Truman K. Gibson Jr., a Chicago attorney who had been the last surviving member of the World War II-era "black Cabinet" of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman, died Friday at Mercy Hospital after an illness of five weeks. He was 93.

As an advocate for African- American soldiers in the War Department from 1940 through 1945, Mr. Gibson fought tirelessly to break down the segregation that ruled the U.S. Army, to persuade the military leadership to commit black servicemen to combat instead of relegating them to service and support duty, and to protect the rights and even the lives of African-American soldiers trained at camps mostly in the Jim Crow South where white violence was a constant threat.

"Truman Gibson was one of the great resources of the civil rights battles who was never acknowledged as he should have been," said Abner Mikva, the former Illinois congressman, federal appellate judge and White House counsel.

That story was the heart of Mr. Gibson's memoir, Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America, published this year by Northwestern University Press.

"I am just so thankful that he got to do that book, to say what he wanted to say," said his daughter, Karen Kelley of New York. "He lived nearly 94 years pretty much on his own terms, and it was such a wonderful life."

Bowing to domestic and international pressure, the Brazilian government has begun releasing intelligence files compiled by the former military dictatorship on government opponents, including victims of torture and those who disappeared.

A preliminary list of people whose activities were monitored by military intelligence during the dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985, has already been made public. As of Jan. 1, those people will be allowed to examine their own files, which are being transferred from military control to the National Archives.

Government officials estimated the files contained more than a million printed pages, plus photographs and films.

The belated release of the documents comes little more than a month after the United Nations Commission on Human Rights issued a draft report urging Brazil to be more assertive in dealing with the dark corners of its recent past.

That report, followed this month by a two-week visit by a United Nations emissary, noted that Brazil had been reluctant to identify and punish those responsible for rights abuses.

STURBRIDGE, Mass. -- Historical fact: In the 1830s, many rural New Englanders followed a religion so strait-laced that they did not celebrate Christmas.

Accordingly, at Old Sturbridge Village -- an outdoor museum where an 1830s town has been re-created down to the cider mill and the Gloucester Old Spots pigs -- they used to ignore the holiday as well.

Used to. Until, in the past few years, attendance started to slip. "How many times can you tell the story, 'They didn't celebrate it'?"
asked Susanna Bonta, a museum spokeswoman.

Now, in December the village gets a makeover that might make a Puritan -- or a historian -- blanch. There is a Christmas tree (not popularized in the United States until the 1840s), a visit from Santa Claus (who didn't take his current form until after 1850) and a series of nighttime tours showing the village lit by (electric) candlelight. These are times for creative thinking at the country's "living history" parks, where officials worry that their old formula of restored buildings, costumed interpreters and anvil-banging demonstrations is losing its tourist appeal.

Museums from Virginia to Michigan are trying to add an edge. How about a walk-through theatrical production? An overnight stay in a pilgrim's house? Who'd like to try on 19th-century replica underwear?

In this fast-moving age, apparently, just making the past come alive isn't enough. "It's just a larger, competitive world," said John Caramia, a North Carolina museum official and past president of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums.

When Christmas Eve comes, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), will track Santa Claus during his annual flight.

NORAD is responsible for handling the air defense of the North America continent. But it has also been tracking Santa's movements on Christmas Eve for the past 50 years.

NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa -- radar, satellites, Santa Cams and jet fighter aircraft.

The satellites have infrared sensors, meaning they can see heat. Rudolph's nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch. Thus, the satellites can detect Rudolph's bright red nose with practically no problem.

The tradition of tracking Santa began in 1955, when a local Sears, Roebuck and Co. store ran a newspaper ad urging children to make a phone call on Christmas Eve and talk to Santa Claus. As fate would have it, the phone number was misprinted and, instead of reaching Santa, youngsters found themselves talking with Air Force Col. Harry Shoup of the Continental Air Defense Command at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado.

A rare German gun that may have belonged to Adolph Hitler -- allegedly taken as a souvenir 60 years ago when U.S. forces captured one of his secret hideaways -- could fetch thousands of dollars in an online auction next month, organizers said.

No one knows for sure whether Hitler owned the Krieghoff Drilling combination shotgun and rifle engraved with the initials "A.H." It is to be sold by Midwest Exchange, a Bloomington pawn shop, at auction at www.gunbroker.com.

On a rocky hillside in Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up and spent much of his life, a familiar scene is taking shape. In the courtyard of a stone stable, surrounded by rough-hewn wooden farming implements, a young man and his wife are comforting their newborn son. They are dressed in simple, handwoven tunics, and the baby is lying on a bed of fresh straw in an animal's trough.

It is as if they had been transported back in time 2,000 years to the birth of Christ and the simple rural community where Mary and Joseph lived, probably less than a mile away. This is Nazareth Village, an authentic re-creation of a first-century Holy Land farm.

This week, the village was the scene for a dramatic retelling of the Nativity by torchlight, accompanied by readings from the Gospels and carols in Arabic for the local community. The play has been staged in Nazareth since 2000, and it draws thousands of spectators.

Although there are other Nativity plays in the Holy Land, this is probably the most authentic reconstruction of the birth of Nazareth's most famous son. The crowded courtyard is buzzing with the raucous sounds of donkeys, sheep and chickens that share the rough accommodation. The steady thud of hammers and chisels drift over from a nearby carpenter's workshop. The air is thick with the smoke of oil lamps, the fresh farmyard odors of animal dung and viscous white goat's milk cooking in a pot on an open fire.

If the central sewage line for Jerusalem's Old City, which runs down the slope of the village of Silwan, had not gotten blocked a year ago, it would probably have been many years before we would have discovered the real dimensions of the historic Pool of Siloam from the Second Temple Period.

The pool, whose present small dimensions date from Byzantine times, is the outlet for the spring water coursing through the ancient Hezekiah's tunnel. It was once huge - three to four dunams.

And if the huge dimensions of the pool had not been discovered, it is doubtful that the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Elad association, which is working for the development of the area also known as the City of David, would not have come across the dramatic discovery now underway: the far end of a street dating from the Herodian period, which begins at the outer southwestern corner of the Temple Mount and is familiar to visitors to the Western Wall.

When the sewage main first backed up during the winter of 2004, the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, responsible for the archaeological sites around the Old City's walls, called for a halt to the repair work and took advantage of the opportunity to dig a heretofore unexcavated part of the City of David.

Archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron, who are directing the dig for the IAA and Elad, say that for the first time they are now able to trace the street that connected the Temple Mount in Second Temple times with the Pool of Siloam. Other portions of the road were revealed by the 19th-century Jerusalem explorers Bliss and Dickey and in 1963 by archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. Now, the last piece of the puzzle has come to light near the pool.

The Japanese government is considering convening a second meeting of a joint Japanese-South Korean history study group in January, government sources said Friday.

The panel will set up a smaller group to examine the issue of history textbooks, in addition to its three current subgroups: one dealing with ancient history, another on medieval history and a third on contemporary history.

The government hopes the new round of talks will improve ties between the two countries, the sources said. Those ties have been badly strained by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors convicted Class-A war criminals as well as the war dead, and by revisionist Japanese history texts that critics say whitewash the nation's wartime atrocities.

In October 2001, the two sides agreed to set up the joint study after a row over the history textbooks, which were penned by nationalists.

Historians from the two countries held a first round of discussions starting in May 2002 but were sharply divided on key historical events, including Japan's 1910 annexation of the Korean Peninsula, as shown in a report compiled by the panel in June.

The group is expected to deal with the issue of history textbooks in both countries at the second round of talks, in addition to topics taken up by the three subgroups during the first round, the sources said.

The scholars will analyze common and divergent points in the two countries' history, as well as how historical events involving the two countries are described.

British Columbia's Lieutenant-Governor Iona Campagnolo has quietly launched a mission to heal an old cross-border scar between the U.S. and Canada: The 1884 lynching by an American mob of a young Sto:lo boy named Louie Sam.

"This is not the best time in relations between Canada and the United States," said Campagnolo in an interview. "This is a positive thing.

"We can't change the past, but we can do something about it."

The Sto:lo First Nation still recounts stories of a moonlit night in February 1884, when the 14-year-old boy was kidnapped and hung 130 paces from the border, allegedly for a murder historians believe he didn't commit.

"We have to remember in an oral society, nothing is forgotten," said Campagnolo, who thinks the only U.S. lynching in Canada now deserves an apology because the U.S. government apologized to its own citizens last June for failing to protect 4,743 Americans who were hung. "I think this is a human rights issue."

Campagnolo chose to act for Louie Sam in September, in a speech given to Washington State's Lieutenant-Governor Brad Owen, who, unlike Canada's crown representatives, is elected by the public.

"Our government spent years seeking justice in the case without effect. Today, the issue is still one contention between the Sto:lo people and our government. The case is the only fully documented lynching ever to take place in Canada."

The bid seems to be working.

Owen is preparing to steer a resolution through the state legislature to issue an apology, one that won't involve any monetary compensation but seeks to offer "healing." Washington's lieutenant-governor also sent a letter this week to the B.C. government asking they, too, follow through with an apology for not doing enough to bring Sam's murderers to justice.

THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine". The order came at a time when the Soviet Union was embarked on a crusade to turn the world upside down, with social engineering seen as a partner to industrialisation: new cities, architecture, and a new egalitarian society were being created.

The Soviet authorities were struggling to rebuild the Red Army after bruising wars.

And there was intense pressure to find a new labour force, particularly one that would not complain, with Russia about to embark on its first Five-Year Plan for fast-track industrialisation.

Mr Ivanov was highly regarded. He had established his reputation under the Tsar when in 1901 he established the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses.

Mr Ivanov's ideas were music to the ears of Soviet planners and in 1926 he was dispatched to West Africa with $200,000 to conduct his first experiment in impregnating chimpanzees.

Meanwhile, a centre for the experiments was set up in Georgia - Stalin's birthplace - for the apes to be raised.

HUNDREDS of human footprints — the oldest in Australia and the largest collection of its kind in the world — have been found in the Mungo National Park in south-western NSW.

They were left by children, adolescents and adults between 19,000 and 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last ice age, as they ran and walked across a moist clay area near the Willandra Lakes.

The prints were laid down in wet clay containing calcium carbonate, which hardened like concrete.

The first footprint was spotted by Mary Pappin jnr, of the Mutthi Mutthi people, two years ago and more than 450 more have since been uncovered by a team led by Steve Webb of Bond University.

Professor Webb said the find provided a unique glimpse into the lives of those who lived in the arid inland. "It brings these people to life in a way no other archaeological evidence can. You can see how the mud squelched between their toes."

Previous administrations, as well as the court that oversees national security cases, agreed with President Bush's position that a president legally may authorize searches without warrants in pursuit of foreign intelligence. "The Department of Justice believes -- and the case law supports -- that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the president may, as he has done, delegate this authority to the attorney general," Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick said in 1994 testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. That same authority, she added, pertains to electronic surveillance such as wiretaps.

More recently, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- the secretive judicial system that handles classified intelligence cases -- wrote in a declassified opinion that the court has long held "that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information."

Such warrantless searches have been at the center of a political fight in Washington after the New York Times reported Friday that the Bush administration had a program to intercept communications between al Qaeda suspects and persons in this country, a story whose publication coincided with the congressional debate over reauthorizing the USA Patriot Act.

In a 2002 opinion about the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the USA Patriot Act, the court wrote: "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."

Indeed, previous administrations have used that same authority.

One of the most famous examples of warrantless searches in recent years was the investigation of CIA official Aldrich H. Ames, who ultimately pleaded guilty to spying for the former Soviet Union. That case was largely built upon secret searches of Ames' home and office in 1993, conducted without federal warrants.

In 1994, President Clinton expanded the use of warrantless searches to entirely domestic situations with no foreign intelligence value whatsoever. In a radio address promoting a crime-fighting bill, Mr. Clinton discussed a new policy to conduct warrantless searches in highly violent public housing projects.

Previous administrations also asserted the authority of the president to conduct searches in the interest of national security.

In 1978, for instance, Attorney General Griffin B. Bell testified before a federal judge about warrantless searches he and President Carter had authorized against two men suspected of spying on behalf of the Vietnam government.

That same year, Congress approved and Mr. Carter signed FISA, which created the secret court and required federal agents to get approval to conduct electronic surveillance in most foreign intelligence cases. ...

Sylvia Cyrus-Albritton isn't going to hold it against actor Morgan Freeman for slamming the need for Black History Month.

She isn't mad that the Oscar winner said on CBS' 60 Minutes that it's "ridiculous" to relegate one month to black history and that the practice should be abolished.

But as director of the group founded by the father of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, Cyrus-Albritton says she has an important message for Freeman: "We're not there yet, Morgan."

It was a response echoed by many civil rights leaders and historians across the country yesterday after Freeman's statements, broadcast Sunday, sparked a heated debate over whether, as he suggested, the only way to eliminate racism is to just stop talking about it.

"Mr. Freeman was giving an opinion that does not jibe with the best information we have," civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson says. "Unless blacks are given due credit for what they do, we need to continue teaching black history, for both esteem purposes and edification. ... I have a lot of respect for him as an actor, but [the] actor makes a statement, an observation. He is not a historian. He is projecting an idealism. We should leave this debate to historians."

Cyrus-Albritton of the 90-year-old Association for the Study of African American Life and History in Washington, agreed that the job of educating Americans about black history is far from done.

The year-end report, Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey - 2005, published by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, found that in many Arab and Muslim countries, Holocaust-denial continued to enjoy official sponsorship in 2005. The regimes in Egypt, Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria promoted Holocaust-denial or defended Holocaust-deniers. The continued promotion of Holocaust-denial by Egyptian government-controlled publications was particularly alarming in view of the fact that in 2004, Egypt's Information Minister had, in response to U.S. protests, publicly acknowledged the Holocaust as a historical fact and condemned Holocaust-deniers.

By contrast, in the United States and Europe, Holocaust-deniers suffered a number of setbacks in 2005, as a result of public protests and government action. Protests in the U.S. resulted in C-Span's cancelation of a broadcast of Holocaust-denier David Irving; the withdrawal by Teen People magazine of an article whitewashing a Holocaust-denying singing duo; and the Jordanian government's decision to halt an antisemitic and Holocaust-denying television series. At the same time, the governments of Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands took legal action against Holocaust-deniers.

In another significant development, the U.S. State Department for the first time officially described Holocaust-denial as a form of antisemitism. In its report on antisemitism around the world, issued in January 2005, the State Department included instances of Holocaust-denial as manifestations of antisemitism.

"The U.S. government now acknowledges that Holocaust-denial is anti-Jewish bigotry, not a legitimate interpretation of history," said Dr. Medoff. "This establishes an important precedent that other governments should follow."

Holocaust-denial was the subject of widespread public attention this past year, due to Holocaust-denial statements by the president of Iran and the announcement that Mel Gibson is involved in a forthcoming television series about the Holocaust. (Gibson's father denies the Holocaust, and Gibson himself has made statements minimizing and distorting the Holocaust.) These developments were reported extensively by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Associated Press, and other major news media.

This Minority Report has been produced at the request of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He made this request in the wake of the President's failure to respond to a letter submitted by 122 Members of Congress and more than 500,000 Americans in July of this year asking him whether the assertions set forth in the Downing Street Minutes were accurate. Mr. Conyers asked staff, by year end 2005, to review the available information concerning possible misconduct by the Bush Administration in the run up to the Iraq War and post-invasion statements and actions, and to develop legal conclusions and make legislative and other recommendations to him.
In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.

Local politicians have pilloried a new documentary film, “Baltic Nazism,” covering the Nazi period in the Baltic states. They have gone so far as to appeal to the Russian Embassy and the local prosecutor in an effort to stop the film’s premiere in January, just days after the documentary was shown to local journalists.

The documentary has drawn criticism because it reportedly juxtaposes video material from World War II with recent minority-related demonstrations in the country.

The documentary was shown to local journalists shortly after the European Council decided to end human rights monitoring in Latvia, causing some members of Parliament to conclude that the film was Russia’s answer to the recent decision to end monitoring. Many have interpreted the documentary as depicting a revival of fascism in Latvia today.

It includes a march to the Freedom Monument by members of All For Latvia and some veterans of the Latvian legion on the day honoring the legion. The footage shows protestors clad in prison uniforms with the Star of David being hauled away by local police for physically obstructing the march.

“This tendentious and one-sided interpretation of the events of World War II cannot even for a small measure pretend to be an objective and serious historical expertise,” Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks told the Baltic News Service.

The Greens and Farmers’ Union have called for a halt to showing the film, which was produced by a little-known Russian company Third Rome, claiming it would ignite ethnic hatred and harm relations between the two countries.

“The film incites ethnic hatred, and is a noteworthy example of [Joseph] Goebbels’ propoganda. It lies and distorts history,” Janis Strazdins, a member of the Greens and Farmers’ Union, said at a press conference.

“This is a known provocation in order to start a debate about the monitoring of human rights in Latvia,” said parliamentarian speaker Ingrida Udre.

The prosecutor’s office is reportedly considering a probe into whether the film promotes ethnic hatred.

Other than a group of journalists and politicians, few have yet to see the whole film.

Iran’s president has shot to the forefront of Holocaust denial in recent days, but it may seem more like self-denial: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad need only look to his country’s Hitler-era past to discover that Iran and Iranians were connected to the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, as was the larger Arab and Islamic world under the leadership of the mufti of Jerusalem.

Iran’s links to the Third Reich began during the pre-World War II years when it welcomed Gestapo agents and other operatives to Tehran, allowing them to use it as a Middle East base for agitation against the British and the region’s Jews.

Key among these Gestapo men was Fritz Grobba, Berlin’s envoy to the Middle East, and often called “the German Lawrence” because he promised a Pan-Arab state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran.

Relations between Berlin and Tehran were strong from the moment Hitler came to power in 1933, when Reza Shah Pahlavi’s nation was still known as Persia.

The shah became a stalwart admirer of Hitler, Nazism and the concept of the Aryan master race. He also sought the Nazis’ help in reducing British petro-political domination.

So intense was the shah’s identification with the Third Reich that in 1935 he renamed his ancient country “Iran,” which in Farsi means Aryan and refers to the Proto-Indo-European lineage that Nazi racial theorists and Persian ethnologists cherished.

The idea for the name change was suggested by the Iranian ambassador to Germany, who came under the influence of Hitler’s trusted banker Hjalmar Schacht. From that point, all Iranians were constantly reminded that their country shared a bond with the Nazi regime.

Shortly after World War II began in 1939, the mufti of Jerusalem crafted a strategic alliance with Hitler to exchange Iraqi oil for active Arab and Islamic participation in the murder of Jews in the Mideast and Eastern Europe, predicated on support for a Pan-Arab state and Arab rule over Palestine.

During the war years, Iran became a haven and headquarters for Gestapo agents and German operatives. It was from Iran that the seeds of the abortive 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Baghdad were planted.

After Churchill’s forces booted the Nazis out of Iraq in June 1941, the German air crews supporting Nazi bombers escaped across the northern border back into Iran. Likewise, the mufti of Jerusalem was spirited across the border to Tehran, where he continued to call for the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of the British. His venomous rhetoric filled the newspapers and radio broadcasts of Tehran.

From Tehran and elsewhere, the Mufti was a vocal and vigilant opponent of allowing Jewish refugees to be transported or ransomed into Palestine. Instead, he wanted them shipped to the gas chambers of Poland.

In the summer of 1941, with the support of key Iranian military and government leaders, the mufti advocated implementing in Iran what had failed months earlier in Iraq. The plan once again was for a total diversion of oil from the Allies to the Nazis in exchange for the accelerated destruction of the Jews in Eastern Europe and support for an Arab state.

Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Iran already had been supplying Hitler’s forces in occupied Czechoslovakia and Austria. Now the mufti agitated to cut off the British and the Allies completely and supply Germany in its push against Russia and the East.

In October, 1941, British, Russians and other Allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Pro-Nazi generals and ministers were arrested and the shah’s Western-leaning son was installed.

The mufti scampered into the Italian Embassy, where he shaved his beard and dyed his hair, and was then allowed to exit the country along with the rest of the Italian delegation.

Once the mufti relocated permanently to Berlin, where he established his own Reich-supported “bureau,” he was given airtime on Radio Berlin. From Berlin and other fascist capitals in Europe, the mufti continued to agitate for the destruction of international Jewry, as well as a pan-Arab and pan-Islamic alliance with the Nazi regime.

He called upon all Muslims to “kill the Jews wherever you see them.” In Tehran’s marketplace, it was common to see placards that declared, “In heaven, Allah is your master. On Earth, it is Adolf Hitler.”

When the mufti organized three Islamic Waffen SS divisions to undertake operations in Bosnia, among the 30,000 killers were some volunteer contingents from Iran. Iranian Nazis, along with the other Muslim Waffen SS, operated under the direct supervision of Heinrich Himmler and were responsible for barbarous actions against Jews and others in Bosnia. Recruitment for the murderous “Handschar Divisions” was open and public in Iran.

Iran and its leaders not only were aware of the Holocaust, they played both sides. The country offered overland escape routes for refugee Jews fleeing Nazi persecution to Israel — and later fleeing postwar Iraqi fascist persecution — but only in exchange for extortionary passage fees. Thousands of Jews made their way to Israel via Iran both during the Holocaust and after the fall of Hitler, when Arab leaders, especially in Iraq, tried to continue Germany’s anti-Jewish program. Iran profited handsomely.

To play all sides of the Holocaust drama — and now to deny that the Holocaust even happened — should be very difficult in a nation named for Hitler’s master race.

RECENTLY unearthed remains of the Temple of Jupiter, the oldest stone building in Rome, are to be opened to the public this week in a move that the Mayor says will bring Ancient Rome alive.

A new architect-designed space, covered in glass, will also feature the bronze equestrian statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius with his arm outstretched — the most celebrated statue in the Ancient world — and a gigantic head of the Emperor Constantine. Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome, said that the new wing of the Capitoline Museums was a stunning sight.

Anna Mura Sommella, the director of the Capitoline Museums, said it had been thought that only the foundations of the temple were left. But excavation work in the new space, a neglected courtyard of the Renaissance-era museum buildings on Capitol Hill, had brought to light a 7m (22ft) stretch of the temple wall.

The Temple of Jupiter dates to the 6th century BC and was dedicated to the gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. According to the Roman historian Livy it was built on the site of a sacred oak, where Roman soldiers deposited the spoils of war. At the height of its fame, its doors, roof and statues of the deities were ablaze with gold.

The finds have helped archaeologists to identify the site and dimensions of the temple, dedicated in 509BC, which measured 60m x 52m (197ft x 171ft) and had a portico of six marble columns. It was the focal point of religion and politics and the scene of triumphal processions after military victories.

The construction of the Roman Limes was quite possibly influenced by the concept of the Great Wall in China, though the two great buildings of the world are far away from each other, said archaeologists and historians.

Although there is no evidence that the two constructions had any direct connections, indirect influence from the Great Wall on the Roman Limes is certain, said Visy Zsolt, a professor with the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Pecs in Hungary.

Visy made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua as he attended an international conference in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province recently, and his opinion was shared by some Chinese and foreign scholars.

The Roman Limes are Europe's largest archaeological monument, consisting of sections of the border line of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in the 2nd century AD.

All together, the Limes stretch over 5,000 kilometers from the Atlantic coast of northern Britain, through Europe to the Black Sea, and from there to the Red Sea and across North Africa to the Atlantic coast.

Vestiges include the remains of the ramparts, walls and ditches, close to 900 watchtowers, 60 forts, and civilian settlements which accommodated tradesmen, craftsmen and others who served in the military.

The long distance and the great number of different peoples and cultures in Central Asia made any connections between the two ancient Roman and Chinese empires almost impossible.

However, curiosity and the challenge of covering great distances and seeing remote lands excited people in the past, Visy said.

"Indeed, more information about each other could be gained exactly in times as the one or the other became stronger and could start some programs toward the other," Visy said.

As for the Roman Empire, the silk trade started during the reign of Augustus. The trade became intensive both on the Silk Route and in the sea.

The Chinese chief commander Ban Chao led an army up the Caspian Sea in the 1st century AD and sent a delegation to the west to get information about Rome (called Daqin in Chinese).

Visy noted that there are a lot of similarities between the Roman Limes and the Great Wall. Both empires wanted to launch a strong barrier against "barbarians" and to prevent their invasions. In doing so, the Han Dynasty (226 BC-220 AD) built a continuous wall, but Rome built a wall only in special cases.

The Nanjing Massacre remains a touchstone of China-Japan conflict nearly seven decades after the event. Now Chinese plans to honor John Rabe, a Germany citizen in Nanjing, for his efforts to protect Chinese citizens from slaughter have inflamed tensions with Japan over war and rare memory. The Chinese plan offers a rare example in the annals of warfare in general, and China in particular, of recognizing in a public and prominent way the achievements of a foreign national in a world that is dominated by nationalist icons.

The official Japanese response to the issues is emblematic not only of the ability to put war issues behind it but also of the fact that serious historians differ on many of the specifics of the massacre. The present article presents Chinese conclusions about casualties, notably 300,000 dead and 80,000 rapes. However, as David Askew has noted in “New Research on the Nanjing Incident,” several of the most exhaustive Japanese and international studies suggest that figures closer to 100,000 deaths may be more plausible.

With Chinese archives still closed, and with Nanjing deniers continuing to challenge the important research findings of critical Japanese historians, important issues pertaining to the massacre remain contested. Likewise, the number of lives saved by the actions of Rabe and other members of the international community remains moot. What is not in question is the fact that the Japanese military committed major atrocities at Nanjing. Is it possible that historians of China and Japan will eventually produce a common understanding of the events of Nanjing? If the recent history of East Asian nationalism is a guide, that will not be any time soon. The stakes, however, are high in terms of the peace and prosperity of Northeast Asia. Japan Focus

For many years, authors, naval historians and tour guides have believed that Lord Nelson went into battle at Trafalgar accompanied by a fearless pet cat called Tiddles. An appearance on breakfast television earlier this month has led to the shock discovery that Nelson's cat was, in fact, a hoax perpetrated 15 years ago by a National Trust employee called Guy Evans.

Stephen Fry uncovered the scam after mentioning Tiddles during a BBC interview to plug the DVD of his quiz show QI. A few days later, he received a letter from Evans's widow, Anna.

'I ought to tell the world that Tiddles is a myth,' it read. 'He first appeared in a letter written by my husband to The Spectator in 1990. He followed it up in an article in the Nelson Society Journal, with very convincing and entirely fictional footnotes.

'From there, Tiddles snowballed to become part of popular folklore and has featured in books, magazines and academic journals.'

Fry's producer, John Lloyd, says this has surprised even tour guides on HMS Victory. 'We research questions exhaustively at QI, and we have never come across something like this before,' he tells me.

MOVE over Charles Darwin and Elizabeth Fry. A leading historian wants to see a black face on a banknote to demonstrate the changing social and ethnic composition of Britain.

Mary Seacole, the nurse who served in the Crimea, Olaudah Equino, an 18th century anti-slavery writer, or Dadabhai Naoroji, the first South Asian MP who sat for Finsbury in the 1890s, have all been suggested as candidates.

Linda Colley, the author of several books on British identity, said in an interview for Fabian Review, the magazine of the Fabian Society, that "practical measures'' were needed to create a new definition of Britishness to include blacks and Asians.

''There are omissions which are painfully obvious and which could easily be put right,'' she said. ''Why, for instance, are all the people on the British banknotes always white?''

While most of the historical figures depicted on the notes are household names, such as Charles Darwin and Sir Edward Elgar, the Fabians - who are organising a major conference on the future of Britishness - are questioning why Sir John Houblon should stay on the pounds 50 note when few have heard of him.

The first governor of the Bank of England, he replaced Sir Christopher Wren in 1994 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the bank.

Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society said it was time for a national debate about the identities of new faces.

''Few people know how these things are decided, or how somebody like Sir John Houblon was chosen to be the face of the pounds 50 note,'' he said.

"Our national symbols should reflect the nation that we are today.

"Deciding how we should do that could be a really positive way to capture and increase the growing public interest in our history.

"Just as Florence Nightingale was on the pounds 10 note from 1975 to 1994, Mary Seacole could be a symbol not just of our history but of the diversity which is today at the heart of our most cherished national institution, the NHS.''