Prince Charles and Gordon Brown have joined presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy to take part in commemorations of the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

Both men this morning attended a service of remembrance at the Bayeux Cathedral in honour of those who fought and died on June 6 1944, when some 150,000 allied troops landed in occupied France in an offensive which would end World War II in Europe.

They then gathered at the Franco American-led remembrance service set amidst the graves of thousands of dead US servicemen in Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, France.

Chinese police turned out in force yesterday to smother any commemoration of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago, but thousands lit candles in Hong Kong in memory of the victims.

The anniversary sparked a fresh row between the US and China over the fate of the victims the Chinese authorities would prefer to forget.

The diplomatic spat broke out when Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, urged Beijing to name the victims of the massacre and release all those still imprisoned in connection with the student-led demonstrations. She called for a dialogue with the victims’ families and an end to harassment of those who took part.

China responded angrily, denouncing Mrs Clinton for crude meddling. Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: “The US remarks, which disregard the facts, make groundless accusations against the Chinese Government. We express strong dissatisfaction [about] that. We urge the US to put aside its political prejudices and correct its mistakes so as to refrain from undermining bilateral relations.”

The U.S. government will not use eminent domain to seize people's land for a permanent Flight 93 memorial and instead will renew negotiations with landowners near the terrorist crash site in Somerset County, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Friday.

Until Friday, the National Park Service had planned to seize the remaining land that's needed for a $58 million, 2,200-acre memorial and national park at the crash site -- an extremely rural area 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., accompanied Salazar Friday as they met with families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, fatal hijacking and landowners in Shanksville.

The meeting also focused on what still needs to be done for the memorial to be completed by 2011, in time for the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

The Observer, a Sunday paper in England, confessed to a series of geographical blunders:

Crossed consonants: the accidental substitution of an"r" for an"x" led to the incorrect labelling of Paros and Antiparos as"Paxos" and"Antipaxos" in our map of"Greece's Hidden Corners" (Escape, 10 May), thus relocating the latter from the Ionian to the Aegean sea.

And, furthermore, the capital of Turkey is Ankara, not Istanbul, as we said in"'Free holiday' scams abroad will catch out 400,000 Brits" (Cash, last week).

TS Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, so we were not technically correct in"Revealed: the remarkable tale of TS Eliot's late love affair" (Review, last week) when we described him as having"Mississippi roots", suggesting he hailed from the Magnolia State. However, the Mississippi River meets the Missouri River near St Louis.

In 2007, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette dedicated an editorial to the importance of geography after its" cartographic ignorance" caused an error:

NO WONDER geography needs more emphasis, not less, in Arkansas schools.
We ourselves are an embarrassing case in point: We got our past and current African horrors mixed up in Monday's editorial. Robert Mugabe is the dictator who's presided over the ruination of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, rather than Rwanda, formerly the Belgian trusteeship of Ruanda-Urundi, the scene of a genocide that preceded the one in Darfur, a region of Sudan, formerly the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

The error was entirely our own and not that of our geography teacher in grade school or the old Book of Knowledge, the twin and wholly estimable sources of whatever geographical knowledge we still retain. The map of Africa has changed wildly since we had to draw it and memorize all the capitals back in class, which is no excuse for our mistake.

Rather, our cartographic ignorance is one more strong argument for emphasizing geography, along with history, as a separate discipline in elementary school...

This year has already seen a couple notable errors of geography. One favorite is from Slate:

In an April 7"XX Factor" post, E.J. Graff originally wrote that she wanted to run up to Burlington, Vt., to kiss every legislator who voted in favor of gay marriage. Vermont legislators work out of the state capital, Montpelier.

But this one from the Canadian Press is the best of ’09 so far:

The Canadian Press moved a story April 3 that erroneously reported The Wilkins Ice Shelf was originally part of Jamaica. In fact the Ice Shelf, located on the western side of the Antarctic, was originally the size of Jamaica.

A school in the Liverpool suburb of Crosby has axed history and geography from its curriculum. St Michael's Church of England High will stop teaching history from September, with geography dropped one year later. An integrated humanities GCSE will combine elements of both subjects with aspects of sociology and economics.

The school, which has 819 pupils on its books, has denied it ditched the traditional subjects as a means of improving its GCSE pass rate. The school said a decline in students wishing to study the subjects to examination level was behind the move.

Parents are understood to be concerned with the timing of the announcement – which came after Year 9 pupils had submitted 'options' forms – lessons to continue studying to examination level. Students wishing to study GCSE history have been told they will be unable to do so in school hours.

Headteacher Yvonne Sharples admitted history, taken at GCSE level by only a third of teenagers nationally,"was not everybody's cup of tea".

She said:"We take every opportunity to ensure there is a balance of academic and vocational subjects on offer. Inevitably, not every student will get their first choice. This year one particular subject only had six students wishing to study it. We would be heavily criticised by the local authority for allowing such a small group to be part of our curriculum. However, such is the commitment of the school and the teacher concerned [that] we are prepared to offer these young people the opportunity to study their chosen subject as an extra-curricular option."

A source close to the school told the Crosby Herald the decision to axe subjects could be a way of"massaging" A-C grades. In 2007 only 23% of students achieved five A* to C grades including Maths and English, rising to 43% last year.

The source said:"All the kids got their options sheets and filled in what subjects they wanted to study to GCSE. The forms were returned but now the school has pulled subjects. It's really bad management – you can't just tell the kids that they can't study their chosen subjects. A lot of parents are fuming. They think of history as a traditional subject. There is a national trend of axing harder subjects from the curriculum as a way of massaging a school's GCSE A-C grades."

Under the proposed humanities syllabus, students could study aspects of politics and history, such as student tuition fees reform. Aspects of geography would emerge in issues such as consumer waste and citizenship.

In one of its 10,000 daily press releases, missives and proclamations, the Obama Administration crowed Monday that The Prez is "proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration."

Take off the Pink Medal of Honor, Team O: You forgot about Roberta Achtenberg. As in the former SF Supe who Bill Clinton nominated to be assistant HUD czarina just days after taking office. That's well within the 100 days.

A White House official called Achtenberg Tuesday morning to profusely apologize. The ground-breaker was cool with it, figuring it slipped their mind.

When confronted with this point, a White House spokesman said Tuesday:

"President Obama remains the first president to have openly LGBT candidates confirmed by the Senate during the first 100 days of an Administration. " True that. Roberta was confirmed after 100 days.

Oh, Roberta is being too nice, so we'll say it: How could Team O forget someone who headed their transition team on HUD and homelessness. D'oh! But Achtenberg prefers to think big picture...and how that big picture has changed for LGBT folks in 16 years:

Writing in Sunday’s Washington Post, Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and Bush, slammed Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice for invoking what he called “the White House 9/11 trauma defense” — namely, the shock of 9/11 was so great as to justify all and any actions taken in the name of national defense. Clarke called the decisions on interrogations, detentions, and Iraq were all “wrong,” and the White House panic proved that Cheney and company had simply been ignoring the warning signs:

Cheney’s admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Speaking at the National Press Club today, Cheney struck back at Clarke. When asked about Clarke’s argument, Cheney — once again — invoked the “burning ashes” of 9/11 and the victims who leaped to their deaths from the World Trade Center. Then, quite succinctly, Cheney pinned the entire blame for 9/11 on Clarke:

CHENEY: You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it. The fact is that we did what we felt we had to do, and if I had to do it all over again, I would do exactly the same thing.

Watch it:

When the moderator reminded Cheney that Clarke had repeatedly warned the administration about al Qaeda’s determination to attack the U.S., Cheney snarkily replied, “That’s not my recollection, but I haven’t read his book.”

In fact, it was Cheney who “missed” the warning signs, not Clarke. New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s book, “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,” reprinted some of Clarke’s emphatic e-mails warning the Bush administration of the al Qaeda threat throughout 2001:

“Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack” (May 3)

“Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot” (May 23)

“Bin Ladin’s Networks’ Plans Advancing” (May 26)

“Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent” (June 23)

“Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” (June 25)

“Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks” (June 30)

“Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays” (July 2)

Similarly, Time Magazine reported in 2002 that Clarke had an extensive plan to “roll back” al Qaeda — a plan that languished for months, ignored by senior Bush officials:

Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. … In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, “Response to al Qaeda: Roll back.” … The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush.

Cheney needs to check his “recollections” before blaming former employees for the single most devastating attack in American history.

LENOX, Mass - It's one of the largest and rarest collections of Civil War memorabilia in the entire country. And soon, it could be yours.

"This is probably one of the hardest things that we had to do, emotionally," said Eastover Resort owner Ticki Winsor.

Eastover Resort in Lenox is the home of the Civil War Museum. But because of the bad economy, Winsor is forced to sell the entire property, including everything in the museum.

"I feel that when you have something of this magnitude, of this interest to others, that it should be seen. So we decided, with great emotion, that we would sell it," said Winsor.

It's all being auctioned off in August. There's already huge interest from people and museums across the country.

Obama ... twisted history when, for example, he mentioned how “Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” He said: “In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, ‘The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.’ ” That made the treaty sound like a celebration of American-Muslim partnership when in reality it was a treaty whereby the U.S. paid substantial bribes to the ruler of Tripoli in return for a cessation of attacks on American shipping by his corsairs. Tripoli didn’t keep its promises, and the result was America’s first overseas conflict — the Barbary Wars fought against the Muslim states of North Africa.

Should Obama have summarized the real — as opposed to the air-brushed — history? Probably not. His point wasn’t to settle historical accounts but to put the best face forward to the Muslim world, and he did that, while still tactfully criticizing Muslim countries and defending the United States.

White-gloved archivists digging through brittle pages inside metal file drawers at the St. Louis circuit clerk's office have unlocked never-before told stories of looting, betrayal and slavery in the years following the Civil War.

Now these rare documents, unearthed during a 10-year preservation project, will be available to anyone who wants to read about how Missourians attempted to bring law and order after the chaos of war.

"This is a treasure trove of information, most of which has never been seen by historians," said Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who oversees the state archives. "These cases are attempting to right the wrongs that people saw in those years."

More than 11,200 court cases, from 1866 to 1868, were preserved and archived with the help of a $330,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

HOHENWALD, Tenn.—Collateral descendants of Meriwether Lewis have unveiled a Web site as part of their campaign to exhume and examine the American explorer’s remains in hopes of determining conclusively how he died.

The Web site, www.SolvetheMystery.org, explains the Lewis family’s more than decade-long quest to gain federal permission for the exhumation as well as a Christian reburial. Since Lewis’ death in 1809, speculation has churned about whether he committed suicide or was killed.

The Web site also gives biographical information about Lewis, provides an overview of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, introduces visitors to the Lewis family, and encourages Americans to join the Solve the Mystery effort by writing letters to the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The department’s National Park Service controls the land in Tennessee where Lewis is buried.

“The truth-seeking campaign of the Lewis family repeatedly has been stalled by the National Park Service. We are asking the public to help us clear the way for exhumation of Meriwether Lewis’ remains, along with a scientific study of his remains and a Christian reburial,” Lewis descendant Howell Lewis Bowen of Charlottesville, Va., said.

In early May, White House Counsel Greg Craig circulated a memo inside the West Wing. Part of a series of memos on protocol, it explained how to deal with writers researching books and articles on the White House. (Craig's unsurprising instructions: Clear interview requests with the press office.) While the memo didn't mention any journalists by name--and while there are currently no fewer than half a dozen major reporters under contract to write books about the nascent Obama presidency and the 2008 campaign, any of whom could conceivably end up embarrassing the administration--there is one person in particular the White House is undoubtedly nervous about: Bob Woodward.

Since the inauguration, the Washington Post legend has been quietly reporting a new book on the Obama White House. "I'm in the preliminary stages of working on it," Woodward confirmed to me by phone recently. "I'm working on it and making progress."

Officially, the White House says it is not adopting a press strategy to respond to Woodward. Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that the Craig memo "was not issued in relation to any inquiry related to a specific reporter or author." Still, there is reason to think that Woodward might make the administration particularly anxious. "Every White House is wary of Woodward, " says New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker, who worked alongside him at the Post. What's more, Obama's White House is known to hate process stories, exactly the sort of exhaustive, in-the-room descriptions of high-level debates at which Woodward excels. And, even worse, Woodward has some extra motivation to fill his next book with big scoops. His fourth and final Bush book, The War Within, sold just 159,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, far below his third Bush installment, State of Denial, which sold more than half a million. "The last time I talked to him about books, earlier this year, he had been lamenting the fact his last Bush book didn't sell as well," one of Woodward's friends told me.

And an especially hungry Bob Woodward is especially bad news if you're one of the people being written about.

I went to the square at noontime, expecting to see pretty much what we saw last night: the square off limits, people walking along the roadside or staring at the flag and Mao's giant portrait.

I was really shocked to see the square itself open to the public during the day. Or, as I realized later, open to the "public." There were thousands of people on the square, but there was something odd about the scene. I realized by the end of the afternoon that this crowd was deliberate, and the casual afternoon at Tian'anmen was as orchestrated as the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic games.

Everyone going into the square was funneled through a security tent, just like for the Olympics. A young woman scrounged through my purse, looking closely (in contrast to the subway screeners' half-asleep attitude) at my wallet, my phone, my brush... She asked for my passport, and I showed her the photocopies of the name page and the current visa page.

I moved to the metal-wanding line. But then a very stern, no-nonsense, non-English-speaking guard again demanded my passport (I feigned ignorance and said in English that I already showed my passport). A little scuffle later, he looked at my papers, called his superior over, scoured my purse again, and finally begrudgingly let me through.

Once "inside", it looked really weird. There were collections of people in yellow shirts, pink shirts, purple shirts, turquoise shirts. There were more groups holding like-patterned umbrellas. It seemed like everyone had umbrellas, men and women alike. But the Chinese do like umbrellas on sunny days! There were formations of green uniforms marching around; police trucks driving slowly around the edges, an occasional car blustering through (as usual) the crowd. There were lots of solitary undercover police, just like last night. Many wore black, others in their own street clothes.

Lots of groups were obviously deputized young men who stood around watching, staring, following people like me at least 3 on 1 at any given moment. There were no women in this capacity. There was a clear absence of the usual "oblivious" quality of Chinese crowd movement, where people bump into you, brush against you, or cut in front of you if you happen to be in the path of where they're going. Everyone milling about was acutely aware of everyone else in his space. They seemed to have assigned space. Some deputies also wore group-colored shirts, all wore "badges" with the Chinese flag surrounded in gold, Many looked like the kids who volunteered at the Olympics. Clearly nationalistic. All young. I wondered if they were paid for the day.

I would guess about 85% of people on the square were there officially. You could tell that because the security lines were basically unpopulated, while all the "deputies" just walked around the screeners without being checked. There were very few tourists, foreign or otherwise. There were mostly uniformed and non-uniformed police. Some foreigners were taking pictures, seemingly unmolested. Any footage and photos will be dull-looking; the shots would look "normal". It was just the feeling of intense orchestration and deliberate crowd-building that gave it away. And also a distinct sense of high-tension, which carried around the front of the Forbidden City, but evaporated just around the corners.

The rest of the city was oblivious. Crowds, shopping, shoving, everything perfectly normal, as far as I could see.

A state program that left its mark historically on Ohio for 50 years might fall by the wayside because of budget cuts proposed by the state Senate.

Other budget casualties could include a state office that for two decades has worked to resolve disputes and avoid costly litigation, and another serving Ohio's fast-growing Latino population.

Since its creation in 1959, the Ohio Historical Marker program has erected nearly 1,300 markers where history happened. Examples include the Ohio Statehouse, the trail of Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan in Ohio, and Ohio State University, in honor of Woody Hayes' winning ways.

Each bronze marker costs about $2,000.

Markers already in place would not be removed, but they would not be maintained or replaced if damaged or stolen. No other sites would get markers.

With a budget that rarely saw increases from year to year, Gettysburg park officials struggled for years to keep up with a backlog of necessary maintenance projects.

In August 2006, Pratt told USA Today that time and a tight budget were taking a toll on the battlefield's historic structures and monuments.

"You start to look around, and there's work everywhere that needs to be done. We just don't have the money or people to do those things," Pratt said at the time. "It's a red flag that we're getting behind, and it appears to be getting worse."

But since 2006 - the year Pratt recently described as the park's "low" point in terms of funding shortages and backlogged projects - Gettysburg National Military Park's operating budget has increased by $1,651,000.

That includes $935,155 in the 2008 budget specifically for repair and rehabilitation - up from only $35,570 in 2006.

Senior Israeli officials accused President Obama on Wednesday of failing to acknowledge what they called clear understandings with the Bush administration that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement “freeze.”

The complaint was the latest in a growing rift between the Obama administration and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to move forward to achieve peace in the Middle East. Mr. Obama was in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and is scheduled to address the Muslim world from Cairo on Thursday.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Western media characterize the incident as a brutal government crackdown on peaceful protesters. What does the Chinese government say about it?

Very little. Neither the 1989 protests nor the ensuing massacre is included in Chinese textbooks, and many students today have never heard of these events. For the most part, the government avoids discussing the issue at all. The government does acknowledge that the People's Liberation Army intervened after seven weeks of demonstrations and that people were killed. But the official line is that, rather than crushing a peaceful protest, the military simply defended itself—and the country—against violent counterrevolutionary elements. ("Counterrevolutionary" is used in China in much the same way as "anti-American" in the United States.)

It didn’t have a TV special, book deal or media-friendly pimping from the mayor of New York City, but a 12 million-year-old skull recently unearthed in Spain just might end up actually deserving the label of “missing link.”

The skull possesses a combination of primitive features previously unseen in a primate, along with a flat, anatomically modern face — the earliest such face in the fossil record. These characteristics qualified it as the founding member of a new genus and species, Anoiapithecus brevirostris.

The findings, described Monday in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, follow in the wake of Ida, a fossil lemur whose made-for-TV hype far outpaced its scientific value. But A. brevirostris, despite its lack of fanfare, may be far more significant.

The large house at 619 D St. SE dates to 1795; its windows are boarded up, moss grows on its bricks. The Maples, also known as Friendship House, is one of six locales announced yesterday on the D.C. Preservation League's annual list of "Most Endangered Places."

Since 1996, the league has compiled a list of sites it considers to be of historic, cultural and architectural significance that are threatened by neglect, demolition or other pressures. Some of the previous listings have received more attention.

For example, Battleground National Cemetery, in the 6000 block of Georgia Avenue NW, listed in 2005, will get some improvements through the recently approved federal stimulus package, officials said.

John D. Bellingham, president of the league's board, said that a yearly reminder of the city's past brings needed publicity. "It's an important part of our history," he said. "You can remodel them, but you can't replicate them."

Presidents have submitted just over 150 Supreme Court nominations to the Senate, and about 80% of the nominees have been confirmed. A closer look at the numbers shows that the odds of confirmation depend on some basic political facts. Not surprisingly, fewer nominees--less than 60%--get confirmed when the president's party does not control a majority in the Senate. By contrast, when the same party controls the White House and the Senate, the confirmation rate rises to over 85%.

Two other factors relate to the president's political strength. Professor John Maltese has calculated that when presidents make nominations during their last year in office, or when unelected presidents make nominations after ascending from the vice presidency, confirmation rates again drop below 60%.

All this bodes well for Judge Sotomayor, the nominee of a popular president just beginning his term whose party controls the Senate by a hefty margin. Here is more good news: After studying Supreme Court appointments since 1954, Professors Charles Cameron, Albert Cover and Jeffrey Segal found that "when a strong president nominates a highly qualified, ideological moderate candidate, the nominees passes the Senate in a lopsided, consensual vote."

THE builders of the ancient Mayan temples at Tikal in Guatemala switched to inferior wood a few decades before they suddenly abandoned the city in the 9th century AD. The shift is the strongest evidence yet that Mayan civilisation collapsed because they ran out of resources, rather than, say, disease or warfare.

Researchers led by David Lentz, a palaeoethnobotanist at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, sampled wooden beams and lintels from all six major temples and two palaces within the ancient city of Tikal. The first three temples, built before AD 741, used only large, straight logs of the sapodilla tree - a particularly strong wood that is nevertheless easy to carve with ceremonial inscriptions.

Researchers have discovered a fossilized face and jaw from a previously unknown hominoid primate genus in Spain dating to the Middle Miocene era, roughly 12 million years ago. Nicknamed "Lluc," the male bears a strikingly "modern" facial appearance with a flat face, rather than a protruding one. The finding sheds important new light on the evolutionary development of hominids, including orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans.

In a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Salvador Moyà-Solà, director of the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and colleagues present evidence for the new genus and species, dubbed Anoiapithecus brevirostris. The scientific name is derived from the region where the fossil was found (l’Anoia) and also from its "modern" facial morphology, characterized by a very short face.

‘Legacies of British Slave Ownership’ is a new project launched, today, by a team of historians from UCL (University College London). The aim of the three-year project is to investigate Britain’s debt to slavery and create an ‘Encyclopaedia of British slave owners’, an online database which will identify all slave-owners in the British Caribbean in the 1830s at the time slavery was abolished. It is the first comprehensive attempt to study the extent and significance of slave-ownership in the formation of modern Britain.

Research will be based on the census of slave-owners in the British Empire, which was created by the Slave Compensation Commission in the 1830s in order to effectively manage the distribution of the money paid as compensation to slave-owners following the promulgation of the 1833 Abolition Act. Once the individual slave owners have been successfully identified, researchers will study how slave-related wealth was put to use. The project will aim to gather information about the affiliations, legacies and activities of all British slave-owners and to trace the major companies, art collections and institutions which originated in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery.

This second part of the project will focus on six main interrelated areas in which former British slave-owners may have contributed to the formation of modern Britain. ‘Commercial continuities’ will consider, first of all, the evolution of individual merchant firms and banks which received compensation. Secondly, ‘political affiliations and associational networks’ will explore the political participation of slave-owners in the 1820s and 1830s and trace their descendants’ participation in the politics of Victorian Britain. Thirdly, the project will research the cultural and institutional legacies of British slave-owners, including their role as collectors, philanthropists and founders or participants in new cultural and social institutions. ‘Historical lineages and memories of slavery’ will examine the role of slave-owners and their descendants as writers and historians in the construction of memories of the slavery. Lastly, researchers will study the imperial legacies of slave-owners as investors, administrators and settlers in other colonies outside the British West Indies, as well as their physical legacies in terms of the built environment associated with slave-owners, such as residential and commercial buildings and public monuments.

The 25-year-old Ukrainian Avraham Radbil and 28-year-old Hungarian Zsolt Balla were handed their certificates on Tuesday at the new synagogue in Munich. The ceremony was attended by senior German political figures and Jewish leaders.

The two newly-ordained rabbis were trained at a seminary in Berlin, which began courses in 2005. They have positions awaiting them in the cities of Leipzig and Cologne.

A "small miracle"

The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, called the event a “small miracle” that she would not have “believed possible just a few years ago.”