Discovery of an ancient village just outside Jerusalem has brought into question one of the strongest images of biblical times - the wholesale flight of Jews running for their lives after the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Just beneath the main road leading north from Jerusalem, archaeologists have found the walls of houses in a well-planned community that existed after the temple's destruction. It might lead to rewriting the history books if it was really Jewish. But at least one expert isn't sure it was.

The discovery of stone vessels indicate Jews in the village continued to live by religious purity laws after 70 A.D., said Debbie Sklar-Parnes, of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who is overseeing the dig.

This is the first evidence that Jews lived so close to Jerusalem - about 1.5 kilometers (a mile) away - after the destruction of the Second Temple, Sklar-Parnes said.

Archaeologists used pottery and coins found at the site to estimate that people lived there from around 70 to 132 A.D., when the Romans crushed a second Jewish revolt.

About 30 Palestinian workers for the Israel Antiquities Authority - some of them sent to dig here by the government instead of collecting unemployment - uncovered and brushed dust off 2,000-year-old glass jewelry, bronze coins and stone vases in the hole carved out in the middle of the road as cars whizzed by.

"We were surprised to find such a massive settlement," Sklar-Parnes said. She estimated the village covered between three and four acres (1.2-1.6 hectares). She said it is impossible to tell if the settlement was built before or after the destruction of the temple, though life continued there after 70 A.D.

But Hebrew University historian Lee Levine questioned whether the village was actually Jewish.

"The evidence is a little mixed," Levine said. The presence of wine amphorae from Italy and the absence of ritual baths cast some doubt on the Jewishness of the village, he said.

During the years of the settlement, most historians believe observant Jews no longer used wine made by non-Jews, Levine said. And assuming the settlement existed before the destruction of the temple, it is unusual there were no ritual baths, which were tied directly to temple rituals, he said.

But he noted they might still be found. Only a fraction of the settlement has been excavated, Sklar-Parnes said.

It is a widely held belief that Jews fled north from the Jerusalem area in 70 A.D. because Romans persecuted them and confiscated their property, Levine said. There are tales of Jews being led away in chains and sacked treasures from the temple on display in Rome, where the Arch of Titus, built to celebrate the triumph, still stands.

But it is "perfectly reasonable" that Jews continued to live around Jerusalem after the temple's destruction, said Daniel Schwartz, also a historian at Hebrew University. The Jews just would have had to pay higher taxes and do road work, farming or other labor for the Romans, he said. It is possible they operated two public bath houses for Roman soldiers that were found at the site, he said.

Sklar-Parnes, Schwartz and Levine said the settlement appeared to have been abandoned around 132, in the time of the second Jewish uprising against the Romans, called the Bar Kokhba Revolt. That time frame provided strong evidence it was a Jewish settlement, they said. It is likely that the villagers fled upon hearing of an impending Roman attack, Levine said.

"The Romans were pretty heavy-handed in putting down the second revolt," Levine said. From the jewelry, small stone vessels and other items found in the site, it appears the inhabitants fled in a hurry, Sklar-Parnes said.

The stone vessels left behind provide the best evidence the settlement was Jewish, Sklar-Parnes said. Jews used stone vessels because they didn't absorb liquids, allowing different materials to be stored while satisfying religious purity laws, she and Schwartz said.

It also appears that the settlement was not inhabited by anyone else after its original residents left, something rather unusual, Sklar-Parnes said.

The excavations began in 2003 ahead of the construction of a light rail line, because Israeli law requires archaeological exploration before any building project, said Itsho Gur, spokesman for the Moriah Co., which is building the train route.

According to historical records, the settlement was on the main Roman road between Jerusalem and Nazareth. Later, the Turks built a road in the same place and Jordan constructed a road on top of that early in the 20th century. Finally, Israel paved it after its capture of east Jerusalem in the 1967 war.

Public voting in a new poll will decide a 21st century set of Seven Wonders of the World. A shortlist of 21 global historical landmarks has been created by a Swiss organisation, the New 7 Wonders Foundation. Public phone voting will culminate in the announcement of the New Seven Wonders on January 1st, 2007.

The foundation’s aim is to highlight the plight of the world’s cultural heritage; the shortlisted monuments had to be man-made, predate the year 2000 and in a decent state of preservation. They include the Acropolis in Greece, Yucatan (Mexico), the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, New York’s Statue of Liberty and Stonehenge in the UK. The pyramids of Giza in Egypt are the only original ancient wonder included in the list.

PARIS – Hardly had the fires died down in the Paris suburbs, as the November rioting by immigrant youths petered out, than the flames of another conflict fed by France's colonial past began to sweep through the political landscape here.

This time they are metaphorical. But the passionate debate under way over whether French history teachers should stress positive aspects of colonialism is generating almost as much heat. The argument reveals the same ambivalence among French politicians about their country's former empire and its peoples which also fuels much of the immigrants' alienation. It has also raised questions about whether a democracy can have an "official history."

The controversy "very much speaks to what is happening in France today," says Nancy Green, who teaches immigration history at the School for Higher Social Science Studies in Paris.

"Questions of memory keep popping up," setting competing groups' recollections against one another, she explains. "It's hard to tell when they'll be sufficiently digested" into a commonly accepted version of history.

The trouble started last February, when lawmakers from the conservative ruling party quietly slipped a clause into a bill requiring schools to "recognize in particular the positive character of the French overseas presence, notably in North Africa."

History teachers protested, and in November the opposition Socialists, whose leader François Hollande said had voted for it "inadvertently," tried and failed to overturn it in Parliament.

Diplomatic pandemonium ensued. Algeria suspended negotiations on a friendship treaty with France that was meant to seal the two countries' final reconciliation. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy cancelled a trip to France's Caribbean island possessions when local leaders said they would not meet him. And fierce arguments broke out at home both about the nature of French colonial rule and about whether politicians should tell schools how to teach history.

President Jacques Chirac insisted in a special address in December that the French state had no intention of promoting an official history. "Laws are not meant to write history," he said. "The writing of history is for historians." France "has known moments of light and darker moments. It is a legacy that we must fully assume ... respecting the memory of everyone."

Mr. Chirac also added that he would form a commission to decide what to do about the law and report back in three months. "It does not take much," he warned, for history, "the key to a nation's cohesion," to become "a ferment for division."

That, argues Catherine de Wenden, a specialist on immigration, is the problem with perceptions of the war in Algeria, which ended with Algeria's independence in 1962....

The New-York Historical Society has extended the landmark Slavery in New York exhibition for an additional three weeks, through Sunday, March 26, 2006 at the New-York Historical Society, at Central Park West and 77th Street in New York City.

The exhibition has broken attendance records for all shows in the Society’s 201-year history, already attracting hundreds of thousands of diverse visitors (including thousands of public school students) since its opening on October 7, 2005.

The remarkable, untold story of New York’s deep involvement in the slave trade is the focus of this major multi-media exhibition. At 9,000 square-feet, the show incorporates historically detailed video re-enactments, audio narrative and interactive video displays, along with rare, primary source materials (paintings, original documents, artifacts) to detail this remarkable, dark time in America’s history.

Exhibition highlights include: giant billowing sails and recorded voices (speaking a dozen African dialects) suggestive of the harrowing Middle Passage; a multi-media installation portraying a local well where slaves met as they gathered water and (in 1712) fomented a slave rebellion; and wire sculptures, which evoke the toil of the faceless, voiceless peoples whose histories were almost erased. Bills of sale for the human slave trade; advertisements offering rewards for runaway slaves; original 18th century maps detailing farmland (in what is now Soho) dedicated to freed blacks; letters revealing the details of daily life of slaves and slave holders; and objects such as a silver tea service crafted by slaves from Africa’s Gold Coast, offer a window into another time.

In addition, the companion exhibit, Finding Priscilla’s Children: The Roots and Branches of Slavery, recreates the experience of 10-year-old Priscilla who was kidnapped from Sierra Leone and brought as a slave to the New World through the use of ships’ logs and diaries. Finding Priscilla runs through March 19, 2006.

That's what National Security Archive founder and former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong tells Bob Garfield.

From the transcript:
BOB GARFIELD: How much does the history of the Times' relationship with the government affect its behavior and the Bush Administration's in this particular case?

SCOTT ARMSTRONG: Historically they have had the willingness to suppress information. The Bay of Pigs was something that they soft-pedaled, lowered their story and profile on. They moved people around from different bureaus, at the complaints of the intelligence community, all through the '50s and '60s. And you also had this notion more recently that the Times had a reporter, Judy Miller, who was extremely compliant with some of the interests of the administration and seemed to be reporting things that they were feeding her with some regularity, and it raised questions about their independence. That has not been their practice from the mid-1970s, when they broke the original stories about domestic spying, where NSA was spying on American citizens, through recent times. They've been very aggressive reporters, very professional and the editorial process has been exactly what you would want it to be - constantly questioning where things are going.

Truman Capote laments that the editors found it necessary to cut his story. The anthropologist Margaret Mead wonders what happened to the manuscript she sent from Bali. Robert Frost asks for someone to please insert a space between the words I and would in one of his poems.

The Atlantic Monthly -- venerable chronicle of the nation's politics, arts, and letters for 148 years -- is packing up and moving out of Boston to its parent company's offices in Washington, D.C., and, as in any big move, it's the odds and ends accumulated over the years that are proving the most vexing.

Thousands of manuscripts, letters, and notes are stuffed into gunmetal filing cabinets, buried in cardboard boxes, and lovingly displayed in black-and-gold frames in the hallways of the Atlantic's fifth-floor offices in a brick office building near Government Center.

Many of the papers may go to Washington, some will tour with Atlantic writers next year, and some might be donated to a museum or library in Boston to be preserved as part of the city's cultural heritage.

But no one at this pillar of intellectualism knows where to put all the correspondence of a century and a half.

There is not enough space to show the entire collection in one office, and no one has found the time to catalog each item properly.

Westminster Abbey has criticized churches that opened their doors to the filming of The Da Vinci Code last year by denouncing the thriller as "nonsense" that should be exposed by Christians.

The abbey barred the filmmakers from its premises in June, saying in a brief statement that the bestselling Dan Brown novel on which the film was based was "theologically unsound." The book's central themes --that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered a child, and that Christianity is a sexist conspiracy to keep women from positions of power -- have been debunked by cardinals and historians.

Nicholas Sagovsky, Westminster Abbey's canon theologian, argues that numerous errors in the book undermine its author's claims to have based it on solid research.

Catroppa, 63, will officially retire Tuesday after serving as superintendent for eight years. The historic site in downtown Atlanta showcases the life of the slain civil rights leader and the civil rights movement.

During his tenure, Catroppa has nearly doubled annual attendance, in part by bringing in provocative exhibits such as the current one: "Of Ballots Uncast: The African-American Struggle for the Right to Vote." Catroppa also guided the ongoing $4.2 million renovation of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King was pastor; commissioned a transportation feasibility study for Atlanta tourist attractions; launched the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the site and forged a strong relationship with the city's civil rights community.

"I think Frank is an unsung hero of our community," said A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, which awarded Catroppa its 2005 Community Leadership Award. "He is really a treasure in terms of what he has done for us and the whole community in preserving that whole part of Atlanta's history."

Catroppa's retirement comes just when the Park Service is negotiating to buy the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change from the King family, which would expand the government's presence. But he seems content with his decision to leave the Park Service after 32 years, 25 of them in the agency's Southeast Regional Office in Atlanta.

A magazine that published an anti-Jewish "dual loyalty" slur has now backtracked, as a result of protests by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a glossy pro-Arab monthly magazine, had published an article in its November 2005 issue alleging that Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. was disloyal to America and helped prolong World War One in order to show his "loyalty to Zionism."

The Wyman Institute and Henry Morgenthau III, the ambassador's grandson, demanded a retraction. They compared the slur to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous antisemitic tract which claims that Jews are disloyal to their countries of residence and conspire to cause world wars. The Wyman Institute pointed out that Ambassador Morgenthau was, in fact, anti-Zionist, a fact which makes the Washington Report's allegation all the more absurd.

The latest issue of the Washington Report (January/February 2006) includes a note from the editors, printed as a comment on a letter, which acknowledges that Amb. Morgenthau "opposed Zionism." Although the editors' note did not comment directly on the erroneous article from November or the protests against it, the editor's acknowledgment directly contradicts and undermines the main point of the November article.

The Wyman Institute issued the following statement by Henry Morgenthau III (who is a member of the Wyman Institute's Advisory Committee):

"The Washington Report's anti-Jewish slur about my grandfather was an outrage. It is significant that the editors have acknowledged, in print, that the central contention of the attack on my grandfather was, in fact, false. It's a pity that the editors of the Washington Report did not have the integrity to forthrightly admit their mistake and apologize."


BACKGROUND ON THE CONTROVERSY:

The article in the November issue of the Washington Report was authored by "John Cornelius," whom the magazine identified as "the nom de plume of an American with long-standing interest in the Middle East."

The article suggested that Ambassador Morgenthau's aborted 1917 peace mission to Turkey could have brought an early end to World War I, but that Morgenthau allowed Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann to talk him out of the effort because Morgenthau chose to "show more loyalty to Zionism than to his president or his country."

The article also falsely claimed that "a [U.S.] Senator" testified at congressional hearings in 1922 that the Zionists were to blame for prolonging World War I. In fact, that testimony was made not be a Senator but by an Arabist professor, Edward B. Reed, and his statement at the time was denounced by American Zionist leaders as reminiscent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was one of Adolf HItler's favorite books and was a staple of Nazi propaganda, is a Czarist Russian forgery, first published in 1905, which claims to expose a Jewish plot to infiltrate governments and conquer the world. The Protocols was the subject of a major scholarly conference at Boston University on October 30-31, 2005.

Conference organizer Prof. Steven T. Katz, who is director of the university's Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University and a member of the Wyman Institute's Academic Council, issued the following statement regarding the Washington Report's article:

"One hundred years after the publication of the forged document known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which alleged that Jews were trying to take over governments and rule the world, the Washington Report has echoed that vicious slur by portraying Henry Morgenthau as a sinister secret agent of Zionism and saboteur of America and President Wilson."

The Wyman Institute also issued the following statement by Henry Morgenthau III:

"The allegation that my grandfather was disloyal to America or to President Wilson is an outrageous falsehood. The claim that he was 'loyal to Zionism' is simply laughable, since Ambassador Morgenthau was well-known for his opposition to Zionism. But what the Washington Report has published goes far beyond slandering my grandfather; the notion that he helped prolong World War One for the sake of Jewish interests raises the vile 'dual loyalty' specter, by suggesting that Jews in government service must be suspected of secretly harboring foreign loyalties."

(In Henry Morgenthau III's book Mostly Morgenthaus, a family history, he devotes a full chapter to the so-called "secret mission," Ambassador Morgenthau's attempt to start negotiations for Turkish withdrawal from World War I.)


BACKGROUND ON THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs often publishes articles comparing Israel to the Nazis and alleging inappropriate Jewish influence on Congress or the media. It also opposes U.S. government support of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and in 1998 printed an article claiming there is new evidence that "would cut in half the Zionists' original claim that six million Jews had died under the Nazi regime." U.S. Congressman Steven Rothman (D-NJ) has described the Washington Report as "extremely anti-Semitic" and urged his congressional colleagues to boycott it.

Yet the magazine maintains a veneer of credibility because of the prominent positions previously held by some of its sponsors. The Washington Report's publisher is Andrew J. Killgore, the U.S. ambassador to Qatar during the Carter administration, and its executive editor is Richard H. Curtiss, former chief inspector for the U.S. Information Agency. The magazine is published by the American Educational Trust, which enjoys nonprofit status. Its directors have included a number of former diplomats, a former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, and former Members of Congress.

An Italian judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove that Jesus Christ existed.

The case against Father Enrico Righi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist.

Signor Cascioli, author of a book called The Fable of Christ, began legal proceedings against Father Righi three years ago after the priest denounced Signor Cascioli in the parish newsletter for questioning Christ’s historical existence.

Yesterday Gaetano Mautone, a judge in Viterbo, set a preliminary hearing for the end of this month and ordered Father Righi to appear. The judge had earlier refused to take up the case, but was overruled last month by the Court of Appeal, which agreed that Signor Cascioli had a reasonable case for his accusation that Father Righi was “abusing popular credulity”.

Signor Cascioli’s contention — echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites — is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith. There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims.

Signor Cascioli’s one-man campaign came to a head at a court hearing last April when he lodged his accusations of “abuse of popular credulity” and “impersonation”, both offences under the Italian penal code. He argued that all claims for the existence of Jesus from sources other than the Bible stem from authors who lived “after the time of the hypothetical Jesus” and were therefore not reliable witnesses.

Signor Cascioli maintains that early Christian writers confused Jesus with John of Gamala, an anti-Roman Jewish insurgent in 1st-century Palestine. Church authorities were therefore guilty of “substitution of persons”.

The Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius mention a “Christus” or “Chrestus”, but were writing “well after the life of the purported Jesus” and were relying on hearsay.

Father Righi said there was overwhelming testimony to Christ’s existence in religious and secular texts. Millions had in any case believed in Christ as both man and Son of God for 2,000 years.

“If Cascioli does not see the sun in the sky at midday, he cannot sue me because I see it and he does not,” Father Righi said.

Signor Cascioli said that the Gospels themselves were full of inconsistencies and did not agree on the names of the 12 apostles. He said that he would withdraw his legal action if Father Righi came up with irrefutable proof of Christ’s existence by the end of the month.

The Vatican has so far declined to comment.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli archaeologists, screening tons of rubble scooped out of this ancient city's sacred Temple Mount, have discovered hundreds of artifacts and coins, as well as jewelry, some with biblical links dating back more than three millennia.

Most of the stones and earth originally were taken to an organic garbage dump in nearby Bethany, the New Testament town known in Arabic as Al-Azariya, and could not be retrieved. But a substantial portion was diverted to the Valley of Kidron, mentioned in the Old Testament and located just outside the Old City's massive walls.

This ambitious archaeological project, known as the Temple Mount Antiquities Operation, was started in November 2004, when Muslims excavated the sector north of Solomon's Stables to build the massive underground Marwani Mosque. Its second season, now under way, will last until February.

Stonehenge has been short-listed in a seven-year poll to identify the seven wonders of the modern world.

The ancient stone circle in Wiltshire is the only British landmark in the top 21 short-list after tens of millions of public votes worldwide.

The Tower of London, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, St Paul's Cathedral, the London Eye and Greenwich Observatory were the other British contenders among the 77 nominated sites.

But all these popular London tourist attractions missed out as they were whittled down to 21.

The other 20 entries include the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal in India, the Colosseum in Rome and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The Kremlin, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Sydney Opera House and New York's Statue of Liberty are also finalists.

Voting will now continue throughout the year to select the seven wonders, which will be announced on New Year's Day 2007.

The poll was launched in 2000 by the New 7 Wonders Society, a Swiss group which aims to alert the world to the destruction of man-made heritage.

Ben Franklin: inventor, philosopher, author, scientist, diplomat, Founding Father.

Although he was born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706, Franklin's adopted hometown of Philadelphia will throw him the biggest birthday bash any 300-year-old guy's ever had. Actually, Philly has been celebrating the American Big Ben's tercentenary since last year with tours, events, hotel packages, restaurant specials and more.

The Tercentenary Consortium made up of the American Philosophical Society, the Franklin Institute, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the University of Pennsylvania began planning this celebration in 2000 with a lead $4 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trust.

The centerpiece of all this birthday hoopla is the exhibition "Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World," which opened last month at the National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St., between Fifth and Sixth streets. This is just a couple of blocks from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center.

The exhibition runs in Philadelphia through April 30, after which it will travel, over the next two years, to St. Louis, Houston, Denver and Atlanta. Its last stop will be Paris in 2008.

Anyone whose knowledge of Franklin is limited before entering the exhibition won't be able to make that claim when departing. Just outside the exhibition space is a 25-foot model ship visitors can climb aboard to learn how Franklin charted the course of the Gulf Stream. Inside the exhibition are more than 250 original items, including five of America's founding documents -- the Albany Plan, The Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Amity, the Paris Treaty and the Constitution -- all signed by Franklin. His copy of the Constitution includes his handwritten notes and signature "B. Franklin."

The exhibition represents the largest collection of historic items related to Franklin ever gathered in one place. Items in the exhibition came from 76 lenders in 16 states and four countries. Many of the artifacts belong to Franklin's descendants and had never been seen in public before.

A side of Winston Churchill's character rarely glimpsed " that of the vengeful, rather than magnanimous, war leader " has emerged in hitherto secret government documents. They reveal that he wanted to take the unprecedented step of sending Adolf Hitler to the electric chair, had he been captured, and was also content to see Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi starve to death during a hunger strike in 1943.

The Prime Minister, talking in a War Cabinet meeting in July 1942, described Hitler as 'the mainspring of evil' and, in his flamboyant fashion, jokingly suggested leasing an electric chair " known as 'Old Sparky'" from the Americans to execute him like 'a gangster' if and when he was caught.

The new insight into Churchill's deep anger and bitter hatred for the Nazi Fuhrer " whom he held responsible for more than half a million British casualties " comes in a set of classified Cabinet Office notebooks, released by the National Archives this week. The notes, taken by the Deputy Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brook during some of the most critical top- level meetings of the war, shed fresh light on the thoughts and fears of Britain's leaders during the period.

The argument over how to deal with the Nazi leadership, if and when they were captured, resurfaces a number of times in the hand-written diaries.

At one key meeting, on 6 July 1942, Churchill says: 'If Hitler falls into our hands we shall certainly put him to death. [He is] not a sovereign who could be said to be in [the] hands of Ministers, like [the] Kaiser.'

The Prime Minister then goes on to outline his preferred method for Hitler's execution: the most torturous means available " the electric chair. He even jokes to cabinet colleagues that one might be available on 'lease- lend' from the US.

Presidential historian George Edwards of Texas A&M University, now temporarily at Oxford University in England, says Bush has suffered the same fifth-year fate as other presidents, misinterpreting the meaning of re-election and failing to recognize the downside of a second term: becoming a lame duck.

"Look at what happened to George W. Bush," Edwards said. "The first time he doesn't get a plurality. Then he gets 50.8 percent. He seemed to be very relieved.

"Two days after he announces he has earned political capital and he is going to spend it, he announces a bold and aggressive agenda," Edwards said. "This is interesting because this is the guy with the smallest electoral vote of any newly re-elected president since Woodrow Wilson and the biggest agenda of any second-term president since FDR.

"It just doesn't mesh. He grossly overestimated his political capital. Hubris, whatever, I can't explain it. He didn't have a lot of political capital. That was wrong."