Newscan

Helping heal with music

Michael Jackson is coordinating another star-studded fundraising effort around a new song to raise money for the survivors and families of victims of the terrorist attacks in the U.S.. Sixteen years after helping to organise the U.S.'s effort for Africa with the song "We Are the World," Jackson has recruited Destiny's Child, 'N Sync's Justin Timberlake, Britney

Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Nick Carter and Mya to record "What More Can I Give," which he hopes will raise more than $50 million.

Bach's music back home

Ukraine has said it would return to Germany a priceless archive of music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach's family that was seized by Soviet troops during World War Two.

"The government decided to hand over the archive to Germany under the process of the mutual return of wartime cultural trophies between our countries," Ruslan Pyrih, head of the State Committee for Archives, told Reuters.

The archive was owned by Bach's second son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who lived from 1714 to 1788 and served as a court musician to Prussia's Frederick the Great, accompanying the flute-playing monarch.

It includes about 500 works by Bach's family members. Some of them have never been published.

Ostrich as assets

Nine ostriches, 75 goats and an unfinished bird sanctuary were among the property declared by Gambian President Yahya Jammeh ahead of next month's election, the electoral commission said recently.

The West African country's constitution demands that candidates for the October 18 election declare their assets.

Jammeh, 36, grabbed power in a 1994 coup and won a presidential election two years later. Many opposition politicians were banned and those who did take part accused the government of rigging and intimidation.

Ahoy! Atlantis sighted

Have we finally located the legendary island of Atlantis? It sounds a familiar enough yarn - a lone researcher claiming to have pinpointed the lost land of Atlantis famously described by Plato. He has turned the clock back on ancient rises in the sea level to reveal an island that matches Plato's story. "There was an island in front of the Pillars of Hercules", says Collina Girard. Named Spartel, the slow rise of sea levels would have swamped the island, he says.

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Section  : Features
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