In the translucent blue waters separating vanua levu and taveuni — the second and third largest islands of Fiji — lies the Rainbow Reef. Among its many wonders is the Great White Wall, a sunken escarpment blanketed in luminescent white corals. Consistently rated as one of the world's best dive sites, the wall is reached via a tubular swim-through and starts at a depth of 20 m. Between a tangle of flexible, treelike soft coral are explosions of ...

If you're tired of music festivals that require you to endure muddy mosh pits, stifling tents and rapaciously priced bottles of water, consider an escape to the plunging cliffs, turquoise waters and weathered citadels of Corsica. Every year, amid this Mediterranean island's gorgeous surroundings, musicians gather under the stars for Les Nuits de la Guitare . Since its humble beginnings more than 20 years ago in the hillside village of Patrimonio, the event has brought together virtuosos ...

My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition. Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still ...

The Virginia colony had John Smith, Pocahontas, slavery, famine, battles and a great Indian chief. So how come Plymouth Rock gets all the press? An in-depth look at the place where our nation began to take shape They thought they were lost. The Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery had sailed from London on Dec. 20, 1606, carrying 144 passengers and crew, bound for Virginia. Howling winds pinned them to the coast of England for six weeks. After crossing ...

Syria could very well learn its fate this Friday. According to a source from the country with close ties to the regime, if large-scale demonstrations break out after midday prayer in Syria's two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, the regime will be faced with a stark choice: either crack down with unlimited violence, or meet the demonstrators' demands. In either case, Syria is looking into an abyss. The regime is in uncharted waters. In 1982 President Hafez Assad, ...

The House ethics committee on Thursday announced separate investigations into whether Rep. Laura Richardson and Rep. Maxine Waters, both Democrats from California, violated rules of conduct.

A military-grade laser that blinds temporarily is the latest security technology available to wealthy superyacht owners afraid of pirate attacks. The "SeaLase" laser, similar to weapons used for crowd control in Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. military, has a range of four kilometers and becomes harder to look at the closer an attacker comes. At a distance of one kilometer, attackers develop strong nausea and can no longer see, according to Lasersec Systems, the Finnish company that ...

Two Somalis suspected of piracy will appear Tuesday before a Spanish judge, hours after they were transported by the military to Madrid, a court spokesman said. The suspects are wanted as part of a pirate gang that captured a Spanish fishing boat in international waters off Somalia on October 2, according to a court document. Spanish naval and air forces, which had rushed toward the captured fishing boat, detected the two suspects leaving it a day later and heading toward ...

The number of dead in devastating floods triggered by torrential rains in India has risen to at least 271, and about a million people have fled their homes, officials said Monday. At least 192 people have died in the southern state of Karnataka, its disaster-management secretary H.V. Parshwanath told CNN. More than 450,000 people there have been housed in 1,330 relief camps as authorities completed rescue operations in most of the flooded zones in the state, he said. ...

The death toll from flooding in the Philippines caused by Tropical Storm Ketsana climbed to at least 100 on Monday, disaster officials said. Flood water began to subside after a weekend that saw the capital, Manila, hit with its heaviest rainfall in more than 40 years. More than 80 percent of the capital was under water at one point Sunday. The deluge swallowed whole houses and buses. Manila, in the island of Luzon, and the nearby province of Rizal bore ...