Historians are divided over whether Prime Minister John Howard's blueprint for how history should be taught adequately covers the nation's past.

Bond University history lecturer Shirleene Robinson described the guide as narrow and selective, whitewashing away the worst aspects of Australia's history, especially its sometimes racist past.

"I think in many ways it's a very white perspective," Dr Robinson said.

She said the guide appeared to underplay early conflict between Aborigines and Europeans, the removal of Aboriginal children from their families and the "White Australia Policy".

"It is an unfortunate fact that racism was a major motivating fact behind Federation and this does not appear to be covered at all," she said.

Australian History Teachers Association Queensland President Ros Korkatzis said it was worrying that northern Australia hardly rated any attention, while Australian National University historian Dr Tim Rowse was concerned that the guide addressed only the history of Australia, ignoring its place in the world.

Plans have been unveiled to refurbish a visitor centre on the site where rebel leader Owain Glyndwr is thought to have set up his parliament 600 years ago.

The group behind the £2.7m project in Machynlleth, Powys, intends to bid for heritage lottery funding.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Iranian president and current Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, said Friday that Hitler’s treatment of Jewish people in Europe was due in part to their being “a pain in the neck.”

Rafsanjani’s comments came during a sermon for "International Jerusalem Day" on Iranian TV.

Rafsanjani noted that Jews caused problems for European governments because they “had a lot of property” and “controlled an empire of propaganda.” He also said that the Nazis were successful in saving Europe from the evil of Zionism.

Turkey, which is a key supply route to U.S. troops in Iraq, recalled its ambassador to Washington yesterday and warned of serious repercussions if Congress labels the killing of Armenians by Turks a century ago as genocide.

After the House Foreign Affairs Committee endorsed the genocide measure, the summons of the ambassador for consultations was a further sign of deteriorating relations between two longtime allies and the potential for new turmoil in a troubled region.

Egeman Bagis, an aide to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told Turkish media that Turkey - a conduit for many of the supplies shipped to U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan - might have to "cut logistical support to the U.S."

Analysts also have speculated the resolution could make Turkey more inclined to send troops into northern Iraq to hunt Turkish Kurd rebels, a move opposed by the U.S. because it would disrupt one of the few relatively stable and peaceful Iraqi areas.

The measure before Congress is a nonbinding resolution without the force of law, but it has incensed Turkey's government. The Bush administration, which is lobbying strongly in hopes of persuading Congress to reject the resolution, stressed the need for good relations with Turkey.

Prime Minister John Howard has described the "neglect" of history teaching in Australian schools as "shameful", announcing that he would make the subject compulsory for all students in years 9 and 10.

Mr Howard said students would be made to attend 150 hours of Australian history lessons over two or three years from 2009.

The history guide, to be distributed across the nation, says it is intended for study in years nine and 10, but the first three of the 10 topics could start in year 8, it says.

She was born into a profoundly dysfunctional family. Her father married six times—and essentially ordered hits on two of his wives, including her mother (whose major crime may have been giving birth to a daughter instead of a son). Jealous relatives plotted against her. As a teenager, she was locked up in a tower. If she were alive today, she could write a best-selling memoir about her abusive childhood and appear on "Oprah." Instead, Elizabeth I became one of the most powerful and respected leaders in history.

This year, as Americans contemplate making Sen. Hillary Clinton our first female president, it is instructive to look back at Elizabeth and other women who wielded power long before the age of speechwriters, personal stylists and YouTube campaigning. Cleopatra, for example, ruled ancient Egypt with fierce political savvy while giving birth to children by Julius Caesar and Mark Antony (twins in the latter case). If she worried about balancing work and family, she left no record of it. This was a woman who understood the importance of the grand gesture. Once, according to a history by Pliny the Elder, she bet Antony that she could spend 10 million sesterces (a Roman coin) on dinner. In the midst of a pedestrian meal, she dropped a valuable pearl earring into a cup of vinegar, watched it dissolve and drank it.

French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.

The painting, which measures about six feet by six feet, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, said team leader Eric Coqueugniot.

"It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dating we established it is from around 9,000 B.C.," Coqueugniot said. "We found another painting next to it, but that won't be excavated until next year. It is slow work," said Coqueugniot, who works at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.

If high school juniors' answers to a World War II questionnaire were strung together, here's how history would look:

World War II took place in 19-something, when Theodore Roosevelt was president and the Germans claimed to be the best race.

Hoping to aid Third World countries, the United States joined the war to stop racism and end the dispute over Jews.

The head of the Nazis was a killer named Hitler whose evil partner, Mussolini, was president of the USSR. Ultimately, the war ended with the bombing of Iwo Jima and Hitler's suicide. Then a treaty was signed.

Not every 11th-grader who answered a Chronicle questionnaire at San Francisco's Burton High School responded with such a fractured version of history. Eight of the 34 students said correctly that"Roosevelt" or"FDR" was president during most of the war, apparently remembering the subject they had studied as sophomores last spring. Most knew about the attempted genocide of the Jews, all but three recognized Hitler, and eight placed the war in the 1940s.

But others, perhaps suffering a temporary memory lapse, variously named George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon and Winston Churchill as the war's main president. Eighteen students wisely left the answer blank.

"It's a bit disappointing," sighed their teacher, Theresa Quindlen, head of Burton High's history department, who agreed to let The Chronicle quiz her students and print the results."But maybe something will spark their interest, and they'll become future readers of history."

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History is hiding in the murky waters of the Penobscot River.

Artifacts from the Penobscot Expedition of 1779 - the largest Revolutionary War naval expedition and worst naval defeat in United States history until Pearl Harbor - offer a peek into the country’s beginnings.

The battle, which ended with the loss of between 30 and 40 commissioned naval ships and sloops of war by the hands of their own crews, left everything from smoking pipes and shoe buckles to swivel guns and cannons along the bottom of the Penobscot River between Castine and Bangor.

Although findings are generally few and far between, some items that are possibly from the Penobscot Expedition emerged as recently as two months ago.

Relics from the naval disaster remain embedded in the river’s thick mud and are sometimes visible at low tide but often go unnoticed by unsuspecting residents. Others sit on the bottom of the river just feet from the surface but are hidden from view by the thick, murky and fast-flowing tidal waters of the state’s largest river.

Archaeologists discovered the tomb of a young couple locked in an embrace during their work in Hakemi Use in the Bismil district of the southeastern province of Diyarbak?r on Saturday.

Archaeologists assert that the couple, who presumably died some 8,000 years ago, is likely to set a record as the oldest embracing couple in the history of archaeology. Diyarbak?r was witness to an extraordinary discovery when archaeologists revealed the tomb of the couple near the township of Tepe in the district of Bismil. The shroud of mystery over the couple will be removed after anthropologists examine the skeletons.

Mural paintings dating back 11 000 years have been found in a building on a bank of the River Euphrates in northern Syria, a French archaeologist said on Tuesday.

Eric Coqueugniot said they were the oldest murals found in the Middle East.

"Geometric paintings - black, white and red - have been found on the wall of a house in Jadeh," he said, adding that they were discovered in late September in a circular house with a diameter of about seven metres.

Ancient Greek craftsmen didn't need fancy math to cobble together the first catapult, a new study of ancient texts suggests. Archimedes' laws and theories just helped make the weapon better.

The first catapult in Europe flung into action around the fourth century B.C., prior to the invention of mathematical models that revolutionized ancient technologies, said Mark Schiefsky, a Harvard University classics professor who led the study.

"It seems that the early stages of catapult development did not involve any mathematical theory at all," Schiefsky said. "We are talking about so-called torsion artillery, basically an extension of the simple bow by means of animal sinews into something like the crossbow."

The first and only team in 70 years is conducting field research on Jewish folklore in the historic region of Podolia, the only place in the Pale of Settlement where Jewish life survived the Holocaust intact.

The visiting scholars from St. Petersburg aren’t here to dwell on Jewish demise, however. They have come to document Jewish life in what expedition leader Valery Dymshits calls “the last Jewish city in the Soviet Union,” Mogilev-Podolsky.

As recently as the early 1990’s — before an exodus to the United States, Israel and Germany depleted the community — Yiddish was widely spoken on the streets here. Despite the community’s rapid contraction, the Jewish presence here perseveres.

With this rare continuity, Dymshits and his team of scholars have staked a claim as the first and only team in 70 years to conduct field research into the region’s Jewish folklore, recording scores of interviews along the way.

A new book explores how global warming is linked to the worst mass extinctions in earth's history. In Under a Green Sky, paleontologist Peter Ward recounts how a sharp CO2 rise accelerated dramatic environmental changes in the past, and what that can tell us about our future.

If the Boston Massacre were to take place today, someone would no doubt capture the event on a cell-phone camera and upload the images online within minutes. Lacking such tools, the silversmith Paul Revere took the established technology of 1770—copper engraving—and in a few weeks churned out prints depicting the attack. They sold briskly, fueled Yankee rebellion, and established a link between cartooning and American politics before the country had been formally created.

Even if hand-drawn cartoons no longer have any role in transmitting news events, the integration of cartoons into American politics is striking, and continues today in a variety of forms. The Art of Ill Will, which takes its title from a quotation from longtime Voice cartoonist Jules Feiffer, traces that history from the 18th century to the near-present, complete with full-page reproductions of more than 100 cartoons.

Fred Thompson has made much of his role 30 years ago as a young Senate lawyer helping to lead the investigation of the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon.

But a much different, less valiant picture of Thompson emerges from listening to the White House audiotapes made at the time, as President Nixon plotted strategy with his aides in the Oval Office.

Thompson's job on the Watergate committee was to lead the Republican side of the investigation. He was appointed by his mentor, Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee, who is now co-chair of Thompson's 2008 presidential bid....

When Nixon's aide H.R. Haldeman told Nixon of Thompson's appointment, Nixon was less than impressed.

"Baker has appointed Fred Thompson as minority counsel," Haldeman is heard saying on one tape.

"Oh sh--, that kid," Nixon responds.

"I guess so," Haldeman replies.

Nixon worried that Thompson's Democratic counterpart, Sam Dash, would outsmart Thompson.

"Well, Dash is too smart for that kid," Nixon says on another tape from March 16, 1973. The existence of the tapes were publicly revealed by a question from Thompson at a Watergate hearing and led to the president's resignation. They are preserved at the National Archives in College Park, Md.

"Sure. Runs circles around him," agrees an aide, John Dean.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has located an ancient world map stolen from Spain's National Library along with other extremely valuable documents in August, the daily El Pais reported Tuesday.

The map torn from a 16th-century edition of Ptolemy's Geographia was found in the possession of a New York collectioner, the daily quoted sources of the National Library as saying.

The identity of the collectioner was not given. It was not known whether he or she was aware that the map, which is valued at about 100,000 euros (140,000 dollars), was stolen.

OLYMPIA - The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe has settled its lawsuits over the failed Hood Canal Bridge graving yard and the ancestral village of Tse-whit-zen.

Motions to approve the settlements were signed Friday by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Anne Hirsch.

The action cleared the way for the Lower Elwha to focus on reburying the remains that archaeologists unearthed at the site from 2003 to 2005.

"We're definitely excited about being able to put things behind us and move on for what's important," said Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles.

"We are definitely looking forward to that day when our ancestors can be put back into their final resting places."

Before archaeologists finished, they had disinterred 337 complete burials.

Italian archeologists have uncovered the ruins of a 2,700 year old sanctuary which they say provides the first physical evidence of Rome at the time of Numa Pompilius, Rome’s legendary second king, in the 8th century BC.

Numa Pompilius, a member of the Sabine tribe, was elected at the age of forty to succeed Romulus, the founder of Rome. He reigned from 715-673 BC, and is said by Plutarch to have been a reluctant monarch who ushered in a 40-year period of peace and stability. He was celebrated for his wisdom, personal austerity and piety.

It was the spring of 1968, and the nation's colleges were convulsed in protest. Students were barricading themselves in buildings, and antiwar demonstrations were growing violent. At Wellesley College, a group of students were threatening to go on a hunger strike if the administration did not agree to recruit more black faculty members and students.

In an effort to avert the strike, administrators convened an all-campus meeting so students could voice their grievances. When it devolved into a shouting match, Hillary Rodham, the student-government president, stepped in. Acting as a mediator between the administration and the students, she brokered a compromise, and the hunger strike was called off.

Over the next 40 years, Hillary Rodham Clinton would return to the role of negotiator again and again. But it was at Wellesley that she first practiced the art of what she calls "principled compromise." And it was in college, at the height of the Vietnam War and the civil-rights movement, that the future presidential candidate became passionate about social issues.

The University of Kentucky has this fall been considering the segregation of its Greek system (a common situation at colleges with large fraternity and sorority traditions) and what to do about it. While no solution has been found, black students and white Greeks were suddenly united Friday to condemn the student newspaper for a cartoon that tried to explore the issue.

The cartoon in The Kentucky Kernel featured a black man in chains on an auction block. Three fraternities, “Aryan Omega,” “Alpha Caucasian” and “Kappa Kappa Kappa,” are seen bidding on the man. The caption: “UK Greeks lead the way on integration with this year’s new bids.”

A critical audit released Friday found struggling History San Jose has been swimming in red ink because of weak financial management, fanciful fundraising goals and limited efforts to reduce expenses.

The Macias Consulting Group audit recommends the San Jose City Council grant the non-profit a relatively modest subsidy increase of $717,113, spread over the next four years in decreasing amounts. The audit also said History San Jose should reprioritize staffing to reduce personnel costs by 17 percent while adding employees who can manage finances and fund-raising.

History San Jose officials called the audit unfair and say the city needs to raise its subsidy to $1.2 million a year - more than three times the amount called for in its contract for the next several years - plus cost-of-living increases.

A group of "young patriots" are asking Quebecers to vote online for the greatest "traitor" to the Quebec nation -- both Liberal leaders, in Quebec and in Ottawa, are on the hot seat.

The contest is a mockery of the search for the greatest Canadian launched by CBC in 2004.

The organizers say the non-scientific, and humorous, poll is a way to counterbalance the shortlist of the CBC that they say "hailed Canadians who despised Quebec's nation, such as Don Cherry and Mordecai Richler."

At the height of his bardic powers, Allen Ginsberg could terrify the authorities with the mere utterance of the syllable “om” as he led street throngs of citizens protesting the Vietnam War. Ginsberg reigned as the raucous poet of American hippiedom and as a literary pioneer whose freewheeling masterwork “Howl” prevailed against government censorship in a landmark obscenity trial 50 years ago.

It is with a queasy feeling of history in retreat that poetry lovers discover that WBAI, long the radio flagship of cocky resistance to government excess, decided last week that it couldn’t risk a 50th anniversary broadcast of the late poet’s recording of “Howl.” The station retreated out of fear that the Federal Communications Commission would levy large obscenity fines that might bankrupt the small-budget station.

The stone, found under the floor at Hausken church in Rennesøy, Rogaland [Norway], was used as part of the foundation when the church was built in 1856.

Archeologists at first believed they had found a new rune stone that was nearly 1,000 years old, but they now have identified it as part of a large tombstone that was previously reported in 1639 and 1745.

The stone lay outside the door of the old stave church, and the remains of this stone have now been found under the floor, beneath the pulpit.

PASARGADAE, Iran (Reuters) - For the people protesting against it, a new dam near these sun-drenched ruins may be more than an environmental upheaval: in it they scent an affront to the country's pre-Islamic identity.

For 2,500 years, the tomb of Cyrus the Great has stood on the plain at Pasargadae in southern Iran, a simple but dignified monument to a king revered as the founder of the mighty Persian empire. But some fear the dam and reservoir pose a threat to the ancient structure.

They say the project may increase humidity in the arid area near the city of Shiraz, which they believe could damage the limestone mausoleum.

That may seem far-fetched -- officials dismiss it -- but the row highlights deep cultural faultlines in attitudes to the Islamic Republic's wealth of pre-Islamic relics.