Archaeologists excavating what they claim is Britain's oldest house have secured more than £1m in funding.

The circular structure at Star Carr near Scarborough was found in 2008 and dates from 8,500BC.

Archaeologists from the Universities of Manchester and York say the site is deteriorating due to environmental changes.

The European Research Council has given them £1.23m to finish the work before information from the site is lost....

Brendan Foley peels his wetsuit to the waist and perches on the side of an inflatable boat as it skims across the sea just north of the island of Crete. At his feet are the dripping remains of a vase that moments earlier had been resting on the sea floor, its home for more than a millennium. “It's our best day so far,” he says of his dive that morning. “We've discovered two ancient shipwrecks.”

Foley, a marine archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and his colleagues at Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens have spent the day diving near the cliffs of the tiny island of Dia in the eastern Mediterranean. They have identified two clusters of pottery dating from the first century BC and fifth century AD. Together with other remains that the team has discovered on the island's submerged slopes, the pots reveal that for centuries Greek, Roman and Byzantine traders used Dia as a refuge during storms, when they couldn't safely reach Crete.

It is a nice archaeological discovery, but Foley was hoping for something much older. His four-week survey of the waters around Crete last October is part of a long-term effort to catalogue large numbers of ancient shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea. And the grand prize would be a wreck from one of the most influential and enigmatic cultures of the ancient world — the Minoans, who ruled these seas more than 3,000 years ago.

Some researchers believe that quest to be close to impossible. But Foley and a few competitors are using high-tech approaches such as autonomous robots and new search strategies that they say have a good chance of locating the most ancient of shipwrecks. If they succeed, they could transform archaeologists' understanding of a crucial period in human history, when ancient mariners first ventured long distances across the sea....

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Almost half of American Indians and Alaska Natives identify with multiple races, representing a group that grew by 39 percent over a decade, according to U.S. Census data released Wednesday.

Of the 5.2 million people counted as Natives in 2010, nearly 2.3 million reported being Native in combination with one or more of six other race categories, showcasing a growing diversity among Natives. Those who added black, white or both as a personal identifier made up 84 percent of the multi-racial group.

Tribal officials and organizations look to Census data for funding, to plan communities, to foster solidarity among tribes and for accountability from federal agencies that have a trust responsibility with tribal members....

A survey carried out two days before Holocaust Memorial Day shows more than a fifth of young Germans do not know the name of Auschwitz or what happened there.

Twenty one per cent of people aged between 18 and 30 quizzed about the most notorious Nazi extermination camp had not heard of it, the survey revealed.

And almost half of all those canvassed by the Forsa research institute said they had never visited a concentration camp despite the fact Germany has made all of those on its soil permanent memorials to the dead....

TOKYO (AP) — The Japanese government’s worst-case scenario at the height of the nuclear crisis last year warned that tens of millions of people, including residents of Tokyo, might be forced to leave their homes, according to a report. Fearing widespread panic, officials kept the report secret.

The emergence of the 15-page internal document might add to complaints that the government withheld too much information about the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

It also casts doubt about whether the government was sufficiently prepared to handle what could have been an evacuation on an extraordinary scale....

For 66 years, they lay unseen, first in a vault on the Upper West Side, more recently in a special cabinet. Now the New-York Historical Society plans to put them on public display alongside a silver cigar box, a silver ice cream dish and the silver controller handle that Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. used when he drove the first subway train, in 1904: A knife and fork with the initials A and H, for Adolf Hitler.

The historical society is including the Hitler flatware, part of a dinner service made in celebration of his 50th birthday in 1939, in an exhibition of 150 of the “most aesthetically and historically compelling pieces” in its collection, according to a description on the society’s Web site.

The exhibition, “Stories in Sterling: Four Centuries of Silver in New York,” promises to interpret “these compelling objects within a cultural context,” the Web site says. “Stories in Sterling” is scheduled to open on May 2 at the society’s recently renovated headquarters at 170 Central Park West, at West 77th Street....

POTSDAM, Germany — The official delegation honoring Frederick the Great’s 300th birthday had just finished laying a laurel wreath and a grand cross of white flowers at his grave here on Tuesday when a 70-year-old retiree quietly slipped in behind them and placed a small potato on the gray slab of stone that marks the monarch’s resting place.

“I’m a born Potsdamer and my father was, too, and I guess a little of the old Prussiandom is still in my veins,” said the man, Harry Günther, a retired engineer, standing before the yellow walls of Frederick’s magnificent summer palace, Sanssouci, on a chilly, foggy morning, a light coating of snow on the grass. He praised Frederick’s Prussian virtues, like hard work, honesty and thrift.

The potato, one of more than a dozen left by admirers, is a traditional token to honor Frederick’s role in spreading the cultivation of the food staple in his lands. “Old Fritz made sure they grew them,” Mr. Günther said, using the monarch’s popular nickname. “Plus, they last longer than flowers.”...

When friends ask me what’s new at work, I occasionally (often enough to become tiresome) respond with, 'Nothing. Everything I work with is old.'

But that’s not entirely true. In archaeology, as in any field of science, there is always something new — whether it’s a new discovery or the development of new technologies that enable us to learn new things about old discoveries.

Ohio’s ancient earthworks certainly aren’t news. The Smithsonian Institution’s first publication, in 1848, included surveys of most of the largest sites.

Sadly, since then, many of these wonderful sites have been plowed over or leveled to make way for houses, stores and factories. For example, the authors of the Smithsonian report concluded, with regard to Newark’s once-sprawling earthworks, “The ancient lines can now be traced only at intervals, among gardens and outhouses.”...

John Roos, the US Ambassador to Japan, has written to Kazumi Matsui, mayor of Hiroshima, to reassure him that the Manhattan Project National Historical Park will serve as "an educational and commemorative facility."

A project directed by academics at the University of Sheffield has made the archaeology of the world-famous Stonehenge site more accessible than ever before.

Google Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge is the first application of its kind to transport users around a virtual prehistoric landscape, exploring the magnificent and internationally important monument, Stonehenge.

The application used data gathered from the University of Sheffield´s Stonehenge Riverside Project in conjunction with colleagues from the universities of Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and London. The application was developed by Bournemouth University archaeologists, adding layers of archaeological information to Google Earth to create Google Under-the-Earth.

The unique visual experience lets users interact with the past like never before. Highlights include taking a visit to the Neolithic village of Durrington Walls and a trip inside a prehistoric house. Users also have the opportunity to see reconstructions of Bluestonehenge at the end of the Stonehenge Avenue and the great timber monument called the Southern Circle, as they would have looked more than 4,000 years ago....

Joseph Stalin didn’t care about taxpayers.

That’s the most benefit-of-the-doubt way to take a radio comment made by Mayor Rob Ford on Tuesday morning, which likened five political rivals to the murderous Russian dictator.

Speaking on the John Oakley show, Ford told the AM640 host that certain councillors are “two steps left of Joe Stalin.”

Ford was being questioned as to whether he had lost support of council’s middle. Oakley pointed to the fact that self-proclaimed centrist Josh Matlow recently stated he would not back Ford’s plan to do away with the land transfer tax.

LOS ANGELES — No one expects to stumble across a cache of Picasso’s works in the middle of a desert. So who would think that just off bustling Wilshire Boulevard, tucked between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the national headquarters of the Screen Actors Guild, lie buried some of the most exquisitely preserved fossils in the world?

The fossils of the La Brea Tar Pits are just that. They were first discovered in Maj. Henry Hancock’s asphalt mine in the 1870s, when Los Angeles was but a village. Since the early 20th century, more than one million bones have been excavated from the pits; when reassembled, they provide an extraordinary time capsule of the creatures that roamed Southern California 10,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Interest in these animals today, however, is more than a matter of prehistoric curiosity. Many of the species found at La Brea disappeared altogether as the planet warmed at the end of the last ice age. The reasons for their demise are not yet fully understood, but may be especially pertinent to understanding the effects of climate change on animal populations today....

PARIS — Relations between France and Turkey dipped to a nadir as the French Senate approved a bill late Monday criminalizing the denial of officially recognized genocides, including the Armenian genocide begun in 1915.

Turkey’s prime minister, anticipating the bill’s passage, called the move “incomprehensible” and pledged to “take steps.” Turkey has already suspended military cooperation, bilateral political agreement and economic contracts with France over the bill, and on Monday raised the possibility of withdrawing support for Euronews, an international news network based in France, in which Turkey’s national radio and television network holds a 15.5 percent stake.

After lengthy debate, the Senate voted 127 to 86 in favor of the legislation, while hundreds of Turks and Armenians demonstrated outside. If signed into law by President Nicolas Sarkozy, the legislation would call for up to one year in prison and a fine of about $58,000 for those who deny an officially recognized genocide. The bill does not make specific reference to the estimated 1.5 million Armenians slaughtered under the Ottoman Turks, but France recognizes only those deaths and the Holocaust as genocides and already specifically bans Holocaust denial....

SOUTHAMPTON, ONT.—Wearing blue rubber gloves, Ken Cassavoy is carefully unfolding a threadbare flag on a boardroom table at the Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre.

Though greatly faded, the red, white and blue of a British Red Ensign are clearly visible — a Union Jack in the top left-hand corner, surrounded by a sea of red.

This is the first time Cassavoy has unpacked the flag since he fetched it home on loan from Annapolis, Md., where for two centuries it has been a war trophy at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum.

As flags go, the ensign isn’t shy. It’s nearly 8 feet tall and is still almost 10 feet long, even after being shortened by about 4 feet when, at some point, the naval museum put a linen backing on it....

A rare cast of the death mask of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin has been sold to an anonymous bidder for £3,600 at an auction in Shropshire.

The cast was taken in bronze from the original plaster death mask by an art dealer who was visiting Moscow in 1990.

Richard Westwood-Brookes, from Church Stretton-based auction house Mullock's, said: "There are, we believe, only two of these in the West."...

Tony Blair agreed to a secret deal to hand joint sovereignty of Gibraltar to Spain, according to explosive claims by a former Labour cabinet minister.

Peter Hain reveals in his memoirs that he struck the deal with the Spanish government in 2002 to end the UK's 300-year control of the vital strategic outpost.

He makes clear that he and Mr Blair were both prepared to ride roughshod over the objections of the people of Gibraltar in order to get their way, describing Mr Blair's attitude to the inhabitants as 'contemptuous'....

The former Europe Minister revealed Mr Blair sanctioned the deal because he wanted to win the backing of the Spanish government – then led by Jose Maria Aznar – to help Britain take on France and Germany in EU negotiations.

The agreement was only shelved when what he called 'hardliners' in the Spanish government – who wanted only full sovereignty – objected....

BOSTON –  President John F. Kennedy's library is releasing 45 hours of privately recorded meetings and phone calls, providing a window into the final months of his life.

The tapes include discussions of conflict in Vietnam, Soviet relations and the race to space, plans for the 1964 Democratic Convention and re-election strategy. There also are moments with his children.

On one recording, made days before Kennedy's assassination, he asks staffers to schedule a meeting in a week. He tells them he's booked for the weekend, with no time to meet with an Indonesian general then, either.

"I'm going to be up at the Cape on Friday, but I'll see him Tuesday," JFK tells staffers....

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The first international drug treaty was signed a century ago this week. So what was the war on drugs like in 1912?

Today it is taken for granted that governments will co-operate in the fight against the heroin and cocaine trade.

But 100 years ago, narcotics passed from country to country with minimal interference from the authorities. That all changed with the 1912 International Opium Convention, which committed countries to stopping the trade in opium, morphine and cocaine.

Then, as now, the US stood in the vanguard against narcotics. While the UK's position is unequivocal today, a century ago it was an unenthusiastic signatory, says Mike Jay, author of Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century.

The real concern a century ago was over alcohol, he argues. "There was a big debate over intoxication as there was concern about the heavy, heavy drinking culture of the 19th Century."...

Prior to World War II, the Ardeatine Caves were mined for the volcanic material known as tuff for use in cement production. But by March 24, 1944, production had long since ceased. On that day, torches inside the cave's corridors and hollows provided makeshift lighting. Outside, in the afternoon sun, trucks were hauling prisoners to the site -- a total of 335 men, the youngest of whom was only 15. They were all Italian.

The German occupiers wanted to avenge an attack that communist partisans had carried out a day earlier on a German police unit in Rome's Via Rasella. The victims of this retaliatory act were chosen at random. Most of them had been imprisoned in a Gestapo jail in the Italian capital or were being detained by the Wehrmacht, Germany's Nazi-era military. None of them had been involved in the attack....

[E]ven if it continues to be publicly commemorated to this day, neither German nor Italian officials had any interest in bringing its perpetrators to justice. Indeed, the only person to be punished for it was Herbert Kappler, the SS officer in charge of German police and security services in Rome during the war. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1948.

While researching why officials have been so reluctant to punish these crimes in the political archives of Germany's Foreign Ministry, Berlin-based historian Felix Bohr stumbled upon a spectacular set of documents, which he published earlier this week on an Internet portal for historians.

The documents entail an exchange of letters begun in 1959 between officials at the German Embassy in Rome and their counterparts at the Foreign Ministry in Bonn, Germany's capital at the time. With unprecedented clarity, the documents testify to how German diplomats and Italian officials cooperated in shielding the soldiers in Kappler's charge from criminal prosecution. As embassy adviser Kurt von Tannstein put it, the goal was a "putting (the affair) to rest, as desired by both the German and Italian side."...

Officials in the District are accustomed to asking Congress for full voting rights on behalf of the city’s 600,000 residents or for greater control of city finances - and getting no satisfaction.

So when members of Congress proposed the “nationalization” of the District of Columbia World War I Memorial — the only memorial on the Mall exclusively for D.C. veterans — city officials did not jump to support the plan.

“The District of Columbia Memorial is for the people of the District of Columbia and it will never be otherwise,” Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting member of Congress, said Monday....

In 2010, the conservatives who controlled the Texas Board of Education caused an uproar when they made radical changes to the history curriculum for the state’s 4.8 million public school students. The changes included referring to the country’s first black president as “Barack Hussein Obama,” and requiring students to “contrast” Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address with Abraham Lincoln’s philosophical views.

To whitewash one of the darkest practices in America history, conservatives proposed that textbooks refer to the slave trade as the “Atlantic triangular trade.”

Now Tennessee Tea Party members are taking their efforts a step further and trying to eliminate references to slavery in American history textbooks. Salon reports that Tea Partiers who fetishize America’s founders are “demanding” that students not be taught that many of them owned sla

At a press conference, two dozen activists presented their proposals — I’m sorry, their “demands” — for the new state legislative session. Among them are sweeping changes to school materials that they probably have not actually read. [...]

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”...

There have been many accusations made against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney from conservative opponents, liberals and the media, in regards to his record at Bain, record on abortion, and record on Romneycare.

But few have questioned the immigration record of his ancestors.

On The Chris Matthews Show Sunday, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell went there:

"And looking ahead to the next primary in Florida, 30 percent of the Hispanic community is Cuban-American. That’s a smaller proportion, and so the Hispanic community there is different. And they are less prone to be susceptible to Mitt Romney’s really hard line on immigration, more prone to the Newt Gingrich approach to immigration. The other interesting little fact is about the Mexican Romneys, those looking back at all of those records say that Mitt Romney should look back at the records because the Romneys that came back from Mexico to the United States, they crossed the border illegally."

NewsBusters Noel Sheppard first speculated that Mitchell's claim could have come from a Sunday NPR report on the Romney's Mexican relatives, however Sheppard notes that the story said nothing about any of his relatives coming to America illegally. NPR's John Burnett told James Crugnale of Mediaite that he did not come across any documents indicating that the Gaskell Romney family came to the United States illegally, noting that they were part of an exodus of 1,200 Mormons from Mexico.

Miles Park Romney was Mitt's great grandfather, who fled the United States and crossed into Mexico in 1885 to escape religious persecution. There he helped build the Mormon enclave of Colonia Juarez in Chihuahua-- while having four wives and 30 children....

KABUL (Reuters) - A cache of ancient Jewish scrolls from northern Afghanistan that has only recently come to light is creating a storm among scholars who say the landmark find could reveal an undiscovered side of medieval Jewry.

The 150 or so documents, dated from the 11th century, were found in Afghanistan's Samangan province and most likely smuggled out -- a sorry but common fate for the impoverished and war-torn country's antiquities.

Israeli emeritus professor Shaul Shaked, who has examined some of the poems, commercial records and judicial agreements that make up the treasure, said while the existence of ancient Afghan Jewry is known, their culture was still a mystery....

Here, along a seamless stretch of small-city blight, a deserted storefront had held its own. With 9 of its 10 front windows broken, it fit in among the two boarded-up bank buildings, last used as houses of worship, and the abandoned Jimmy’s Custom Cleaners, whose claim to being open remained true, since you could stroll right into the emptiness.

Finally, a year or two ago, demolition workers knocked down this Highland Avenue building in a municipal act filed somewhere between reclamation and surrender. But in doing so, they uncovered a rare portal to the faraway past, when boys wore knickers and Highland Park was the vibrant home of the Ford Motor Company’s first moving assembly line.

The demolition revealed two colorful, well-preserved advertisements that had adorned the brick side of the adjacent building for nearly a century. Their two-story assumptions of endless prosperity are particularly conspicuous in the Highland Park of today, a city so economically distressed that it recently removed most of its streetlights.

One of the ads spells out the long-gone clothing brand of Honor Bright in bold red letters floating in sky blue, along with the blurb: “Boys Blouses, Shirts and Playsuits for Real Boys From Morn ’Till Night.” It depicts two youngsters, both in ties. One, holding schoolbooks, wears knickers and a newsboy cap; the other, riding a bicycle, wears a faintly maniacal grin.

Nearby is another ad, for “A Thoro-Bred Work Shirt” called Black Beauty. Against its golden backdrop stands an older boy in his late teens, exuding the confidence to take his place in the assembly lines of Highland Park or, perhaps, the front lines of the Great War....