Before Bush's secret order, the NSA operated under strict limits on domestic intelligence collection. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 set up a secret federal court that must approve requests for the NSA to conduct surveillance against anyone in the USA suspected of being an "agent of a foreign power," such as a terrorist group.

Revelations in 1975 of CIA misdeeds led to an investigation by a committee headed by then-senator Frank Church. The committee published a report in 1976 that uncovered three cases of NSA spying on Americans.

"Here we are, 30 years later, revisiting the whole issue," said Matthew Aid, a historian who has written about the NSA.

Chamberlain died in 1999, less than two years after seeing his number retired during a dramatic half-time ceremony at Allen Fieldhouse. He was 63.

In "Can Basketball Survive Chamberlain? The Kansas Years of Wilt the Stilt," a lengthy article in the latest issue of Kansas State Historical Society's "Kansas History" magazine, Goudsouzian contends that Chamberlain's time in Lawrence "foreshadowed the changing landscapes in ofAmerican sports and race relations."

Though Chamberlain was hardly a civil rights activist, Goudsouzian said, his fame and ego often put him on a collision course with Lawrence's then-de facto segregation.

Businesses -- bars and restaurants, mostly -- that had long refused to serve blacks found it difficult to turn away Chamberlain.

"I'll tell you a story that was well-known at the time," said Leonard Monroe, a Lawrence native and a longtime friend of Chamberlain's.

"(Then-KU basketball coach) Phog Allen's son, Mitt, and Wilt went to a cafe downtown -- I can't remember which one it was -- and the owner said, ‘Mr. Allen, we're not going to serve him,'" Monroe said.

"Now, Mitt Allen was a lawyer. So he says, ‘Why you ol' blankety-blank, if you don't serve him, I'm going to close this blankety-blank place down," Monroe said.

"They served him," Monroe chuckled.

But Chamberlain's being served didn't mean other blacks were.

"Me? Oh, no, I couldn't eat there," said Monroe, who is black. "Wilt could, but the rest of us couldn't."

The information was presented at a panel on "America and the Holocaust: New Research," sponsored by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, as part of the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS), the premier organization of Jewish scholars, at the Washington, D.C. Hilton hotel.
The panel was chaired by Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute.

Prof. Laurel Leff, of Northeastern University, revealed in her lecture:

* While other university departments and disciplines added Jewish refugees to their faculties to help them escape Hitler, none of America's approximately forty journalism schools and departments took in Jewish refugee journalists, and no major newspaper hired refugee journalists.

* In 1939, refugee advocates Prof. David Reisman (later a famous Harvard sociologist) and Prof. Carl Friedrich requested ten minutes to speak at the convention of the American Newspaper Publishers Association about the plight of Jewish refugee journalists. Their request was rejected.

* Refusals to aid Jewish refugee journalists were often laced with antisemitic comments. For example, Lawrence Murphy, dean of the University of Illinois School of Journalism and one of the leading figures in journalism education, opposed aiding the refugees and rationalized it on the grounds that it was for their own good. "The minute that Jews show up in numbers they become a threat to the others ... they would occupy all the jobs there are [and] are quite likely to work together in filling the jobs," Murphy wrote. "We must hurt them to help them. We must keep them from becoming too prominent and assertive..."

Prof. Leff is the author of the critically-acclaimed new book about the New York Times and the Holocaust, 'Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper,' which was published by Cambridge University Press earlier this year.

Prof. Stephen Norwood, of the University of Oklahoma, said in his remarks at the conference:

* Despite book-burnings and anti-Jewish violence in Nazi Germany, the leaders of elite American universities such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins refused to speak out against the Hitler regime during 1933-1937. Columbia president Nicholas Butler expelled a student for leading an anti-Hitler rally on campus. Harvard president James Conant warmly welcomed Ernst Hanfstangl, a Harvard alumnus who was Hitler's foreign press secretary, when he visited the campus in 1934. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted a visit by Nazi Germany's ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther.

* Even though German universities fired their Jewish professors and adopted a Nazi curriculum, prominent American universities continued to maintain relations with them. They exchanged students with German universities, and sent representatives to a celebration at the University of Heidelberg in 1936 (Williams College was one of the few that refused to participate). Harvard Law School dean Roscoe Pound accepted a honorary degree from the University of Berlin in 1934. Johns Hopkins president Isaiah Bowman, a famed geographer, accepted an honor from a Nazi geographical society.

* Antisemitic comments that Prof. Norwood found in the private correspondence of some prominent American university officials suggest that bigotry was at least part of the motive for their positions regarding Hitler and German Jewry. Harvard president Conant urged the DuPont Corporation not to hire the famous German Jewish chemist Max Bergmann, because he was "very definitely of the Jewish type." Yale president James Rowland Angell asked his deans to examine whether Jewish students were engaged in cheating and financial wrongdoing. Johns Hopkins president Isaiah Bowman refused to sign a petition against anti-Jewish discrimination in Polish universities in 1937, and claimed the protest was the result of "pressure from Jews in New York."



ABOUT THE WYMAN INSTITUTE: The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, located on the campus of Gratz College (near Philadelphia), is a research and education institute focusing on America’s response to the Holocaust. It is named in honor of the eminent historian and author of the 1984 best-seller The Abandonment of the Jews, the most important and influential book concerning the U.S. response to the Nazi genocide.

The Institute’s Advisory Committee includes Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, Members of Congress, and other luminaries. Its Academic Council includes more than 50 leading professors of the Holocaust, American history, and Jewish history. The Institute’s Arts & Letters Council, chaired by Cynthia Ozick, includes prominent artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers. (For a complete list, please visit www.WymanInstitute.org)

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a"watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said."Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."

Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk."I shudder to think of all the students I've had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that," he said."Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless."

The Foreign Office files detailed an investigation carried out by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward, who found evidence of torture and said at least two inmates had starved to death while another had been beaten to death.

"Even today, the Foreign Office is refusing to release photographs taken of some of the 'living skeletons' on their release," the newspaper said.

Former prisoners told Inspector Hayward they had been whipped as well as beaten and any prisoner thought to be uncooperative during interrogation was taken to a punishment cell.

"Threats to execute prisoners, or to arrest, torture and murder their wives and children were considered 'perfectly proper' on the grounds that such threats were never carried out," the paper reports.

Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi members or former members of the SS, rounded up in an attempt to prevent any Nazi insurgency, although a significant number were also businessmen who had done well under Adolf Hitler, the paper says.

One of the men who starved to death, Walter Bergmann, had offered to spy for the British and fell under suspicion because he spoke Russian.

"There seems little doubt that Bergmann, against whom no charge of any crime has ever been made, but on the contrary, who appears to be a man who has given every assistance, and that of considerable value, has lost his life through malnutrition and lack of medical care," Inspector Hayward wrote in his report.

Click here for an earlier account.

“They have no idea of reality. They are up against very well organised looters with outlets in Switzerland, the US, France and England. So they need people who know the mechanics of the black market and how to fight it. They need people to whisper in their ear and tell them where to look.”

One measure recommended includes getting rid of Florence Nightingale, Edward Elgar, and Charles Darwin from notes, or even remove the Queen's face altogether.

In their place could come Victorian black MPs, social pioneers like nurse Mary Seacole, anti-slavery campaigners like William Wilberforce or poets like Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society said: "Our national symbols should reflect the nation we are today. The design of notes is not set in stone.

"Just having a debate about whether there should be a new mix of black and white faces on them would be a positive development."

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Writing in the Fabian Review, historian Linda Colley - an adviser to Tony Blair - also backed the idea.

She said: "Why are the people on British bank notes always white? Why not have Olaudah Equiano, the great 18th century anti-slavery writer, or the first Indian MP?"

The group, which has close links with Downing Street, also called for a written constitution setting down rights and responsibilities. It would also change the traditional coronation into a "multi-faith ceremony".

And it suggests ending an honours system with awards such as the Order of the British Empire and replacing it with an Order of British Citizens.

For younger people it suggests introducing a compulsory community service scheme for 16 and 21-year-olds to ensure they work with youngsters of different backgrounds. The society wants to tackle discrimination in employment and promote a social and ethnic mix in school intakes.

Police believe that a crane was used to hoist the 11ft by 8ft, two- ton statue on to a Mercedes flat-bed lorry. Three men are being sought, having been caught on security cameras.

A Reclining Figure was created by Moore, widely seen as one of the 20th century's greatest sculptors, late in his career.

Born in Yorkshire in 1898 to a mining family, Moore is credited with helping to heal the rift between popular and 'intellectual' art. His work is to be found worldwide, much of it on public, or open access, display. Moore died in 1986 " feted by the media, honoured by the establishment and loved by the public " leaving an extraordinary body of work comprising hundreds of pieces, scattered worldwide in public and private collections.

As a consequence, the ongoing debate over the Iraq war and its origins is taking place without crucial information about the former Iraqi regime and its relationships with presumed U.S. allies and known U.S. enemies. Despite the determined shredding and burning efforts of regime officials in the dying days of Saddam Hussein's government, much of this information still exists--in handwritten documents, in videotapes and audiotapes, in photographs and satellite images, on computer hard drives. All told, the U.S. government has in its possession more than 2 million "exploitable" items from the former Iraqi regime (the intelligence community's term of art for information it thinks might be useful). According to sources with knowledge of the project, now two and a half years old, only 50,000 documents have been translated and fully exploited. Few of those translated documents have been circulated to policymakers in the Bush administration. And although one of the translated documents was leaked to the New York Times last summer, none of the others has been released, formally or informally.

The result: Much of today's debate about the threat posed three years ago by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is based on past assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies that we now know had no real sources on the ground in Iraq. The Bush administration seems remarkably uninterested in discovering, now that we have reams of material from Saddam's regime, what the actual terror-related and WMD-related activities of that regime were. But as the political debate of recent weeks makes clear, answering these questions remains central to the debate over the war. More important, it cannot be the case that there's nothing helpful to the ongoing war on terror in these files.

Beginning in February 2005, I started asking the Pentagon's public affairs office for more information on the document exploitation (DOCEX) project headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Later in the spring, I provided to the Pentagon a list of more than 40 unclassified Iraqi regime documents and requested that they be released. Pentagon public affairs officials denied this request and indicated that a Freedom of Information Act request would likely be the only way to secure the documents, even though they were not classified. I filed a FOIA request on June 19. The FOIA request was passed from the Pentagon to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to the Army's Intelligence and Security Command. I received an "administrative denial" of my request on September 20.

One of the reasons I was given to explain the delays: "There are hundreds of thousands of other documents in the system, and it is a labor intensive process to find specific documents." That is nonsense, according to two intelligence sources with extensive background in the document exploitation project. The databases are keyword searchable.

With 2006 marking the 100th anniversary of Butch and Sundance's arrival in Bolivia and a fledgling backpacker trail already carving out a route in their footsteps, interest in the legend of Butch and Sundance is fuelling a new boom in Bolivia for Butch Cassidy tours.

"Bolivia's Tupiza region is as captivating today to backpackers as it was to Butch and Sundance a century ago, while the story of Butch and Sundance's misadventures in the Tupiza region is attracting increasing numbers of tourists, history buffs and trekkers," says historian Ann Meadows, author of Digging Up Butch and Sundance, the definitive book about the outlaws.

LETTER OF JESSE LEMISCH:

I was glad that President James Sheehan and the American Historical Association Council expressed disapproval of the Turkish government's role in the cancellation of a conference on"Ottoman Armenians during the Decline of the Empire" (Perspectives, September 2005, 3–4). But I found it jarring that, in the midst of this otherwise commendable expression, the AHA and its president felt the need to state that,"Needless to say, the Association does not have a position on the fate of the Armenians." As a veteran of Vietnam-era struggles within the professional associations, I know just how militantly the AHA has held to the notion that, in President Sheehan's words, it"does not take a position on particular historical issues." (And I recall the December 1968 AHA meeting in New York in which a procession of worthies proclaimed that the convention had been moved from Chicago after the police riot during the Democratic Convention in August only as a matter of convenience, with no hint of political or historical judgment.)

As President Sheehan reminds us, the Turkish government has denied that a genocide took place. But can it be that the AHA has no position on the fact of the Armenian Genocide? In response to my query on what I take to be a related question, the AHA's executive director has reminded me of the AHA Council's 1991 statement deploring Holocaust Denial ("No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place"). I'm sure some readers will see an inconsistency between the AHA's position on the Holocaust and its position on the Armenian Genocide; I'm sure others will find enough angels on the head of this pin to squirm out of it. But doesn't it come down to this: the AHA opposes Holocaust denial in one case but is agnostic in another?

RESPONSE OF JAMES SHEEHAN:

I am grateful to Jesse Lemisch for the opportunity to clarify the point I tried to make in my letter to Prime Minister Erdogan. Let me add that I am now speaking only for myself, not for the Council or the AHA.

In December 1991, the Council approved the following statement:"The American Historical Association Council strongly deplores the publicly reported attempts to deny the fact of the Holocaust. No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place." The second sentence is, of course, a simple statement of fact: there is agreement among all serious scholars about the basic facts of the Holocaust, even if there are debates about details and interpretations. This consensus did not happen because organizations like the AHA"deplored" the views of those who denied the Holocaust, but because free and open research produced an extraordinarily rich and convincing body of scholarship.

The AHA does not have a position on the Armenian genocide. Should it have one? I don’t think so—even though I am personally convinced that what happened to the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian minority in 1915 was indeed a genocide. As a scholarly organization, our efforts should not be directed at issuing proclamations about what happened in the past. Such proclamations, I suspect, rarely change anyone’s mind. We should concentrate our attention on trying to end restrictions on research and discussion in the present. This was why the AHA protested the political pressures that forced the cancellation of the scholarly conference scheduled to be held in Istanbul last May.

As many readers of Perspectives are aware, that conference, on"Ottoman Armenians during the Demise of the Empire: Issues of Democracy and Scientific Responsibility," took place on September 24 and 25, 2005, at Bilgi University in Istanbul. The success of the conference was a testimony to the courage of its organizers and a victory for academic freedom and scholarly integrity. These values, on which our common labors as historians must ultimately depend, remain the best antidotes to irresponsible scholarship and repressive politics.

Once his DNA is known, it can be cross-referenced with the DNA of descendants from the prime suspects in the case.

Five brutal prostitute murders in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888 were originally linked to Jack the Ripper, although theories have emerged recently claiming that he went on to kill elsewhere.

Many of the letters police received signed "Jack the Ripper" are believed to be hoaxes but some, including several which had mutilated body parts enclosed, are thought to be genuine.

Professor Findlay, chief scientist at the Gribbles molecular science forensic laboratory in Brisbane, Australia, said being involved in the Ripper case was "daunting".

The Glasgow University graduate said: "As a youngster growing up in Blantyre, I always wanted to be a police scientist and now I am working onone of the world's biggest murder mysteries.

"The Ripper case is absolutely huge and one mention of it in Australia landed me on the front pages of the newspapers here.

"If we found DNA on the stamps, we can compare that with DNA from the descendants of the suspects. There were supposedly hundreds of letters. Most were probably hoaxes, but at least a dozen are thought to be genuine, including one which came with a piece of kidney he took from one of his victims.

"Generally, there were thought to be 10 main suspects, from royalty to doctors and painters."

The attempt to establish the London murderer's true identity is the latest in a series of recent high-profile investigations which have fanned interest in the notorious killings.

Patricia Cornwell, the crime writer, spent GBP2m of her own money researching a book in which she claimed that the artist Walter Sickert was the killer. However, her theory has been heavily criticised by detectives and historians.

Professor Findlay began working on the case after developing a DNA identification technology called CellTrack ID which he claims can extract and compile a DNA fingerprint from a single cell or strand of hair up to 160 years old.

Armed riot police in body armour and white helmets thronged the narrow corridors of the Sisli district criminal court, but did little to maintain order as protesters from the hard left and the far right hurled abuse at Pamuk and his supporters, attacked his car, and punched and kicked human rights observers.

Pamuk, 53, who is accused of "denigrating Turkishness" for stating that 30,000 people have died in Turkey's Kurdish conflict and that a million Armenians were killed in Turkey during the first world war, must return to court in February unless the government decides to drop the case, the judge ordered.

The author of the novels Snow and My Name Is Red, who is widely regarded as a Nobel laureate contender, stood silent in a dark suit and white shirt for 45 minutes in a packed court. Judge Metin Aydin struggled to maintain order amid arguments between Pamuk's defence team and a group of rightwing lawyers who claimed their Turkishness had been impugned by Pamuk's remarks in a Swiss newspaper interview earlier this year.

The defence demanded an instant dismissal of the case. The prosecution demanded instant pursuit of it. The judge played for time and shifted the onus of decision-taking to the government.

Pamuk voiced dismay that his ordeal was not over. "It is not good for Turkey, for our democracy, for such freedom-of-expression cases to be prolonged," he said in a statement. But the government made plain it was in no hurry to close the case.

Outside, nationalists screamed "traitor" at Pamuk, and scuffles broke out. Protesters pelted his car with eggs and assaulted his supporters.

The International Journal for Educational Integrity, a freely accessible online publication that made its debut last week, will cover matters of academic rectitude, including soft marking, fraud, and other forms of academic dishonesty, as well as plagiarism.

Billed as the first of its kind, the periodical is to be published twice a year. Most of the articles in the new issue examine the theme of plagiarism in Australia, particularly in relation to the country's historically high number of international students among whom English is not a first language.

The publication was unveiled at a conference on the same subject that was held at the country's University of Newcastle, which itself was recently found by a government investigation to have covered up a rash of plagiarism for fear of losing a lucrative overseas program (The Chronicle, October 14).

The cabin, where Henson lived during the time in which Stowe's novel takes place, served for many years as the home office for Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Hildegarde's husband and a lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board who died in 2000. Their son Greg, showing a reporter around recently, pointed out the oak beams below, still covered in bark; the broad floorboards, probably original to the plantation house; the bedroom where he slept when he was home from college.

Few have been inside cabin

"My parents were history people," Greg said. "They accommodated anyone who wanted to take pictures of the outside, and people came by constantly, but my parents wanted to be left alone on the inside."

As a result, few historians have been inside the cabin. "This house basically fell between the cracks," said Judy Christensen, a historian who is preservation planner for the city of Rockville. "It's a site of national importance."

Planners for Montgomery County and Heritage Montgomery, the county's historical tourism agency, are trying to raise money to bid on the house, which is on Montgomery's list of historic sites. The cabin has not made it to the National Register of Historic Places because, as Greg Mallet-Prevost put it, "my father felt it was his right to decide if it was historic."

However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

Considering how Wikipedia articles are written, that result might seem surprising. A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on the Sun, but would have the same status as a contributor without an academic background. Disputes about content are usually resolved by discussion among users.

But Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and president of the encyclopaedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation of St Petersburg, Florida, says the finding shows the potential of Wikipedia. "I'm pleased," he says. "Our goal is to get to Britannica quality, or better."

Wikipedia is growing fast. The encyclopaedia has added 3.7 million articles in 200 languages since it was founded in 2001. The English version has more than 45,000 registered users, and added about 1,500 new articles every day of October 2005. Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.

But critics have raised concerns about the site's increasing influence, questioning whether multiple, unpaid editors can match paid professionals for accuracy. Writing in the online magazine TCS last year, former Britannica editor Robert McHenry declared one Wikipedia entry — on US founding father Alexander Hamilton — as "what might be expected of a high-school student". Opening up the editing process to all, regardless of expertise, means that reliability can never be ensured, he concluded.

Yet Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.

Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.

Editors at Britannica would not discuss the findings, but say their own studies of Wikipedia have uncovered numerous flaws. "We have nothing against Wikipedia," says Tom Panelas, director of corporate communications at the company's headquarters in Chicago. "But it is not the case that errors creep in on an occasional basis or that a couple of articles are poorly written. There are lots of articles in that condition. They need a good editor."

Several Nature reviewers agreed with Panelas' point on readability, commenting that the Wikipedia article they reviewed was poorly structured and confusing. This criticism is common among information scientists, who also point to other problems with article quality, such as undue prominence given to controversial scientific theories. But Michael Twidale, an information scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that Wikipedia's strongest suit is the speed at which it can updated, a factor not considered by Nature's reviewers.

"Well, I was pretty amazed," said Charles Moenning, the head of construction on a project to turn the old S.H. Kress store into loft apartments and retail space. "I have never seen anything like that in my life, in person, rather."

Black letters stand out from the beige plaster walls, recalling the days when segregation ruled the South. Blacks and whites were kept apart in schools, public transportation and accommodations. Integration arrived here slowly in the 1950s and 1960s, most anxiously as nine black students tried to enter Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

"I used to shop downtown when I was a kid and I used to remember all of those signs," said 63-year-old Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey, who dropped by the store Friday with the hope of preserving the wall. He said a Roman Catholic priest had raised his awareness about racial issues when he was in high school in the 1950s.

"He would talk about it's just not fair that a young man who's white can go to a movie and sit in a certain place and a black man cannot," Dailey said. "And somebody can't drink out of a certain water fountain."

Kress built the store on Main Street in 1943 and it remained a five-and-dime until the 1960s when a drug store moved in and occupied the space until the 1990s. Developer Frieda Nelson Tirado recently purchased the vacant three-story building.

Demolition workers clearing the basement for parking spaces were ripping out old walls about two weeks ago when someone noticed the lettering through the partially demolished partition. Moenning helped workers remove the last of material covering the words Thursday.

Marks on the wall, which has sections of exposed turquoise paint, suggest the water fountains were once separated by a partition.

While Little Rock is perhaps best known for its high school desegregation crisis, integration actually started in the city a bit earlier, said Laura Miller, a historian at the Central High School National Historic Site.

"I believe it was right around 1955 and 1956 when representatives from the NAACP started asking downtown store owners to desegregate water fountains and things like that," she said. "And they did, quietly, without telling their white customers."

But the desegregation of downtown Little Rock wasn't swift. In 1960, students from historically black Philander Smith College staged a sit-in at Woolworth's to protest continuing lunch counter segregation.

During the mayor's visit, Moenning agreed to save the wall from demolition.

Dailey said he would try to see that the signs are put in a museum, calling them "a dramatic reminder of a world that we don't want to go back to."

Hickok was assigned to the Light Mine Layer the USS Sicard when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Many crewmembers from the USS Sicard, including Hickok, were dispatched to assist the crew of the USS Cummings, a destroyer docked nearby. The Cummings succeeded in getting underway and clearing Pearl Harbor with no casualties reported. However, an investigation into those still unaccounted-for after the attack surmised that Hickok may have been a casualty aboard the battleship, the USS Pennsylvania, since some crewmen from the USS Sicard had been dispatched to the USS Pennsylvania during the attack. But records indicate that Hickok was not lost aboard that ship.

In the days following the attack, burial details interred many of the unknown dead in Nuuanu Cemetery on Oahu. Among those buried were an unknown sailor identified only as X-2. Following the war, the Army Graves Registration Service oversaw the disinterment of unknown remains, including the X-2 remains. They could not be identified and were reburied in Section E, Grave 73 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, on June 9, 1949.

The non-binding resolution sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Pembroke Pines, urges Bush to designate by executive order the month of January each year as American Jewish History month, similar to the way February has been designated Black History Month.

More than 250 members of the House joined in co-sponsoring the resolution, led by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee. Local Reps. Mark Foley, R-Jupiter, Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, E. Clay Shaw Jr., R-Fort Lauderdale, and Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, were among the co-sponsors.

Wasserman Schultz introduced the resolution late Wednesday after receiving a commitment from House Speaker Dennis Hastert that he would contact Bush and urge him to issue the order.

Congress last year adopted a resolution recognizing this year as the 350th anniversary of American Jewish life and suggested that a month recognizing the contribution of Jews to America be established.

"American Jewish History Month would honor the contributions of American Jews to society," Wasserman Schultz said in introducing the resolution. "Similar to Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, American Jewish History Month would present educators with the opportunity and tools to teach diversity and cultural awareness."

Wasserman Schultz noted that "ignorance about Jews and our history, culture and contributions to American society remains widespread in the United States. This ignorance leads to hatred and bigotry, and one way to stop it is through education. As we all know, education leads to understanding."

Dr Moffat has housed his archive at the nearby former Fala Primary School, Fala, for the past three years, since he was forced to move it from its original home at a cottage in the village.

But now Midlothian Council is to sell the land - and has told Dr Moffat he will have to move the archive by the end of December.

It is believed the land is to be sold to the Honourable Michael Dalrymple of Oxenfoord Castle near Pathhead.

Dr Moffat said: "It is a huge archive. We've been going for 20 years and I never throw anything away. The school in Fala hasn't been used for 12 years, so it seems a shame that the landowner wants to do something with it now.

"It is very difficult because I have only had a few weeks' notice and at the moment, I have nowhere to go. Unless we find somewhere suitable very quickly, we will be on the streets with four tonnes of paperwork."

He added: "I need somewhere very specific for the archive. Somewhere that is very dry, with plenty of storage and it has to be very secure. Some of the work contains information that could be worth quite a lot of money if it got into the wrong hands.

"The council has suggested I might be able to store it at the Old Dalkeith High School, but it would be in an open classroom, which I don't think is secure."

He said he was expecting the archive, which currently receives around a dozen inquiries a week from drug companies and medicinal herbalists looking for information, to see a huge surge in popularity over the coming months following a joint project with the Duchess of Northumberland.

He added he had hoped to open a visitors' centre in the school hall to hold exhibitions about the monks' work.

The Duchess, who is originally from Edinburgh, took cuttings from Soutra to include in her poison gardens at Alnwick Castle.

The Duchess, who features cannabis, opium poppies, magic mushrooms and coca - the source of cocaine - in her gardens, has featured an interview with Dr Moffat in one of her promotional videos.

The IER, a 17-member independent panel set up by the king in November 2003 to probe reports of killings, disappearances, torture and other serious abuses between 1960 and 1999, the reign of his father Hassan II, meanwhile urged the state to apologise and develop a "national strategy against impunity".

"We intend to give a very warm welcome to the different recommendations made in this report," government spokesman Nabil Benabdellah said. "We consider the report to bear witness of the deep desire of His Majesty the King and his government to turn a page in our history."

The king's decision to set up such a commission, which reported back to him last month after a series of investigations and opening mass graves around the country, including inside the notorious Tazmamart prison in the south, was the first of its kind in the Arab world.

Hundreds of families had reported atrocities and disappearance during what were known as the "leaden years", when Hassan II was a staunch ally of the west but maintained power at home surrounded by hardline security and interior ministers and secret services while keeping a multi-party system going.

Reichel and Salam Al Kuntar, of Syria's Antiquities Department and Cambridge University, directed a team that excavated the site in the present day town of Hamoukar. It's one of the most revealing discoveries yet of early urban warfare.

There's no record of a battle, since writing hadn't been invented yet. In such cases, it's often difficult to determine whether destruction was the result of warfare or of other calamities such as accidental fires.

"But in our case, it was unambiguous," Reichel said. "There's very clear evidence of violent destruction."

INTERNATIONAL PEN

PEN OBSERVERS DESCRIBE "UGLY AND VIOLENT" SCENES TRIAL OF ORHAN PAMUK

16 December 2005

On 16 December 2005, the Sisli No 2 Court of First Instance in Istanbul, announced that the hearing against Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey's most eminent writers, would be adjourned until 7 February 2006. His trial dossier is apparently still with the Ministry of Justice in Ankara for consideration that Pamuk be tried under the old penal code that was repealed on 1 June this year. Pamuk's "offence", was a statement published in a Swiss newspaper in which he declared "One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands [Turkey] and nobody but me dares talk about it." This has led to him being accused of "publicly denigrating Turkish identity". The comment was made in February this year before the penal code was revised.
Since then Article 159 of that Penal Code dealing with "insult" to the Turkish state has been replaced by new Penal Code Article 301.

Until a few days ago, it was thought that the court would hear a request that the trial proceed under the New Penal Code. Pamuk's lawyer, Haluk Inanici, in a written statement earlier this week, said that the court asked the prosecutor's office whether Pamuk should be tried according to the new Penal Code or the old version. On December 2, the Istanbul court, stated that while both article 159/1 of the old penal code and article 301/1 of the new code call for prison sentences of up to three years for the same "crime", the old law favours Pamuk as it requires the permission of the Ministry of Justice to proceed with the trial.

Among the many observers to the trial were the Chair of International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee, Karin Clark, President of the Turkish PEN Centre Vecdi Sayar, and International PEN Board Member, Eugene Schoulgin. Here follows their account of the events this
morning:

"The scenes around the first appearance of Orhan Pamuk before Sisli No. 2 Court of First Instance on 16 December 2005 at 11:00 were marked by constant shouting and scuffling turning ugly and violent at times. As those attending the proceedings left the court, eggs were hurled along with insults from the nationalists and fascists among the crowd lining the pavement across the street. This in full sight of the national and international media which had turned out in full.

Right wing hecklers had already greeted the defenders of free expression from within and outside Turkey with banners bearing slogans in English and even German such as: "Turkey for the Turks this is none of your concern", "Foreign presence is uncalled for", "You are putting Turkey on trial, giving it a bad name", "You are only here for the show" etc.

The courtroom was packed with well over 70 people - among them famous Turkish writers such as Yasar Kemal and Arif Damar, and representatives of the European Parliament, several diplomats, members of Turkish and international freedom of speech organizations.
The aggression and heckling inside and outside the court did not abate. Some ten lawyers of the extreme right who want to be involved in the case on the prosecutor's side, some in their robes, others in street clothes, eventually surrounded the court officials seated on the podium, with Orhan Pamuk and his defence lawyer standing before them. One of the lawyers who had initiated the charges, even though he did not have any right to intervene, as there had not been a decision yet on whether or on what grounds the trial would be opened, was allowed to speak for almost 10 minutes without being interrupted by the judge. He made accusations against Orhan Pamuk, who was represented by council but himself was not called on to speak.

Again and again, confrontations and shouting in the hallways interrupted the proceedings, the aggressive mood spilling over into the courtroom itself. The session ended after an hour and 15 minutes with an adjournment until 7 February 2006, due to the fact that the Ministry of Justice had indicated it needed more time to decide on the legal basis of the trial".

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INTERNATIONAL PEN

STATEMENT ON THE TRIAL OF ORHAN PAMUK

16 December 2005

Turkey: Suspension of trial hearing against Orhan Pamuk Bodes Ill for Free Expression

This morning the trial against Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey's most well- known authors, was postponed to 7 February 2006 after the Ministry of Justice said that it needed more time to study the trial dossier. On hearing of the news that the process will drag on, the President of International PEN, Jiøí Gruša said "It is unbelievable that Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey's best known and eminent authors, is in this situation. What it indicates is a complete disregard for the right to freedom of expression not only for Pamuk, but also for the Turkish populace as a whole. This decision bodes ill for other writers who are being tried under similar laws."

Jiøí Gruša is referring to the cases of around 14 other writers, publishers and journalists accused of "insult" for having criticised the Turkish state and its officials. They are on trial for writings on issues including accusations that the Turkish army has committed human rights abuses and for commentary on the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman army in the early 1900s. They are being prosecuted under the revised Penal Code that had been amended earlier this year as part of a process aimed at removing from Turkish law human rights anomalies. This is part of the process that the government hopes will lead to acceptance to the European Union. The EU's Enlargement Commissioner, Olli Rehn, has said that the trial has cast a shadow over Turkey's application.

Among those on trial for "insult" is Hrant Dink, the editor of an Armenian language newspaper, who is accused for his comments on his discomfiture at having to recite as a child a patriotic verse that required him to identify himself as a Turk rather than Armenian. Also writer Zülküf Kisanak, whose next trial hearing will be on 22 December, or his book depicting the destruction of Kurdish villages by the Turkish armed forces. Ragip Zarakolu, a long-time campaigner for minority and human rights, has two trials against him, both for books published by him by Armenian authors describing the events of the early 1900s. The most recent case was the initiation of trial proceedings earlier this month against five journalists who are accused of having insulted the judiciary by challenging a court decision in November to ban an academic conference on Armenia planned to take place at a university in Istanbul. For details of these and other "insult" cases known to PEN see below. Around 50 writers, publishers and journalists have been before the courts this year under various Penal Code items for their writings on sensitive issues There is growing alarm in Turkey that positive changes in the state of freedom of expression and the right to write, which had been the pattern of recent years, have taken a dramatic downward turn in recent months.

International PEN President Jiøí Gruša reiterates "PEN demands that the trials against all writers, publishers and journalists be halted and that the laws under which they are being tried be removed from the Penal Code. We also call on the Turkish authorities to put a definitive end to the penalisation of those who exercise their right to freedom of expression."

LIST OF CASES OF WRITERS, PUBLISHERS AND JOURNALISTS TRIED UNDER "INSULT" LAWS

1. Erkan AKAY, editor of Yeni Dünya Için Çagri (Call for a New World). His trial was launched in Istanbul Court of First Instance under Article 301 of the Penal Code on 10 November 2005 for an article '1915-2005 Forgetting or Denial?'

2. Hrant DINK: editor of the Armenian language Agos whose trial opened on 28 April 2005 on charges of insult regarding remarks he made at a conference in December 2002 entitled "Global Security, Terror and Human Rights, Multi-culturalism, Minorities and Human Rights". He reportedly faces up to three years in prison if convicted. The charges relate to comments he made about his childhood when he had objected to having to recite a patriotic verse that required him to identify himself as a Turk, rather than an Armenian. He also criticised a line in the Turkish national anthem that he considered to be discriminatory. The next hearing is due on 9 February 2006.

3. Zülküf KISANAK: Writer and journalist against whom legal proceedings were initiated in December 2004 for his book, Lost Villages. He was charged under Article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code for insult to the Turkish state for claiming that 3,500 Kurdish villages were forcefully evacuated between 1990 and 1995 and that homes were burnt. A hearing held on 18 October 2005 approved the trial to proceed under Article 301 of the new Penal Code. Next hearing due 22 December 2005.

4. Ersen KORKMAZ: editor-in-chief of Demokrat Iskenderun had a case launched against him on 28 June 2005 for "insulting the state" under Article 301 of the new penal code for an article entitled "Turkey Towards May Day". Hearings started on 22 July 2005.

5. Seyvi ÖNGIDER: A court hearing was scheduled to open 8 December 2005 on charges of "insulting Atatürk" for his book The Story of Two
Cities: Ankara-Istanbul Conflict. To be tried at the Kadiköy Penal Court of First Instance.

6. Murat PABUC, a writer on trial in November 2005 under Article 301 of the Penal Code for his book Deserting Bench Guard Duty that suggests that corruption in the army is systemic. He is accused of insulting the military. Pabuc refers to his experience as a soldier serving in the south east of Turkey as being an inspiration behind his book.

7. Orhan PAMUK an internationally renowned author who is to stand trial on 16 December 2005 before the Sisli Court, Istanbul on charges under article 301/1 of the Penal Code for "insult" to the Turkish nation. He faces up to 3 years in prison. Charges relate to a statement he made in the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger published 6 February 2005 in which he stated that a million Armenians had be killed by Ottoman forces in Turkey in 1915-17, and that "30,000" Kurds had died in the conflict in the south east since the mid 1980s.

In February-April 2005, Pamuk was under threat from extremist groups who had objected to the article. It was also reported that a local official in the southern town of Isparta ordered the seizure and burning of all Pamuk's works in Isparta's libraries, only to discover that none existed. The official was subsequently reprimanded for his comments by the Isparta governor. Pamuk is the author of six novels and is translated into 20 languages. He is the recipient of numerous literary awards both in Turkey and abroad. Books include My Name is Red, Snow and most recently book on his home city, Istanbul.

8. Fatih TAS, a publisher with the Aram Publishing House. A trial opened on 17 November 2005 for the publication of a Turkish Translation of US academic John Tirman's Spoils of War: the Human Cost of America's Arms Trade. The book, that claims that US weapons were used to carry out human rights abuses against Kurds and is highly critical of the Turkish military, nationalism and Atatürk. He is being tried under Article 301 of the Penal Code for insult to the army, the Turkish state, "Turkishness", and, under Article 1/1 and 2 of Law 5816, to the memory of Kemal Atatürk. Article 301 carries penalties of up to 2 years. Law 5816 carries sentences of up to 3 years, which can be increased by one half if the "insult" is in print. Hearing held on 2 December 2005 was adjourned to 8 February 2006. On 9 December Tas was convicted to six months in prison under article 301 of the New Penal Code for publishing another book, this time accusing the Turkish army of complicity in the disappearance of a journalist in the early 1990s.

9. Ragip ZARAKOLU: publisher, Belge Publishing House. Legal proceedings were initiated in December 2004 against Zarakolu for the publication of George Jerjian's book History Will Free All of Us/Turkish-Armenian Conciliation under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (formerly Article 159 of the old Penal Code) for "insult" to the State and to the memory of Kemal Atatürk. The book is said to claim that leading government figures close to Atatürk had been responsible for the mass deportation of Armenians in 1915. The first trial was held before the Light Crimes Court at Istanbul on 16 March 2005 with a subsequent hearing on 17 May, postponed to 20 September, then to 22 November 2005 and again to 15 February 2006. On 1 August 2005, another case was opened, this time for the publication of Professor Dora Sakayan's An Armenian Doctor in Turkey: Garabed Hatcherian: My Smyrna Ordeal of 1922 To be charged under Article 301 of the Penal Code . Case opened on 21 September 2005, adjourned to 22 November and again to 15 February 2006 when the final verdict is due to be given.

10. Five journalists: Ismet BERKAN, Murat BELGE, Haluk SAHIN
(Radikal) and Erol KATIRCIOGLU and Hasan CEMAL (Milliyet): Charged on 2 December 2005 with insult to the judiciary under Article 301 of the Penal Code for having criticised a court decision to ban a conference on the Armenian "genocide" that was to be held in September. The conference was eventually held later that month at another university.

For further information please contact Sara Whyatt at the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN, 9/10 Charterhouse Buildings, London EC1M 7AT, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0) 207 253 3226 Fax: +44
(0) 207 253 5711 email: swhyatt@wipcpen.org

Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest and least developed nations, is believed to contain some of civilization's oldest archaeological troves under its rocky soil. Experts estimate that less than 7 percent of these artifacts have been found, meaning that Ethiopia could be on the brink of the same kind of major archaeological discoveries that began in late 19th-century Greece or 1920s Egypt.

"Aksum is one of the least known civilizations in the world," said Fasil Giorghis, an Ethiopian architect and leader of a team of archaeologists and historians who are working in Aksum, as he hunched over reams of drawings in his office. "There are layers and layers of buildings and history here. There is major work to be done here. It's an exciting thing for our country."

Robert L. White, a retired cleaning-supply salesman whose collection of 350,000 items relates to the life of the 35th president, spent more than 40 years gathering Kennedy material. His collection, the largest in private hands, is rivaled only by that of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

White, who lived in Woodbine, died two years ago. He was 54.

White's collection began in his youth when he wrote to Kennedy, requesting an autograph. After Kennedy's assassination, he traveled to Washington to attend the funeral.

What became a lifelong obsession was given a significant boost when White befriended Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's personal secretary and presidential pack rat, who filled her Chevy Chase apartment with steamer trunks and filing cabinets containing material relating to the late president.