The citadel was discovered early in 2003 during excavations to rebuild the Ba Dinh Hall Complex, the seat of Vietnam’s legislature.

After conducting a thorough archeological search of the site, researchers discovered layers of structures built on top of each other and millions of artifacts dating back to the 7th century that detailed long-lost history of the ancient capital.

The citadel was inaugurated as a museum for the public in October 2003.

"He was a good husband, a good son, and a good friend and I wanted to show him that way," said the lyricist, Dojpalem Ganzorig. "Not as a tyrant or someone with a bad character which is how some people see him."

Non-Mongolian historians beg to differ' they say Genghis and his Mongol hordes murdered about 40 million people as they created an empire from Asia to eastern Europe, raping and pillaging as they went.

But in Mongolia, locals revere the warlord as their most famous son, and the rock opera, called Chinghis Khan, (as he is known in Mongolia) has opened in Ulan Bator, the country's capital, to rave reviews.

It is the latest manifestation of a growing personality cult around the man who united warring tribes more than 700 years ago to forge one of the most effective armies in the world. "During Communism it was prohibited to talk about Chinghis Khan," Ganzorig said recently. "But he was in everyone's heart, everyone wanted to know him, be proud of him, and sing songs about him. Now after the democratic revolution we can do that." Communism, which discouraged talk of Genghis Khan for fear of stoking nationalism, collapsed in 1990, and Mongolians have moved to reclaim ownership of Genghis ever since The rock opera is being staged now to coincide with the 800th anniversary of Mongolia's creation, which Genghis brought about.

The production is loosely based on The Secret History of the Mongols - an account of Genghis's life allegedly written by his generals. It features 40 dancers, 60 singers, a rock group, a 50-piece orchestra, and mixes traditional Mongolian throat singing and folk music with electric guitars.

Mongolia is a relatively poor country and Ulan Bator is not Broadway nor the West End so the budget is modest, just $60,000 (pounds 32,000). Genghis has already been used to sell vodka, chocolate, and hotel rooms but the rock opera's composer, Taraa, insists the use of his life story is not a marketing ploy. "We are very proud of our heritage. We need an intellectual product with a Khan label."

The oversized orb is just one highlight of the more than 8,000 artifacts in the German Historical Museum's new permanent display on the country's 2,000-year history, which seeks to help Germans rediscover their identity.

With World War II and the Nazi genocide still in living memory, many Germans have shunned the study of their own past. Museum director Hans Ottomeyer hopes the exhibit can contribute to changing that.

"It is a history that has been shaped by dramatic wars and long periods of peace," Ottomeyer said. "We attempt to show what strategies are used to generate hate, to vilify others, and start wars. On the other hand we show how reasonable policies form the basis for prosperity and times of peace."

Though the 12 years the Nazis were in power makes up one of the largest sections of the exhibit, Ottomeyer said the museum also wanted to make sure to put the era in perspective to show "that there is also another history than the one which found its terrible fulfillment in the 20th century."

The more than 80,000-square-foot exhibition, being officially opened Friday by Chancellor Angela Merkel at the museum on the Unter den Linden boulevard, spans long corridors posted with "milestone" markers in English and German that tell the story of each era. Visitors more interested in a certain period can head off the main path for side exhibits at every stop.

The journey starts in A.D. 9, when Germanic tribes ambushed and destroyed three Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The defeat ended Roman plans to extend their power beyond the Rhine River.

Alongside bones from the battlefield is the eerie iron mask from a Roman's helmet dug up at the site in northwestern Germany.

Lea Rosh, who led the campaign to build a Holocaust memorial in the city centre, has made the "coverup" her new cause. "At the very least, the figures of Arno Breker should be hidden from view, and an explanation given on the plinth," Ms. Rosh said yesterday.

Mr. Breker, who died in 1991, was one of Europe's top sculptors even before the Nazis came to power, and his powerful figures caught the attention of Hitler. His sculptures were supposed to adorn the new Berlin that Hitler and Albert Speer, his chief architect, were planning to build after the war.

For the Olympic Stadium, constructed for the Games of 1936, Mr. Breker sculpted The Female Victor and The Decathlete.

Ms. Rosch wants both to be covered, as well as colossal statues of discus throwers and relay runners by Karl Albiker, The Resting Athlete, by Georg Kolbe, and many others scattered around the complex.

"Breker was a top Nazi," Ms. Rosch said. "It's unacceptable that the statues are still on public view."

Ralph Giordano, a leading German- Jewish novelist, is lobbying for the statues -- some bronze, some stone -- to be pulverised or melted down. "The figures are ugly and deceitful," he said.

"I demand that these statues be taken out of the stadium, quickly dismantled and scrapped."

German historians are skeptical that removing the statues would serve any political purpose, and argue that it would actually distort German history.

"Much of 20th-century art is bound up with dictatorship," Christoph Stolzl, a historian, said. "We should put up plaques explaining the statues. The connection between the celebration of the body and racism is complicated."

The letter was dated the day of the U.S. Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri during the 1950-53 Korean War. It is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that the policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government.

The letter, declassified in 1982, is discussed in a new book by American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, who discovered the document at the U.S. National Archives, where the Associated Press also obtained a copy.

A Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with policy, said the South Korean government has asked Washington about the existence of the letter from Ambassador John J. Muccio to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

"We're doing various checks about the report," the official said.

The letter detailed decisions made at a high-level meeting in South Korea on July 25, 1950, the night before the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment shot the refugees at No Gun Ri.

The No Gun Ri killings were documented in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by The Associated Press in 1999, which prompted a 16-month Pentagon inquiry.

The Pentagon concluded that the No Gun Ri shootings were "an unfortunate tragedy" _ "not a deliberate killing."

It suggested panicky soldiers, acting without orders, opened fire because they feared that an approaching line of families, baggage and farm animals concealed North Korean troops.

Following reports of the Muccio letter, the No Gun Ri victims' group condemned the U.S. government for allegedly covering it up, calling for a reinvestigation by the United Nations.

In 2001, the United States offered to set up a scholarship fund and build a memorial for the victims, but the project hasn't been implemented yet due to a dispute with the victims' group.

After years of delay, Washington proposed in April to spend $4 million for the project. But the victims' group rejected the offer again, claiming Washington is trying to build a memorial for all Korean War victims killed in similar cases, not specifically for No Gun Ri victims.

The survivors claim that the U.S. government is pressuring Seoul to persuade them to accept the proposal, by saying the project's budget will expire at the end of September.

Estimates vary on the number of dead at No Gun Ri. U.S. soldiers' estimates ranged from under 100 to "hundreds." Korean survivors say about 400, mostly women and children, were killed at the village 100 miles southeast of Seoul.

Hundreds more refugees were killed in later, similar episodes, survivors say.

Bingham, the Yale-educated son of a former U.S. senator, died in 1988 at age 84. His own children did not learn the extent of his wartime deeds until 1996, when a son found a cache of old journals and correspondence stashed in a hidden closet in the family's Connecticut home. Soon Bingham's face -- and, supporters hope, his story -- will be well known across the United States, as the U.S. Postal Service issues a stamp next Wednesday in his honor.

Last month the Empire State Development Corporation unveiled a new plan for Moynihan Station. It is a bold reinvention of the current Penn Station, which could become a truly breathtaking entrance to this city. But this plan is also a bold — and necessary — reinvention of the previous vision of Moynihan Station, which was flawed by the simple fact that the broad expanse of railroad tracks lies east of Eighth Avenue and not under the post office....

All of this depends on one thing: moving Madison Square Garden. In the draft environmental impact statement that accompanies this plan, the prospect of moving the Garden is described as an alternative. It is nothing of the kind. If the Garden does not move, its owners will renovate it where it stands, putting an end to any real prospect of expanding or improving Penn Station.

Some immigrant advocates say the new plan remedies shortcomings of the old Bracero Program, through which the United States recruited Mexican workers to toil at 4.5 million mostly agricultural jobs from 1942 to 1964. And they say it's a crucial alternative to the current state of affairs where migrant workers risk their lives crossing the border illegally.

But others say the new arrangement probably will replicate the pitfalls of the Bracero Program and two present-day guest worker programs. They also fear new worker protections in the Senate bill will vanish when lawmakers seek to reconcile the legislation with the enforcement-only bill the House passed in December.

...

In the early years of the Bracero Program, 10 percent of workers' wages was withheld to be deposited in savings accounts they could claim when they returned to Mexico.

Somewhere between the payroll deductions and bank transfers, the money vanished. In the United States, a class-action lawsuit filed four years ago on behalf of defrauded braceros is inching through the federal courts; last year, the Mexican government announced it would pay roughly $3,800 to former braceros who could prove their claim to the deducted pay. Former braceros dismiss the one-time payments as inadequate.

The braceros
From 1942 to 1964, Mexicans filled 4.5 million mostly agricultural U.S. jobs in exchange for food, housing, transportation and the prevailing wage. About 10 percent of the wages of these workers were withheld as an incentive for them to return home, but most of the money was never repaid. A similar program for British West Indians ran from 1943 to 1952.

Source: Migration Policy Institute

The ITS, under the management of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has been administering the archive and answering queries for around 60 years. Until now, Germany had staunchly opposed opening the archive to a wider public.

The letter — dated the day of the Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950 — is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government.

"If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," wrote Ambassador John J. Muccio, in his message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

The letter reported on decisions made at a high-level meeting in
South Korea on July 25, 1950, the night before the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment shot the refugees at No Gun Ri.

Estimates vary on the number of dead at No Gun Ri. American soldiers' estimates ranged from under 100 to "hundreds" dead; Korean survivors say about 400, mostly women and children, were killed at the village 100 miles southeast of Seoul, the South Korean capital. Hundreds more refugees were killed in later, similar episodes, survivors say.

The No Gun Ri killings were documented in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by The Associated Press in 1999, which prompted a 16-month
Pentagon inquiry.

The Pentagon concluded that the No Gun Ri shootings, which lasted three days, were "an unfortunate tragedy" — "not a deliberate killing." It suggested panicky soldiers, acting without orders, opened fire because they feared that an approaching line of families, baggage and farm animals concealed enemy troops.

But Muccio's letter indicates the actions of the 7th Cavalry were consistent with policy, adopted because of concern that North Koreans would infiltrate via refugee columns. And in subsequent months, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, documents show.

The Muccio letter, declassified in 1982, is discussed in a new book by American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, who discovered the document at the U.S. National Archives, where the AP also has obtained a copy.

Conway-Lanz, a former Harvard historian and now an archivist of the National Archives' Nixon collection, was awarded the Stuart L. Bernath Award of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for the article on which the book is based.

"With this additional piece of evidence, the Pentagon report's interpretation (of No Gun Ri) becomes difficult to sustain," Conway-Lanz argues in his book, "Collateral Damage," published this spring by Routledge.

The Army report's own list of sources for the 1999-2001 investigation shows its researchers reviewed the microfilm containing the Muccio letter. But the 300-page report did not mention it.

Asked about this, Pentagon spokeswoman Betsy Weiner would say only that the Army inspector general's report was "an accurate and objective portrayal of the available facts based on 13 months of work."

Said Louis Caldera, who was Army secretary in 2001 and is now University of New Mexico president, "Millions of pages of files were reviewed and it is certainly possible they may have simply missed it."

Ex-journalist Don Oberdorfer, a historian of Korea who served on a team of outside experts who reviewed the investigation, said he did not recall seeing the Muccio message. "I don't know why, since the military claimed to have combed all records from any source."

Muccio noted in his 1950 letter that U.S. commanders feared disguised North Korean soldiers were infiltrating American lines via refugee columns.

As a result, those meeting on the night of July 25, 1950 — top staff officers of the U.S. 8th Army, Muccio's representative Harold J. Noble and South Korean officials — decided on a policy of air-dropping leaflets telling South Korean civilians not to head south toward U.S. defense lines, and of shooting them if they did approach U.S. lines despite warning shots, the ambassador wrote to Rusk.

Rusk, Muccio and Noble, who was embassy first secretary, are all dead. It is not known what action, if any, Rusk and others in Washington may have taken as a result of the letter.

Muccio told Rusk, who later served as U.S. secretary of state during the Vietnam War, that he was writing him "in view of the possibility of repercussions in the United States" from such deadly U.S. tactics.

But the No Gun Ri killings — as well as others in the ensuing months — remained hidden from history until the AP report of 1999, in which ex-soldiers who were at No Gun Ri corroborated the Korean survivors' accounts.

Survivors said U.S. soldiers first forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S. lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment. Troops of the 7th Cavalry followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter under a railroad bridge.

The late Army Col. Robert M. Carroll, a lieutenant at No Gun Ri, said he remembered the order radioed across the warfront on the morning of July 26 to stop refugees from crossing battle lines. "What do you do when you're told nobody comes through?" he said in a 1998 interview. "We had to shoot them to hold them back."

Other soldier witnesses attested to radioed orders to open fire at No Gun Ri.

Since that episode was confirmed in 1999, South Koreans have lodged complaints with the Seoul government about more than 60 other alleged large-scale killings of refugees by the U.S. military in the 1950-53 war.

The Army report of 2001 acknowledged investigators learned of other, unspecified civilian killings, but said these would not be investigated.

Meanwhile, AP research uncovered at least 19 declassified U.S. military documents showing commanders ordered or authorized such killings in 1950-51.

Among the twisted metal, he saw leather flight gear and parachute silk. He saw a comb, a sweater, and a flight map - all of it preserved by the island's freezing wind, ice and snow.

"I was shocked," said Jones, a biology professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

"I looked back and said, 'This is a war grave.' "

It would take another two years before the military retrieved the remains. It would take two years more before the seven Navy aviators aboard the plane were positively identified and their relatives located.

"The site of the wreck is an incredibly remote, harsh, spectacular, wild place where there's terrific winds and weird clouds coming over the volcano," Jones said. "And from the wreck site you can hear the tremendous roar of steam coming out of the vents because it is an active volcano. It's a place of incredible ruggedness, and harshness, and great beauty, actually."

Jones hurried back to his base for the daily radio communication. As the long Alaskan day ended, he thought about the plane's massive impact as it slammed into the mountainside, and the lives of the people left behind.

"It was really quite overwhelming, quite emotional," he said. "That night, while falling asleep, I thought, 'Oh my goodness, we've found something really important.' "

'Dumbfounded' by find

Sixty-three years after her brother disappeared, the phone rang at Eleanor Keller's Denver home.

The man on the line identified himself as a Navy lieutenant and mentioned something about her brother, something about retrieving an airplane.

Everything else, she said, was a blur. At the time, in 2005, she was 85.

"I was dumbfounded," she said.

Then she was suspicious.

"I told my friends and relatives, and they all told me to watch out - there are a lot of people claiming to be such-and- such. I was being warned about all these telephone calls you get nowadays," she said.

"You're not sure about these things. Especially when it was 63 years ago."

As she absorbed the news, the man said he would call back later.

She later decided the phone call was a hoax.

The forgotten campaign

In the comma-shaped Aleutian Island chain that stretches from Alaska across the Pacific, Kiska Island hangs near the western edge, about as close to Siberia as it is to the Alaskan mainland.

For Japan in 1942, the unguarded island chain presented an opportunity to claim a moral victory, if not necessarily a strategic one, at the height of the war in the Pacific. In the process, thousands of men would die in the miserable conditions for which neither the U.S. nor Japan was prepared.

The campaign began in early June of 1942, after the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians and soon afterward took the islands of Kiska and Attu, the first U.S. territories occupied by foreign forces in North America since the war of 1812, according to John Cloe, historian and author of The Aleutian Warriors.

"It's referred to as the forgotten campaign, the forgotten theater of World War II," said Cloe, who lives in Anchorage.

"Everyone's familiar with Normandy, everyone's familiar with Guadalcanal, but few know about this. And it's kind of ironic because this was on American soil, on the homeland."

With the arrival of the Japanese ships, U.S. forces scrambled all the available aircraft in the area.

The American response began with bombing attacks using fleets of lumbering amphibious PBY Catalina airplanes, essentially "flying boats" that weren't designed for the attacks on the heavily-fortified gunships at Kiska Harbor.

From the onset of the campaign, the missions lasted as long as the Alaskan days, the planes flying virtually nonstop, landing in the water, reloading from a supply ship and taking off again.

On June 14 - four days after the initial attacks were ordered - a plane known as PBY-5 04511 took off on what would be the final mission of the "Kiska Blitz."

The plane emptied its bombs on the harbor, according to Navy reports, and "was last seen plunging into a cloudbank."

Flying was a dream come true

When that amphibious plane took off from the cold waters of the North Pacific, Navy Ensign Robert "Bob" Franklin Keller had only flown for a few years.

In his mind, he had been in the air for much of his life.

While growing up in Denver, Keller and his brother, John, built a soapbox derby-sized airplane using leftover parts from their father's sewing machine sales business.

As his sister remembers, the plane was just big enough for one of them to sit inside, and imagine.

"That was the thing in those days - planes," Eleanor Keller said. "And after all, you want to do something adventurous, you know."

The family moved to Colorado Springs, where Keller graduated from Palmer High School, then to Wichita, Kansas, where he earned a journalism degree and worked as a reporter for the Wichita Eagle.

In Kansas, he finally had a chance to take the flying lessons he had spoken of for so long, beaming with what his sister called "a smile that could break your heart." The handsome, wavy-haired Coloradan joined the Naval Reserves in February 1941.

Three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he reported to Patrol Squadron 43 - a group made up of amphibious planes that would soon find itself in the midst of the "Kiska Blitz."

Eleanor Keller remembers kissing her brother goodbye at their home before her father took the young aviator to the train station. Only a few months later, they received word that he was missing.

"At first, you have hopes," she said. "I had an uncle from World War I who was missing in action, and he was found in a prison camp when the war ended."

Inside her home, she picked up a photo of her brother taken in San Francisco before he deployed. In the photo, he gazes into the eyes of a girl he had likely just met.

"To a swell fellow of the Navy by the name of Bob," the inscription reads. "Sincerely yours, Diane."

His 86-year-old sister flipped through another photo album, then closed the cover.

"He was 24 years old. I feel like he didn't get his life at all," she said. "But then you think, there was one (of the plane's crew members) who was only 18 years old - he didn't even get as much as Bob."

Interred in ice for 63 years

When the Americans finally took Kiska Island in August 1943, they expected massive resistance, but found nothing. Japanese forces had slipped away days earlier, shrouded by the fog.

The Americans then began to look for their dead.

According to Navy reports, a search party found the remains of the plane in 1943, nearly 3,000 feet high on the island's volcano. A burial team later interred the crewmen in a common grave, marked by a wooden cross with a hand-carved inscription.

"SEVEN U.S.N. AIRMEN," it read.

Following the war, the military mounted two attempts to find the grave and transport the bodies home but was unable to relocate the burial site, which was covered by snow and blocked by drifts 15 to 20 feet deep.

"On 30 Sept. 1948 the U.S. Navy ceased further efforts to recover the remains," a report said, "and recommended that all seven men aboard . . . be declared non-recoverable."

After Ian Jones rediscovered the site in 2001, the military mounted another recovery mission. In 2003, a team of forensic anthropologists landed on Kiska and scaled the volcano.

The recovery lasted nearly two weeks as the crew worked in dense fog that at one point stranded the team on the volcano for three days.

Still, anthropologists scoured the area, carefully removing human remains and personal items, cataloging the site with detached precision.

"Metal whistle," the report reads, "pocketknife . . . glove, winter flying . . . mercury dime . . . bottle opener/corkscrew . . . toothbrush . . ."

Near the rock cairn that marked the mass grave, the recovery team found a splintered plank of wood with all that remained of the epitaph:

". . . AIRMEN."

Internet queries find family

The Tablets of the Missing war memorial in Honolulu is inscribed with thousands of names of troops lost in the Pacific. Since the late 1940s, Robert Keller and his fellow crewmen have been included among them.

The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command is on the same island as the Tablets of the Missing memorial.

Inside forensics laboratories, investigators are dedicated to shortening the list.

"We're working cold cases that go back to the War of 1812 and the Civil War," said spokesperson Maj. Rumi Nielson-Green, who noted that more than 78,000 service members from World War II remain missing.

"We promised we wouldn't leave a comrade behind," she said, "and we're going to stick to that promise."

When the remains of the Kiska crash arrived in Hawaii, forensic teams analyzed bones and teeth and sampled DNA. They reconstructed skeletons and compiled lengthy reports.

In Keller's case, dental records, along with historical evidence of his part in the crew were enough for a positive identification.

Then, in 2005, the search began for surviving family members - a search that is often as intricate as the forensics investigation. In Keller's case, a search of next-of-kin turned up empty, even though the Navy Ensign had already been immortalized in Naval history.

In 1944, the military had commissioned a destroyer escort in his name. The U.S.S. Robert F. Keller aided in the last stages of the war, including the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and then served through the next two decades.

It was scrapped in 1972 - and by then, the Navy had long since lost contact with the Keller family.

Navy casualty officers eventually turned to the Internet, posting queries on genealogy databases and group forums - one of which was the Collector's Newsletter (tias.com), an antique and collectibles site that often matches people with lost family heirlooms.

In early 2005, several readers at the site saw the posting and led the casualty officers to a home in Denver.

Return to Denver

When the second call came, Eleanor Keller remained wary.

She wasn't sure if she wanted to know any more.

"After my mother passed away, I sat down one day and was cleaning out the desk. I found a bunch of his letters that he had written during the war," she said. "When I read the letters, I don't remember ever crying so hard - I don't remember ever crying like that in my life. I read them all. And then I threw them away. I never wanted to go through that pain again. Ever."

She worried that the phone call would open the door to the pain.

"But now I'm glad," she said. "I'm really glad."

After scheduling a meeting that included her nephews (to ensure it wasn't a hoax, she said), casualty assistance calls officers presented her with the full account of the forensic investigation, including graphic pictures of bones, teeth, and pictures from the crash site.

She's impressed by the thoroughness of the report, she said, but at this point, she's simply ready to bring her brother home.

"He always wanted to return to Denver," she said.

This month, the Navy conducted a formal service at Arlington National Cemetery for burial of the remains of crew members that couldn't be individually identified.

She couldn't make the long trip to Virginia, so she sent the nephew who carries her brother's name, John Robert Keller of Aurora.

Now she's looking forward to the next funeral, at 10 a.m. on June 21, when Robert Keller's remains will be buried with full military honors at Fort Logan National Cemetery.

After years of wondering, she said, she had forced herself not to think about her brother's gravesite. Now she can't wait to see it.

"Once upon a time, every day I thought about him," she said.

"Then there comes a time when - it's not that you love them any less - but you just start to think of other things."

Inside her home, she looked at the thick forensic investigation book, then at her brother's photo album that is only half-filled.

"Now I do think of him again," she said.

Back to Kiska

In the five years since he spotted the plane on Kiska Island, Ian Jones has continued to wonder about the lives that ended on the side of the volcano.

He'll always remember the first time he saw the ragged wing and looked in the cockpit, he said. But among all the twisted metal, among the propellers in the wreckage, he's most shaken by the image of a single comb.

"It made me think, 'Here are young men, maybe 20 years old, who had all of their life ahead of them, even their vanity, that even though they were stuck out in the middle of nowhere, they were combing their hair,' " he said.

"Then it was suddenly gone for all of them, all those brave guys."

Earlier this month, Jones set off on another summer-long research trip in the Aleutians.

By Memorial Day, he should be back on the islands.

When he returns to Kiska, he said, there's one place where he promises to pause.

"I'm not a religious or spiritual person, but I can look up at that spot (of the crash), and it holds a special significance. It's a harsh place, and it's often covered in clouds and fog, but sometimes a clear spot breaks out for five or 10 minutes," he said.

"It's really spectacular, and then it disappears again."

During a discussion with fellow historian Ross Fitzgerald, Professor Reynolds said he believed history had a purpose, which was to search for the truth.

''Truth is important. It always has to be partial, it always has to be as I see it, but that is what we have to search for,'' he said.

After the session, Professor Reynolds said that school history courses were tending to preach rather than teach, which was inappropriate.

''History can teach us to understand and empathise and sympathise with people who are different from us, either because they're (from) different cultures or of a different era,'' he said.

''If that also makes us more understanding and tolerant, I think that's a splendid thing.''

But courses such as the NSW modern history syllabus were ''too prescriptive'' for attempting to go beyond fostering an appreciation of different cultures and traditions.

The syllabus said students will ''display a readiness to counter disadvantage and change racist, sexist and other discriminatory practices''.

''That's probably too prescriptive,'' Professor Reynolds said.

''It's not the central point of history, which is explaining things so people understand why others behaved the way they did.

''You have to have confidence in your students. They have to make up their own minds ... otherwise it's just propaganda. It's wrong to preach at them.

''I always tell my students, 'I will tell you what I think happened but you've got to make up your own mind'.''

In Western Australia, the draft history exam for the new course to be introduced next year contains little examination of historical events.

Rather, it requires students to analyse primary historical sources, comparing messages in the sources, identifying opinion and fact, and the nature of bias or prejudice.

Professor Reynolds said he had no problem with such questions as long as the students knew enough facts to make sense of the interpretations.

''As a general principle, I think for students to make sense of history, they have to have a good factual foundation,'' he said.

''Only then can they make sense of all assessments and interpretations.''

Indicative of the direction of history teaching in schools is a question asking ancient history students whether the raiding of the pyramids was analogous to sending Aboriginal artefacts, including human remains, overseas. Australia's leading Egyptologist, Naguib Kanawati of Macquarie University, said there were no similarities, saying Aboriginal culture was an existing culture with links to the artefacts.

''But an Egyptian mummy is just a mummy. It should be treated as a human being, with respect, but no modern Egyptian has a spirtual link to it,'' he said.

The other important difference was that Egyptian artefacts had left the country with the permission of the government.

Professor Kanawati said the issue of respecting cultural artefacts was an important ethical consideration that should be part of a course preamble.

But the study of the pyramids was not about their looting but about the magnificence of the structure and the achievement of ancient man.

The dramatist Euripides called her a "bitch whore". A medieval writer called Joseph of Exeter wrote a condemnatory, but virtually pornographic epic about her in 1184, in which she "robs Paris of his semen". In Shakespeare's Lucrece she is a "strumpet", in Marlowe she "sucks forth my soul".

The Pre-Raphaelites made her an airhead, and in the 2004 film Troy she is "simpering, vacuous, empty and wishy-washy", according to Hughes. "Even Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad (from which the author reads tonight at Hay) makes her a brainless bitch, though at least she's got a character." According to Hughes, Homer's account points to a real historical background of powerful noblewomen in the Mycenean period, 500 years before he composed his poems at the start of the 7th century BC and passed on through oral tradition.

For example, in the Odyssey, Helen mixes a drug for the Greek veterans to make them forget painful memories of war. In the past 18 months, archeologists have found an "extraordinary percentage of opiates", according to Hughes, in vast dishes found on bronze age sites in Greece. That and other evidence suggest Helen's drug preparation in Homer could be a "500-year-old memory of a real Queen of Sparta".

She added: "I haven't found Helen of Troy, but this is the first time that anyone has realised that she exists beyond a multilayered fantasy object . . . She relates to late-bronze age aristocratic women, who were in charge of much of palace society in the eastern Mediterranean and mainland Greece." In addition, Helen became important as a semi-divine figure. "From 600BC to AD 400 she was worshipped ardently as a quasi goddess," according to Hughes.

Adolescent girls venerated her in order to capture Helen's sexual power, singing homoerotic hymns describing each other's golden hair and delicate ankles. "This aspect of Helen has been completely ignored. People have wanted to keep her as a pretty-pretty, chocolate-box girl, instead of a fear-inspiring, venerated cult figure."

The Guardian Hay festival, dubbed "the Woodstock of the mind" by Bill Clinton, takes place in a town where books outnumber people 1,000 to one. This year, it occupies its biggest ever site, at 20 acres, compared with 13 acres in 2005. According to festival director Peter Florence, box office takings are up 25% on last year, with tickets for sold-out events doing a brisk black-market trade on eBay.

Those for Seamus Heaney were yesterday selling for £250 on the site, proving hotter than last night's PJ Harvey concert (£150), and former US vice president Al Gore (£65), who sweeps in to town on Monday to talk about climate change.

This year, said Mr Florence, the festival sees "a new generation of writers stepping up, successors to the great generation of Barnes, Rushdie, Amis and McEwan. They are people like Sarah Wa ters, Zadie Smith, Ali Smith, Monica Ali and Julie Myerson. These are the new superstars, and they are all women. Women are absolutely dominant at this year's festival." The festival also sees appearances from figures as diverse as Moazzem Begg, DBC Pierre, Princess Michael of Kent and Slavoj Zizek.

Alleviating fears that wet weather might cause the festival to descend into a Glastonbury-esque mudbath, Mr Florence pointed out that "very reasonably priced wellington boots are available for sale. . . the dress code this year is very much tea-dresses and wellies."

According to an official account, they came ashore "never to leave." Except for one thing. By the end of the 17th century, after creating a legacy that included slavery and profiteering from tobacco, the Jamestown settlement had all but vanished. Jamestown, Va.'s permanent population today? Two — an archaeologist and his wife.

Jamestown has been billed as the nation's birthplace, the first permanent English colony, and has already begun an extended celebration of the site of America's 400th anniversary.

While plenty of other locations stake a claim, some New Yorkers maintain that if any place deserves to be known as the nation's birthplace, it is New York, population 8.2 million. And a real birthday is almost here.

Perhaps it slipped your mind, but 2009 is the 400th anniversary of the voyage of Hudson up the river that would within a few years bear his name. It's also 400 years since Champlain sailed down his lake upstate. The 200th anniversary of Robert Fulton's inaugural steamboat voyage up the Hudson in 1807 is also being marked in 2009.

Published on-line in the Digital National Security Archive (ProQuest) as well in print-microfiche form, the 28,000-page collection is the result of a seven-year effort by the National Security Archive to collect every memcon that could be found through archival research and declassification requests. According to Kissinger biographer and president of the Aspen Institute Walter Isaacson, "Henry Kissinger's memos of conversation are an amazing, fascinating, and absolutely indispensable resource for understanding his years in power." Nearly word-for-word records of the meetings, the memcons place the reader in the room with Kissinger and world leaders, and future leaders, including Mao Zedong, Anwar Sadat, Leonid Brezhnev, Georges Pompidou, Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Donald Rumsfeld, and George H.W. Bush.

The memcons show Kissinger at work from 1969 to early 1977 as policymaker, negotiator, and presidential adviser. They show him pursuing détente with the Soviet Union, rapprochement with China, strong ties with Europe and Japan, stability in the Middle East, and, most important, a diplomatic resolution to the Vietnam War. The near-verbatim transcripts vividly show Kissinger's style as negotiator, his use of flattery and humor, his outbursts, and his musings on U.S. interests and the use of power. They show Kissinger in the early days of the Nixon administration as his influence was growing as presidential adviser, at the height of power when he served simultaneously as Secretary of State and national security adviser, and later after President Ford fired him from his White House post. The documents are equally revealing of Kissinger's numerous interlocutors.