The Prince of Wales has told "Kindertransport" refugees how "incredibly proud" he felt of his grandmother for sheltering Jewish refugees when the Second World War broke out.

Prince Charles met a member of the "Kinder" - now elderly citizens - and their families over tea at a reunion in north west London, to mark the 70th anniversary of the decision to allow thousands of children into Britain from Nazi-occupied Europe.

In a short speech to the gathering, he told how his paternal grandmother, Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece, took in a Jewish family when she was living in Athens.
He said: "That's one reason why I wanted to be with you today because my grandmother would have approved. She was a very remarkable lady."

He said he was "incredibly proud a member of my family did the right thing.

Far from being a hated symbol of military occupation, Hadrian's Wall was the business opportunity of a lifetime for ancient Britons, archaeologists have discovered.

The 73-mile long Roman wall, built in AD 122 to defend the Roman Empire from hostile Celtic tribes, created a thriving economy to serve the occupying army, according to aerial surveys.

Farmers, traders, craftsmen, labourers and prostitutes seized the occasion to make money from the presence of hundreds of Roman troops.

The letter, which sets up a new rendezvous point for the fleet, was written 20 months before the Battle of Trafalgar at a time when Nelson's fleet were blockading the French inside Toulon.

The secret order reads: "Rendezvous No 99 - Twelve leagues due West from Cape Corse. To be added to the list of Rendezvous."

It is addressed from "Victory at the Madalina Islands, 13th February 1804" and sent to Sir Richard Bickerton bart, Rear Admiral of the White" aboard HMS Kent.

Nelson set up a supply base at what are now called the Maddelena Islands off the Northern tip of Sardinia after the Napoleonic war resumed in May 1803.

His secret order is significant because it shows how he was operating an open blockade of the French.

They have hailed as a hero Yury Trushyochkin, 70, a former Soviet officer who claimed last week to have fired the missile which brought down Mr McCain's plane as it flew over a bridge near Hanoi in 1967.

Mr Trushyochkin served in a mixed Soviet-North Vietnamese missile unit during the Vietnam war, which was guarding the bridge near a power plant under attack from a 20-strong strike force whose pilots included Mr McCain. The Soviet-made missile blew off a part of one wing of Mr McCain's plane and he ejected upside down moments before it crashed - suffering injuries which have plagued him ever since.

"This sincere Cold War hero is now living in St Petersburg and thinks he simply did his duty," the St Petersburg Communist group declared. "But in reality he defended the USSR and Russia, helping to guard socialism in Vietnam and teach a lesson to the future Number One enemy of Russia."

In an interview last week Mr Trushyochkin told a tabloid newspaper that he had been responsible for firing the missile, and had glimpsed Mr McCain soon after he was pulled from the lake in which he landed. "His hands were covered in blood and he was in a state of shock," he said.

The American, who failed in his attempted to run for the White House earlier this month, spent more than five years as a prisoner of war, and Mr Trushyochkin said he was glad he lost to Barack Obama.

Red Army Faction leader Christian Klar, aged 56, is serving five life terms but will have served the minimum required 26 years by January.

The court in Stuttgart said there were no grounds to keep him in custody.

The group, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, targeted bankers, businessmen, judges and US servicemen.

More than 30 people were killed by the gang, before it disbanded 10 years ago.

The Europeana website was attracting more than 10 million hits an hour - more than double the number which had been anticipated.

The site includes paintings, photos, films, books, maps and manuscripts from 1,000 museums, national libraries and archives across Europe.

It is expected to reopen in December after technological improvements.

In Washington, Kara Weipz of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group told reporters Libya had "finally fulfilled 100% justice" by paying compensation.

Libya paid $1.5bn (£1bn) in October into a fund for victims of the 1988 bombing, which killed 270 people.

It cleared the last hurdle to restoring full diplomatic relations with the US.

"Until today, Libyan officials claimed it had long fulfilled justice to the families," said Ms Weipz, whose brother was killed on the flight.

"For many years, we were the forgotten victims of terrorism. Today is historic because Libya has finally fulfilled 100% justice to the Pan Am 103 families."

Senator Frank Lautenberg, who has acted as a representative for relatives of the victims, praised Tripoli's transfer of the final payment.

"We're proud to announce we won, and Libya has been held accountable," he said.

KIEV, Ukraine: Church bells tolled, candles flickered under falling snow and national flags, adorned with black ribbons, flew in the Ukrainian capital Kiev Saturday as the country marked the anniversary of the start of a Soviet-era famine that killed millions.

But the solemn events were overshadowed by fierce opposition from Russia. The Kremlin is resisting Ukraine's campaign to win international recognition of the 1932-33 tragedy as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation, saying other ethnic groups also suffered.

The anniversary of Holodomor — or Death by Hunger as it is known here — is traditionally marked in late November, when the food shortages began.

No matter how careful he is, sooner or later President-elect Barack Obama is likely to make a bum nomination or two.

"It's unavoidable," says Paul Light, a New York University professor and expert on presidential transitions.

It may happen because a nominee has lied about his or her background to Obama's team, or because something that was dismissed as minor turns out to be a big deal.

Whatever the reason, "These things are likely to pop up at any time — even though they are trying their darndest to make sure that doesn't happen," says George Mason University Professor James Pfiffner, another expert on transitions.

As Barack Obama considers whether to include former rival Hillary Clinton in his Cabinet, the president-elect is emulating his role model, Abraham Lincoln, who boldly put political adversaries in his Cabinet, hoping to forge a strong presidency through the heat of conflicting ideas.

But historians argue that Lincoln's model, described in the best-selling book "Team of Rivals," by Doris Kearns Goodwin, is a high-risk strategy for Obama, one that could alienate his allies and sow dysfunction inside the White House. Few modern presidents have made political adversaries Cabinet appointees, in this view, and even fewer could make the arrangement work.

"I question the entire concept of 'Team of Rivals' being sound," said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian and author. In Obama's case, he said, "It's not organic, and it's not realistic. It's a very ethereal idea being played on a high level, and it's based on a false historical analogy."

Indeed, one historian argued in a newspaper column that Goodwin's book sidesteps the rancor inside Lincoln's Cabinet and does not mention that the president himself struggled to control the turmoil.

"The Cabinet dynamics were kind of poisonous," said Matthew Pinsker, a Civil War specialist at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. "It's nothing I think President Obama would want to emulate in his administration."

Goodwin said yesterday that there is no question the dissent Lincoln faced at times bordered on dysfunction, but added: "I think the most important thing to realize about the outcome of Lincoln's decision is that it produced the three goals that mattered the most: He won the war, he saved the union, and he ended slavery. That's the fun part that I enjoyed, to see how complicated it was in that inner circle."

The thaw in the resentful relationship between the most powerful woman in the Democratic Party and her younger male rival began at the party’s convention this summer, when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave such a passionate speech supporting Senator Barack Obama that his top aides leapt out of their chairs backstage to give her a standing ovation as she swept past....

Few are predicting that this new relationship born of mutual respect and self-interest will grow into a tight bond between the new president and the woman who will be the public face of his foreign policy around the world, though some say it is not impossible. They argue that a close friendship between those in those powerful roles is useful but not essential, and is not a predictor of the success of the nation’s chief diplomat.

While James A. Baker III was extraordinarily close to the first President Bush and is widely considered one of the most successful recent secretaries of state, Dean Acheson was not a friend of President Harry S. Truman and Henry A. Kissinger did not particularly like Richard M. Nixon.

“Two of the nation’s greatest secretaries of state in the modern period, Dean Acheson and Henry Kissinger, were not personally close but were intellectually bonded to their presidents,” said Walter Isaacson, the author of a biography of Mr. Kissinger and of the book “The Wise Men,” a history of America’s postwar foreign policy establishment. “I think that Obama and Clinton could form a perfect partnership based on respect for each other’s view of the world.”

Colin L. Powell, President Bush’s first-term celebrity secretary of state, would appear to be a cautionary tale for Mrs. Clinton since his relationship with the president was strained, and he left office an unhappy man. But Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush’s second-term secretary of state, is generally not viewed as having the success her unusually tight bond with the president might have engendered.

In the Obama-Clinton relationship, advisers say, the relatively smooth nature of their talks about the secretary of state job indicate that both, for now, have a working chemistry. The advisers say that Mr. Obama was clearly interested in bringing a rival under his wing, and that he also recognized that Mrs. Clinton had far more discipline and focus than her husband.

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