Pierre Trudeau has topped the list of the 10 "worst Canadians" in an online survey conducted by the country's top history magazine, the Beaver.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper placed sixth on the list, and ex-PMs Brian Mulroney (fourth) and Jean Chretien (eighth) also made the top 10.

The Beaver's plan to rank the most-loathed Canadians had stirred advance media interest around the world, largely because the concept seemed to run counter to Canadians' international reputation for never saying a bad word about anybody.

The survey drew 15,000 responses, according to the Beaver's Winnipeg-based publisher, Canada's National History Society.

It's out there. Somewhere underneath cat claw briars or mud flats or even modern subdivision tracts, there are shards of Spanish metal, burned clay and a palisaded wall waiting to be found, which could answer one of the South's famous mysteries: Where is Mauvilla?

Historians gleaning descriptions from written accounts of Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's expedition across the South say the earliest and bloodiest battle between Europeans and Indians happened at Mauvilla, a fortified village that researchers spell a variety of other ways, including Mabila and Mavila.

It sat between two rivers, likely in Alabama. The accounts describe the landscape, the village, the daylong battle and the weeks of recovery the Spanish spent there after Mauvilla burned to the ground.

On July 30, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced that it had reached a non-exclusive agreement with CustomFlix Labs, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., to make thousands of historic films from the Archives’ holdings available for purchase on Amazon.com. CustomFlix DVD on Demand service will initially make the National Archives’ collection of Universal Newsreels, dating from 1920 to 1967, available on DVD. A limited number of titles are already available on Amazon.com.

In an article in the Washington Post, National Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper emphasized that the deal between the Archives and CustomFlix was non-exclusive. Last year the Smithsonian Institution was sharply criticized for entering into a semi-exclusive deal with the Showtime Networks, Inc. that limited access to the Smithsonian’s holdings for filmmakers. No details were released concerning the financial arrangements made between the Archives and CustomFlix....

A well-financed group plans to back a ballot initiative that would give the Republican presidential candidate a chance to pick up twenty electoral votes in California even if the state goes Democratic in 2008.

The initiative, which would appear on the June 2008 ballot, would apportion most electoral votes by congressional district instead of by the traditional winner-take-all method. Some twenty districts in CA almost certainly will vote Republican in 2008.

Few voters are expected to participate in the June 2008 election since the primary has been moved up to February.

A similar measure is under consideration in North Carolina. It would result in extra electoral votes for Democrats.

A Namibian human rights group said on Tuesday it had filed a request with the International Criminal Court to investigate the country's founding president over the disappearance of thousands of people.

In its submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) accuses Sam Nujoma of gross human rights violations as well as responsibility for the disappearance of about 4 200 people during his country's struggle for independence.

"The ICC sent us a letter earlier this month that they would decide on our submission," said NHSR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh.

THE battle against global poverty is being won but most Australians do not realise it.

The proportion of the world's people living on less than $US1 a day has dropped from 21.4 per cent to 17.3 per cent since 2000 and the number surviving on that income has fallen by 132 million since 1990, says a report by Australia's biggest overseas aid agency, World Vision.

As the number of people living in abject poverty has fallen, child mortality has dropped, the number of children completing primary school has risen and more people have access to sanitation.

A plan to create a permanent home for the City College of San Francisco’s campus in Chinatown has provoked a bitter fight, with critics opposing the plan for a 16-story building on the grounds that it would loom over the historic area — and obstruct views from a nearby Hilton Hotel.

"Right from the time it was unveiled as one of the options, it has generated a lot of energy and a lot of heat, some good, some bad,” says City College’s chancellor, Philip R. Day Jr. In response to the opposition — led by the Hilton — Day says, supporters of the community college’s Chinatown campus have “dug in their heels a little bit.”

In response to petitions by Holocaust scholars, Jewish leaders, and families of Holocaust rescue activists, and an appeal by Elie Wiesel, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has for the first time publicly pledged to change its Permanent Exhibit to acknowledge the rescue work of the Bergson Group.

The Bergson Group, also known as the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, was a maverick 1940s political action committee that used newspaper ads, rallies, and lobbying on Capitol Hill to publicize the plight of the Jews under Hitler and the need for U.S. rescue action.

In a letter to The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, dated July 30, 2007, Dr. Steven Luckert, chief curator of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, pledged to make changes in the Museum’s Permanent Exhibit “by early spring of 2008” in order to acknowledge “the positive contributions that the Bergson Group made in raising American awareness of the Holocaust and in advocating Jewish rescue.”

The changes will be made in the Museum’s segment concerning the War Refugee Board, a U.S. government agency that was belatedly established by President Franklin Roosevelt, in 1944, as a result of pressure by the Bergson Group, Members of Congress, and Treasury Department officials. 

The Museum’s current exhibit panel on the creation of the War Refugee Board mentions only the role of the Treasury officials, not Bergson or Congress.  But the revised panel will include “visual materials and artifacts relating to the Bergson Group,” Dr. Luckert pledged in his letter to the Wyman Institute.

Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff said:

“The Wyman Institute applauds the U. S. Holocaust Museum’s pledge to correct the omission of the Bergson Group from its Permanent Exhibit.  We trust that the corrected exhibit will clearly acknowledge the Bergson Group’s vital role in the process leading to creation of the War Refugee Board, including its march by 400 rabbis in Washington and its crucial work with Members of Congress to promote rescue.”


BACKGROUND:

In August 2002, Dr. Rafael Medoff sent the chief curator of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Dr. Steven Luckert, information about the Bergson Group’s role in the creation of the War Refugee Board, and urged the Museum to correct its omission of the Bergson Group from its panel on the Board.  On September 5, 2002, Dr. Luckert wrote back that the Museum’s panel on the Board would be “redone,” and “the contribution of the Bergson Group to the formation of the WRB should be mentioned.”   

On March 8, 2005, Dr. Medoff and a delegation of sons and daughters of Bergson Group activists met with Dr. Luckert; Stephen Goodell, Director of Exhibitions; and Alice Greenwald, Associate Director of Public Programs, to again explain why the Bergson Group should be added to the Museum’s Permanent Exhibit. 

On June 17, 2007, Nobel Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, in his keynote address to the Wyman Institute’s national conference in New York City, urged the U.S. Holocaust Museum to add material about the Bergson Group to its Permanent Exhibit.

On July 22, 2007, the Wyman Institute sent the Museum a petition signed by 110 prominent Holocaust scholars and Jewish leaders --including top leaders of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism-- urging recognition of the Bergson Group’s efforts. 

On July 29, 2007, the Wyman Institute faxed the Museum a petition signed by 185 relatives of the 400 rabbis who took part in the Bergson Group’s 1943 march in Washington, urging the Museum to add Bergson and the march to its Permanent Exhibit. 

On July 30, 2007, Dr. Luckert wrote to the Wyman Institute that the  Museum will change its Permanent Exhibit “by early spring of 2008” in order to acknowledge “the positive contributions that the Bergson Group made in raising American awareness of the Holocaust and in advocating Jewish rescue.”  The changes, in the segment concerning the War Refugee Board, will include “visual materials and artifacts relating to the Bergson Group" and its role in bringing about creation of the Board, Dr. Luckert wrote.

(For the text of the petitions and a list of the signatories, please call the Wyman Institute at 202-434-8994.)

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described as "regrettable" on Tuesday the approval of a resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives calling on Japan to acknowledge its wartime sex slavery, indicating strongly that the Japanese government would not offer surviving victims an official apology.

"The resolution's approval was regrettable," said Abe, who provoked anger in Asia and the United States in March by denying that the Japanese military had directly coerced women into sex slavery during World War II.

News of the resolution's approval, which had been expected, came as Abe faced more calls to resign after his governing Liberal Democratic Party's crushing defeat in the election on Sunday for the upper house of Parliament.

Asked whether he would comply with the resolution's call for an official apology, Abe said: "The 20th century was an era in which human rights were violated. I would like to make the 21st century into an era with no human rights violations."

They were all good Lutheran men and women, happy to drop the pastor a line.

"Dear Pastor," Army Pvt. Edmund C. Lust wrote on Jan. 25, 1944, while stationed in Kansas. "Hope & pray our church doesn't have any more casualties. It's so hard on the families & if there is no Holy Spirit present the grief is very much harder to take."...

And Pastor Oden safely stored away all of his precious letters.

Last fall, two members of Irving Park Lutheran Church, Lloyd DaMask and Darcie Wadycki, discovered a tattered old cardboard box in a second-floor storage area of the church, at 3938 W. Belle Plaine. In the box, they found more than 1,000 letters written by 239 of those 388 church members who had served in World War II.

The letters had been posted from around the world, sent back home to Chicago by neighborhood kids who had never seen much before. They were posted from Pearl Harbor and Africa, Italy and Australia, England and New Guinea. Even from a submarine.

Moving past the usual alarmist anecdotes, a new study by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) offers hard evidence that the social studies are being squeezed in America’s schools by test-driven pressures imposed by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

English Language Arts (ELA) and Math—the two subjects that are regularly tested under NCLB—are taking up an increasing amount of student time. In a survey of 491 school districts they found that 58 percent increased the amount of time in the elementary schools allocated to ELA, and 45 percent increased the time devoted to math.

Given a finite amount of time in the day something has to go, and as often as not, it turns out, the social studies lose. The CEP found that over the past five years 36 percent of the departments surveyed decreased the time allocated to the social studies, more than science (cut by 28 percent of school districts), art and music (cut by 16 percent), and even lunch (cut by 20 percent)....

The findings in the CEP report validate the AHA Council’s decision, made reluctantly this past January, to support adding history to the areas of assessment under No Child Left Behind. Following on policy alerts from the National Council for History Education, Council concluded that, “if history is to be a high-priority subject in the public-school curriculum, then it must be assessed and evaluated.”

A Los Angeles Native woman’s anger over “Native”-themed summer camps is echoed across the country as many Native people continue to object to non-Native people’s appropriation of tribal traditions, reports Indian Country Today. While walking her dogs in a Los Angeles Park, Marisol Crisostomo-Romo, 26, spotted a van with a tipi on it. A group of white children piled into the van, clutching bows and arrows. They were members of the five-week-long Camp Shi'ini, ''a Native American-themed summer camp,” according to the camp’s website. Similar Native-themed camps, nonprofits, centers, programs, workshops, retreats and seminars, offered mostly by non-Natives thrive across the country. Native activists also believe that non-Native people operating as medicine men and shamans -- and often charging for their services -- are taking advantage of Native traditions. ''We don't charge for ceremonies,” says Charlie Sitting Bull, a traditional Oglala Lakota from South Dakota and direct descendant of Chief Sitting Bull. A 1993 decree issued by 40 different tribes declared that action should be taken against non-Natives exploiting Lakota traditions. In a letter of complaint to the camp, Chrisostomo-Romo writes that “it is important for non-Natives to understand that Natives do not exist only in museums or in Western movies. We are a people who have a future and who want the best for our children.”

An evening crew of bustling sailors had taken over loading munitions at Port Chicago Naval Magazine on July 17, 1944 -- a night like most others at the Suisun Bay pier during World War II.

At a barracks half a mile away, 20-year-old Irvin Lowery was relaxing with friends just after 10 p.m. when reverberations from a massive explosion shattered his windows and sent him flying across his room. The blast, the largest stateside disaster during the war, killed 320 people -- 202 of them black -- and catalyzed military desegregation by drawing attention to race-based assignments. Lowery, a specialist A first class, spent the next two days collecting body parts of the bowlers and basketball players he worked with as a physical instructor on the recreation staff.

Now 83, Lowery hopes a new bill could help to preserve the Port Chicago story by increasing the public's access to the site and making it easier to pursue funding for an information center there.

Among the tales he wants told is the public outcry that followed the courts-martial of 50 black ammunition loaders, who were charged with mutiny for refusing to return to the same work conditions. In general, the loaders were black men who worked under the supervision of white officers and had little training in how to handle heavy munitions. ...

THE CORPORATION for Public Broadcasting is chasing teenagers. But instead of courting them with content about sex, music, or MySpace, the corporation is investing $20 million to develop multimedia content -- from television shows to Web-based games -- about American history and civics....

Launched in 2005, this project asked public television managers to develop media projects that "measurably improve" how middle and high school students learn civics and history. Public television was asked to work with educators, filmmakers, and high-tech content providers. This month, the corporation announced that seven of 88 proposals would get funding to develop prototypes.
Among these are "Virtual Congress," a Web-based game about getting bills passed; "Flashback," a reality show and online game about completing historic missions; and "American Dynasties," an online role-playing game in which students interact with historic figures.

It was designed by a friend of Pablo Picasso, adorned with mosaics depicting Oedipus and the Sphinx, and described as Art Deco at its Athenian best. But a row about the building that guidebooks describe as a 'must-see' on the boulevard linking the Greek capital's great classical sites is now threatening to eclipse the opening of Europe's most ambitious museum. All because the 1930s building blocks the view from a restaurant.

Culture Ministry officials say the four-storey architectural gem designed by Vassilis Kouremenos commits the cardinal sin of blocking a visitor's view of the Parthenon from the vantage point of the New Acropolis Museum's dining terrace. Unrivalled vistas have been the biggest selling point of the stunning museum built at the foot of the Periclean masterpiece to promote its golden age wonders - including one day, Greeks hope, the Elgin Marbles, currently housed in the British Museum.

Take a drive down Dock Street any time of day, and you'll see two large people looking back at you. A bushy-eyebrowed, hook-nosed ship's captain, and a serene Muckleshoot woman, side by side.

They're about 8 feet high, and they're staring out from the wall of the Working Waterfront Maritime Museum. The faces are part of a brand-new mural on the street side of the museum, the beginning of a multiyear, $28 million renovation. It's an 80-foot-long scene of turn-of-the-century Tacoma, peopled with shipping employees, American Indians, tugboats and canoes.

[HNN: On Friday the House of Representatives approved a new farm bill that includes a provision to pay millions of dollars to black farmers discriminated against by Agriculture Department bureaucrats in earlier dcades. The bill goes to the Senate in the fall.]

John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, said it is something that needs to happen."At least the farmers will get their cases heard on their merits," said Boyd, who raises corn, soybeans and chickens in southern Virginia."I'm very hopeful that this will be added to the farm bill."

The legislation would allow about 73,800 black farmers to file in U.S. District Court for damages and would delay foreclosures against farmers who can prove discrimination.

In 1997, dozens of black farmers sued the Agriculture Department, saying the agency treated them differently from white farmers in approving loans, and a settlement was reached in 1999. The USDA has paid out nearly $1 billion in claims to about 15,000 black farmers who said they suffered discrimination. But tens of thousands of black farmers missed the Sept. 15, 2000, deadline.

The first lame ducks, those extraneous politicians christened as such, waddled into American history nearly 100 years ago, courtesy of the New York Evening Post. They made their appearance at the White House, but in refuge, not residence. It was there that Republican members of Congress who hadn't survived the 1910 midterm elections assembled in a hallway that the Evening Post dubbed "Lame Duck Alley." The defeated lawmakers were hoping for a presidential appointment from William Howard Taft, or, at the least, the fellowship of their fellow has-beens.

Today's pundits feel free to confer lame-duck status on the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue no matter how much time is left in their terms. The Houston Chronicle, the largest paper in Texas, pronounced the state's favorite son a lame duck on the day in 2005 that he took the oath of office for the second time. The Associated Press made that same assertion on the day that he was re-elected in 2004.

"This president is a lame duck," Stuart Rothenberg, author of The Rothenberg Political Report, recently intoned after the latest defeat of the latest version of the immigration-bill-that-wouldn't-die (or pass). "A president who was not a lame duck would have been able to muscle at least some Republicans to support his position on immigration."

Political science professors Samuel Popkin of the University of California (San Diego) and Henry Kim of the University of Arizona went Rothenberg one better: "President Bush is a lame duck and an albatross," they wrote. Given the way that Republicans are seeking to shed their association with this president, albatross may be the better metaphor. Bush might be thankful that while dispensing their avian cliches, Popkin and Kim didn't call him a dodo....

"President Bush may be a lame duck politically, but he is not a lame duck as chief executive and will lose many of his powers only on January 20, 2009," said James Pfiffner, professor of public policy at George Mason University. "He is still head of the executive branch and commander-in-chief, and has many unilateral powers that he can -- and has -- used, including executive orders, pardons, control over many regulations, control of executive branch execution of the law, secrecy, and classification of documents."

California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), is a multicultural wonderland, with classrooms filled by Golden Staters whose ancestors came to this lively, diverse beach community from every corner of the world. Double-stocked with both an Office of Equity and Diversity and a Multicultural Center, CSULB openly proclaims its commitment to educating all of California’s students, regardless of income, race, creed or national origin.

Given its diverse student body, it would seem that CSULB would be the last place to find a tried and true anti-Semite and white supremacist lecturing. But that is where Kevin B. MacDonald, a 63-year-old man who developed a deep-seated mistrust for Jewish activists while protesting the Vietnam War, is employed as the psychology professor for those seeking degrees in child development.

From an office inside the bunker-like, six-story Psych building, a tall, thin, bespectacled MacDonald pumps out pages and pages of material on how Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies. According to MacDonald, who considers himself an evolutionary psychologist, Jews, who have typically been in the minority in countries around the world, are compelled by an evolutionary strategy that makes them push for liberal policies, like immigration and diversity, with t

Each year the intention is the same: to arm Mormons with information so they can answer criticisms of their faith, doctrine and practices.

But the ninth annual conference of The Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR), which begins Thursday in Sandy, is especially needed given recent high-profile anti-Mormon developments, the nonprofit organization's president, Scott Gordon, said.

Gordon, reached by phone in Redding, Calif., pointed to offensive comments swirling around Mitt Romney's campaign and to the distribution in March of some 350,000 DVDs that likened The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to a cult. He also mentioned concerns about the soon-to-be released film, "September Dawn," which uses the highly controversial Mountain Meadows Massacre as a backdrop and explores various conspiracy theories that put the church in a bad light.

"We are not afraid to take on the tough issues," he said. "We pick controversial topics and talk about them from a believer's perspective."

When israel's education ministry announced that history textbooks for third-graders would now include a heretofore unmentionable truth -- that the creation of a homeland for Jews in 1948 resulted in the exile of 700,000 Palestinians -- it seemed an enlightened step.

"History is written by the victors," as Winston Churchill said, and for the last 59 years, Israeli elementary school textbooks have taught only the Jewish version of events: The outcome of the Arab-Israeli war was justifiable because of Jews' historic roots in the Holy Land and their need for a permanent refuge from persecution. The Palestinian exodus from Israel, called the Nakba (catastrophe) by Arabs, was nowhere to be found.

The education ministry's apparent openness, however, is deceptive. For the new, balanced textbooks will be printed only in Arabic and distributed only to Arab classrooms. Hebrew editions of "Living Together in Israel" won't be revised. Some education officials sought to amend Jews' textbooks too, but they were overruled by those who said Jewish third-graders cannot understand divergent interpretations of history.

Education Minister Yuli Tamir says the new books will help Arab children reconcile the history they learn at home with the history they are taught in school. But Jewish children, who are less likely to hear the Palestinian version of events in their homes, need this information even more than their Arab peers, who at least may have the personal experiences of family and friends to educate them. If Israel acknowledges the fact of the Palestinian exodus, then it should be taught to all children. Instead, the ministry seeks to placate Palestinians without standing up to hard-line Jewish conservatives, who oppose the revisions even for Arab classrooms.

History is continually being revised. Although written first by the victors, over time the voices of the defeated and disregarded demand inclusion. China and Korea insist that Japan acknowledge wartime atrocities; Native Americans, that their 4,000-year history become a part of this country's founding narrative; and women, that their deeds get equal scrutiny with those of men.

Whether most Palestinians fled their homes voluntarily or through coercion and force, and whether they have a right to return, will likely be argued until the end of time. But that thousands did flee and have spent subsequent decades living in refugee camps -- the United Nations says that descendants have swelled the number of refugees to 4 million today -- is not at issue. Why not teach that truth?

By amending history textbooks for Arab children, Israel has acknowledged the validity of the Nakba. And if it's valid for Arabs, it should be valid for Jews as well.

“American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis like American soldiers or not.”

That’s not from a think tank primer prepared in 2003, but from a pamphlet prepared 60 years earlier and just published in book form by the University of Chicago Press. Instructions for American Serviceman in Iraq During World War II could be unusually successful for the press, at least as reprints of obscure government documents go. The press has shipped out 20,000 copies in the first 10 days it has been available.

Carol Kasper, marketing director for the press, said that the idea came indirectly from the University of Oxford. Chicago distributes books published by the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where in 2004 scholars decided to publish the U.S. Army’s World War II guide for soldiers stationed in Britain. In the pre-D-Day period when increasing numbers of American soldiers were stationed in Britain, the guide was intended to help the allies understand one another. One bit of advice: “The British don’t know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don’t know how to make a good cup of tea. It’s an even swap.”

The book wasn’t a huge success in the United States, but Kasper said that sales in Britain were impressive. So the press approached the Bodleian about whether it was interested in publishing more volumes in the series, especially one on Iraq (World War II having been a truly global war, the Army produced country guides for just about everywhere). When the Bodleian passed on the idea, Kasper said press decided it should track down a copy of the Iraq guide and it found one in the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library....

Journalists ask questions and get answers. But answers to some questions are tough to come by as Yomiuri Shimbun's special project team found.

Why did Japan plunge into the quagmire of what the Japanese call the "Sino-Japanese War" and what actually was the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression?

Why did Japan wage war against the US despite lacking resources?

What caused the Japanese military to go on "kamikaze" attacks?

Could Japan have prevented the atomic bomb attacks?

Was the Tokyo Tribunal beset by problems?

For answers to these and many other questions, it was necessary to re-examine Japan's responsibility and pinpoint those who were to blame for the war that killed a great number of people and caused boundless suffering across Asia Pacific. And that's exactly what Yomiuri Shimbun group chairman Tsuneo Watanabe started in the summer of 2005.

Watanabe was opposed to the war as a student, but he was forced to become "one of the Imperial Japanese Army's last group of privates" to prepare to fight US troops on Japanese soil.

The Palestine Post and later The Jerusalem Post has been around since 1932, reporting the history of the Jewish people and the State of Israel for 75 years.

The following is the first in a new feature titled 'History Revisited', where we will show you images of those magnificent front pages - which you will be able to read (including the small text by using the zoom option - the plus sign - icon in Acrobat Reader) - from 1932 onwards....

Sixty-two years ago they were bitter enemies -- one a Japanese pilot trained to crash his plane into U.S. ships on a suicide mission, the other two survivors of a ship sunk by one of the pilot's kamikaze comrades.

But on Friday the three now elderly men shook hands and blinked back tears during a meeting that the former U.S. servicemen said finally helped them come to terms with their traumatic past.

"You feel terrible towards the people who did this to you and as the years go on and we get older, it's a terrible burden to carry," said Fred Mitchell, an 81-year-old survivor of the U.S.S. Drexler, a destroyer sunk by kamikaze off Okinawa in 1945....

The meeting was arranged by the makers of a documentary on the kamikaze released in Tokyo on Saturday, which shows that not all the young men who trained for the missions faced their almost certain death gladly.

For the first time since it began debating the issue more than three decades ago, Congress is now poised to adopt legislation that will require -- not merely recommend -- public disclosure of the total national intelligence budget.

"Not later than 30 days after the end of each fiscal year beginning with fiscal year 2007, the Director of National Intelligence shall disclose to the public the aggregate amount of funds appropriated by Congress for the National Intelligence Program for such fiscal year," states the House-Senate conference agreement on H.R. 1 (section 601), the massive bill to implement recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

The conference bill has already been approved in the Senate and is expected to win final approval in the House as early as today. If enacted into law, it would lead to the first authorized disclosure of current U.S. intelligence spending since the aggregate budgets were disclosed in 1997 ($26.6 billion) and 1998 ($26.7 billion) in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Federation of American Scientists. (Those figures included spending on"national" as well as"tactical" intelligence.)

The Bush White House has expressed opposition to intelligence budget disclosure but is not expected to veto the entire 9/11 bill on that basis.

"The Administration strongly opposes the requirement in the bill to publicly disclose sensitive information about the intelligence budget," according to a February 28 statement of administration policy.

"Disclosure, including disclosure to the Nation's enemies and adversaries in a time of war, of the amounts requested by the President and provided by the Congress for the conduct of the Nation's intelligence activities would provide no meaningful information to the general American public, but would provide significant intelligence to America's adversaries and could cause damage to the national security interests of the United States."

Hardly anyone agrees with that assessment.

The bipartisan 9/11 Commission came to almost the opposite conclusion:"The top-line figure by itself provides little insight into U.S. intelligence sources and methods.... But when even aggregate categorical numbers remain hidden, it is hard to judge priorities and foster accountability." (Final Report, p. 416)

In a compromise with Administration opponents, the House-Senate conference agreed that, beginning in 2009, the President could waive the disclosure requirement by submitting a statement to Congress that budget disclosure in that particular year could damage national security. The legislation does not allow for a waiver in 2007 or 2008.

The conference legislation also includes provisions to strengthen the Public Interest Declassification Board, and to require declassification of the executive summary of a CIA Inspector General report on events leading up to 9/11.

An artificial big toe attached to the foot of an Egyptian mummy could be the world's oldest prosthetic body part, British researchers said Friday.

The fake toe, which is made of wood and leather and is currently on display at the Cairo Museum in Egypt, dates from between 1000 and 600 BC.

Researchers at Manchester University in north-west England hope to prove it was used to help someone who had lost their original big toe to walk.

If they do, it could mean that prosthetic body parts were in use up to 700 years earlier than was previously thought.