All this week, Norway is feting a writer who was lucky to escape being shot for his shameless collaboration with the Nazis. Knut Hamsun was either, according to taste, one of the greatest figures in world literature, or a vile old man with a head full of nasty ideas who betrayed his country.

Not many years ago, anyone who went into a Norwegian bookshop and asked for one of Hamsun's books was likely to get a frosty reply from across the counter. And yet he was, to be blunt, the only world-renowned novelist that country has yet produced.

This week, the town of Hamaroey, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where Hamsun grew up, has been celebrating six consecutive "Hamsundagene" (Hamsun Days), with seminars, meetings and exhibitions dedicated to the writer, to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.

The 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script on the artifact is 'unprecedented,' an archaeologist says. Researchers are not yet able to decipher it.

U.S. archaeologists have found an extremely rare 2,000-year-old limestone cup inscribed with 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Although the script itself is not eroded or otherwise degraded, he said, researchers are not yet able to decipher it because the text is in an informal cursive script and is apparently deliberately cryptic. They know it contains the Hebrew word for God, YHWH or Yahweh, indicating it was probably important to the priests who used it in rituals. Gibson expected it to take two to six months to understand its meaning.

In 2003, archaeologists excavating in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores made a discovery that forced scientists to completely rethink conventional theories of human evolution.

They reported the discovery of a new species of human, one that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago, at the same time as modern humans.

But others disagreed, arguing the one-metre-high skeleton was a modern human that suffered from a deformity known as microcephaly.

The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, was exposed as a fraud 30 years ago by British diplomats who were investigating his qualifications.

The science-fiction writer, who invented a religion now followed by celebrities such as Tom Cruise, awarded himself a PhD from a sham “diploma mill” college that he had acquired, the diplomats found.

Such was the climate of fear and paranoia surrounding Scientology that the U.S. believed the sect had sent bogus doctors to declare a high-ranking legal investigator mad and then taken his papers relating to the case.

Scientologists threatened to sue the British Government for libel after it acted in 1968 to ban followers from entering the country to visit the sect’s world headquarters in East Grinstead, West Sussex.

To celebrate their 150th anniversary and its strong naval heritage, Woods’ 100 Old Navy Rum recently launched a project to find out what it means to be a hero for people in the UK today. During the month of June researchers interviewed 1,000 people from across the UK. The results of their research revealed that for 41% of people members of the army and the navy were considered the most heroic. A quarter of those questioned viewed doctors and paramedics as particularly heroic, followed by the police and fire services (23%). You may ask, however, where history fits into the survey...

The second part of the research project was carried out by Naomi Tickle, an international personologist and author of You Can Read a Face Like a Book, who identified the key facial characteristics that epitomise heroism. To test her theory, she applied these characteristics to a portrait of Viscount Horatio Nelson in order to ascertain whether or not he displayed the traits and whether they were common among today’s heroes and leaders. According to Tickle, Nelson had a Roman nose, a square forehead that was also high and sloped back, set back ears, a pointed chin, oval eyebrows and exposed eyelids. The outer corners of his eyes were also lower than the inner corners and his head was wider at the back. All these traits are allegedly symbols of heroism. A Roman nose reveals, for example, management skills and an ability to delegate and oversee people. A pointed chin is a sign of stubbornness and tenacity and oval eyebrows show that Nelson was good at bringing ideas together, organising his thoughts and expressing them clearly.

Plans by German scholars to reprint Adolf Hitler's"Mein Kampf"" as an academic treatise were rejected by the state copyright holders, who said a new edition of the book could fuel support for far-right groups.

The Bavarian authorities this week reaffirmed a 64-year-old ban on the book after the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History, or IFZ, applied for permission to reprint the work. State officials said that extremist groups could have legally promoted the book if the ban had been lifted.

"Scholarly as the aims of the institute are, we won't lift the ban as it may play straight into the hands of the far- right," Horst Wolf, a spokesman for the Bavarian Finance Ministry, the legal guardians of the state's copyright, said today in an interview."Prohibition is recognized and highly regarded by Jewish groups and we mean to keep it that way."

Written by Hitler in 1924 as he languished in a Munich prison, Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, combines autobiography with the Nazi leader's political manifesto. It last rolled off authorized German presses in 1945 before being banned that same year after World War II ended.

For the first time, Leon County Schools is growing closer to a districtwide plan that will ensure more African-American history is taught across multiple subjects throughout the school year.

It comes on the heels of a Tallahassee civic-rights group's relentless pursuit — which has included filed complaints, letters to Gov. Charlie Crist and a filed lawsuit to the state attorney general — for more to be taught.

Black history is being taught already in Leon County. But some school officials admit some teachers do more than others.

The Tallahassee Inter-Civic Council has strongly disagreed with the district's level of commitment to teaching African-American history, especially as a result of the 1994 Florida law that requires school districts to teach black history in all public schools.

A German Jew sent to Britain as a schoolboy to escape Hitler's gas chambers is to be a witness for the prosecution at what is expected to be the last great Nazi war crimes trial.

Kurt Gutmann, 82, has been chosen as one of a handful of co-plaintiffs who will testify against John Demjanjuk, who is accused of taking part in the murders of 27,900 people at the Sobibor extermination camp in occupied Poland.

Kurt’s brother Hans and his mother Jeanette died there in 1942, two of 250,000 Jews killed at the camp.

'It is the last thing I wish for,' said Kurt, a former translator who now lives in Berlin.

'Perhaps I don’t have much more time. But I still want to experience one more thing: just punishment for John Demjanjuk.'

Fatah, the dominant Palestinian movement under Yasser Arafat that has gone from debacle to defeat since his death, begins its first leadership convention in 20 years today.

The big question as more than 2,000 delegates gather in Bethlehem is whether the secular group on which the world pins any remaining hopes for a peace deal with Israel can cast off the taint of corruption, regain its legitimacy and put forward new faces who can take back the ground lost to the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement...

...The group's downturn began with the death of Mr Arafat in 2004, which set the stage for twin disasters under Mr Abbas: the unprecedented loss of parliamentary elections to Hamas in 2006 and the seizure of the Gaza Strip by Hamas the following year.

The White House today described Bill Clinton's surprise visit to North Korea as a "solely private" effort to secure the release of two captive American journalists. But the real story behind the trip very likely goes back to the public diplomacy that then-president Clinton was conducting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il nearly 10 years ago, during Clinton's final months in office.

At the time, the United States and North were tantalizingly close to a deal to stop all North Korean missile exports, and for Pyongyang to cease development, testing, and deployment of missiles. In exchange, the North would get full diplomatic recognition, billions in aid from Washington and Tokyo, and, above all, a visit to Pyongyang by the U.S. president. That's according to an account of the talks given to me by Wendy Sherman, a former senior aide to secretary of state Madeleine Albright, and other officials.

Sherman and other North Korea specialists say Kim was plainly eager for the Clinton visit, which would have given his regime the stamp of legitimacy and a guarantee of security the North Korean leader has long sought. At a secret meeting in Washington in October 2000 between Clinton and Marshal Cho Myong Rok, who was second only to Kim in North Korea, Cho had delivered Kim's personal invitation to the president to visit Pyongyang. Albright's historic visit to Pyongyang a week later was an attempt to secure a deal that would justify such a presidential visit. While in North Korea, the secretary appeared with Kim at a stadium spectacle, during which a mass of performers flipped colored placards that together depicted Kim's Taepodong I missile taking off for its first test in 1998. According to Sherman, who was there, an ebullient and apparently hopeful Kim turned to Albright and said, "That was the first launch of that missile, and it will be the last."

The moment marked a high point for diplomacy between the two countries, a culmination of spotty talks that had been going on since 1994, when Clinton came to an Agreed Framework deal with Pyongyang. Under that 1994 pact, Clinton obtained a commitment to freeze plutonium reprocessing in exchange for aid and a civilian nuclear plant. Notably, that agreement began with a visit by former president Jimmy Carter, which was also described by the White House at the time as private.

But the Clinton-Kim missile talks foundered over Pyongyang's demands that smaller Nodong missiles, used as a deterrent against South Korea and Japan, be fully exempted from the missile moratorium, and Clinton grew otherwise occupied with a final effort at Mideast peace (which also failed). ...

A Cotswolds history buff has unearthed a piece of weaponry believed to be among the rarest ever discovered in Gloucestershire.

Steve Taylor, from Hatherley, stumbled across the treasure, part of an ancient sword handle, while metal detecting on a farm near Cirencester.

The bronze head, which would have been fitted to the end of a Celtic sword to keep the blade in place, is worth about £5,000.

Steve has given the artefact, which dates from 200-400BC, to Cirencester's Corinium Museum as part of a long-term loan arrang- ement.

Museum bosses have described the find as "extremely important" and have given the exhibit pride of place in the facility's Iron Age section.

A vast operation in search of WWII-era bombs in the western French city of Brest on Sunday forced 16,000 people to leave their homes for the day.

About 16,000 residents in Brest were evacuated Sunday to make way for a major operation to rid the northern French city of unexploded ordnance dating from World War II.

Sirens wailed as some 400 police officers and firefighters fanned out to ensure everyone had left the designated security zone in downtown Brest before mine-clearing experts were sent in to begin work.

The evacuation was decided last month and many residents had decided to leave their homes on Saturday and stay with friends during the security sweep.

City officials had set up temporary shelters for evacuees left homeless during the operation from 7:00 am (0500 GMT) to 10:00 pm (2000 GMT).

An important German naval base during World War II, Brest was heavily bombed by Allied forces in August and September 1944.

Experts estimate that some 10 percent of the 30,000 tonnes of explosives that rained on the city during the allied campaign still pose a threat.

The lost Roman city of Altinum has been found in Italy. Sophisticated aerial images released this week reveal fascinating new details about Venice's predecessor, which was abandoned by its citizens and then sank into the lagoon.

After a long search, the ancient city of Altinum -- considered to be the predecessor of Venice -- has been discovered. In a report published this week in Science, archaeologists at the University of Padua also report that the most popular of Venetian tourist attractions, the Grand Canal, was flowing through the Roman trade town as long as 1,500 years ago.

Altinum plays a major role in Venice's history -- it was one of the richest Roman settlements but inhabitants fled before the advance of the armies of Attila the Hun. Then as water levels rose, the abandoned city sank into the lagoon. Its walls remain covered by fields today. And this is why the ancient city has remained undiscovered for such a long time.

On a modern map, Altinum is situated seven kilometers north of Venice, near the Marco Polo airport. It is the only large Roman city in northern Italy and one of the few in Europe that was not buried beneath medieval or modern towns...