In S.Y. Agnon's story "As a Musician Playing," a character, Avigdor, stands on the roof of his house and looks out over the Old City of Jerusalem. "House touches house and roof touches roof. A person can pass from one end of Jerusalem to another by the roofs, as a city built connected together, Avigdor said, alluding to the Psalms, sighing deeply. Jerusalem is connected by its houses and divided by its inhabitants."

It is hard to know whether the the Jewish Quarter Development Company's inspiration for the rooftop walk came from Agnon, but it will link, at least to some extent, the Jewish and the Muslim quarters.

The Old City is divided into quarters more or less according to the identity of its residents - Jews, Muslims, Christians and Armenians. In the Camp David summit of 2000, Ehud Barak expressed willingness to divide the Old City between Jews and Arabs, leaving Israel the Jewish and Armenian quarters and giving the Palestinians the Muslim and Christian sections. Now, with the approval of the government, the Jewish Quarter Development Company is planning a rooftop promenade that will extend from south to north, linking the Jewish and Muslim quarters.

A million and a half tourists visit the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall annually, but only about one third visit the other quarters. The company hopes the development of the promenade will change all that, with tourists first visiting the rooftops, and eventually the quarters as well.

The UCLA Film & Television Archive makes its long-awaited move to the new, state-of-the-art Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood on Friday...

"With this theater's level of technology, we can go from silent film to the most extraordinary and contemporary surround sound, and we can go from the nitrate era all the way up to digital in a contemporary setting," [UCLA Dean Robert] Rosen enthuses...

With its store of more than 220,000 movies and television programs - only the Library of Congress has a larger collection - UCLA plans to program its heart out at the Wilder.

JAMESTOWN, Va. -- So this guy is walking toward the parking lot with his wife, big guy with a small camera around his neck, and he's obviously not happy.

"I thought there would be buildings," he says.

The first permanent English settlement in the New World is celebrating, in a responsibly big way, its 400th birthday this year.

To put that in era-perspective: In 1607, Shakespeare's latest hit play, "Antony and Cleopatra" (follow-up to his smash "Macbeth"), was playing to standing-room crowds at the Globe.

There will be commemorative huzzahs and meaningful new stuff to see and enjoy on permanent exhibit, and we'll talk about all that.

But no, after 400 years, there are no original buildings left on the original historic settlement site, Historic Jamestowne. No original fort. No original saloon. No original slaughterhouses for your photographic pleasure. Nothing.

Washington, DC, February 7, 2007 - The CIA's proposed new rule on Freedom of Information Act processing fees is likely to discourage FOIA requesters while imposing new administrative burdens both on the Agency and the public, according to formal comments filed with the CIA today by the National Security Archive of George Washington University.

The Archive's general counsel, Meredith Fuchs, commented that, "Significant time, money, and other resources were spent by the CIA on fee disputes last year. One of those disputes involved the CIA's refusal to abide by a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judicial decision about the Archive's fee status. Given that the Agency recouped only $4,732.80 in fees in FY 2006, those disputes served mainly to delay and obstruct FOIA requests."

The Archive recommended that the Agency change its proposed rule to: (1) eliminate the unnecessary and improper definitions of FOIA requester categories; (2) eliminate the requirement that all requesters make open-ended, written fee commitments because many FOIA requests can be processed without the requester incurring any fees and the CIA proposal would discourage requesters and add to the Agency's administrative processing time; (3) eliminate the illegal provision mandating prepayment of fees before the CIA will honor form or format requests; (4) revise the proposed duplication fees provisions so that requesters pay only those "direct costs" actually incurred in the processing of the individual request, whether for paper or electronic duplication; and (5) revise the public interest fee waiver provisions to follow the letter and intent of the FOIA to promote dissemination of information in the public interest.

The Archive has had to sue the CIA twice over FOIA fee issues, despite the D.C. Circuit's definitive 1989 ruling in the Archive's favor. The most recent case, filed in 2006, covered 42 FOIA requests that the CIA deemed not to be "newsworthy"; only after the Archive filed its legal complaint and a motion for summary judgment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did the CIA reverse course on the 42 requests, but even then fell short of committing to abide by the judicial precedents.

Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq’s National Library and Archive in Baghdad, finally had some time to catch up on his diary after a couple of very busy weeks. As he wrote in his latest entry, he was having trouble repairing the Internet system; the Restoration Laboratory “was hit by 5 bullets”; and “another librarian, who works at the Periodical Department, received a death threat. He has to leave his house and look for another one, as soon as he can; otherwise, he will be murdered.”

For a month now, Dr. Eskander’s intermittent diary entries have been appearing on the Web site of the British Library (bl.uk/iraqdiary.html), and they detail the daily hurdles of keeping Iraq’s central library open, preserving the surviving archives and books and, oh yes, staying alive.

“We thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight the conditions Dr. Eskander and his staff are really facing and that they are risking their lives to provide this service,” said Catriona Finlayson, a spokeswoman for the British Library.

WASHINGTON —- The House of Representatives laid the groundwork Tuesday for an ambitious new museum honoring Latinos.

Supporters of the proposed National Museum of the American Latinos still face a long road ahead, but moved a crucial step forward when the House agreed to spend $3.1 million on a commission to study the idea.

"Walk through the National Mall in Washington, D.C., visit our outstanding national museums and you can learn a lot about who Americans are and where we have been," said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif. "Yet the official narrative still fails to recognize the significant contributions made by Latinos to the culture and history of the United States."

The proposed museum would be in Washington. Beyond that, key questions involving cost, governance, fundraising, collections and precise location remain unresolved. The museum might be folded into the Smithsonian Institution, for instance.

WARSAW -- Holocaust survivors from around the world will gather in Warsaw this month to urge the Polish government to compensate them for property confiscated by the former communist regime, Jewish organizations said yesterday.

Poland, the biggest post-communist European Union member, is the only country from eastern Europe, besides Belarus, that has not enacted a program for the restitution of property seized after World War II. Attempts to solve the issue since the collapse of communism in 1989 have failed, mostly on the grounds that it would be too costly for the state budget.

Representatives of Jewish groups will gather here on February 27, hoping to convince the authorities to speed up legislation allowing the restitution of lost property.

Poland had Europe's biggest Jewish community until World War II, when the Nazis killed nearly 90 percent of the country's 3.3 million Jews. The post-war communist rulers seized their property as well as that of people who left or fled the country.

JERUSALEM –- The Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City is probably the single most disputed piece of real estate in the world. A new archeological dig there is stirring tension in the already volatile region.

The dig is required by Israeli law before any major construction project can take place. The government plans on building a permanent replacement for a bridge near the site that collapsed a few years ago in a heavy snow storm.

The bridge is used by Christians and Jews to enter the Temple Mount via the Mugrabi Gate. Israeli police also use it when they’re called in to quell riots on the Temple Mount, which usually occur on Fridays when Moslems gather there to pray.

Tuesday, following threats of terrorist attacks inside Israel, police fanned out throughout Arab-populated East Jerusalem, where they ducked rocks thrown by rioting youth at several locations.

CAIRO –- Zahi Hawass is one part celebrity, one part investigator. Egypt's lead sleuth in the country's hunt to reclaim ancient antiquities has gained a reputation for often strong-arming curators and bullying museum directors. But while he's attracted critics in his hunt for Egypt's mummies and pharaonic masks, his hard-nosed techniques are indeed paying off.

Mr. Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has recovered some 3,500 objects, including the Ramses I mummy from Atlanta's Michael C. Carlos Museum and an ancient sarcophagus from the chairperson of Chicago's electric utility, Exelon.

At home, his quest has broken up smuggling rings and will possibly increase punishments for illegal trading. Abroad, he's demanding that Boston's Museum of Fine Arts return the bust of Ankhaf, the Khafre pyramid builder, and the St. Louis Art Museum hand over a pharaonic mask...

California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) has introduced a bill in the state legislature that would prohibit teachers "from teaching untruths about extremist terror networks." Teachers found in violation of the act could be fired.

Assembly Bill 137 would also authorize the firing of any public employee who belongs to an "extremist terrorist network" or donates money to one.

The bill would amend an existing statute passed in the 1950s that prohibited membership in the communist party.

DeVore began thinking about the necessity of such a bill when he came across the now antiquated legislation aimed at communists. He said in a press release that "We should act to update our laws before someone uses a position of trust in state government to facilitate a dirty bomb attack on a California port, or uses a position of authority at a state university to recruit students into service of a violent and hateful cause."

Excerpts from the legislation:

Existing law prohibits a teacher from giving instruction and prohibits a school district from sponsoring any activity that reflects adversely upon a person because of his or her race, sex, color, creed, handicap, national origin, or ancestry.

This bill would additionally prohibit a teacher from giving instruction in a school or on property belonging to an agency included in the public school system from teaching untruths about extremist terror networks, as defined. The bill would delete obsolete provisions regarding communism.

(4) Under existing law, a public employee may be dismissed if he or she advocates or is knowingly a member of an organization which during the time of his or her membership the employee knows advocates overthrow of the Government of the United States or of any state by force or violence. Under existing law, a public employee is required to answer, under oath, specified questions, including, but not limited to, knowing membership in an organization advocating the forceful or violent overthrow of the Government of the United States or of any state.

This bill would additionally provide that a public employee may be dismissed if he or she advocates or is knowingly a member of an extremist terror network, as defined, or a financial supporter of an extremist terror network. The bill would require a public employee to answer, under oath, specified questions, including, but not limited to, knowing membership in, or financial support of, an extremist terror network. The bill would delete obsolete provisions regarding knowing membership in the Communist Party.

Related Links

Dave Ellison: Outlaw the teaching of"untruths" about terrorism?

The Library of Congress, which already has several million digital items that are accessible—mostly through the American Memory web site—to users around the world, received a grant of $2 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support a program to digitize thousands of public-domain works, with a major focus on fragile books and U.S. history volumes.

The project, “Digitizing American Imprints at the Library of Congress,” will include not only the scanning of volumes, but also the development of suitable scanning and display technologies.

In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Kurdish authorities are trying to turn a historic landmark into a United Nations-approved World Heritage Site. According to local historians, the ancient citadel in Irbil has been the site of human habitation for more than 7,000 years.

The Sumerians built a town on the flat Mesopotamian plains here they called "Ur Bilum." Civilizations came and went. Each wave of new inhabitants — including Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Ottomans - built on top of the other. Today, a crumbling brick citadel looms over modern-day Irbil on a giant man-made hill.

"It's the oldest continuously inhabited place in the world," says Sami Al Koja, who serves as an adviser to the citadel's board of renovation.

Many scholars contest this claim. Al Koja says that the mountain upon which the citadel sits has never been excavated or studied by archaeologists, due to decades of conflict and isolation.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. ˜ Hold on to your bearskin hats and
your macramé snoods, readers: You are in for a wild
verbal ride through your deep, deep past.

The authors of a new book have fashioned a 16-chapter
prehistory theme park worthy of Disney, but in their
confection, lame, even egregious, past assumptions
about our past are hunted down and slain, and stars ˆ
in the form of womankind ˆ are born.

"The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women
in History" (Smithsonian Books/Collins) is a roller
coaster ride through Homo sapiens' unsteady past. No
stone tool is left unturned to bring us up on what is
ˆ and what is not ˆ probable about our long and
miraculous journey.

The authors are archaeologists J.M. Adovasio, the
founder and director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological
Institute; Olga Soffer, a professor of anthropology at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and
Jake Page, a freelance writer. Adovasio is an expert
on perishable prehistoric artifacts; Soffer is an
expert on the Paleolithic Period and peoples of the
Old World.

Of greatest import in this book is the idea that women
have always been major players ˆ not simply
baby-machines who tended to the children, rustled up
roots, collected nuts and berries and relied on macho
male hunters to bring home the bacon.

When Carter G. Woodson first proposed Negro History Week in 1926, the history of black Americans was an afterthought in most school curriculums, if it was there at all.

Woodson, a Harvard-educated son of former slaves, believed encouraging schools to spend just a single week on black history would be a first step toward instilling a sense of pride in black students, toward breaking down the edifices of racism.

He chose the second week in February to acknowledge the birthdays of Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader, and President Abraham Lincoln.

"Woodson went on the philosophy that he was committed to studying black people so that black people wouldn't become 'a negligible factor in the thought of the world,' " says Pero Dagbovie, a Michigan State University history professor who has a book on Woodson and the early black history movement coming out later this year.

"He wanted to make sure that blacks' contributions to American democracy and history were recognized within the broader scope of U.S. history," Dagbovie says.

And what he wanted was not just a Black History Week, designated in 1972, or a Black History Month, which it became in 1976, but the integration of black history into the history of the American people and the world.

Archivists and historians are urging Southern Methodist University to reject the Bush presidential library unless the administration reverses an executive order that gives former presidents and their heirs the right to keep White House papers secret in perpetuity.

"If the Bush folks are going to play games with the records, no self-respecting academic institution should cooperate," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The policy triggered outrage and a still-pending lawsuit when President Bush issued it about seven weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now, as SMU officials try to complete a deal for a Bush library, museum and policy institute, the Society of American Archivists plans a public relations offensive meant to pressure Congress and the university to force a change.

"Whether they like it or not, they have become a player in that discussion," said Mark Greene, president-elect of the archivists and director of the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center. "There's been no indication from the Bush administration that they have in any way rethought the executive order, and it is our hope that these negotiations provide a possible pivot point."

SMU Vice President Brad Cheves said the university is well aware of the debate but is mindful that rules regarding release of presidential papers have evolved in the last 30 years. He said SMU is taking the long view as it tries to land a facility that will stand "for generations to come as a storehouse of history."

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BARCELONA -- Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, made a secret wartime mission to an abbey in Spain in search of what he believed was the Aryan Holy Grail, a new book claims.

Himmler visited the famous Montserrat Abbey near Barcelona where he thought he would find the Grail which Jesus Christ was said to have used to consecrate the Last Supper.

According to The Desecrated Abbey, by Montserrat Rico Góngora, the Reichsführer-SS thought if he could lay claim to the Holy Grail it would help Germany win the war and give him supernatural powers...

Góngora has interviewed a former monk who was ordered by his superiors to greet Himmler during the visit in 1940.

Now a pensioner living in an old people's home near Barcelona, Andreu Ripol Noble was at the time the only German-speaker in the abbey and was asked to help Himmler with his odd quest.

A couple who lost a seven-year legal battle against an ecclesiastical law that required them to pay the cost of repairs to an ancient parish church were ordered to meet the final demand for more than £200,000 yesterday.

The initial bill presented to Andrew and Gail Wallbank for restoration of St John the Baptist Church in Aston Cantlow, Warwickshire, was about £95,000...

The Wallbanks own Glebe Farm, in Aston Cantlow. The site includes a field called Clanacre, which is classified as rectorial property, making them “lay rectors” of the parish.

The couple, who also have a sheep farm in Carno, Powys, became liable for restoration costs under the Chancel Repairs Act 1932, which is based on centuries-old law.

The Arab League (AL) denounced on Tuesday the Israeli excavations near the Islamic holy shrine in Jerusalem, the official MENA news agency reported.

The denouncement, made by AL Assistant Secretary General for Palestinian and the occupied Arab Lands Affairs Mohammad Sobeih, came after Israel began its digging operations under al-Magharba Gate, which is considered part of the Western Wall of al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest Islamic mosque.

Sobeih said such act represented a violation of all international legitimacy resolutions and Israel's agreements signed with the Palestinian side to preserve the heritage and religious sanctities whether Islamic or Christian.

Sobeih, who is currently in Qatar, asserted that the AL general secretariat has been following up with deep worry the Israeli acts and their recurrent aggression and damage to Islamic and Christian sanctities in Jerusalem.

He called on international organizations concerned, especially UNESCO, the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council to immediately shoulder their responsibilities and halt the heinous Israeli aggression on one of the holiest Islamic sanctities.

Israeli excavation work started Tuesday near al-Magharba Gate, which is one of the relics of the Arab and Islamic history and its destruction would threaten the foundations of the holy mosque. The operation has stirred wide-spread anger from Arab world.

In an extraordinary internal challenge to the unruly Office of
the Vice President (OVP), the Information Security Oversight
Office (ISOO) has formally petitioned the Attorney General to
direct the OVP to comply with a requirement that executive
branch organizations disclose statistics on their classification
and declassification activity to ISOO.

For the last three years, Vice President Cheney's office has
refused to divulge its classification statistics to ISOO,
despite a seemingly explicit requirement that it do so. Prior
to 2002, such information had routinely been transmitted and
reported in ISOO's annual reports to the President.

The disclosure requirement appears in ISOO Directive 1 (at
section 2001.80): "Each agency that creates or handles
classified information shall report annually to the Director of
ISOO statistics related to its security classification program."

Such ISOO directives "shall be binding upon the agencies,"
President Bush wrote in Executive Order 13292 (section 5.1).
Significantly, an "agency" here means not only a
statutorily-defined executive branch agency (which would not
include the OVP), but also refers to "any other entity within
the executive branch that comes into the possession of
classified information" (which would include the OVP).

Last May, the Federation of American Scientists urged ISOO to
press for the Vice President's compliance. (SN, 05/31/06).

"Since the Office of the Vice President has publicly staked out a
position that openly defies the plain language of the executive
order, ISOO now has a responsibility to clarify the matter," we
wrote at that time. "Otherwise, every agency will feel free to
re-interpret the order in idiosyncratic and self-serving ways."

This week ISOO indicated that it was actively pursuing the
matter.

"With respect to the question you raised, I was unsuccessful in
achieving a common understanding with OVP," wrote ISOO director
J. William Leonard in a February 5 email message.

"Accordingly, in early January, pursuant to section 6.2(b),
Executive Order 12958, as amended, I wrote the Attorney General
requesting that he render an interpretation on the issue," he
wrote.

(Section 6.2(b) of the executive order states that "The Attorney
General, upon request by the head of an agency or the Director
of the Information Security Oversight Office, shall render an
interpretation of this order with respect to any question
arising in the course of its administration.")

"I have not received a reply to this request as of yet," Mr.
Leonard wrote.

He declined to provide a copy of his January letter to the
Attorney General, explaining that it is pre-decisional.

The Justice Department has been asked at least once before to
resolve a dispute over implementation of the executive order on
classification.

In 1999, the Central Intelligence Agency refused to accept the
jurisdiction of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals
Panel over Agency classification activity. But the Justice
Department Office of Legal Counsel issued a ruling in October
1999 that the CIA classification decisions were indeed subject
to ISCAP review. That state of affairs was modified by
President Bush in 2003, when he effectively gave the Director of
Central Intelligence a veto over ISCAP decisions.

A hundred and ninety-eight years after Abraham Lincoln's birth, the White House's Lincoln Bedroom finally looks like a room the great man would recognize.

Until recently, Lincoln furniture and a copy of the Gettysburg Address were displayed against the pale walls, curtains and carpet of a 1950s city hotel—not the vivid golds and purples, heavy fabrics and large patterns of Lincoln's era.

One reason for this mild historical fib was to focus attention on the chamber's historic objects. Another: midcentury Americans disdained Victorian décor, which they equated with the horrific house in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho."

But now, under First Lady Laura Bush and White House curator Bill Allman, the bedroom has been impressively restored to the time of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln signed there in 1863.

Adam Willis was brought to California as a slave in 1846, gained his freedom nine years later, then searched the country using newspaper ads to find his family and build a home for them in Solano County.

The recent discovery of Willis' 152-year-old manumission record in the Solano County Archive has, along with other records from that era, stimulated a new examination of California's past that's been left out of the Gold Rush history books.

The existence of slavery in early California and the debate over whether it would enter the union as a free or slave state had momentous import. That past is featured in...[a new exhibit] at San Francisco's Museum of the African Diaspora, known as MoAD.

"As you know, slavery just tore apart so many families," said Vallejo resident Sharon McGriff-Payne, who found Willis' document in August while doing research for a book about the history of African Americans in Solano County.

The ancient Egyptians believed themselves superior to their neighboring nations in almost every aspect.

The passages, inscribed on the subterranean walls of the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara, reveal that the Egyptians enlisted the magical assistance of Semitic Canaanites from the ancient city of Byblos, located in what is now Lebanon. The Canaanite spells were invoked to help protect mummified kings against poisonous snakes, one of ancient Egypt's most dreaded nemeses...

The passages were first uncovered in the 19th century, but they have remained a mystery to scholars for generations...But in 2002 a colleague asked Richard Steiner, a professor of Semitic languages and literature at New York's Yeshiva University, if the texts might be Semitic.

"I immediately recognized the Semitic words for 'mother snake,'" Steiner said at a recent lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he presenting the findings.

So this is where world war three would have been waged. And this is the tub in which, in between ordering retaliatory nuclear strikes, the prime minister would have taken a bath. There is his toilet, and here, in the dead centre of a 34-acre underground bunker in Wiltshire, is the reinforced chamber in which preparations for nuclear winter would have been made. As you stand in the torchlit cold, with the doorframes collapsing from dry rot and with water dripping down incipient stalactites, the room seems to fill with the voices of Harold Macmillan, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher, and you find yourself shivering. But not from the chill.

Until two years ago, the existence of this complex, variously codenamed Burlington, Stockwell, Turnstile or 3-Site, was classified. It was a huge yet very secret complex, where the government and 6,000 apparatchiks would have taken refuge for 90 days during all-out thermonuclear war. Solid yet cavernous, surrounded by 100ft-deep reinforced concrete walls within a subterranean 240-acre limestone quarry just outside Corsham, it drives one to imagine the ghosts of people who, thank God, never took refuge here...