This morning's top stories:
- Fifteen Britons held captive by Iran for 13 days have returned to London, the Associated Press and various media outlets report. The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday pardoned the sailors and marines, calling their release an Easter gift to the British people. Video.
- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich issues a video statement after making comments on bilingual education that he concedes were a "poor" choice. Comments by Gingrich are taped in both English and Spanish in an effort to reach out to the Latino community. In his recent speech, Gingrich said bilingual programs should be replaced with English immersion, "so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."
- In an excerpt from his first book as pope, Benedict XVI accuses rich nations of plundering Africa and other poor regions.
- The astrophysics community is severely agitated over a massive supernova, some 77 million light years away, which has shaken existing theories on how stars die.
- Relics from the body of Joan of Arc are forgeries, the Journal Science reports. In fact, the remains of the 15th-century French heroine and saint are from a much older Egyptian mummy. The fabrication was first reported on Nature.com, the online site of the journal Nature, astonishing curators and historians.
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