A leading Jewish human rights organization says that comparing Arizona's tough new immigration law with Nazi Germany is "inappropriate and irresponsible."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles issued a statement this week expressing its opposition to the Arizona law but denouncing the use of language about the Holocaust, saying there was no need to "demonize opponents, even when they are mistaken, to those whose actions led to history's most notorious crime."

"We don't need on top of everything else invoking imagery that is inappropriate," the center's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said Thursday in a phone interview from Jerusalem. "This type of language is toxic, is not accurate and makes the whole issue more difficult, not less difficult, to resolve."

Before the Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to boycott most city travel to Arizona and future contracts with companies there, Councilman Paul Koretz compared the environment in Arizona now to Germany in the 1930s....

Republican Senate challenger J.D. Hayworth recently bungled World War II history by asserting at a recent meeting with Republicans in Phoenix that the United States never declared war on Adolf Hitler's Germany.

In remarks captured on a YouTube video, Hayworth, a former Arizona congressman, flatly says, "We never formally declared war on Hitler's Germany, and yet we fought the war."

That's incorrect. You can read the formal Dec. 11, 1941, U.S. declaration of war on Germany at this link.

Hayworth made the gaffe in the context of a question about recent uses of military force sans a formal congressional declaration of war, which the U.S. Constitution requires.

"But I would also point out, that if we want to be sticklers, the war that (future President) Dwight Eisenhower led in Europe against the Third Reich was never declared by the United States Congress," Hayworth said. "Recall, the Congress passed a war resolution against Japan. Germany declared war on us two days later. We never formally declared war on Hitler's Germany, and yet we fought the war."...

A Greenwich woman continuing to fight for the return of two 500-year-old paintings seized by Nazis during World War II, currently on display at a California museum, has received the support of that state's attorney general in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a friend-of-the-court brief last week asking the court to consider an appeal by Marei von Saher, who unsuccessfully sued the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for the paintings in 2007.

The pair of 16th-century wood panels were painted by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder and depict Adam and Eve. They were seized, along with other paintings, by the Nazis after von Saher's father-in-law, art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, fled the Netherlands in advance of the Nazi invasion. The museum purchased the paintings close to 40 years ago. They were recently appraised at $24 million.

Von Saher said that she had been instructed by her attorneys not to comment on the case until it is resolved.

Brown's brief argued that California law extended the statute of limitations for heirs of Holocaust victims beyond the usual three-year limit that would apply to von Saher.

A trial court in Los Angeles tossed out the case, ruling that the law was unconstitutional because it interferes with the federal government's authority over foreign policy....

Past clapboard houses with white fences, in a tree-filled yard next to the local high school is an unusual sight: a large sign painted to look like a Confederate flag.

In most other parts of the country the flag is a searingly divisive symbol of racial segregation. But here, it is also a display of pride for the Walpole High School Rebels.

For years, Confederate flags filled the bleachers at football games while fans sang “Dixie,’’ the Old South anthem. Yearbooks were emblazoned with the flag, and a celebrated coach went by the nickname General Lee.

Most of that ended in 1994, when school officials declared the flag an inappropriate symbol and eliminated it as an unofficial team emblem. But affection for the flag has lingered, and in the fall it appeared in the neighboring yard, resurrecting what some say is an uncomfortable era in the school’s history. Games at cozy Turco Memorial Field now come with a disclaimer, read to the crowd to preempt tension and distance the school from the controversial display.

“The Walpole School Committee apologizes to anyone who may be offended by the private citizen who chooses to display a Confederate flag in close proximity to the Walpole High School field,’’ the message goes. “It in no way reflects values that we support.’’...

The CIA had a bag of dirty tricks ready for Saddam Hussein in preparation of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq that included making him look like a pedophile. It also had something similar planned for Osama bin Laden.

The Washington Post blog Spy Talk, citing former CIA officials, said one devious tactic involved creating a video showing the Iraqi strongman purportedly having sex with a teenage boy.

The ex-CIA officials said the idea was then to "flood Iraq with the videos."

The CIA also had a plan to interrupt Iraqi television programming with a fake special news bulletin, and use a Saddam Hussein lookalike to announce he was resigning and handing over the reigns to his elder and erratic son, Uday, Spy Talk reported

A plan to attack Hitler's bunker in 1943 and a 1944 plot involving an assassin who had gained the trust of the Nazi leadership were both cancelled on Stalin's orders, General Anatoly Kulikov told a historical conference in Moscow.

"A plan to assassinate Hitler in his bunker was developed, but Stalin suddenly cancelled it in 1943 over fears that after Hitler's death his associates would conclude a separate peace treaty with Britain and the United States," Russia's RIA news agency quoted Kulikov as saying.

In 1944 the Soviets again plotted to kill Hitler after a potential assassin managed to gain the trust of the Nazi leadership. "A detailed assassination plan was prepared, but Stalin cancelled it again," Kulikov was quoted as saying.

Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945, as Soviet forces closed on Berlin, effectively ending the war in Europe and setting the stage for the Cold War stand-off between Russia and the West.

A US judge on Tuesday ordered the deportation of former Nazi concentration camp guard Anton Geiser to Austria.

Geiser, 85, immigrated from Austria to the United States in 1956 and became a naturalized US citizen six years later, according to a statement from the Justice Department.

"As a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II, Anton Geiser must be held to account for his role in the persecution of countless men, women and children," Assistant Attorney General Breuer said in a statement announcing the removal decision by US Immigration Judge Charles Honeyman in Philadelphia.

"The long passage of time will not diminish our resolve to deny refuge to such individuals."

Geiser is a resident of Sharon, a town in western Pennsylvania.

During a federal investigation that led to Geiser's US citizenship being revoked by a court order in 2006, "Geiser admitted under oath that he served as an armed SS Death's Head guard at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, near Berlin, Germany, for most of 1943," the department said.

He also admitted to serving as a guard at Buchenwald Concentration Camp and its subcamp Arolsen from November 1943 to April 1945.

Geiser's duties included escorting prisoners to slave labor sites and standing guard from the camp's watch towers, and he was "under orders to shoot anyone attempting to escape," according to the department.

"Without Anton Geiser and other members of the SS Death's Head guard battalions, the Nazi concentration camp system could not have accomplished its diabolical objectives," said Eli Rosenbaum, Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy in the newly created Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section of the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

It remained unclear when Geiser would be deported, or exactly what charges he might face in Austria.

The case is part of a continuing US effort to bring Nazi fugitives and other human rights violators to justice, following the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which targets those who assisted Nazi-sponsored persecution.

The expulsion order came just over a year since John Demjanjuk was deported from Cleveland, Ohio to Germany to face charges of helping murder 27,900 Jews as a guard at a Nazi death camp.

Demjanjuk, now 90, is in the midst of his trial in Munich. While doctors judged him fit to stand trial, Demjanjuk's family says he is suffering from a litany of health complaints and will likely not survive the court proceedings.

He was taken to hospital on Tuesday after complaining of heart problems, a court spokesman said.

The last time Raymond Atkinson was here, he was nearly killed by a German dive-bomber while his unit almost finished off a certain Erwin Rommel and caused the enemy such jitters that they unnerved Hitler himself.

In the course of just one day, Raymond and his comrades were involved in a bloody, chaotic battle which is often overlooked because of the enormity of the event which followed it - Dunkirk.

But yesterday, the 94-year- old great-grandfather from Dewsbury, Yorkshire, was the toast not only of his old regiment but of the French city of Arras.

Back in 1940, Mr Atkinson was a trooper with an ammunition truck in the 7th Battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment.

He ended the war, after being taken prisoner in the North African desert, a corporal.

Yesterday, however, he found himself taking the salute alongside Major General Sir Laurence New as the Pipes, Drums and past and present members of the Royal Tank Regiment marched past him through historic Heroes' Square in Arras.

Inside the Gothic splendour of the city hall, Mr Atkinson was thanked by the acting Mayor of Arras, Thierry Spas, for his part in fighting for 'the values, liberty and defence of France'.

Earlier, at an open-air ceremony at Arras Abbey, the retired plastics supervisor heard how the 4th and 7th battalions of the RTR had fought a 'real David and Goliath' battle to stem the German advance to the Channel in May 1940. If they had not, the fall of France would have come sooner and the course of history would almost certainly have been different.

Today, there are there are just two survivors of that epic battle and Mr Atkinson was the only one able to make it to this weekend's events. 'I've never been back before. It's very nice but I'm not used to this sort of fuss,' he said yesterday, with the characteristic no-nonsense approach of his generation.

You won't find anyone else making light of the 1940 Battle of Arras. Fought over the same murderous terrain as some of the worst fighting of the First World War - in the countryside just south of Vimy Ridge - it cost many British lives.

Raymond vividly remembers the Stuka that dropped a bomb over his head at Vimy - 'I dived for cover but Quartermaster Sergeant Slater didn't and that were him gone' - and the desperate struggle to reach Dunkirk.

This week, we will mark the 70th anniversary of the evacuation from Dunkirk. Tomorrow, two Royal Navy warships and no less than 50 of those original ' little ships' will gather in Ramsgate. The following dawn, they will set sail for Dunkirk, replicating Operation Dynamo, one of the greatest escapes in history.

The spring of 1940 saw Hitler's forces sweep through the Low Countries, reaching France by mid-May. A third of a million Allied troops, more than 200,000 of them British, were pushed back to the beaches of Dunkirk where a miraculous combination of naval heroics, good weather and German hesitation allowed the withdrawal of an entire army. Britain now stood alone but able to fight another day.

And yet, without the two gallant tank battalions which went charging into the side of Rommel's 7th Panzer Division outside Arras on May 21 1940, the Dunkirk party would have been over rather sooner.

It was a wholly uneven match. Rommel had 218 tanks. Most of the 74 British tanks were slower (top speed: 8-15 mph) and poorly armed. They had no air or artillery support and their infantry support, two battalions of the Durham Light Infantry, arrived late and exhausted.
And yet they stopped Rommel in his tracks. Germany's Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt would later call it 'a critical moment'. Military Illustrated magazine has described it as 'Rommel's Bloody Nose'.

Indeed, one of our most eminent Second World War historians, Sir Basil Liddell Hart, would state: 'It may well be asked whether two battalions have ever had such a tremendous effect on history.'

This weekend, Raymond and 146 members of the regimental family, including 50 serving officers and other ranks from today's 1st Royal Tank Regiment and relatives of those involved in the action, were taken on a tour of the battlefield.

At one point, the British were causing such problems on Rommel's right flank that many of his infantry and artillery fled. It was only when Rommel personally dashed between his tanks and guns - sometimes on foot - that German order was maintained. Rommel's own staff officer was shot dead a few feet from him.
By the end of the battle, the RTR had less than a dozen tanks in operation. The commanding officers of both battalions were dead, along with many men.

But the impact of the Arras counter-attack had been critical. Three days later Hitler ordered the advance on Dunkirk to halt.

As Field Marshal von Rundstedt would later explain: 'A critical moment in the drive came just as my forces had reached the Channel. It was caused by a British counter-stroke southwards from Arras. For a short time, it was feared that the Panzer divisions would be cut off.'

That delay gave critical time to the men on the beaches and their saviours. It allowed countless thousands, including survivors of the battle themselves, to escape.
This week, as the Royal Navy and the gallant 'little ships' of Dunkirk enjoy the richly deserved spotlight of this heroic anniversary, spare a thought for those chaps in those little tanks which helped to make it happen.

A 24-year-old deacon of the Sidirokastro Metropolis has been arrested by Thessaloniki police for attempting to sell to a 43-year-old Swiss collector items he claimed were relics of Saints, police announced on Monday.

The deacon was arrested on Saturday after the Swiss collector was found at Thessaloniki's Macedonia airport with human bones in his luggage as he was preparing to fly to Germany.

A police investigation turned up approximately 200 bones in a silver reliquary in the collector's luggage, which were seized, and an examination of the bones found them to be well-preserved and scented with myrrh, while the name of a Saint was written on each.

The bones and reliquary were picked up by the collector from the deacon at Sidirokastro, in order to hand them over to a high-ranking cleric of the German Church, according to the collector in questioning by police.

A search of the deacon's home on Monday by Thessaloniki Security police turned up 10 narcotic pills, 505 bones and 15 skulls on which names of saints were written, as well as a 19th century Byzantine icon, a 19th century Byzantine cross, two Byzantine rings, and five ancient and Byzantine coins which are protected under antiquities laws.

The two men were arrested on charges of violation of the law on antiquities, the law on desecration of the dead, of grand theft, of accepting and disposal of the product of a crime, and on drug charges.

The investigation is continuing into the activities of the two detainees and the origin of the bones, which are being examined by an Archaeology Service anthropologist.

The two were taken before a Thessaloniki prosecutor.

Simkins Residence Hall is the last all-male dormitory at the University of Texas. Tucked into a quiet corner of campus along Waller Creek, it was the first men's dorm with air conditioning.

It is notable for another reason as well: Simkins is named for a UT law professor who was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

William Stewart Simkins, who taught at the School of Law for 30 years until his death in 1929, organized the Klan in Florida after the Civil War along with his brother, Eldred, who later became a member of the UT System Board of Regents.

Now, 55 years after opening the dorm, the university is about to begin a review that could result in the removal of Simkins' name from the building.

The disclosure this week of the review came one day after the American-Statesman asked university administrators about the residence hall's name and several weeks after the release of a scholarly article examining Simkins' record....

What if key elements of science policy are based on patterns of discovery that no longer exist?

That's the question behind a paper (abstract available here) released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper -- by Benjamin Jones, associate professor of management at Northwestern University -- argues that science has changed in key ways. Specifically, it argues that the age at which researchers are able to make breakthroughs has advanced, and that scientists are parts of increasingly larger teams, encouraging narrow specialization. Yet, he argues, science policy (or a lot of it) continues to assume the possibility if not desirability of breakthroughs by a lone young investigator....

He then reviews a variety of measures that show the twin trends of an aging and more group-oriented scientist. On age, he notes that:

* During the 20th century, the average age at which researchers made the accomplishments that were later honored with Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics increased by 5.83 years.
* During the 20th century, the average age at which researchers made "great" technological achievements rose by 4.86 years, while the age of those achieving a first patent -- for more average inventors -- went up by 6.57 years.

In exploring the data more fully, Jones finds that the gains are not the result of people living longer, but generally of a decline in "great achievement" in scientists' 20s and 30s. "Peak productivity has increased by about 8 years, with the effect coming entirely from a collapse in productivity at young ages," Jones writes....

The Israeli president on Monday categorically denied a report that he offered nuclear warheads to South Africa in 1975, when he was defense minister.

The report published Sunday by British newspaper The Guardian is based on an American academic's research and claims to cite secret minutes of Shimon Peres' meeting with senior South African officials discussing the issue.

Peres said Israel has never negotiated the transfer of nuclear weapons to South Africa.

"There exists no basis in reality for the claims published ... by The Guardian that in 1975 Israel negotiated with South Africa the exchange of nuclear weapons," the president said in an English-language statement. "Unfortunately, The Guardian elected to write its piece based on the selective interpretation of South African documents and not on concrete facts....

Catherine Ariemma teaches U.S history at Lumpkin County High School. She allowed students to wear Ku Klux Klan outfits for a final school project.

"I don't apologize for the project. I do apologize that someone felt threatened. I teach about United States history. I teach about the good, the bad, and the ugly," said Ariemma.

Ariemma was in tears she she talked about the incident upsetting other students.

Lumpkin County High School senior Cody Rider said seeing other students in KKK outfits upset him.

"Tears did run down my face when I realized it," said Rider.

Rider said he and other students were in the school's cafeteria having lunch when the four students in mock KKK gear walked by.

"My little cousin comes up and taps me on the shoulder, and there was fear in his eyes. He was like, he just started pointing, like he couldn't even talk, that's how bad it was. There was fear in his eyes, and I looked up and they are walking through the hallway in white sheets," said Rider....

Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.

The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.

That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.

Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted the first-hand account of his life kept under wraps for so long. Some believe it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Others argue that the time lag prevented him from having to worry about offending friends.

One thing's for sure: by delaying publication, the author, who was fond of his celebrity status, has ensured that he'll be gossiped about during the 21st century. A section of the memoir will detail his little-known but scandalous relationship with Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who became his secretary after the death of his wife Olivia in 1904. Twain was so close to Lyon that she once bought him an electric vibrating sex toy. But she was abruptly sacked in 1909, after the author claimed she had "hypnotised" him into giving her power of attorney over his estate....

The Rev. Richardson Libby certainly has an unflagging dedication to history. Thanks to his perseverance, the right version of the Stars and Stripes is hanging inside the State House rotunda.

Libby, who lives across the street from the Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis, discovered that the flag thought to be an accurate reproduction of one made in 1783 was incorrect. The blue field of 13 eight-point stars should have been vertical instead of horizontal.

He worked with historians to rectify the situation over a period of several years, and the corrected banner was unveiled on Flag Day 2009.

"Being a history buff and a Colonial person, I feel very good (about it)," said Libby, who is scheduled to speak about the topic Tuesday at St. John's College as part of the school's lecture series.

Elaine Rice Bachmann, director of artistic property, exhibits and outreach at the Maryland State Archives, praised Libby's efforts, both in terms of the flag and his volunteerism....

The old warship has been part of Philadelphia's waterfront for 50 years and left lasting impressions on thousands of visitors who heard gripping stories of its role in the Spanish-American War.

Now the Olympia - the last surviving vessel from that 1898 conflict - could face an ignoble end as an artificial reef off Cape May if a new benefactor cannot be found.

The Independence Seaport Museum and the Navy have already checked with officials of New Jersey's Artificial Reef Program on the possibility of sinking the ship, once a source of national pride.

"Another option would be scrapping Olympia," said James McLane, interim president of the museum, which owns the ship and is adjacent to it at Penn's Landing. "But the Navy has told us that 'reefing' is better because it would allow divers to go down on it and would preserve Olympia."

The museum can no longer afford the ship's upkeep, McLane said. At least $20 million is needed to tow, restore, interpret, and endow the deteriorating vessel.

"We have a couple people we're talking to who might take the ship," McLane said, "but these things don't move with great speed."

The ship will be open until the end of September, then closed while its future is determined, McLane said....

The last wish of one of America's greatest authors is about to come true: Mark Twain's biography will hit stories 100 years after his death.

According to a report by The Independent, the late novelist, whose works include "Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," left behind 5,000 pages of unedited text that will be turned into a three-volume trilogy running about half a million words.

Intrigue, humor, politics, philosophy and an early 20th-century electric sex toy. It's all there in there within the pages of this series.

But don't bother waiting lining up just yet to buy your copy. Twain's autobiography doesn't hit store shelves until November.

The rapid decline of mammoths and other megafauna after humans spread across the New World may explain a bone-chilling plunge in global temperatures some 12,800 years ago, researchers reported Sunday.

The 100-odd species of grass-eating giants that once crowded the North American landscape released huge quantities of methane -- from both ends of their digestive tracks.

As a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, methane is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2).

It was not enough to trigger runaway global warming. But when all that gaseous output suddenly tapered off, it caused or at least contributed to a prolonged freeze known as the Younger Dryas cold event, they argue.

If so, the "Anthropocene epoch" -- the era of major human impacts on Earth's climate system -- began not with the industrial revolution in the 1800s, but the large-scale influx of two-legged predators to the Americas more than 13,000 years earlier.

Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), whose remains were recently identified using modern forensic tools, was buried Saturday at the Frombork Cathedral, 467 years after his death.

Copernicus died in 1543 and was buried at the cathedral of Frombork, northern Poland, along with many other priests and lay people whose bodies remained anonymous under the floor of this large Gothic building. Although an epitaph was placed at the church, information on the exact location of his tomb was either not recorded or it was lost.

For two centuries, Polish, French and German researchers tried in vain to identify Copernicus’ grave by excavating in several points of the marble floor of the church. Finally in 2005, Jerzy Gassowski, professor at the Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology of Pultusk, north of Warsaw, discovered what seemed to be the burial place of the astronomer under the marble floor at the foot of one of sixteen altars located next to the towering pillars of the cathedral.

The skull and bones were entrusted to the police laboratory in Warsaw. Forensic experts made a virtual reconstruction of the man's face. The results showed striking similarities with existing portraits of Nicolas Copernicus. However, only DNA evidence could confirm the finding. Rest of tissue was found under teeth of the skull, but it was necessary to find genetic material to compare it with. The difficulty seemed insurmountable, because genealogy research was not successful.

The empty eye sockets of the battered half-skull stared at me, lifeless, sightless and silent. They were topped by a heavy brow ridge of bone, and the upper jaw of the creature's broad face jutted forward. Not fully human but recognizably related, it sent a shiver down my spine as I looked across 12 inches of space and 2 1/2 million years in time.

There is something deeply humbling about coming face to face with one of humanity's distant early relatives, a practical demonstration of one's own utter insignificance as an individual.

Stw 505 does not, unlike some hominid fossils, have a friendly nickname. He -- the fossil is believed to be that of an adult male Australopithecus africanus -- was around 25 years old when he apparently fell into a sinkhole in the rolling grasslands north of what is now Johannesburg and died. His remains were covered in sediment, turned to stone over thousands of years and lay buried until scientists discovered them in 1989.

For an object lesson -- literally -- in the origins of the human family, nothing compares with the Cradle of Humankind, as the area has been dubbed. The oldest hominid fossils in the world have been found in East Africa -- particularly Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia and Chad -- but the southern end of the continent also has a strong claim to being where our genus, Homo, first emerged: something of an evolutionary Garden of Eden.

Most visitors to South Africa in the next two months will be going for soccer's World Cup. But perhaps in their downtime they'd want to take two very different but equally fascinating side trips within two hours of Johannesburg: to the Cradle of Humankind and to the diamond mine in the town of Cullinan....

Texas isn’t the only place with lousy social studies standards, though you might be forgiven for thinking so considering all the attention that the Texas Board of Education has received in recent months as it adopted a new set of standards....

In Indiana, for example, the state Board of Education last year warned local school districts in an open letter not to use many of the social studies texts that were actually adopted by the state because, it said, they are lousy. The letter explains that the state education board is required by statute to adopt textbooks for use if they meet very minimal criteria. But that doesn’t mean board members have to like the books. The letter said in part:

“...As a board we have expressed our concern that the now standardized form of social studies textbooks -- jammed full of facts without interesting prose, racing through data without telling the story (good and bad) of our country -- may jeopardize both student interest in history as a subject and the effective learning of the country’s principles and values as a predicate to participating as a citizen of our nation. You should feel no obligation to utilize the standard form of social studies textbooks.

"To the contrary, we urge schools to move cautiously and not adopt social studies textbooks without giving thought to what book or other instructional materials can best help bring social studies to life. We continue to encourage local districts and educators to make content decisions that are premised on presenting material that both aligns to the state’s subject matter standards and engages students’ interests, that detail the complexity of the human experience and elicit richer student consideration of the history, values and principles important to the meaning of America, its past and developing place in the world and the fabric of its culture. This is critically important in United States history as a foundation element of educating students toward good citizenship.”