The mayor of Harrisburg, Pa., spent $7.8 million of public funds on items for an Old West museum he hoped to open.

[Now that his city government is in the red, he's having to sell off the archive.]

MADRID -- Iranian Ambassador to Madrid Seyed Davoud Salehi on Saturday thanked the Spanish government for paying attention to protection and reconstruction of historical Islamic monuments in the country.

He made the remark at a ceremony marking the auspicious birth anniversary of the holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and Imam Jafar Sadeq (AS), which was attended by a number of Iranian expatriates residing in Spain.

"The special attention of Spain's government to safeguard the country's ancient Islamic centers and buildings shows that the initiative of dialogue among civilizations and respecting other culture has materialized."

PHNOM PENH -- Ever since his 1994 movie "Rice People" introduced a Cambodian voice to world cinema, the director Rithy Panh has become the conscience of a nation still haunted by the tragedy of its recent past. "From the beginning I knew my work would focus on the problems in my country," Panh said. "It's been 26 years since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, yet we still don't fully understand why we were forced to live through these horrors."

Having lost many of his relatives to the terror, during which 1.7 million people died, Panh, 42, has returned repeatedly to the personal dramas of national decimation. "Un Soir Après La Guerre" (1998), a feature set among the detritus of postwar Phnom Penh, charts the attempts of a returning soldier to forge a new life in a decimated moral and physical landscape.

The documentary "Bophana: A Cambodian Tragedy" (1996) tells the story of a couple separated and fatally tortured at S21, the regime's notorious detention center in Phnom Penh. Panh uses the victims' love letters and extracted confessions as voiceover. "When shall we two meet again," writes Sothy to his wife in a touching misquote of Shakespeare's "Macbeth."

The same high school-turned-torture center is the subject of Panh's multi-award-winning "S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine" (2003)...

"Most of those men still don't understand how they became killers," Panh said. "It's not simply a question of judgment. We need to find answers to these questions."

Pol Pot is dead, but so far not a single person has been tried or convicted for crimes committed during that period. Panh welcomes the upcoming UN-sponsored Khmer Rouge trial, but shares his compatriots' skepticism.

Ministers are to open up the entire English coastline to the public in a historic and controversial extension of the "right to roam".

The move, which will make it possible to walk all 9,040 miles around the coast of Great Britain and create the first ever right of access to thousands of beaches, is provoking a bitter backlash from landowners and celebrities with expensive seaside properties, who will not be compensated.

It will also boost the profile of the fast-rising Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, whose decision to push through the measure will win him new friends among Labour traditionalists, since access to the countryside is one of their most totemic issues.

Until now, the public has only had a right of access to about half of the country's coastline, mainly along paths, and - despite a popular misconception - none at all to most beaches.

This picture shouldn't be published [of the all-white football team of Little Rock's Central High]. It belongs in a moldy scrapbook in some old man's attic. Its time is done. Its way of life is finished. Even the school these 42 white boys played for a half century ago did away with it. Took it down one day to paint a hallway in the early '90s, and then....

What became of it? Some said it was stowed beneath the auditorium stage and destroyed in a fire. Some said that a black janitor threw it away along with four decades of other team photos from that hallway because no black faces appeared in them. No, others claimed, it was a black principal who decreed that the school's history began the day that all people became welcome there and that no image from its prehistoric past would ever be displayed.

Not even this one, the 1957 Little Rock Central Tigers, the best high school football team in America that year.

This story shouldn't be told. No one wants to hear it. They're all too busy celebrating another group at Central High that year -- the nine black kids. Too busy planning their 50th anniversary, building their museum across the street, getting ready for the crowds and the network news reporters and the two presidents, Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton, who will fill the school's front yard on Sept. 25 to commemorate them.

No one wants to tell this story. Not even the white boys who lived it. It reeks of political incorrectness. It's sure to be misconstrued. They can't ask you to feel for them: They're Southern Caucasian males on the other side of 65, for goodness' sake. Born and bred not to feel for themselves.

Just 42 of the white faces on the wrong side of the saga of the Little Rock 9.

OTTAWA -- Canada will remove the French-language exhibit at a major military memorial after a reporter discovered it was riddled with grammatical errors, Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson said on Thursday.

Public broadcaster Radio-Canada found numerous mistakes in interpretive panels at Vimy Ridge in France, where more than 10,000 Canadian soldiers were killed or wounded in April 1917 during World War One.

"I have just been made aware of this situation and it is totally unacceptable. As soon as the errors were confirmed, it was obvious the only solution was to remove the panels," Thompson said in a statement. The panels will be replaced.

The issue is an embarrassment for Ottawa, since Canada has been officially bilingual for 40 years and millions of French-speakers are very sensitive about their fate in a country where most people speak English.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) will soon issue Notices of Availability (NOAs) for 17 historic lighthouses located across the country.

"GSA takes its stewardship responsibilities very seriously," said David L. Winstead, Commissioner of GSA's Public Buildings Service. "We recognize
the cultural, recreational and educational value associated with these historic lighthouses and are committed to working with our federal partners and other interested stakeholders to preserve these treasured assets."

GSA, the federal government's property management and procurement agency, will work with the Departments of Homeland Security's U.S. Coast Guard and Interior's National Park Service to facilitate the transfer of excess historic lighthouses. These lighthouses are transferred at no cost to qualified federal agencies, state and local governments or non-profit organizations under the authority of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000 (NHLPA)... GSA [has] transferred 35 historic light stations out of Coast Guard ownership through the NHLPA.

In a cramped front bedroom on the second floor of a narrow rowhouse on 30th Street in Georgetown, 80-year-old Timothy Hobson declares, "This is where I was laid up with a broken leg."

It was so long ago, the winter of 1937, when Hobson was 10 years old and had a routine childhood injury that would confine him and make him a witness to history. Though he couldn't have known it then, this was no ordinary home. It was, instead, a place where routine acts of espionage allegedly were committed when his stepfather, Alger Hiss, brought home stolen State Department documents for handoff to a fellow Communist and spy named Whittaker Chambers.

That's the commonly accepted story line of the still-contested Hiss case. But Hobson and his half brother, Tony Hiss, don't believe it, never have. Hiss, 65, has written a couple of books about his father, lives in his father's old Greenwich Village apartment and has made his father's vindication a focus of his life. Hobson, in his twilight, now has joined in, both brothers driven by the heartache of their family history.

The last living link to the events on 30th Street -- and a witness who was never allowed to testify at Alger Hiss's 1949 and 1950 perjury trials -- Hobson returned on Tuesday to the Georgetown house, to refresh his memory in advance of a conference today at New York University, where he will speak in public about the case for the first time....

Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley and the Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern are to visit the historic site of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne.
Mr Paisley said it would show "how far we have come when we can celebrate and learn from the past".

He was speaking after talks with the taoiseach in Dublin when the pair shook hands publicly for the first time.

Mr Paisley said he hoped "old suspicions and discord can be buried forever" through mutual co-operation.

The Battle of the Boyne was fought between William of Orange and Catholic King James II in 1690. The Protestant Orange Order celebrate William's victory every year on 12 July.

Mr Paisley said: "We both look forward to visiting the battle site at the Boyne, but not to re-fight it. I don't want Mr Ahern to have home advantage."

With its stacks of yellowing historical documents and staff of earnest archivists and librarians, the National Archives doesn’t seem like a typical setting for intrigue. So workers at the Philadelphia branch have understandably been shaken by a whodunit that has unfolded in their normally placid corridors during the last few months.

The unusual crime began to unravel last September, when Dean Thomas of Gettysburg, Pa., had the sensation of déjà vu while reading an eBay offer for three Civil War documents from 1861 and 1862 that his brother was bidding on for him. Thomas, who publishes Civil War and American Revolution history books, got up from his desk and looked into one of his many black binders, the one that holds the letters he photocopied some 20 years earlier at the Philly National Archives. There, he found the same ones he was seeing on eBay, being sold by a private seller, “hchapel.” His brother won the bid on a Sunday night and the purchase went through for $298.88. Payment was to be delivered to Denning McTague of Philadelphia; his full address and contact information clearly printed. “It wasn’t very secretive,” says Thomas.

The next morning he called up an acquaintance at the archives and asked if there was a sale of original documents under way. There wasn’t, so Thomas called up the Archives’ Inspector General’s office. A quick search revealed that 164 documents were missing, and soon the National Archives Archival Recovery Team (ART) got to work. Like most of McTague’s other eBay clients, Thomas quickly returned his letters. Only three documents are still missing.

Officials in Paris were guardedly optimistic Friday that Iran will allow a French academic who has been blocked in the country for more than two months to leave soon.

Stephane Dudoignon was arrested in southeastern Iran on Jan. 30 and has since been prevented from leaving the Iranian capital, Tehran.

A French Foreign Ministry official said Iran's ambassador to Paris had "quite encouraging comments" about the possibility that Dudoignon would be allowed to leave Iran shortly.

"We hope a solution can be found quickly to fix this administrative problem," spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said.

Dudoignon, a historian with France's prestigious CNRS Institute, has said he was detained over his research into Iran's Sunni minority.

Several historians at Southern Methodist University have signed a new petition to protest the establishment of an institute on the campus in tandem with the proposed Bush presidential library.

GIZA, Egypt -- The modern world has not been kind to the pyramids of Giza. Just a generation ago they were out in the desert, which is how they still look in the postcards, shot from carefully selected angles. But rampant development has hemmed them in with the accoutrements of the tourist trade -- cafes, restaurants, souvenir workshops, stables for horses and camels, tacky little establishments of every sort, and slummy accommodation into which tourist hawkers are crammed.

Then comes the Cairo ring road and the undistinguished modern hotels that line it; the road itself is solid with traffic. Forty-five centuries of history -- that's how long the oldest of these pyramids has held sway here -- look down on our contribution and are not, one suspects, greatly impressed...

It's unforgettable, all right. But apart from the papyrus workshops and the like, the experience is strangely lacking in depth. What are the pyramids all about? Who built them and how and why, and what came next? You can ask your guide as you plod along on horse or camel, but don't expect much enlightenment.

All that is about to change. On a desert site within view of the pyramids, an immense museum, built by the Chinese-American architect Shih-Fu Peng, is about to rise which will transform the Giza experience. The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) will be the biggest museum of Egyptology in the world, and (it is claimed) the largest archaeological museum of any sort. It is designed to become the modern complement the pyramids have always lacked.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- Patrick Henry was sitting just to my left in the Virginia House of Burgesses as the debate raged about the events that had been following the Boston Tea Party. Mr. Henry was a brilliant hothead, of course, though not yet moved to pose his famous nonnegotiable alternatives, demanding liberty or death. But when Governor Dunmore of the Virginia colony strode into the room, even Mr. Henry rose, out of respect to the authority of the king, as did we all, even those of us carrying digital cameras, umbrellas and souvenir bags...

Colonial Williamsburg, where all this took place (about 150 miles south of Washington), is variously called a historical village or a living museum. But that means much more now than it once did. Aside from dramatizing historical controversies, the town is also caught up in living ones: debates about who writes history and how it is told, about what historical realism is and how it should be portrayed, even about what aspects of our past are to be celebrated in this strange combination of education and entertainment...

Bulgaria's government decided Thursday to open a museum in honour of country's late prophet Vanga, Darik News reported.

The museum will be founded in the town of Petrich as the government announced it donated a municipal property for the cause. The exposition will include many of Vanga's belongings and many photos...

Baba Vanga (Grandma Vanga), a blind peasant whose clairvoyant powers gave her saint-like status across Bulgaria, died at 84. Born in neighbouring Macedonia in 1911, Vanga lost her sight at age 12 in a windstorm.

She claimed to derive her powers from an ancient city buried under her village in southwestern Bulgaria.

Over 1 million people had consulted her, whose fame stretched across the Balkans. Many of Bulgaria's most respected intellectuals and notable politicians sought Vanga's advice, usually uttered in a trance.

BEIJING -- Standing atop the Jingshan Park hill, just north of the Forbidden City, provides the most commanding view of Beijing, the nerve center of one of the greatest civilizations of the world for most of the past 900 years. This is a city that is saturated in history, haunted by the ghosts of warlords and khans, merchants and scholars, revolutionaries and poets.

Looking around from Jingshan hill, however, it is difficult to conjure up visions of these ghosts. What you do see radiating out in all directions from the nucleus of the Forbidden City are construction sites, monstrously large earth-moving machines, and predatory cranes rearing up their mechanical heads high into the sky.

As Beijing gears up to host the Summer Olympic Games next year, it is anxious to project itself as a modern world-class capital. However, wrong-footed conceptions of modernity combined with a weak legal system and corrupt collusion between real-estate developers and local officials has resulted in the wanton demolition of large swaths of the historical city. In the process, not only have up to half of the physical neighborhoods that once comprised the capital's center been destroyed, but so has much of the city's social fabric.

The primary object of Beijing's demolition spree has been the hutongs, the narrow tree-lined alleyways that used to make up the entire 62-square-kilometer area surrounding the Forbidden City. Hutongs have been both the arteries and the lifeblood of Beijing since Mongol times, in the 13th century. They represent a long-lasting organic connection between the present and multi-layered past of China's capital city.

Home buyers and history and mystery buffs have the chance to own a bit of Agoura Hills' lore if they buy a house high in the hills above Agoura Road.

The four-bedroom, three-bath home sitting atop a 1.38-acre hilly lot offers some unique amenities- a 14-foot statue of an Indian sculpted by Count Jean de Strelecki, a Polish immigrant and artist; caves once used as an outpost for weary travelers; a stone mask either engraved or embedded in the side of the hill and possibly other artifacts dating back to the days when Chumash Indians resided in the area.

A legend claims one of the largest caves was used as a hideout for the bandit Joaquin Murrieta.

Hidden treasure is also said to be buried on or near the site, possibly by Murrieta, but owners Scott and Donna Sava and their twin 4-year-old sons have yet to discover any stashed gold...

[A town plannern said the Polish count] unwittingly fashioned the statue of Chief White Eagle after the Seminole Indians in Florida rather than the Chumash Indians who lived in the Conejo Valley for centuries. [The statue base was later signed by Native American actors Jay 'Tonto' Silverheels and Iron Eyes Cody.]

The earliest direct ancestors of modern humans may have looked more like apes than previously thought, a new study suggests.

But the findings, based on a reconstructed 1.9-million-year-old skull, are highly controversial among the anthropological community.

New computer-generated reconstructions suggest that the specimen had a smaller brain than scientists had believed as well as a distinctly protruding jaw.

"We see in this new reconstruction primitive features that are carryovers from what may be its Australopithecus ancestor," said study author Timothy Bromage, an adjunct professor at New York University College of Dentistry...

But other experts expressed skepticism about Bromage's argument that the repositioning of the specimen's face means its brain size must have been smaller.

"It's probably right that the face should stick far more forward. But to say that because they've changed the angle of the face, the brain size has to get smaller doesn't make any sense," said Robert Martin, a biological anthropologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.

Related Links

Comparing skulls: original drawing and computer reconstruction

The darkness and terror on the night the Titanic sank are described in a letter, released yesterday, written by survivor Laura Mabel Francatelli shortly after the disaster.

The letter, along with her official affidavit during a subsequent legal inquiry and her life preserver, will be sold at a Christie's auction on May 16. The life preserver was signed by men and women aboard the lifeboat...

[After finally boarding an emergency lifeboat] she wrote, "...we went down into the blackness of the water. Which never shall I forget. There wasn't a light, or a lamp in the boat...We rowed away from the ship, which was sinking fast so to get away from the swell or suction. Then all the rest is too terrible for me to write. The screams of the hundreds of dear women, children and the bravest of men fighting in the icy cold waves, I still hear."

The letter continued, "Oh, you cannot imagine anything more terrible, than a ship wreck at the dead of night that most beautiful and wonderful boat like a floating town sinking so quickly. I watched the whole of it from our little boat and saw all the lights go out, and the very last of her, then the terrible explosion of rumbling, followed by the cries and screams of the hundreds all in the water..."

[The 95th Titanic Memorial Weekend will be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, from April 13-15.]

ATHENS -- Controversy is raging in Greece over a new school history book, which critics say is designed to improve relations with Greece's ancient rival, Turkey.

Leading opposition is the Orthodox church, which says the book waters down the severity of Turkish brutality towards Greece over the centuries...

"There won't be any clear identity of what the Greek fights were all about and why did we want to rebel against the Turks," Jeni Tutsis, a teacher, told the BBC...

But theologian George Mustakis says it's essential to remove bigotry and extreme nationalism from accounts of the country's recent history.

"The book tries to eliminate the words which challenge and brings in front of us the bitter memories. It's a good thing, but we are not mature (enough) to accept such a book", George Mustakis said.

The parallels are striking: bold new Congressional majorities swept into power by public dissatisfaction with White House policies. The administration and Congress digging in for a test of wills over federal spending. A watershed presidential election looming.

Memories of the rancorous 1995 budget fight between President Clinton and leaders of the Republican revolution are casting a distinct shadow over the current impasse between President Bush and Congressional Democrats on Iraq. Each side believes it can apply lessons learned from that earlier battle to its strategy in the current showdown.

The 1995 budget fight grew out of the push by Republicans — riding their historic House takeover the year before — for cuts in federal spending, with Medicare as their poster child for a bloated federal program. When Mr. Clinton refused to go along with trimming the program, budget talks collapsed, and the resulting 21-day shutdown put nearly 300,000 federal workers on furlough and disrupted public services.

WASHINGTON -- A Japanese-American internment camp in southern Utah that confined some 8,000 people during World War II will join the ranks of some of the most historic sites in America.

The Interior Department announced Wednesday that the Topaz Camp, near Delta about 140 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, will be recognized as a National Historic Landmark...

The camp, now mainly a windswept field, was used during the war to jail Japanese-Americans and recent immigrants as racial fears increased; nine other camps also held those of Japanese descent during the war and five of those have earned a similar historic designation...

Topaz [internees], mostly legal citizens at the time, spent three or so years living in 20-foot by 20-foot barracks with thin walls; they slept on Army cots.

Residents of nearby Delta have campaigned for some 15 years to raise funds to preserve and partially restore the site, buying up some 624 acres. The Topaz Museum Board currently is attempting to buy the last 16 acres that are privately owned.

Related Links

Dedication ceremony for Heart Mountain internment camp set

U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne today announced the designation of Washington Place in Honolulu as a national historic landmark.

The former home of Queen Lili'oukalani — the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian kingdom — is among one dozen new national historic landmarks recognized for their importance in interpreting the heritage and history of the United States.

The others established today are in Massachusetts, Ohio, California, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, South Carolina, Missouri and Illinois...

Washington Place is nationally significant for its close association with the life of Queen Lili'oukalani. It was her home from the time of her marriage in 1862 to John Owen Dominis, son of the original builder, to her death in 1917. Her constitutional monarchy was overthrown in an 1893 coup d'etat, and, in 1898, Hawaii was annexed to the United States. Two years later, it formally became a territory.

Built in 1844-1847, Washington Place also is significant for its service as the executive mansion for the territorial governors from 1918 to 1959, and, after Hawaii became the 50th state, the state governor's mansion, from 1959 to 2002.