Friday, December 02, 2005

In the news...

From the Telegraph:
David Irving, the British historian, has embarrassed Austria's judicial authorities by finding his own books in a prison library while in custody on charges of Holocaust denial.
Irving, 67, who will spend Christmas and the New Year behind bars pending trial, found two of his most contentious books in the Graz prison library after asking for something to read.
He said in an interview he signed both, German translations of Hitler's War and The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17, before returning them to guards.
Josef Adam, the head of the prison, said it was "not possible" to know how the books had ended up in the 6,400-volume library, the contents of which he "could not know exactly".
"Now we will dispose of the books," he said.
An embarrassed justice ministry said it had known nothing about the existence of the books in the prison.
"Revisionists have no place in the libraries of judicial institutes," said Christoph Pöchinger, a spokesman for Karin Gastinger, the justice minister.
The rediscovery of Edward the Confessor's tomb:
The ancient tomb of Edward the Confessor, one of the most revered of British saints, has been discovered under Westminster Abbey 1,000 years after his birth.
The original burial chamber of the Anglo-Saxon king, who died in 1066, months before the invasion of William the Conqueror, was revealed by archaeologists using the latest radar technology.
The existence of a number of royal tombs dating back to the 13th and 14th century was also discovered beneath the abbey, the venue for nearly all coronations since 1066.
The forgotten, sub-terranean chambers were located during conservation work on the abbey's medieval Cosmati mosaic pavement around the high altar.
Dr Warwick Rodwell, the abbey's consultant archaeologist, said the find was "extraordinarily exciting".
Until now archaeologists had assumed that the original tomb of Edward the Confessor was near the present high altar, because medieval records referred to him being buried there. It has now emerged, however, that the position of the altar was moved by Henry III in the mid 13th century. The archaeologists have located the original tomb 10 feet behind the present altar, under the shrine built by Henry III in 1269, which still contains the remains of the saint.
The story of the 10 by 10 acrostic square. The proposed solution.
Why?
(ANSA) - Rome, November 30 - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has had an island in the Caribbean Sea named after him, something none of his predecessors can boast .
The island belongs to the Central American state of Belize and used to be called Black Birds. From now on it is to be known as Silvio Bay .
Belize Prime Minister Said Wilbert Musa informed Berlusconi of his unusual
move during an official visit to Rome last week, Italian weekly Chi discovered .
It remains unclear why Musa decided to honour his Italian counterpart in this way.

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