Iran's powerful intelligence ministry has stepped up its war of nerves with the west by telling the country's academics they will be suspected of spying if they maintain contact with foreign institutions or travel abroad to international conferences.

The blunt warning has been issued by the ministry's counter-espionage director in an atmosphere of rising suspicion and paranoia as Iran claims to have cracked a CIA-backed spy ring and has charged three American citizens with spying.

In a briefing with Iranian journalists, the official - whose identity was not disclosed - accused western intelligence agencies of using academic contacts to lure scholars into an espionage network against Iran. He said seminars inside and outside the country were used.

For centuries, rats and fleas have been fingered as the culprits responsible for the Black Death, the medieval plague that killed as many as two thirds of Europe’s population.

But historians studying 14th-century court records from Dorset believe they may have uncovered evidence that exonerates them. The parchment records, contained in a recently-discovered archive, reveal that an estimated 50 per cent of the 2,000 people living in Gillingham died within four months of the Black Death reaching the town in October 1348.

The deaths are recorded in land transfers lodged with the manorial court which – unusually for the period – sat every three weeks, giving a clear picture of who had died and when. The records show that 190 of the 300 tenants holding land in the town died during the winter of 1348-49, at a time when a form of bubonic plague spread by rat fleas would have been dormant.

Experts now believe that the Black Death is more likely to have been a viral infection, similar to haemorrhagic fever or ebola, that spread from person to person.

Pakistan’s Education Min-ister has defended the inclusion in school textbooks of chapters dealing with Hindu monarchs in the subcontinent, saying history deals with historical events and not religious incidents.

The Islamic alliance Muthahida Majlis Amal (MMA) had objected to inclusion of the Ashok and Chandra Gupta Maurya period in history textbooks, whose curriculum is otherwise confined to Islamic periods and its rulers.

The chapters dealing with Hindu rulers were included “so that students have first-hand knowledge of history of the subcontinent,” Education Minister Mr Javed Ashraf Qazi said during a sitting of the National Asse-mbly Standing Comm-ittee here yesterday.
“The work done by Hindu rulers were part of history of the subcontinent. How can we omit it from the curriculum?” Mr Qazi was quoted as saying by The News. However, members of the MMA were not satisfied with Qazi’s remarks, even though a majority of the committee members agreed with the minister, the newspaper said.

When I read that Mayor Robert Duffy's proposed city budget would downsize and outsource the position of city historian to save about $58,500 a year, I recalled that more than 20 years ago, the trustees at the George Eastman House secretly discussed giving away the museum's collection of films and photos.

Kodak had grown weary of the annual expense of a growing collection, and the trustees had approached the Smithsonian Institution about taking them all — lock, stock and Ansel Adams. The community rose up to object, and the board finally relented. Kodak made a new financial commitment; matching funds were raised; the museum was expanded and improved. The facility today is the finest of its kind.

The lesson: We must not give away who we are.

The mayor's proposal is hardly on the same scale as the near debacle at the Eastman House. But the lesson is the same.

Duffy's proposal would transfer the city historian's job to the nonprofit Rochester Historical Society. The city would pay the society about $40,000 a year. City Historian Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck isn't sure she could afford such a pay cut (with benefits, the city now pays about $98,000 a year for the historian), along with the loss of future retirement benefits because of an early departure from City Hall....

Driven mainly by an extraordinary influx of Hispanics, the nation’s population of minority students has surged to 42 percent of public school enrollment, up from 22 percent three decades ago, according to an annual report issued yesterday by the government.

The report, a statistical survey of the nation’s educational system, portrays sweeping ethnic shifts that have transformed the schools. The changes, with important implications for educators and policy makers, have been most striking in the West, where, the survey says, Hispanic, black and Asian students together have outnumbered whites since 2003. But all regions have seen growth in minority student enrollment, particularly by Hispanics, who accounted for one of five public school students in 2005, the last year for which data were available.

The lake kept its secret as long as the rain fell.

The remains rested in the soft, black muck for hundreds of years -- buried beneath the water of Lake Okeechobee.

But the drought tore open the ancient grave, and a local man happened upon it. The bodies have been discovered.

But the mystery is just beginning.

''It's a mixed blessing,'' State Archaeologist Ryan Wheeler said. ``The lower lake levels give us a chance to learn . . . but the site was probably better-protected under water.''

Little is known about this uncovered archaeological site of boats and bodie