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POPSThe Unlikely Role of Patriot Pirates in bloody mismatches of firepower and seamanship. But the payday was deemed worth the risk. One success, shrugged the Philadelphia financier Robert Morris, an avid investor, "will pay for two, three, or four losses." The crews themselves were no less bullish. One New Hampshire seaman, just 14 years old, collected a ton of sugar, 40 gallons of rum, and $100 in gold from the proceeds of one captured ship. Although a six-week privateering jaunt turned into two years of combat and harsh imprisonment for a Connecticut teenager, he astonished his family by hopping another privateer two days after staggering home. He ended the war a wealthy man. Benjamin Franklin, America's first emissary to France and a strong supporter of privateering, had no illusions about defeating the Royal Navy, but he aimed to prolong the sea war in order to weaken British resolve. "We expect to make their merchants sick of a contest in which so much is risked and nothing gained."
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POPSNatural Disaster Evolves Into Man-Made Catastrophe "We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors." The USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship, and its battle group have been waiting to join in the relief effort as well. U.S. Marine flights from their makeshift headquarters in Utapao, Thailand, continued Saturday — bringing the total to 500,000 pounds of aid delivered. Britain's prime minister accused authorities in Burma of behaving inhumanely by preventing foreign aid from reaching victims. "This is inhuman," Gordon Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp. Brown said a natural disaster "is being made into a man-made catastrophe by the negligence, the neglect and the inhuman treatment of the Burmese people by a regime that is failing to act.
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POPSAfrican Shipwreck Yields Rich Treasures Then the team found what looked like cannon barrels. The geologists stopped the brutal earth-moving work of searching for diamonds and sent photos to Noli, who had done research in the Namibian desert since the mid-1980s and has advised De Beers since 1996 on the archaeological impact of its operations in Namibia. The find "was what I'd been waiting for, for 20 years," Noli said. "Understandably, I was pretty excited. I still am." Noli's original specialty was the desert, but because of Namdeb's offshore explorations, he had been preparing for the possibility of a wreck, even learning to dive. After the discovery, he brought in Bruno Werz, an expert in the field, to help research the wreck. Noli has studied maritime artifacts with Werz, who was one of his instructors at the University of Cape Town.
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POPSImages from Borneo including a deforestation projection graphic One half of the annual tropical timber acquisition of the whole world comes from Borneo. Palm oil plantations are rapidly encroaching on the last remnants of primary rainforest. The rainforest was also greatly destroyed due to the forest fires in 1997 to 1998 which were started by people and coincided with an exceptional drought season of El Niño. During the great fire, hotspots could be seen on satellite images and a haze was created that affected Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
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POPSWest Coast Array of Protests on May Day Operations in Oakland and other West Coast ports ground to a halt Thursday after ILWU workers stayed off the job, said Steve Getzug, spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents companies that move cargo through the ports. "There is no activity," he said. "The ILWU struck West Coast ports and brought cargo operations to a virtual standstill." Music to my ears.
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