The Pakistani Army ran training camps for a Muslim extremist group, at least until recently, with the acceptance of the US Central Intelligence Agency, according to France’s foremost anti-terrorist expert.

Jean-Louis Bruguière, who retired in 2007 after 15 years as chief investigating judge for counter-terrorism, reached this conclusion after interrogating a French militant who had been trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and arrested in Australia in 2003.

In a book in his counter-terrorism years, Mr Bruguière says that Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was set up to fight India over disputed Kashmir territory, had become part of the international Islamic network of al-Qaeda.

Silverware from the sunken ship apparently was kept by a Navy diver after salvaging

Lime-encrusted silverware taken from the officers' mess aboard the USS Arizona during World War II have been pulled from an auction.

Cowan's Auctions, a Cincinnati resale house specializing in American historical and military items, had planned to sell the 24 pieces on Dec. 9, with initial estimates of $15,000 to $20,000. But when Navy attorneys got wind of the planned sale, they put pressure on the auction house.

A Navy spokesman, Bill Doughty, noting that lawyers were reviewing the matter, explained that "U.S. Navy craft and their associated contents remain the property of the U.S. Navy unless expressly abandoned or title is transferred by appropriate U.S. government authority."

Property rights are established in the U.S. Constitution and international maritime law.

"USS Arizona is considered one of our nation's most sacred and hallowed historical sites," Doughty said. "Many of the 1,177 crewmen who died on Dec. 7, 1941, aboard the ship are entombed in the ship at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. We cherish the memory of the sailors who sacrificed in World War II. The significance of USS Arizona should never be diminished or cheapened."

Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue isn't out until Tuesday but leaked excerpts reported by the Associated Press are already setting off denials from John McCain's old campaign staff. In response to the Palin's reported claim that she received a bill from the McCain campaign to pay for expenses related to her own vetting process, a McCain official told CNN that the story is "one hundred percent untrue." The official added: "All those bills are from her personal attorney Thomas Van Flein, mostly relating to the Troopergate investigation and other ethics investigations. It is not legal to pay for those investigations out of general election funds, even if the campaign was so inclined." A spokeswoman for Palin, Meg Stapleton, wouldn't confirm whether the claim was even in the book as it is still embargoed before its release.

U.S. researchers said Thursday they have located the remains of two high-tech Japanese submarines that were scuttled by the U.S. Navy off Hawaii in 1946 to prevent the technology from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War.

One of the vessels was the largest non-nuclear sub ever built and had the ability to sail 1 1/2 times around the globe without refueling. Called the I-14, the behemoth was 400 feet long, 40 feet high, and carried a crew of 144. It was designed to launch two folding-wing bombers on kamikaze missions against U.S. cities such as New York and Washington, D.C., although the end of the war prevented such attacks.

The second was an attack submarine called the I-201, whose design foreshadowed the sleek submarines of today, and which was thought to be twice as fast as any American subs. It never fought in the war either.

Former President George W. Bush, speaking today in Dallas, listed education, economic growth, freedom, and global health as the policy areas that will be the focus of a future institute bearing his name at Southern Methodist University, The Dallas Morning News reported. The institute will be part of the $300-million presidential center, which will include a library and museum. In his comments today, Mr. Bush attempted to ease faculty concerns that the institute would be too partisan, saying it will be "independent and nonpartisan." The university also announced that James W. Guthrie, an education professor and director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt University, will join Southern Methodist's faculty and become the institute's first senior scholar.

Former President George W. Bush has chosen the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia to conduct a "comprehensive oral history of his presidency."

The Miller Center and Bush's foundation announced the George W. Bush Oral History Project this morning, saying the university's scholars will do 100 interviews with the Bush Cabinet and outside advisers during the 5-year project.

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, a law enforcement official told CBS News Friday.

Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning, a White House official told the Associated Press. The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Without confirming details of the decision, President Barack Obama said it was a legal and national security matter. "I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subjected to the most exacting demands of justice," Mr. Obama said at a joint news conference in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

NEWARK -- One of the artifacts brought out from behind the heavy, six-inch doors of a basement vault in Newark is an oil portrait of Arthur T. Vanderbilt, New Jersey’s chief justice from 1948-1957.

Still stored there are original letters from the Olmsted Brothers, famed park designers, and even original art-deco door knockers, shaped as human figures and once gripped by Newark visitors to an "Egyptian-style" courthouse razed in 1907.

The black-doored vaults along a darkened corridor inside the Essex County Hall of Records in Newark provide a home for historical documents and assorted artifacts that were once scattered in offices throughout the county.

The items — many of them portals into the lives of the Essex County of old — have been digitally captured within the past year, making for quite a picture show in the offices of Frank J. DelGaudio, the county risk manager in charge of records modernization.

"We can just pull up anything back to 1682," DelGaudio said.

Today's typical union member is a woman working in the public sector, whereas 25 years ago it might have been a man with a factory job, according to a report that looks at the changing face of organized labor.

The report, published by the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, starts its analysis in 1983, when federal surveys first started collecting details about union members.

By analyzing those records, author John Schmitt found that more than 45 percent of today's unionized workers are women, up from 35 percent in 1983...

... Union membership in absolute and percentage terms has declined over the last quarter century.

Schmitt said that in 1983, 20.5 million people, or 23.3 percent of the U.S. workforce, was unionized.

In 2008, 17.8 million people, or 13.7 percent of the labor force, worked under union contracts.

At 75, Charles Manson has spent more than half his life in prison for masterminding the notorious Helter Skelter killing spree that left actress Sharon Tate and six others dead in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969.

Manson spent his 75th birthday this week at the state prison in Corcoran, California, where he is isolated from the rest of the prison population. Some records indicate that Manson was born on November 12, but Manson's current associates and California corrections records indicate his birthday was on Wednesday, November 11.

While his appearance has changed significantly from the wide-eyed cult leader who appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1969, Manson continues to wield influence over some who consider him a wizened messenger.

LGBT activists -- and progressives generally, regardless of sexuality -- have been waiting for months now to hear about a timetable for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which forbids gays from openly serving. And with good reason; ending the ban was, after all, a campaign promise of President Obama's.

If Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is to be believed -- and given his own sexuality and his stature among Congressional Democrats, on issues like this one, he generally is -- we now have an idea of that timeline.

On Wednesday, Frank told the Advocate's Kerry Eleveld that a repeal is likely to be a part of the Department of Defense authorization bill taken up in Congress next year. "'Don’t ask, don’t tell' was always going to be part of the military authorization," Frank said.

Canada is unveiling a new study guide for would-be citizens that requires much more knowledge of the country's military history, a federal minister said.

At an Ottawa news conference Tuesday timed for the observance of Remembrance Day Wednesday, Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney said the new immigration test will require knowledge of Canada's military achievements in both World Wars, Korea and a myriad of peacekeeping missions, Sun Media reported.

"I think it's scandalous that someone could become a Canadian not knowing what the poppy represents," Kenney said of the 1.5-inch red plastic lapel pins sold each year to commemorate the thousands of World War I Allied soldiers buried in a French cemetery rife with poppies.

LIUYI VILLAGE, YUNNAN PROVINCE -- In a courtyard of her crumbling house, Wu Liuying lifts her favorite pair of shoes from a dusty cardboard box. Hand-sewn from navy-blue cloth, embroidered with pink flowers, they are no bigger than a small child's slippers.

But they slip easily over the gnarled shrunken feet of the 90-year-old Ms. Wu. From the age of 5, her feet were bound tightly with cotton strips, warping them. The four smallest toes folded under the sole, which was squeezed into a high arch, creating a crevasse between the heel and the ball of the foot.

Hers was among the last of countless generations of Chinese women who bound their feet in search of an idealized form of beauty. Though banned in 1912 after the Qing dynasty fell and the Nationalists established a republic, the practice lingered, especially in remote areas of China. A 1928 census in rural Shanxi province found that 18% of women had bound feet; binding also hung on in Liuyi, in the frontier province of Yunnan.

"When the Nationalists came here we would undo our feet in the daytime," says Ms. Wu. "Then, in the night, we would bind them again."

In time the Communist government, which took power in 1949, succeeded in stigmatizing foot-binding as backward and shameful. Today, like Ms. Wu's tumbledown house -- where cobwebs cloak the rotted eaves -- the millennium-old custom is slipping into history. Few of the elderly survivors care to try to explain to their grandchildren how they came to wear such dainty shoes, the agony they endured and what exactly was so sexy about a 10-centimeter foot that -- being hard to clean -- usually gave off a tangy smell and was prone to decay.

"It's out of fashion now," says Ms. Wu...

Police say they have evacuated 3,000 people in Wroclaw, a city in southwestern Poland, after discovering a World War II-era bomb.

Wroclaw police spokesman Pawel Petrykowski says workers found the 1,100-pound bomb Thursday during construction of a new music hall that will go up near the Wroclaw Opera House.

Petrykowski said the area was evacuated, residents were asked to avoid the area and a special crane was brought in to remove the bomb.

A key adviser to Nato forces warned today that Barack Obama risks a Suez-style debacle in Afghanistan if he fails to deploy enough extra troops and opts instead for a messy compromise.

David Kilcullen, one of the world's leading authorities on counter-insurgency and an adviser to the British government as well as the US state department, said Obama's delay in reaching a decision over extra troops had been "messy". He said it not only worried US allies but created uncertainty the Taliban could exploit.

Speaking in an interview with the Guardian, he compared the president to someone "pontificating" over whether to send enough firefighters into a burning building to put a fire out.

He was speaking as Obama left Washington for a nine-day trip to Asia without announcing a decision on troop numbers. The options being considered by the US have been narrowed down to four: sending 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000, the latter the figure requested by the Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. These would be on top of 68,000 US troops already deployed.

CBS News reports President Obama's trip to Asia will bring his total to 8 foreign trips and 20 countries since becoming president.

"The only other president to come close to Mr. Obama's first-year-in-office globe-trotting numbers is President George H. W. Bush, who took 7 foreign trips to 14 countries."

In addition, as Politico notes, Obama is stopping in Alaska on his way to Asia. It's the only state he hasn't been to since he declared his run for president.

GALESBURG, Ill. — The future of VFW Post 2257 might hinge on the life span of its worn-out, 50-year-old boiler and attendance at weekly bingo games this winter.

Like many Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion posts, Post 2257 in this western Illinois city of 31,000 people is struggling to survive as older members die and younger veterans decide not to join. Nationally, the number of VFW posts declined from 8,374 in 2007 to 7,915 as of June, spokesman Jerry Newberry says. The American Legion has 14,150 posts, down from 14,260 two years ago, spokesman John Raughter says.

More than a building is at stake here and at other troubled posts, says quartermaster Mike Lummis, who keeps the books for Post 2257. VFW and American Legion posts, both founded to fight for veterans' benefits and promote patriotism, quickly became havens where veterans could talk with peers about experiences and problems, members say. Beyond the physical posts, both groups have long been vital presences in communities, marching proudly in parades, placing flags in cemeteries and sponsoring scholarships and Little League teams.

Some younger vets buy into the misconception "that all this organization is is a bunch of old warriors sitting around blowing smoke and in a lot of places drinking beer and telling war stories," Lummis says. "Well, that's not correct at all" — especially at Post 2257, where zoning rules bar alcohol sales.

"We look after our fellow vets whose lives were never the same and the ones fighting in the current wars and the wars that will come," Lummis says.

As national membership in the VFW dips — down from a peak of 2.5 million in 1992 to 1.5 million as of June — VFW posts have to change, Newberry says. Local posts are encouraged to welcome female vets, offer family friendly programs such as child care and to make veterans who are having trouble with civilian life feel comfortable. "You have to give them a reason to join," he says...

An archaeological excavation has uncovered the mummy of a young priestess, a member of the elite, with several precious items dating from the period of 300-450 AD in Cahuachi, Peru.

According to a report in Travel Culture History News, the mummy was found inside a series of rooms between the Great Pyramid and what is known as the Orange Pyramid.

The building would have formed a small temple that had 4 columns holding up its roof.

Giuseppe Orefici, director of the Nasca Project, said that the archaeologists had to remove a layer or reeds and ropes that covered the burial.

The body appeared to have been painted and found with an additional vertebra added.

She also had slightly deformed forearms, apparently something self-inflicted by having the arms extended vertically for long periods of time - perhaps as a result of a praying.

She was wrapped in finely woven fabric that had patterns of orcas (killer whales) found in the southern pacific and contained obsidian arrow heads.

Governor Deval Patrick today assailed the speaking invitation that a group of UMass Amherst faculty extended to a convicted terrorist, even after criticism from state and university leaders scuttled earlier plans for a speech.

"I am more than a little disappointed about this invitation having been extended,'' Patrick said at a State House news conference. I fully get the point, and respect the idea of free speech. But I think it is a reflection of profound insensitivity to continue to try and have this former terrorist on the campus.

Ray Luc Levasseur, the founder and former leader of the radical revolutionary group United Freedom Front, is scheduled to speak Thursday night. An earlier invitation for him to speak at a library symposium was canceled last week amid pressure from Patrick's office and from family members of victims of his group's attacks, which included the April 1976 blast on the third floor of the Suffolk County Courthouse that injured two dozen people...

... Levasseur was released from federal prison in Atlanta in 2004 after serving 18 years for his involvement in the radical group, which plotted a series of bombings and bank robberies along the East Coast between 1976 and 1984.

In 1989, after the longest criminal trial in Massachusetts history, Levasseur avoided additional jail time when he was acquitted by a federal jury of attempting to overthrow the government by force.

The group's followers were also convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper, Phil Lamonaco, and linked to a 1982 shootout with Massachusetts state troopers. Police groups and the trooper's widow have pledged to protest Levasseur's speech.

Levasseur originally was invited to the university on the 20th anniversary of his 1989 acquittal to speak at a forum discussing response to social and political unrest during the 1960s.

Frankfurt, Germany - Yesterday, Marlene Muehlmann saw the Berlin Wall tumble down.

Along with tens of thousands of young people from around the world, she decorated one of 1,000 giant dominoes erected along the strip that once divided East and West Germany and then toppled to commemorate the end of the cold war.

"I knew everything already, how the border was," says Marlene, a 9th-grader who lives in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg, not far from where the wall was."The parents in half the class had something to do with it." She knew that her mother had been barred from taking her high school exam because of her parents' church activities. She knew, too, that her friend's grandfather was put in jail when he tried to escape, only to be denounced by a friend. [Editor's note: The original misstated how her mother left East Germany.]...

... In the Black Forest village of Ichenheim, near the French border, Tobias Geiser knew little of his country's eastern half until his teacher sent him on a historical scavenger hunt. After months of interviews, he and fellow students built a Trivial Pursuit of sorts about the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) history.

His verdict?"The wall still exists in people's heads," says Tobias, whose project won third place in a national history competition"We hope that that can happen if the economy in the east improves."

Study: Kids have rosy view of east

Last year, a study stunned Germans by revealing not only how little youths know of the GDR, but how many still view it as a cozy, socially just society. Two decades after unification, children's views of their country's second dictatorship still hinges on whether they grew up in the east or in the west.

"We still have a country that's divided into two," says Monika Deutz-Schroeder, co-author of"Social Paradise or Stasi State? The GDR seen by schoolchildren – an East-West comparison."

Conducted with 5,219 schoolchildren in Berlin, Brandenburg, Bavaria, and North Rhine Westphalia, Ms. Deutz-Schroeder's survey showed the disparities: Only 57 percent of young people from East Germany approved of the Federal Republic's political system as opposed to 83 percent from West Germany...

... History minus the ideology

Experts tend to agree that too little time is devoted to teaching GDR history – but note that it typically takes two decades for history to be absorbed and taught without ideological twists.

"Until the wall came down, there was no GDR history that wasn't ideologically tainted," Professor Moser says."We need teaching materials."