Chemists have solved a 20-year mystery surrounding the date of a Madonna and Child painting, the "de Brecy Tondo," painted by an as-yet unidentified artist...

Howell Edwards, a specialist in Raman spectroscopy at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, used laser-based technology to detect yellow pigments and glue typical of the Renaissance period, which dates the painting between the 14th and 16th centuries...

During the past 24 years, 8 laboratories around the world have also scientifically examined the "Tondo" to try and determine when it was painted and by whom. In 2003, researchers in Belgium discovered that the painting appears to be the first in which an artist used a medieval blue dye called turnsole...

Several art historians have assumed that the similarities between the "Sistine Madonna" and the "Tondo" show that Raphael painted both artworks. Although the artist of the "Tondo" still cannot be verified, the scientific evidence described by Edwards and Benoy help place the painting within Raphael's reach.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, goes the old saw. But when you are an archeologist and life gives you looters, often all you can do is make lamentations. Looting afflicts archaeological sites worldwide, from the wide-spread plundering of ancient Sumerian sites in Iraq, to pot-hunters in the American Southwest, to the looting of Inca and other sites in the Peruvian Andes.

However, a few archaeologists have figured out a way to put the looters to work for them, as archaeologist Lisa Lucero of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces demonstrated in a recent talk about her team's study of the ancient Maya ceremonial center at Yalbac in Belize...

At Yalbac, Lucero and her colleagues with the Valley of Peace Archaeology Project are faced with unraveling the riddle of three sets of pyramids and other structures surrounding three broad plazas in central Belize, all buried under dirt, vegetation and decay at the site.

Belize antiquities officials want more information about the archaeological site, but also want as few excavations as possible to limit damage at Yalbac. "So I only have looter's trenches, and I'd rather stick with that than destroy more temples," Lucero says.

Are you an American scholar? You aren’t welcome in India.

That’s the signal from the UPA to Fulbright scholars in the US: delaying their visas for weeks, months; rejecting their research proposals without any reason. Even asking them to change their subject. This when Indo-US equation couldn’t have been better.

... Records show that for US scholars, the last two years — since the UPA came to power — have been the worst in the 57-year history of the programme. Not only has the Government kept the highest number of scholars waiting for anywhere between anywhere between six months to 21 months — effectively derailing their entire schedule — it has also, in several cases, rejected research proposals without giving any reason.

Sample the subjects rejected by the babus of this “secular” Government: Democratization in Kerala and the role of associations; perceptions of Muslim women; Left politics in Mumbai; how migration affects Hindus and Muslims in Hyderabad and Dubai. Many scholars refused to re-apply while some changed their subjects to get a visa (see chart).

Significantly, the scholars get no explanation why their research proposals have been rejected.

A furious row was raging across the Adriatic today over the Second World War after the presidents of Croatia and Italy traded accusations of racism and barbarism.

Italian diplomats called off visits to Zagreb and summoned the Croatian ambassador in Rome for a stiff talking-to; and the Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi, attacked Croatia after its president, Stipe Mesic, accused his Italian counterpart of racism and trying to rewrite history.

Croatia and Slovenia were stunned by a weekend speech by Italy's president, Giorgio Napoletano, devoted to the suffering of Italians in former Yugoslavia towards the end of the second world war.

Describing the pogroms of Italians by Yugoslav communist partisans as "the barbarism of the century", "ethnic cleansing" and a campaign of annexation of Italian territory fuelled by "Slav bloodthirsty hatred and rage", Mr Napoletano stirred a storm of controversy and appeared to raise questions about Croatia's bid to join the European Union.

Mr Prodi and his foreign minister, Massimo D'Alema waded into the row yesterday, with Italian officials implying that while Italy had faced up to its fascist past, Croatia had yet to do so.

"We don't need any lessons in fascism from Italy," quipped a Croatian politician after Mr Mesic said the Italian statesman's speech smacked of "open racism, historical revisionism, and political revanchism".

The dispute has to do with the pogroms and population shifts enforced at the end of the second world war all across central Europe, but it also touches on sensitive current property claims and compensation demands...

Similar rows are currently simmering between Germany and Poland since a German lobby has gone to the European court to reclaim property lost at the end of the war...

Freddie Mac Bank has donated the childhood home of Susan B. Anthony to New York State Parks Department for $1. Helise Flickstein, mother of five children, is the sole person who convinced the bank to donate the house has plans to make it into a museum. She had also gotten the house on the New York State & National Historic Register! She has the knowledge of five years of research behind her in regards to the Anthonys & the Stantons. Coline Jenkins, the great great grand daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the woman who held the first women's rights convention in 1848, has agreed to donate in writing 3,000 reproductions of women's suffrage to adorn the walls. Helise’s mother contacted Assemblyman Steven Englebright to help with the acquisition of the house and finalized the acquisition to the New York State Parks Department with Assemblyman Roy McDonald.

History of Battenville



The Susan B. Anthony House located at 2835 State Route 29 Greenwich, NY 12834. Susan Brownell Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts on February 15, 1820. Her father Daniel Anthony was offered a job by Judge John Mc Lean to move to Battenville to partner running the mill that he owned. Daniel and Lucy Anthony packed up their four children and moved in with the Mc Lean’s in 1826. Susan at the time was six years old. Judge Mc Lean assisted with the move along with his grandson Aaron Mc Lean. Hence, Susan’s older sister Gulema, Susan, and younger sister Hannah all played with Aaron while growing up. Her younger sister Mary Anthony was born in the Mc Lean house. Susan stayed at the Mc Lean House from ages six thru eight years old.



Two years later the Anthony’s moved out of the Mc Lean house into the temporary home only two houses down that Daniel built from 1828-1832 whereas Susan was eight thru twelve years old. Susan’s other sister was born in 1832. Her name was Eliza Teft Anthony. Eliza lived until she was two years old and had passed away in the Anthony's primary home in 1834 from Scarlet Fever. Her headstone was recently found at the Mc Lean house. There are three homes in between the mill and the Mc Lean residence that Daniel built for the workers at the mill.



The Anthony’s then moved into their primary residence in 1833. Susan just turned thirteen and lived there until the time she was nineteen years old. J.T. Merritt Anthony was born in the main house. However, the Panic of 1837 was catastrophic to the Anthony and Mc Lean household so much so that Daniel who now owned eight mills and other stores were all taken away in a bankruptcy in 1839. Every single item including clothing, her mother Lucy’s silver spoons, and even the family bible were sold. Lucy’s brother came to the rescue to purchase back their personal possessions for the family…however, the house and everything else was lost.



The Anthony’s then moved into a rented house in Hardscrabble and later renamed by Daniel Anthony, Center Falls. Daniel became the postmaster for the town and had two small gristmills next to the house. The house was used as a schoolhouse for boys and for other people to go dance in the grand ballroom in the upper part of the house. The Anthony’s stayed in Center Falls until 1845 and then moved to a farmhouse near Rochester.



In 1851, Susan met her best friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Elizabeth Cady grew up in Johnstown, New York only 59 miles away from where Susan lived in Battenville. Elizabeth Cady Stanton formulated the making of the women’s movement in 1840 with her mentor Lucretia Mott. In 1848, she held The First Women’s Right’s Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. However Elizabeth being the mother of three, and later on had a total of seven children, could only spread the word about women’s rights so far. When Susan came along, she made it her primary goal in life to spread the word about Women’s Rights and Suffrage all across the United States and aboard.

First modern foreign languages, now history. Just as ministers are about to embark on a shake-up of the school curriculum to place more emphasis on "Britishness" in history lessons, more bad news comes their way.

Seven out of 10 schoolchildren have given up studying history by the time they are 14, according to Paul Armitage, history adviser for the education standards watchdog Ofsted, who spoke at a conference yesterday.

Mr Armitage gave the example of seven and eight-year-old children who were given three topics to study in the school year: the Romans, the second world war and ancient Egypt. They went from one to another, leaving them with little understanding of the chronology of historical events.

History is not alone. Geography -- the subject ministers think will be crucial in teaching pupils about climate change -- is also losing popularity. The number of 14 to 16-year-olds studying the subject for their GCSE fell by 3,287 last year...

But with losers come winners and while history, geography and modern languages are haemorrhaging pupils, media studies, psychology and religion are gaining popularity.

However this latest warning must be making ministers wonder if the history lessons on offer are relevant to youngsters and whether their proposed tweaks can keep teens from ditching the subject. --Alexandra L. Smith

It appears efforts to move a giant historic live oak tree [in downtown Austin] over the weekend were successful.

The tree is estimated to weigh about 400,000 pounds and could be between 200 and 300 years old.

The tree used to sit on a hill at the corner of 9th Street and Neches. It was moved across the street to the property of the First Baptist Church...to make way for a new 10-story condominium project being built by a company called Noble Development Group.

The developer paid more than $200,000 for the move.

KAMPALA, Uganda -- It is exactly one week since the historic unveiling of the [President's] Shs40 million shilling statue at Kabamba military barracks.

It depicts a youthful Popular Resistance Army (PRA) guerrilla leader, Yoweri Museveni [now president of Uganda], directing the attack on the armoury at the beginning of the five year 'bush war' between 1981 and 1986 against the Uganda People's Congress (UPC) government of the late Dr Apollo Milton Obote.

The world over statues, monuments, medallions, portraits on legal tender and naming of institutions, roads and buildings are ways in which communities preserve history, reward and motivate contributions to the development of society.

In Africa's case, these have always been sources of controversy to the extent that wherever there is regime change, predictably, the first action that characterises the new government is destruction of anything that brings memories of the deposed leaders.

In Uganda's case for instance the huge medallion that commemorated Obote as Uganda's first post independence premier and graced the entrance at the gates of The Parliamentary Buildings was brought down by Field Marshall Idi Amin Dada following the coup of 1971.

The life size statue of Amin erected by himself at Jaja Villas in Munyonyo was obliterated after he was deposed in 1979. The currency on which he had his portrait was replaced just as it happened in 1987 to the money that was adorned by the face of Dr Obote.

Opposition Forum for Democratic Change top official Maj. Rubaramira Ruranga, a veteran of the bush war predicted on a radio that at an appropriate time, Gen. Yoweri Museveni's statue "will also certainly be brought down like that of Saddam Hussein."

The National Archives and Records Administration has proposed that the depositions of the parents of the Columbine High School killers be kept at its Denver regional center and ideally be made public after 20 years.

The agency, weighing in on a legal debate over what to do with statements given by the parents in connection with various now-settled lawsuits, said that any materials from Columbine given to it would be considered to be of significant historical value and would be permanently preserved and never destroyed...

The National Archives said...that after receiving physical custody of court records the normal practice of its Denver center is to assume legal custody after 20 years. Then it normally gives the public full access to the records, it said. Should [U.S. District Judge Lewis] Babcock desire to seal the records for a longer period of time, the agency would abide by his wishes.

EDINBURGH -- Contractors renovating a building in Edinburgh, Scotland, were surprised to find a mummified cat believed about 180 years old under basement floorboards.

In fact, none of the workers would even touch the cat, which has distinct features and its paw resting on its face, The Scotsman reported Tuesday.

DX Network Services Manager Angus Philip said...he is donating his ancient -- and rather dead -- pet to the National Museum of Scotland.

The museum has two other mummified cats in its collection. Its curator told The Scotsman it was common in the 1830s to keep dead animals in buildings to "ward off evil spirits and bring good luck."

The Australian Government says it is commited to repatriating Aboriginal remains held in overseas collections.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has obtained a court injunction in Britain, preventing that country's Natural History Museum from carrying out scientific tests on the remains of 17 Aborigines, before they are returned to Australia.

The centre wants the federal government to help fund its continuing legal challenge.

The attorney-general Philip Ruddock says his office is still waiting on a formal funding request, but is committed to bringing back remains held by institutions like the British museum:

"We think they've had plenty of opportunities to do what they think might be required to get information from scientific research," he said. "They ought to just get on with the job and return the remains to Australia."

[Transcript + audio] Jeb Sharp: The memorial at Murambi sits on a hilltop near the town of Gikongoro in the southwest. The site was supposed to be a technical college. The campus was still under construction when the genocide began. Thousands of Tutsis sought refuge in the empty buildings. They were slaughtered there. The bodies were dumped into mass graves.

The day I visit with my translator, the place is deserted. There are two guides who work at the memorial. They catch a ride up with us from the village below. A lone dog lies in the road near the entrance. It heaves itself up and lopes off into the grass. Rolling green farmland stretches out in every direction. All you can hear is the buzz of insects. One of the guides, Francois Rusanganwa, launches into his spiel.

Rusanganwa: "Many people, Tutsis, have been killed here, in 1994. They came here to find their protection because it was the plan of the genocide by the authorities told them to come here, to be protected."

Sharp: But it was really a ruse, according to Rusanganwa, to get the Tutsis to assemble in one place to be killed. Rusanganwa explains that a year after the massacre some of the bodies were exhumed and reburied. About a thousand were kept above ground for the memorial. I brace myself, knowing I'm about to see those remains...

DUBLIN -- Britain removed the last of its armoured watch towers in Northern Ireland on Tuesday in a significant symbolic step towards erasing the visible reminders of the province's 30-year conflict.

Improved security conditions following the 1997 cease-fire by the IRA have seen Britain drastically reduce its military presence in Northern Ireland.

It began dismantling the watch posts that dotted the countryside and towered over small towns and villages in 2000 and has pledged to end all military support for the Northern Ireland police force on July 31 this year.

The iron-clad, cube-shaped observation post, or sangar, removed by crane on Tuesday had stood 20 feet (6.5 metres) above the army-backed Crossmaglen police station in County Armagh...

"This is at the heart of what used to be called 'Bandit Country'," [army spokesman Mervyn] Wynne Jones said. "Times move on, it's tremendous."

Italian archaeologists say they will not separate the remains of stone age lovers, which they unearthed last week on the outskirts of the northern city of Mantua.

Archaeologists said Tuesday they would scoop out the tightly embraced male and female skeletons and keep them together. The couple was buried between 5,000- and-6,000 years ago. They are believed to have died young because their teeth were found intact.

The discovery during construction work has sparked theories about prehistoric love in Italy. The hugging skeletons were found not too far from Verona, the city where Shakespeare's fictional lovers Romeo and Juliet took their lives.

Archaeologists say there is no doubt the couple's pose reflects deep love, but caution that it is almost impossible to determine the exact nature of their relationship and the circumstances of their death.

Chemists have solved a 20-year mystery surrounding the date of a Madonna and Child painting, the "de Brecy Tondo," painted by an as-yet unidentified artist. However, a debate continues as to who painted the "de Brecy Tondo," which looks suspiciously similar to the "Sistine Madonna," painted by the renowned Italian Renaissance artist Raphael.

Howell Edwards, a specialist in Raman spectroscopy at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, used laser-based technology to detect yellow pigments and glue typical of the Renaissance period, which dates the painting between the 14th and 16th centuries.

His findings suggest that the "de Brecy Tondo" and the "Sistine Madonna" were painted during the same time period.

"Prior to Professor Edwards' work, there has been no consensus amongst art historians as to the age of the painting," said Timothy Benoy, secretary and trustee of the de Brecy Trust, and coauthor of a report on the new finding, published in the February issue of the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.

Edwards found evidence of massicot, a lead-based yellow pigment used by artists prior to the introduction of a new pigment called Naples Yellow in the 1700s. Massicot, also found in Vermeer's 1670 painting "Young Lady Seated at the Virginals," has been used to date previous works of art.

As well, the laser research detected organic residues characteristic of a vegetable- or starch-based glue, typical of the Renaissance period.

Examination of mass graves discovered on October of 2006 in Turkish district of Nusaybin will be carried out by an international expedition. Swedish historian David Gaunt is sure that the graves belongs to 270 Armenians and Assyrians, who were killed by order of a Young Turks chieftain. Turkish authorities have not carried out any investigation, journalists were not allowed to approach the burial and obtain more information.

n this connection Hans Dinden, a deputy from Swedish leftist party, has sent an interpellation to the Swedish parliament. In response Turkish authorities, as usual, launch a counter-offensive. Chairman of scientific-historical association Yusuf Haladjoghly offered to carry out a joint excavation of graves. Professor David Gaunt agreed with that offer, but demanded full freedom during the process. He also wished to speak to those who could know anything about the mass burial. In his part Haladjoghly stated that if really occurs that Armenians and Assyrians are buried in the graves he will publicly apologize, otherwise he expects the same from professor Gaunt, ‘Yerkir Media’ TV Company reports.

Villagers from Xirabebaba were digging a grave for one of their relatives when they came across to a cave full of skulls and bones. The Xirabebaba residents assumed they had uncovered a mass grave of 300 Armenian villagers massacred during the Genocide of 1915. They informed Akarsu Gendarmerie headquarters, the local military unit, about the discovered remains. Turkish army officers instructed the villagers to block the cave entrance and make no mention of the remains buried in it. The officers said an investigation would take place. Journalists, who had arrived to obtain more information, were denied access to the cave. As the mass burial made news, local Gendarmerie made another visit to the villagers. The latter were pressed to report the name of the person who leaked the mass burial discovery to the press. The villagers were warned not to show anyone directions to the cave.

The victims of the mass grave, according to Sodertorn University History Professor David Gaunt, are most likely the 150 Armenian and 120 Assyrian males from the nearby town of Dara (now Oguz) killed on June 14, 1915.

Using a tiny global-positioning device to measure their location via satellite and a map superimposed on topographical images provided by Google Earth, Daniel Adamson and Mahmoud Twaissi are tracking the route that Abraham might have trod.

The ends, however, are as ancient as can be. The two researchers – one British, one Jordanian – are tracing the footsteps of the ancestral patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the hope that people today will rediscover the common roots of many generations past – and inspire coexistence and understanding in the present.

This is the making of the Abraham Path, a route that will start in Harran, Turkey – the place where many sources suggest Abraham heard "the call" from God – and will continue into Syria, down through Jordan, across the river into the West Bank, winding through both Israeli and Palestinian territory before ending in Hebron, or Al Khalil, described in the Book of Genesis as Abraham's burial place.

The grisly truth about the disappearance of a British woman believed to have been murdered on the orders of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, has been revealed for the first time in secret papers released by the government.

Dora Bloch, a 74-year-old grandmother, was a passenger on an Air France plane from Athens to Paris when it was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and forced down at Entebbe airport, Uganda, in 1976.

During the hijack, Mrs Bloch was taken ill after choking on some food and released to be treated in a hospital in Kampala.

Days later, Israeli commandos stormed the airport, killing all the terrorists and destroying half of Amin's air force...

Now confidential cabinet papers released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the British High Commission in Kampala received a report from a Ugandan civilian that Mrs Bloch had been shot and her body dumped...

It's been nearly 80 years since Sam Spade wandered the streets of San Francisco in search of the Maltese Falcon. Now, the statue is missing again.

John Konstin, the owner of San Francisco's John's Grill on Ellis Street, said someone broke into a locked cabinet on the second floor of his establishment and took a signed reproduction of the Maltese Falcon -- one used for publicity stills for the movie -- along with several vintage and signed books by and about Maltese Falcon author Dashiell Hammett.

Konstin said the theft was noticed Saturday afternoon. He guesses the theft took place sometime late Friday night or in the early morning hours of Saturday.

The black statue was signed by actor Elisha Cook Jr., a San Franciscan who played the role of Wilmer the Gunsel in the movie. He presented it to the restaurant after Konstin and San Francisco private investigator Jack Immendorf failed in their attempt to buy the original bird that was used in the movie.

Police have been summoned to the scene of the broken cabinet on the second floor of the restaurant, and Konstin has offered a $25,000 reward for return of the statue and books.

Abraham Lincoln was born 198 years ago today, but his melancholy visage has perhaps never been as popular. He's the star of television commercials -- including one in which a beaver is his co-star -- and is the subject of at least eight recent books, with more on the way. A motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Liam Neeson is in the works.

Politicians, too, are getting in on the act. Officials ranging from Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who launched his presidential quest Saturday in Springfield, Ill. -- where Lincoln honed his political skills and is now entombed -- to Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold are invoking the martyred president.

Some of the interest is based on the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth in 2009, as well as new insights into the Civil War president's medical, marital and mental issues. But experts say there's more to the renaissance of Lincolniana -- such as a nation weary of war and yearning for trusted leadership.

"So much of what we think of him is happening in our own time," said Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of the recently published Lincoln's Melancholy.

"He met and wrote to widows. He had the courage to acknowledge his responsibilities," Shenk said. "He was open and available in the White House, compared to our increasing fast-food politics."

Subdivisions. Strip malls. Roadside motels.

The Baby Boomers of buildings have hit a milestone this decade: They're turning 50, the benchmark age for historic designation.

Mid-century modern architecture -- think Brady Bunch houses and drive-in restaurants -- is eligible to join the ranks of its architectural ancestors, such as Queen Anne, Art Deco and Classic Revival.

"We're the new kids on the block for historic preservation," said Virginia Courtenay, owner of a 1955 home in Delray Beach that has a local landmark designation. "We're all steel and glass."

In a state that measures its history in decades rather than centuries, Florida historic preservationists are grappling with how to determine what development during the state's largest building boom is considered historic. Preservationists say it's the first time they have found themselves in this position: Instead of fighting to save a few treasures, they have an abundance of old but unremarkable buildings.

A NEW history textbook for children in the last year of primary school has incurred the wrath of Cypriot politicians, who are demanding its immediate withdrawal because it allegedly distorts and over-simplifies the island’s history. The textbook, covering four centuries of Greek history in 150 pages, devotes three pages to Cyprus, which refer to the anti-colonial struggle, the coup, Turkish invasion and the continuing division. Cypriot politicians found plenty to complain about in these three pages, while the Education Ministry has prepared a letter in which it lists the changes it wants made to the book.

It was not only Cypriot politicians who were outraged with the contents of the book. A small handful of nationalist politicians and academics in Greece have also lambasted it, because of the neutral terminology it used and its failure to mention the killing of thousands of Greek civilians by the Turkish troops in Smyrna in 1922. All it said was that the Turkish army had entered the town and thousands of Greeks had crowded to the port in order to get on a ship that would take them to Greece. The Greek Education Minister, responding to the criticism, said some corrections would be made to the book, but had no intention of withdrawing it from schools, as had been done in the case of other ‘nationalistically incorrect’ textbooks in the past.

The good news for Chiang Kai-shek  is that he may get to come inside after braving the elements for more than half a century. The bad news for him is that "inside" may be some dark and obscure corner of a warehouse.

The statues of Chiang that had been a ubiquitous feature of the nation's streets, parks and military bases have been subjected to increasingly diffident treatment since power transferred from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2000.

DPP legislators have asked the Ministry of National Defense to move all of the statues at its bases indoors before the anniversary of the 228 Incident at the end of this month. The party is also working to have Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall renamed "Taiwan Democracy Hall." After a report last year on the 228 Incident placed the blame for the incident on Chiang and with the coming 60th anniversary of the incident, anti-Chiang sentiment has seen something of a revival.

There is no place for polygamy in Mormon life -- not even on a Web site.

That's the message a Brigham Young University assistant dean got when administrators ordered him to take down a Web page from the university's server that discussed the history of polygamy and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Within a day, though, he had moved all the content to an independent Web site called Mormon-Polygamy.org, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

Jim Engebretsen, assistant dean for corporate relations and M.B.A. director at Brigham Young's Marriott School of Management, says many people mistakenly believe that polygamy is still practiced by Mormons. He says he wants to provide facts for people interested in the church's history.

JERUSALEM -- From the roof of his home just inside the Old City walls, Palestinian landlord Nasser Karain has a view of the valleys and plateaus where scriptures say Solomon built the first Temple, Jesus was betrayed and Muhammad rose to heaven.

A new landmark may soon rise next to his family compound.

The Israeli government is funding the first construction of a Jewish settlement in the Old City's Muslim Quarter since taking control of it nearly four decades ago. The Flowers Gate development plan calls for more than 20 apartments and a domed synagogue that would alter the skyline of the Old City.

Karain's property is at the center of an accelerating campaign by Jewish settler organizations to change the ethnic and physical character of this city's oldest Arab neighborhoods. The Israeli government is financing projects that dovetail with the settlers' goals, which they say are to secure the Old City and an adjacent valley for Israel in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians...

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -— The 1.6 million visitors a year to the USS Arizona Memorial are told by their guides about the legends surrounding the oil that still bubbles up from the sunken battleship.

One legend holds that the oil represents the tears of the 900-plus sailors and Marines entombed below decks since the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941. Another says the oil will continue to surface until the last Arizona survivor dies.

But the fact is that 500,000 or more gallons of fuel oil are estimated to remain aboard the Arizona. Now the National Park Service and the Navy, which jointly maintain the memorial, are in the early stages of a comprehensive study of the ship and the possibility that its oil might someday spill into Pearl Harbor, fouling the shoreline and hampering naval operations.

CALCUTTA -- Raj Bhavan’s move to dig out pre and post Independence history may redefine happenings under British rule.

Birendra Singh, a history professor, has gifted Raj Bhavan [the former viceroys' mansion, built by the Marquis Wellesley in 1799-1803] a rare history book penned by Sundar Lal, 'Bharat Mein Angrezi Raj', which the British [suppressed] in 1938.

In response to an open invitation from the Raj Bhavan to gift manuscripts, documents, photographs and diaries related to the freedom struggle since 1857 for setting up a museum, Singh has handed over the book that his family had kept safe for the past 80 years...Of the 2,000 copies, printed on September 30, 1938, the police could confiscate 1,700.

The police action prompted Gandhiji to make an appeal to 'Young India' that they should face the ignominy of the search operation but refuse to hand over the book to the police.

Singh pointed out that the action of the British indicated that the history books were written at the diktat of the colonial rulers. Several events penned by historians under the British rule are still being taught in schools.