ALLENSWORTH, Calif. — Spirals of alkaline dust swirl across the hardpan where a century ago 300 black Americans planted alfalfa and corn hoping racial tolerance would take root.

They were led to this remote place by escaped slave Allen Allensworth, a retired Army chaplain and the first black lieutenant colonel. Their goal: to build a prosperous African-American farming community that would change perceptions about people who first suffered slavery, then Jim Crow segregation laws.

"It was more than creating an all-black community," said Lonnie G. Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. "There was a national political strategy involved in the founding of Allensworth that makes it unique."

Allensworth _ now a state park with rebuilt clapboard houses, two general stores, a Baptist Church and beloved schoolhouse _ will be the site of the town's centennial celebration this weekend. And thousands of visitors are expected to travel streets named Sojourner Truth and Booker T. Washington.

English Heritage has spent over a year painstakingly recreating the garden once known as the "Glory of England" and wants to finish it off authentically by planting carnation varieties that were available to 16th Century gardeners.

Unlike the modern version, which are better known for being found wrapped in cellophane on a garage forecourt, 400 years ago the carnation was considered one of the most beautiful flowers around.

It is hoped they will provide the finishing touches to the garden at Kenilworth Castle, Warwicks, where the Queen was romanced by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester.

John Watkins, English Heritage's Head of Gardens and Landscape, said the older varieties are easy to spot because of some striking characteristics, predominantly a spicy, exotic scent which, he said, can be "strong enough to make the eyes water."

The government’s plan to prop up banks large and small — along with recent bailouts as well as guarantees to support business loans, money markets and bank lending — represents the most sweeping government moves into the nation’s financial markets since the Great Depression, and perhaps ever, according to economists and finance experts.

The high-stakes program is intended to halt the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. If successful, it could long be studied by historians as a textbook case of the emergency role that government can play to rescue a teetering economy.

“It is profound, and it is something of a shift back to the state,” said Adam S. Posen, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “But is this a recasting of capitalism? I think what we’ll see is that the government acts as a silent partner and gets out as soon as it can.”...

The government’s plan is an exceptional step, but not an unprecedented one.

The United States has a culture that celebrates laissez-faire capitalism as the economic ideal, yet the practice strays at times. Over the last century, the federal government has occasionally taken stakes in railways, coal mines and steel mills, and has even taken a controlling interest in banks when it was deemed to be in the national interest.

The corporate wards of the state typically have been returned to private hands after short, sometimes fleeting, stretches under federal stewardship.

Finance experts say that having Washington take stakes in United States banks now — like government interventions in the past — would be a promising move to address an economic emergency. The plan by the Treasury Department, they say, could supply banks with sorely needed capital and help restore confidence in financial markets.

Elsewhere, government bank-investment programs are routinely called nationalization programs. But that is not likely in the United States, where nationalization is a word to avoid, given the aversion to anything that hints of socialism.

In past times of war and national emergency, Washington has not hesitated. In 1917, the government seized the railroads to make sure goods, armaments and troops moved smoothly in the interests of national defense during World War I. After the war ended, bondholders and stockholders were compensated and railways were returned to private ownership in 1920.

In October 1929 shares on Wall Street fell sharply following a speculative boom during the "Roaring Twenties".

In two days the Dow Jones industrial average fell by 25% (ending on Black Tuesday, 29 October).

The volume of stocks traded set a record that was not broken for 40 years.

When it finally reached its record low in July 1932, the Dow Jones had fallen 89%, and it did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954.

WHAT WAS THE CAUSE?
Debates continue over the causes of the Wall Street crash.

With stocks rising four-fold over the previous decade, it had all the characteristics of a bubble, with stocks in new technologies like radio leading the way up.

Schoolchildren are celebrating, commentators are astonished and purists are fuming over what they describe as a scandalous attack on 500 years of French history.

In the most sweeping linguistic reform in France for centuries, Le Petit Robert, the nation's premier dictionary, has cast aside tradition to allow alternative spellings for thousands of words. Accents have become optional, consonants can be doubled on a whim and hyphens will float in and out of literary texts under the changes imposed by Alain Rey, the linguist responsible for the opus.

He says that the reform has been necessary to enable a rigidly codified language to move forward in a society of slang and multi-ethnic innovation. “We have to make spelling simpler,” he said. “It's too complicated and it's not surprising that schoolchildren have trouble learning it.”