take on a higher public profile, but may not be able to resist media pressure for a replacement for Diana, Princess of Wales. She benefits from being attractive, and has already been adopted as a figurehead by the Landmine Survivors Network and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She already has impressive credentials as a peace campaigner.

British-born Ephraim Halevy will take over as head of the Israeli secret service, Mossad, on Apr. 8, 1998, in a bid to save the agency from itself. Mossad's reputation is in tatters following a series of bungled operations. Former general Danny Yatom was forced to retire as head of Mossad when an Israeli government inquiry concluded that the agency had a fixation with high-risk operations and appeared to be uninhibited by diplomatic or political sensibilities. Halevy's career has included 34 years with Mossad, but he will be the first Mossad leader with no military experience.

United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan was confident on Feb. 23, 1998, of winning international backing for the deal he has struck with Iraq. However US Pres. Bill Clinton made it clear that force would be used if Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein again prevented UN inspectors from fulfilling their mission of inspecting all suspect weapons sites in Iraq. Meanwhile UK Prime Minister Tony Blair stressed the need for a new Security Council resolution giving the UN the right to respond by any necessary means should Saddam break his word.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continues to exude confidence despite hanging on to power by a thread as his 19-month-old administration staggers from crisis to crisis. Netanyahu has handled crises with a combination of bluff and a US-imparted command of the television soundbite. Netanyahu's defence and interior ministers have threatened to resign unless he withdraws troops from a substantial part of the West Bank. However Netanyahu's belief that the Arabs are intent on destroying Israel prevents him from ever granting the Palestinians a contiguous, sovereign state.

Landmines laid by the British Eighth Army during the second world war are killing and injuring Bedouin herders on the desert plateau around El Alamein, Egypt, more than 50 years later. The sands around El Alamein contain more than 18 million mostly British, but also German and Italian, landmines. More than 400 people have been killed and another 4,500 maimed by landmines since the end of the second world war. However the Egyptian government's calls for the ex-combatants to clear the landmines have produced little more than token donations and words of encouragement.

The al-Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) claimed responsibility on Nov. 18, 1997, for the massacre at Queen Hatshepsut's temple in Luxor, Egypt, that left 58 foreign tourists dead on Nov. 17, 1997. The group claimed that it had wanted to take Western hostages to trade for its leader, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is in prison in the US. However no witness to the massacre has mentioned any attempt by the gunmen to take hostages. Rosemarie Dousse, a Swiss who survived the massacre by pretending to be dead, revealed on Nov. 18, 1997, that the gunmen had danced and sung as they put an end to the wounded.

Iraq made a diplomatic move to settle its confrontation with the US on Nov. 16, 1997, when its deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz proposed a formula to allow US weapons inspectors back into the country. Aziz told French newspaper Le Figaro that Iraq would have no objection to the return of the US inspectors it has expelled, provided they accounted for no more than a fifth of the United Nations arms monitoring teams. The US is thought to be keen to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis, despite its threats of military action, but a senior Clinton administration official dismissed Aziz's proposal.

Ratings-conscious US Pres. Bill Clinton is well aware that a powerful air and missile campaign against Iraq would find favour with the American public, but the US's Arab allies are counselling restraint. US public opinion is that Clinton should deal with Iraq's expulsion of US weapons inspectors in Nov. 1997 by 'socking it' to Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein. However the US's inability to reactivate the Israeli/Palestinian peace process and its apparent indifference to Iraqi suffering caused by United Nations sanctions has seriously damaged its image in the Arab oil states.

The laws that condone 'honour killings' of women in Jordan are not even an issue in the campaign for parliamentary elections on Nov. 4, 1997, despite the fear of summary execution hanging over thousands of women. Wisaf Ka'abneh, one of the 17 women among the 540 candidates standing in the election, justifies 'honour killings' on the grounds that no encouragement should be given to women who break up the family. However Jordanian journalist Rana Husseini argues that 40 of the 153 inmates at the women's prison in Amman, Jordan, are there to avoid becoming victims of 'honour killings.'

The reputation of the Israeli secret service Mossad as a well-oiled machine staffed by perfect spies suffered a severe blow on Sep. 25, 1997, when an assassination attempt on Khaled Meshal, a leader of Islamic militant group Hamas, went spectacularly wrong. A former Mossad official complains that the feeling that there is peace means that the kind of young people who would have joined Mossad in the days when it was renowned for such exploits as the elimination of Black September terrorists no longer consider it necessary to join the security services.

US officials revealed on Aug. 10, 1997, that the US is planning an ambitious new Middle East peace initiative aimed at achieving a final settlement as early as spring 1998. The US package would involve abandoning the gradual approach of the 1993 Oslo accords in favour of almost immediate talks on the highly contentious issues of the return of refugees, the presence of Jewish settlements in Arab areas, the fate of Jerusalem, Israel, and the size and nature of any future Palestinian state. However there are few signs of common ground between Israel and Palestine on these issues.

The Israeli Knesset's special parliamentary committee for the return of Jewish property heard evidence on Jul. 21, 1997, that the British government had profited from victims of the Holocaust. Relatives of concentration camp victims held up photographs of dead family members whose life savings had been expropriated by the British government during the war. Israeli journalist Itamar Levin estimates that tens of millions of pounds sterling are involved. British diplomat Elizabeth Scholes told the committee that the issue was being investigated by the Dept. of Trade and Industry.

Hermann Arndt, the polite, kindly 76-year-old who always does the lighting for the charity variety show held each year in the village hall in Woodbury, Devon, England, is also the man who organised the illegal abduction of the programmer of the Nazi's final solution, Adolph Eichmann. Arndt, a German Jew who emigrated to Israel in 1937 aged 17, was the Israeli secret service Mossad's top interrogator for 10 years. The mass of claims and counter-claims surrounding Eichmann's abduction from Argentina prompted Arndt to write a book which he claims tells the truth about the operation.

British SAS troops gave a clear message that the Dayton peace agreement will be implemented in Bosnia when they arrested one indicted Bosnian Serb war criminal and shot another one dead on Jul. 10, 1997. The war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands, had charged Simo Drljaca and Milan Kovacevic with establishing and running the Serb death camps around Prijedor, Bosnia. Drljaca, a former police chief, was shot dead after opening fire on the soldiers who had come to arrest him. However Kovacevic's arrest could prove the turning point for the Hague tribunal since he seems ready to unburden his conscience.

Claims of a secret marital contract giving Sara Netanyahu, wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the right to vet key political appointments have been reiterated in a biography published in Jun. 1997. Journalists Ben Caspit and Ilan Kfir allege that Sara has gained an unprecedented foothold in the centre of power, deciding who should, and who should not, be in the government. Israel Women's Network chair Alice Shalvi finds Sara an embarrassment, pointing out that, unlike US first lady Hillary Clinton, she lacks intelligence and could never have been elected in her own right.

Evidence is emerging that may help bring Serbian Pres. Slobodan Milosevic before the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. Witnesses reveal that thousands of convicts were armed and sent to fight in paramilitary groups such as the Serbian Cetnik Movement and Arkan's Tigers by a small group of Serbian secret policemen under Milosevic's direct control. These paramilitary groups carried out a murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing and looting under the command of a small group of Milosevic appointees in the State Security Dept of the Serbian interior ministry.

Preliminary results in the Bosnian elections have revealed major voting discrepancies, prompting independent election monitors to call on the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe to declare the Sep. 14, 1996, poll null and void. Initial returns showing that the number of votes was 7% higher than the number of estimated voters call into question Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic's 41,000-vote victory over Bosnian Serb separatist Momcilo Krajisnik. The discrepancies are particularly acute in predominantly Muslim areas and are thought to be due to large-scale ballot-stuffing.

There is speculation in Pale, the 'capital' of the Republika Srpska, that Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will die in an 'accident.' An international arrest warrant for Karadzic was issued by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, on Jul. 11, 1996, but Nato's I-For troops are not permitted to go looking for him. Karadzic's house is guarded by special police and he travels to work in a heavily guarded cavalcade. Vladimir Srebrov and Marko Vesovic who knew Karadzic very well as a young man believe that Serbian Pres. Slobodan Milosevic had some kind of hold over him.

The expected arrival in Bulgaria of its exiled King Simeon II at the weekend of May 25, 1996, has created great excitement among supporters of the monarchy but the ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party is ignoring the visit entirely. Simeon's supporters will beg him to lead Bulgaria out of crisis, either by retaking the throne in a constitutional monarchy, or by standing for the presidency in elections due in about six months' time. However, despite the excitement at Simeon's first visit to Bulgaria since 1946, recent opinion polls indicate just 15%-20% support for a restoration of the monarchy.

Throstur Karlsson, an Icelander from a peace institute in Reykjavik, Iceland, has played Santa Claus to the people of Sarajevo, Bosnia, where there has been a shortage of most things for 45 months. Karlsson's sister, Harpa Karlsdottir, was nevertheless disappointed by the fighting that broke out among the crowd. The distribution of a further 50,000 Christmas presents to schools, hospitals and orphanages was carried out more discreetly, and more successfully. The Boeing 737 used to bring the presents into Sarajevo also carried Bosnian invalids and refugees paying a rapid Christmas visit to their families.

Vivid accounts of recent massacres in western Bosnia have been provided by a group of 305 Muslim men exchanged for 135 Serb soldiers by Serb rebels on Oct. 30, 1995. Most of the men, many of whom were miners who had worked as slave labour for the Serbs, had been held prisoner in a ceramic tile factory outside the town of Sanski Most, Bosnia, from Sep. 21, 1995 to Oct. 11, 1995. The men, speaking on Nov. 1, 1995, told of how at least 11 of their fellow prisoners were summarily executed by Serb paramilitaries on Oct. 10, 1995, shortly before the Serbs fled the factory in the face of the advancing Bosnian army.