Using 3/16 build on Win 95, Win 98, Win NT, Mac 8.5 and Linux. Open URL. There is a paragraph within the body. The body is bordered in red; the paragraph in green. The paragraph is positioned absolutely 50 pixels from the left and 65 pixels from the top with respect to its containing box which is the body. Expected result: Bordered body should encompass bordered paragraph. Actual result: Bordered paragraph displays outside bordered body.

Your test is wrong. The containing block is the HTML element (see the CSS2 spec and lookup "initial containing block")

Yup, Troy is right.

Verified fixed by py8ieh=bugzilla@bath.ac.uk but I requested additional information from same regarding bug.

Requested information was, I believe, given a long time ago, so I am wiping the status whiteboard to prevent it from coming up on my queries.

Yes, I understand since I wrote the bug up. In this case, the containing block would be the BODY only if there was a padding value. Since BODY has no padding value, the content edge of the root element's box (HTML element) defines the containing block.