The implication that the EU is spending billions of euros on a program to study 3-legged dogs is completely misleading. The fund in question appears to be FP7 (Wikipedia article), which funds a huge variety of researchers on many differnet topics.

If you look at what I think is the relevant EU site, the project received EUR 2.7 million from the 'Embodied intelligence' Initiative within the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Thematic area of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

Which wouldn't make much of a story I guess - "multi-billion" sounds waaay more impressive.

-Chris

Newfoundland is one possible site - there are a number of proposed locations in that area, down to Massachusetts. In addition, Newfoundland island is only 17 miles off the coast of Labrador, so it's not really relevant - if they'd explored Newfoundland, or sailed round it, they would clearly have been aware of the much larger land mass.

Anyway, even though the map is not to a fixed scale, the 'island' couldn't really be Newfoundland - it's the size of most of western europe!

Vinland is recognised by most historians as being a short-lived Norse ('Viking') colony in the Newfoundland area, probably on mainland North America (though the exact location and extent is very unsure). See the Wikipedia article.

The map shows it as an island presumably (assuming it is genuine) because the area was explored to a very limted extent and the explorers were unaware that it was part of a much greater land mass.