Hurricane Ike has reminded everyone here that the seawall, though tough and enduring, is not enough to protected Galveston from a painful past.

Linz is to be Europe's Capital of Culture in 2009. Before the Austrian city takes on that mantle it is showing an exhibition about how Hitler had wanted to make Linz a "Culture Capital for the Führer."

Linz is taking on a lot. On New Year's Eve the Austrian city will kick off a three-day opening festival with fireworks and drum rolls, to celebrate its year as Europe's 2009 Capital of Culture. Under the direction of Martin Heller, it's planning an intensive program of exhibitions, concerts, festivals, theater performances and readings.

No matter how powerful the Russian government may appear nowadays, it hasn't been able to quell nostalgia for some of the country's most brutal leaders.

Dictator Josef Stalin made the final cut Wednesday in a Kremlin-backed contest to identify Russia's most significant historical figure, though he was stripped of almost one million votes organizers called "illegal."

The "Name of Russia" contest is part of a broad effort by the Kremlin and state media to strengthen national pride, drawing on Russia's Soviet and Czarist past. But the campaign has turned into a political minefield.

When the online contest kicked off in June, Internet voting gave Stalin a huge lead, before a grass-roots campaign pushed Czar Nicholas II into first place. Other figures went on to occupy the top slot but Stalin always remained a close second.

Fancy tasting the life of a polar explorer, albeit without the stewed penguin?

A City of London restaurant is offering a menu inspired by the exploits of Sir Ernest Shackleton that packs in a massive 6,000 calories.

The £75 four-course blow-out includes pork scratchings, a 20oz steak and “hoosh”, a thick stew eaten by the pioneering explorer, all washed down with wine, beer and an ice cream shake. There is a modern twist on the hoosh - while Shackleton and his men made it with penguin, the 21st century version will use goose.

The meal, which is being offered at the Green Door Bar and Grill in the City of London, contains three days worth of an adult woman’s recommended calorie intake. For every meal sold the restaurant will donate £10 to the Shackleton Foundation, a new charity to fund projects embodying the adventurer’s spirit and hunger for “calculated risk”

The feast's calorific value matches the amount that seven-strong British team hoping to complete Shackleton’s failed journey to the South Pole a century ago must eat each day to maintain their strength.

Henry Worsley, leader of the modern-day adventurers and a descendant of Frank Worsley, Shackleton's skipper on the Endurance, said: “Obviously this isn’t a meal for the faint-hearted, but I’m sure there are a few people in the City who’ll be up for the challenge.

“There will, of course, be honour and recognition in the case of success.”

Mr Worsley and two fellow adventurers, also descended from members of the original team, will set off on October 29 on the same 900-mile, 80-day route chosen for Shackleton’s 1908/09 Nimrod expedition. They will meet the other four 97 miles from the Pole, where their predecessors were forced to turn back on January 9 1909 in the face of howling icy blizzards and dwindling rations.

MANCHESTER, Conn. -- Instead of dropping "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from its reading list, the Manchester school system has decided to hold seminars for teachers on how to deal with issues of race before bringing the book back to classrooms.The goal of the seminars is to put the book into perspective and create a dialogue on race, white privilege, satire and stereotyping, which were also issues when Twain published it in 1885."It does provide a very good platform to talk about racial issues and to actually without me going into detail as to where Twain was in chapter 4 or chapter 12," said Assistant Superintendent Anne Richardson. "It really provides a good opportunity to have a conversation about race."The book will be back in classes next month after teachers complete a series of seminars, which will put the novel into the context of the time in which it was written.

The central Iraqi Sunni city of Samarra which houses a revered Shiite mosque that was bombed by Al-Qaeda has been selected as a world heritage site, the government said on Tuesday.

"The Universal Heritage Committee of UNESCO has agreed to add the city of Samarra to its list of world heritage sites," a statement said.

Samarra, north of Baghdad in Sunni Salaheddin province, gained prominence after the Shiite Al-Askari shrine there was bombed on February 22, 2006, by Al-Qaeda fighters.

That attack sparked nationwide brutal sectarian violence which killed tens of thousands of people, mostly in Baghdad.

A prominent French writer, Pierre Pean, is on trial in Paris accused of inciting racial hatred in a book on the Rwandan genocide.

Mr Pean wrote that the Tutsis had a culture of lies and deceit, and this had somehow spread to the Hutus.

He said it made investigating Rwanda "an almost impossible task". Some 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 1994.

A French rights group, SOS Racisme, filed the lawsuit against Mr Pean.

The case against him is backed by the public prosecutor. It centres on four pages in Mr Pean's book Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs (Black Furies, White Liars), published in 2005.

In remarks broadcast on French radio on Wednesday, Mr Pean said he "wrote a book on lies, misinformation, which were, I believe, conducted through extremely elaborate methods, whereby a dictatorial regime wanted people to believe in lies".

An investigative journalist, Mr Pean wrote a bestseller about former French President Francois Mitterrand, among other works.

A week before the American government plans to start a redesigned civics test as part of the naturalization process, a senior immigration official sought on Tuesday to calm nervous immigrants and critics who say the new exam will be more challenging than the current one.

“It’s not harder than the current exam,” said Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the citizenship office at Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that devises and administers the test. “In fact, for some it may be easier.”

At the crux of the debate is a list of 100 questions that applicants will have to study to prepare for the new test, which takes effect on Oct. 1.

During the naturalization interview, an immigration officer will ask the applicant 10 of the questions spanning a range of difficulty. The applicant must correctly answer six questions to pass that portion of the interview.

When the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Association distributed its new tourist guide “Shenandoah at War” last spring, officials at the organization crossed their fingers for a positive response.

To their surprise, the response was greater than expected, especially after the guide got some exposure in a Richmond Times-Dispatch story.

“We were inundated,” said Elizabeth Stern, the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation’s associate director for policy and communications, of the telephone requests that came pouring into her office. “We couldn’t get an outside line for days.”

“Shenandoah at War” provides a comprehensive story of Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s Valley Campaign. It features 15 battlefields between McDowell and Win

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has posted reports on the impact of Hurricanes Ike and Gustav on historic buildings in the affected areas, including several National Trust properties. On September 17, representatives of the Galveston Historical Foundation received permission from authorities to visit Galveston Island to assess the damage. They report that the Strand National Historic Landmark District and East End residential district sustained serious flood damage. The Trust is seeking volunteer structural engineers and architects to work with the Galveston Historical Foundation, Preservation Texas, and preservation groups to assess affected properties and work to save as many as possible.

If you like presidential debates, thank Ronald Reagan.

Until Reagan ran for reelection in 1984, debates were a hit-and-miss thing. Only when both candidates thought it was in their interest to debate would debates take place. In 1960, the younger and less experienced candidate, John F. Kennedy, wanted to debate in order to close the stature gap with Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon wanted to debate because he was trailing in the polls and thought he was a really great debater.

In each of the next three elections, no debates occurred because one candidate believed he had more to lose than to gain. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was way ahead in the polls in 1964, and President Nixon, who was way ahead in 1972, saw nothing to be gained from appearing side by side on live television with their debate-hungry opponents. Nixon avoided debates in 1968 because — surprise! —he’d gotten skunked in 1960.

In 1976 and 1980, debates occurred because the interests of the candidates coincided. Former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter wanted to debate President Gerald Ford in 1976 to establish his presidential bona fides, and Ford wanted to debate Carter because he was way behind in the polls. In 1980 it was the incumbent Carter who was way behind and the challenger Reagan who wanted the luster of a joint appearance with the president.

Nineteen eighty-four was the crucial year. Reagan was both the incumbent president and miles ahead, the exact formula for backing off from debates. But Reagan just thought debates were something a candidate ought to do, and two debates took place between him and his opponent, Walter Mondale. (The first one, in which Reagan seemed doddery at times, cost him dearly until he turned in a strong appearance in the second.)

In this telegenic, mass-media age, the health and fitness of presidential candidates often is equated with their fitness to lead.

But should someone's health, vigor and resting pulse rate make a whit of difference as a barometer of performance as president? And is it fair to compare the health and wellness of candidates who have a 25-year age gap, as is the case with Barack Obama and John McCain?

Yes, says presidential historian Allan Lichtman, author of "The Keys to the White House" and other political books.

"Sure, it reflects the superficiality of politics, but it also reflects a reality a modern president has to go through," says Lichtman, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C. "Health and fitness of a candidate is a legitimate issue. The president is under enormous pressures and tensions.

"And when you look at the two candidates, the electorate is bound to make (physical) comparisons. Robust health has been a positive image for a president for over a century."

ST. ALBANS, W.Va. -- Many 11-year-olds breathe and live video games. Zane Samples chooses to spend his time wearing Confederate gray and living history.

"They hated the blue devils (Union troops), and they had nice hearts," he said of Confederate soldiers. "The rebels stood strong. They didn't have anything, but they still held together."

A fifth-grader at St. Francis Assisi School in St. Albans, Zane shared his love for Civil War history last weekend by hosting a re-enactment at St. Albans City Park. With the help of adult re-enactors, Zane and about 20 of his classmates staged The Battle of the Wilderness, a bloody Civil War skirmish in central Virginia that was a draw between Confederate and Union troops.

More than 144 years after General George A. Custer positioned his headquarters on its front porch, the Charles Goodall Trevilian House will cement its permanent place in the battle's history for future generations. After some negotiations, the sprawling antebellum homeplace on Danne Road was recently purchased by the Civil War Preservation Trust with the assistance of the Trevilians Station Battlefield Foundation."People see different things when they look at a house," said Gerald W. Harlow, president of TSBF."When I see this house, I get excited. It's a great house by itself."

When early humans mastered the use of fire, their immediate rewards were warmth, light, and protection from nocturnal predators.

Investigators have assumed that our ancestors also quickly realized the advantages of flame-cooked food — easy chewing and digestion — though clear evidence has been hard to find. A new study bolsters that idea, showing that we share our fondness for cooked grub with our wild cousins, the great apes.

It seems fitting that this fall we are celebrating perhaps the most important anniversary on the Revolutionary calendar. Two hundred and twenty five years ago, on September 3, 1783, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams went to the Hotel D’Yorke in Paris and signed the Treaty of Paris with the British diplomat, David Hartley. The document formally and finally ended eight years of warfare with Great Britain and established the United States of America as a nation.

The treaty also meant the end of the two years of menacing uncertainty that followed the American victory at Yorktown in 1781. Far from ending the war, Yorktown left the United States bankrupt and deeply divided about its future. The Continental Congress owed millions of dollars in back pay and pensions to George Washington’s soldiers. The congressmen could not persuade the 13 states of the shaky union to give them the power to raise so much as a penny in taxes. Meanwhile, inflation ravaged the millions of paper dollars issued by Congress until "not worth a Continental" became a wry synonym for worthlessness.

The Treaty of Paris rescued America from these embarrassments. On December 2, 1783, when news of the treaty reached Philadelphia, elation swept the city. The woes of the present receded and people began remembering the Revolution’s glory days. That unforgettable first week in July, 776, when Congress defiantly ratified Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence even though they knew a huge British fleet and army were about to attack New York. The wild excitement of the last week of that tumultuous year, when General Washington’s do or die victories at Trenton and Princeton rescued Philadelphia from capture by a seemingly unbeatable British army. The heroic patience of the suffering army at Valley Forge in the following year and its emergence from that ordeal on the highest imaginable point: Ben Franklin had negotiated an alliance with France!

To celebrate the Treaty of Paris, the Pennsylvania Assembly voted to erect a triumphal arch that spanned Market Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets. On it were thirteen paintings by Charles Willson Peale. Some honored General Washington and the alliance with France. Others hailed the future prosperity of the United States. The arch soon became the centerpiece of a boisterous celebration, with fireworks, oratory, parading soldiers and martial music.

On September 10, 2008, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts launched a visual celebration of the Treaty of Paris, in collaboration with the American Revolution Center. It is a veritable feast of historic paintings and fascinating artifacts that bring the Revolution to life in all its variety and drama. On September 12, Tom Fleming spoke on "The Mind and Heart of the Indispensable Man, George Washington." He was joined by Peter Lillbach, who has written a fascinating book, The Sacred Fire, about Washington’s religious faith.

Swat – a land of pristine beauty, a prime tourist destination, a celebrated seat of learning, music and melody through the ages and the centre of the glorious Gandhara civilisation – is lost to war.

Known as 'Udyana' (garden) in the Hindu scriptures, the valley has turned into a hotbed of violence since Maulana Fazlullah, a firebrand cleric-turned-Taliban commander, started propagating extremist religious messages through an illegal FM radio station in July 2006, and the Taliban took over.

Audio shops, girls' schools and public places were attacked, killing and injuring hundreds of innocent people. Fazlullah's militants did not even spare Buddhist statues, monasteries and rock carvings, as they viewed these sites as being the remnants of an infidel civilisation whose obliteration would give them a high place in paradise.