VICKSBURG, Miss. (AP) - Mississippi Sens. Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker have again proposed expanding the Vicksburg National Military Park to add the battlefields of Champion Hill, Port Gibson and Raymond.

The bill was filed in Congress this week by the Republican senators. A similar bill was filed last year....

Acclaimed historian Shelby Foote insisted that any true understanding of American history, and thus of America, must be rooted in an understanding of the Civil War.

For Foote and scores of history buffs, often it was the power of pictures that helped trigger their curiosity. Soldiers marching up against a shower of shot and shell, seeing men mowed down by the dozens. After staring at those Civil War pictures for hours, the historians had to uncover the stories behind them.

Newell Conyers Wyeth certainly played a significant role in their fascination. Owner of a constant and grand imagination, Wyeth poured it into a flood of dynamic pictures of the Civil War....

WASHINGTON, DC. 150 years ago this month, seven Southern states seceded from the Union, igniting the American Civil War. A defining event in US history, it lasted four years, claimed nearly a million lives, and led to the abolition of slavery. Yet despite its impact even today, there is no major art exhibition planned in the US in 2011.

It was a different story for the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth in 2009. Congress created a special commission to plan the nation’s commemoration and there were numerous exhibitions. In Washing­ton, DC, the National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery of Art and National Museum of American History celebrated Lincoln’s life and explored his image. The New York Historical Society organised the ambitious “Lincoln and New York” show in 2009, a version of which is touring nationally. Art museums are also commemorating the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, for example, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta’s touring exhibition “Road to Freedom”.

The American Civil War had a major impact on some artists and photographers, with images of the dead, by the likes of Matthew Brady, shock­ing a public more accustomed to romanticised images of conflict.

“America has so many inhibitions about remembering the Civil War, and has had from the beginning,” said Harold Holzer (senior vice president of external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), who is an authority on Lincoln. Holzer was the chief historian for “Lincoln and New York” and served as co-chairman of the Lincoln bicentennial commission. “The reviews that greeted the unveiling of some of the key paintings was mixed. They were critical of the idea of remembering something so unpleasant.” Holzer also added that the centenary of the war in 1961 was “a mess in many ways”. Southern states did not want it used to advance the civil rights movement, insisting on “a romanticised recollection”....

Human remains from Stonehenge and other ancient settlements will be reburied and lost to science under legislation that threatens to cripple research into the history of humans in Britain, a group of leading archaeologists says today.

In a letter addressed to the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, and printed in the Guardian today, 40 archaeology professors write of their "deep and widespread concern" about the issue.

The dispute centres on legislation introduced by the Ministry of Justice in 2008 which requires all human remains excavated at digs in England and Wales to be reburied within two years, regardless of their age. The decision, which amounts to a reinterpretation of law previously administered by the Home Office, means scientists have too little time to study bones and other human remains of national and cultural significance, the academics say.

"Your current requirement that all archaeologically excavated human remains should be reburied, whether after a standard period of two years or a further special extension, is contrary to fundamental principles of archaeological and scientific research and of museum practice," they write. Signatories include Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London; Stephen Shennan, director of University College London's archaeology institute; and Helena Hamerow, head of archaeology at Oxford University....

South Sudan, currently in the news because of its secession referendum, is not the only area of Sudan with a troubled history, as David Keys investigates.

Between 2003 and 2008, in a terrible conflict and humanitarian catastrophe, the Darfur region (in the western part of the country), up to 400,000 civilians were killed, another two to three million driven from their homes and 1,000–2,000 villages razed to the ground. Last year the international criminal court in the Hague made it clear they believe that the slaughter may have amounted to genocide. The roots of the catastrophe lie in three major historical developments – one in the early 20th century, one in the 1950s and 1960s and another in the latter part of the century.

Darfur was one of a string of powerful Black African states – including the Kanem-Borno, Songhai and Mali empires – which emerged along the Sahara’s southern fringe in the medieval and early modern periods. At its peak in the late 18th and early 19th century, Darfur was a well organised and successful empire – a Sultanate around seven times the size of England. It was Egypt’s largest single trading partner – and controlled the region’s salt, textile, iron, copper, and slave trades. Its capital was a thriving town called Al Fasher where the Sultan ran his far-flung empire from the comfort of his sumptuous palace.

The Civil War may have started 150 years ago, but the battles over it continue.

In Montgomery, the "birthplace of the Confederacy," residents still cannot even agree on what caused the fight, let alone whether it is an event worthy of honor or shame.

It was Feb. 9, 1861, when the Con­federate States of America was formed in Montgomery with Jeffer­son Davis as president.

William T. Myrick of Wetumpka, said the 150th anniversary of the Civil War is "our history no matter what different persons may feel about it.

"Every Southerner should take pride in our ancestors for having the backbone to stand up against an overbearing federal government," said Myrick, commander, South­west Central Brigade, Sons of the Confederate Veterans, Alabama Di­vision.

But Greta McGowan of Prattville doesn't see why it should be cele­brated at all.

"It is history and it should be studied so that we can learn from the past," she said....

Americans who have accessed the WikiLeaks web site may have violated the Espionage Act, under an extreme interpretation of the law advanced by Air Force officials last week.

Many government agencies have instructed their employees not to download classified materials from the WikiLeaks web site onto unclassified computer systems. The government’s position is that although the material is in the public domain, its classification status is unaffected. Therefore, to preserve the integrity of unclassified systems, the leaked classified information should not be accessed on such systems. If it is accessed, it should be deleted.

But on February 3, Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base issued startling new guidance stating that the leaked documents are protected by the Espionage Act and that accessing them under any circumstances is against the law, not simply a violation of government computer security policy.

“According to AFMC’s legal office, Air Force members — military or civilian — may not legally access WikiLeaks at home on their personal, non-governmental computers, either. To do so would not only violate the SECAF [Secretary of the Air Force] guidance on this issue,… it would also subject the violator to prosecution for violation of espionage under the Espionage Act,” the AFMC legal office said....

Archaeologists voiced deepening concern on Thursday after fresh street battles erupted around Cairo's Egyptian Museum housing the gold sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun and other priceless relics.

Websites and chat-rooms buzzed with anxiety after a break-in last Friday that left a number of glass cabinets smashed and precious objects damaged, including two mummies.

There were also accounts of pilfering at an antiquities storage depot at Qantara and anecdotal reports of tomb raiding at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.

In London, the British Museum said the Egyptian Museum housed objects "of unique importance to world heritage."

"It is a matter of the greatest concern that these irreplaceable objects should be fully protected to ensure their safety and survival for future generations," it told AFP.

In Paris, the Louvre said it was "very closely" following the situation. A team of French archaeologists, on a dig at Saqqara, had decided to return to France as site access had been closed for security reasons, it said.

UNESCO chief Irina Bokova pleaded for "all necessary measures" to be taken to preserve Egypt's treasures and secure the country's historical sites.

"Egyptian cultural heritage, both its monuments and its artefacts, are part of the ancestral heritage of humanity, handed down to us through the ages," she said on Tuesday....

Although it may seem to be just for show, that distinctive pinch in the crown of the national park ranger's iconic hat actually originated as a practical solution to a significant problem.

The broad-brimmed, high-crowned hat that national park rangers wear with their class A uniform was first specified as National Park Service apparel in the agency's 1920 uniform regulations. Since this was only four years after Congress created the National Park Service, the hat that rangers call the "flat hat" is one of the agency's longest-standing traditions. It is instantly recognized, though many people will tell you that it's a "Smokey Bear hat" and some will say it's a Stetson.

The Montana Peak

The crown of the ranger hat is not just high, it is also pinched into four symmetrical quadrants. The pinch, which is formally known as a Montana Peak (aka Montana Crease), has a shape that prompts some people to call the hat a "lemon squeezer."

Whatever you may call it, the distinctive pinch in the ranger hat's crown was not a National Park Service innovation. This design characteristic actually came into use over a century ago after U.S. Army troopers learned that adding a symmetrical quadrant pinch to the crown of a standard issue campaign hat rendered it more useful....

The famous historian's eyewitness accounts of the Navy during World War II—now being reissued—won't be surpassed.

On March 23, 1942, the historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote to his friend President Franklin D. Roosevelt to offer himself as a “sea-going historiographer” to chronicle the activities of the U.S. Navy in World War II. “In order to do it the right way,” he told Roosevelt, “I must have a living, intimate connection with the Navy flagrante bello. An armchair history job after peace is concluded won’t do.” Before April was out, Morison was meeting with Navy officials to accept a commission as a lieutenant commander and discuss the logistics of his globe-spanning assignment.

That July, he boarded a destroyer and pressed into the cold swells of the Atlantic to witness the war against Germany’s U-boats. In ten other ships, over three years, Morison amassed the eyewitness experience that buoyed his 15-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. The series, published between 1947 and 1962, was not only a comprehensive report on the Navy’s projection of power over two oceans, but a classic of historical literature that stands as the definitive treatment of its subject. And now that the Naval Institute Press is reissuing the series, with Volumes 7 through 9 due this spring, Morison’s masterwork is worth considering as a lesson in how history can have both blue-ribbon scholarship and popular appeal—and why works of such scale are almost never published anymore....

From acting with the "The Gipper," to walking through a recreation of Berlin Wall, the newly renovated Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum is giving visitors an interactive approach to learning about America's 40th President.

As part of the celebration of the 100th birthday of Reagan, the museum in Simi Valley, Calif. underwent a $15 million, one-year renovation. Starting Monday, the public can view the 17 new galleries.

"I think what we wanted to do was create a better story, better told," said John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

"We had the advantage this time in 2011 in having 20 years of history behind us and it allowed us to take a look back at millions of documents and tens of thousand of artifacts and tell the story using modern museum technology in a very smart way."

The 30,000-square feet exhibit is chronological, beginning with Reagan's early years growing up in Illinois. It follows his days in radio as a Chicago Cubs announcer, then west to Hollywood, where he appeared in more than 50 television and film productions.

This is the part of the museum where visitors can star in "Knute Rockne, All American," and then watch a replay of it....

Birds living around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident have 5% smaller brains, an effect directly linked to lingering background radiation.

The finding comes from a study of 550 birds belonging to 48 different species living in the region, published in the journal PLoS One.

Brain size was significantly smaller in yearlings compared with older birds.

Smaller brain sizes are thought to be linked to reduced cognitive ability.

The discovery was made by a team of researchers from Norway, France and the US led by Professor Timothy Mousseau from the University of South Carolina, US, and Dr Anders Moller from the University of Paris-Sud, France.

Harmful legacy

In April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded.

After the accident, traces of radioactive deposits were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere....

Japan and Russia have exchanged heated comments over the disputed southern Kuril islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Japan's PM Naoto Kan called a visit by Russia's president to the islands last year an "unforgivable outrage".

Mr Kan was speaking during a rally in Tokyo held to demand the return of the islands, which were occupied by Soviet troops at the end of World War II.

Russian FM Sergei Lavrov responded by saying that Mr Kan's remarks were "clearly undiplomatic".

The dispute over the islands, which lie north of Hokkaido and are known as the Northern Territories in Japan, has stopped Japan and Russia from signing a peace treaty....

Rumors that the Egyptian Museum in Cairo caught fire yesterday (Feb. 2) were just that, according to Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, on his blog today.

Al Jazeera reports suggested the monuments of Saqqara -- a large burial ground of Ancient Egypt referred to as the "City of the Dead" -- had been damaged and that items were stolen, Hawass wrote. "This is not true."

In fact, while the break-in at the Egyptian Museum on Friday (Jan. 28) resulted in 70 broken objects (all of which will be restored), Hawass said all of the Egyptian monuments are safe

And amidst reports of violence on the Cairo streets, Hawass points out the Egyptian people are keeping watch over these ancient treasures....

The pursuit of a gang of grave robbers has led to the discovery of an ancient church outside Jerusalem that may contain the burial place of the biblical prophet Zechariah, Israeli authorities said Wednesday.

The hill-top church was destroyed by an earthquake some 1,300 years ago and lay partly buried until detectives from Israel's Antiquities Authority, pursuing a gang of antiquity thieves, noticed an elaborate doorpost poking through the earth. The robbers got away -- they were caught a few months later at a site nearby -- but after weeks of digging, archaeologists uncovered the remains of the church. It was about the size of a basketball court and contained fallen marble pillars and a nearly pristine 10-meter-long mosaic floor.

Beneath the church's altar is a burial chamber that the Antiquities Authority said may have been the tomb of the prophet Zechariah, known from the eponymous book in the Bible, written around 520 BC....

Arlington National Cemetery is making management and technology changes in the wake of the mishandled gravesites and remains that cast a shocking and disappointing shadow over the hallowed grounds.

A report from the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) is blaming the cemetery's severely outdated paper record keeping system for the mix-ups, which came to light last summer.

Speaking at a press conference on the findings Monday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said he faced sharp criticism from one of his own family members over the mistakes.

"I particularly remember a very heated call I got from my dad, who's a World War II Marine," Warner said. "[He asked,] 'What in the heck are you guys doing in Washington, allowing this screw-up to take place?' [...] Rather than simply pointing fingers, we wanted to see if we could be part of the solution."...

DETROIT - The Detroit Yacht Club has been notified that it will be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The club that's located on Belle Isle in the Detroit River said Tuesday that the designation will take effect on or around March 1, when the Department of Interior gives it the official listing.

The Detroit Yacht Club was formed in 1868 at the site of what now is Owen Park. The current clubhouse was designed by architect George Mason and built in 1922....

HIRBET MADRAS, Israel – Israeli archaeologists presented a newly uncovered 1,500-year-old church in the Judean hills on Wednesday, including an unusually well-preserved mosaic floor with images of lions, foxes, fish and peacocks.

The Byzantine church located southwest of Jerusalem, excavated over the last two months, will be visible only for another week before archaeologists cover it again with soil for its own protection.

The small basilica with an exquisitely decorated floor was active between the fifth and seventh centuries A.D., said the dig's leader, Amir Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority. He said the floor was "one of the most beautiful mosaics to be uncovered in Israel in recent years."

"It is unique in its craftsmanship and level of preservation," he said....

A federal court in Washington Wednesday heard arguments on a challenge to the Voting Rights Act, a year and a half after the Supreme Court issued an opinion many believe opened the door to undoing the landmark civil rights legislation.

In that 8-1 decision back in 2009, the justices seemed to clear the way for future challenges to the act, while avoiding ruling on the validity of its core provisions. It was originally drafted in 1965 to remedy racial discrimination in voting rules in parts of the South.

Today, Shelby County, Ala., takes center stage as the latest jurisdiction to assert that the noble purposes of the law have been served, and that further enforcement is no longer necessary or legal....

Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history - after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest.

The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims a new study.

The deaths of 40million people meant that large areas of cultivated land grew thick once again with trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

And, although his methods may be difficult for environmentalists to accept, ecologists believe it may be the first ever case of successful manmade global cooling.

‘It's a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era,’ said Julia Pongratz, who headed the research by the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology....

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has often paid tribute to Ronald Reagan.
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By Getty Images
The U.S. Senate will pay tribute today to Ronald Reagan, in one of many events tied to the centennial of the 40th president's birth.

Reagan would have turned 100 on Sunday, Feb. 6.

Senators will deliver speeches honoring Reagan from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. today.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has often spoken about the impact Reagan had on his political life. The former prisoner of war also speaks frequently of the support Reagan and his wife, Nancy, gave to him and other POWs during their captivity in Vietnam....

Poland's culture minister said Tuesday he had asked museums at former Nazi death camps to drop their Polish .pl Internet suffix to help counter the false impression they were Polish-run.

The minister, Bogdan Zdrojewski, told Polish news agency PAP he had written to the directors of three museums in Poland asking them to use other suffixes for their websites, such as the more neutral, pan-European .eu.

The three memorial museums, run and largely financed by the Polish state, are Auschwitz-Birkenau (www.auschwitz.org.pl), Majdanek (www.majdanek.pl) and Stutthof (www.stutthof.pl)....

WASHINGTON: An immigration judge ordered a former Ukrainian Nazi policeman's removal from United States for his participation in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution during World War II.

John (Ivan) Kalymon of Michigan served as an armed member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) in Nazi-occupied Lvov, Ukraine.

The removal orders were issued by US Immigration Judge Elizabeth Hacker in Detroit, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A Breuer of the criminal division, the department of justice said on Wednesday.

Kalymon, 89, immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1949 and became a US citizen in 1955....

MUNICH — A court-appointed expert said Wednesday that she can't confirm or reject the authenticity of John Demjanjuk's signature on a key piece of evidence at his trial on charges that he was a Nazi death camp guard.

Handwriting expert Beate Wuellbeck told the Munich state court that only three letters in Demjanjuk's alleged identity card were clearly recognizable and she could not verify the authenticity of the signature.

Prosecutors say the signature on the identity card from the Nazis' Sobibor death camp is Demjanjuk's.

Demjanjuk, 90, is standing trial on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly having been a guard at the Sobibor death camp....

Two British historians are leading an eight-day luxury tour of Nazi and Third Reich sites in Germany.

For $3,200, participants will visit key Hitler-related sites including the lakeside villa where the plans for the Holocaust were laid out, Hitler's vacation home in Berchtesgaden, Sachsenhausen concentration camp and the bunker where Hitler committed suicide.

The tour, "The Face of Evil: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is intended only for serious students of the Nazi leaders, say the tour's leaders, Nigel Jones and Roger Moorhouse....

Technically the Walmart case, which kicked around on the docket of the Orange County Circuit Court for more than a year, will go down as a no decision. The board of supervisors will maintain their approval of the special use permit (SUP) allowing Walmart to build near Routes 3 and 20 was done legally and appropriately. The Friends of the Wilderness Battlefield and individual plaintiffs will maintain it was not. When Walmart decided it would no longer pursue a store on that site during county attorney Sharon Pandak's opening arguments last Tuesday, the argument became moot. The shock decision from America's largest retailer has left preservationists feeling like winners and county officials disappointed in losing their ideal spot for development.

"We're pretty shocked," said Lee Frame, District 5 Supervisor and board chairman. "[Walmart's decision] was very unexpected and we're not particularly happy about it. The county has been with Walmart all the way."

Frame said that from conversations he's had with Walmart vice president Eric Zorn, the decision was made to avoid an even longer legal battle in the appeals process....