Skeleton found beneath English parking lot may belong to King Richard III

King Richard III's burial grounds may no longer be a royal secret. Researchers at the University of Leicester say they may have located the English monarch's remains beneath a parking lot in England — though it will be weeks before they can say for sure. "Clearly we are all very excited by these latest discoveries," Richard Taylor, director of corporate affairs at the University of Leicester, told reporters Wednesday. "Our focus is shifting from the archaeological excavation to laboratory analysis. This skeleton certainly has characteristics that warrant extensive further detailed examination." The fully intact skeleton was found within the choir area at the site of the ancient Grey Friars church, which was demolished in 1538 at the order of Henry VIII during the Dissolution of Monasteries. King Richard, the last English monarch to die in battle, is believed to have been buried at the church after he was killed during the Battle of Bosworth Field in August 1485. The adult male skeleton showed signs of trauma to its head and had a barbed arrow head lodged between the vertebrae of the skeleton's upper back — injuries consistent with those sustained in battle. "A bladed implement appears to have cleaved part of the rear of the skull," researchers said in a statement. The skeleton also had spinal abnormalities, suggesting that the person suffered from severe scoliosis. This abnormality would have made the person's right shoulder seem visibly higher than his left — a physical description that matches contemporary accounts of King Richard. Peter Soulsby, Leicester's City Mayor, said that if the remains do belong to the late monarch, the findings will have "enormous implications" for the city. "The discovery of King Richard's final resting place — if this is what we have — will enhance the telling of that story in a way we could never have planned," Soulsby said. This is not the team's first discovery related to King Richard. The archeologists announced last week that they had come across medieval paving stones that may have adorned a garden built in honor of the king by a 17th-century mayor of Leicester, Robert Herrick. In 1612, Christopher Wren, father of the famous architect, visited Herrick and described seeing a three-foot pillar, bearing the inscription, "Here lies the body of Richard III sometime King of England," in the garden. The possible remains of King Richard will now undergo DNA tests. But it will be as much as 12 weeks before researchers can confirm that they belong to the English monarch.

Nazis Planned To Kill Churchill With Exploding Chocolate

A possible plot by the Nazis to use exploding chocolate to kill Winston Churchill during World War II has recently been discovered. As the Telegraph reports, the plan called for Adolf Hitler’s bomb makers to coat explosive devices with a thin layer of chocolate wrapped in fancy expensive looking black and gold paper in order to make it look like the Peters Chocolate brand of premium chocolates. These explosive chocolates (capable of taking out anyone within several meters of the device) incorporated a thin piece of canvas that would trigger the explosion 7 seconds after a piece was broken off. The next step of the plot, reports the DailyMail, involved having secret agents the Nazis had working in Britain to secretly place the sweetly disguised goodies in the dining room being used by the War Cabinet along with other fine luxury items. British spies, however, foiled the exploding chocolate plot. The British found out the chocolate bombs were being produced and contacted Lord Victor Rothschild, one of MI5′s most senior intelligence chiefs. Rothschild typed up a letter from his secret bunker in Parliament Street, London, asking artist Laurence Fish to draw up a poster sized image of the chocolate bombs in order to warn the public. Laurence Fish died in 2009 at the age of 89, leaving behind his wife, Jean Bray. This letter was recently discovered by Jean Bray, a journalist, while going through some of his possessions. The letter, which is marked SECRET, describes how the bombs are activated and gives a description of what to look for with a crude sketch. In the letter Lord Rothschild writes: ‘Dear Fish, I wonder if you could do a drawing for me of an explosive slab of chocolate. ‘We have received information that the enemy are using pound slabs of chocolate which are made of steel with a very thin covering of real chocolate. ‘Inside there is high explosive and some form of delay mechanism… When you break off a piece of chocolate at one end in the normal way, instead of it falling away, a piece of canvas is revealed stuck into the middle of the piece which has been broken off and a ticking into the middle of the remainder of the slab. ‘When the piece of chocolate is pulled sharply, the canvas is also pulled and this initiates the mechanism. ‘I enclose a very poor sketch done by somebody who has seen one of these. ‘It is wrapped in the usual sort of black paper with gold lettering, the variety being PETERS. ‘Would it be possible for you to do a drawing of this, one possibly with the paper half taken off revealing one end and another with the piece broken off showing the canvas. ‘The text should indicate that this piece together with the attached canvas is pulled out sharply and that after a delay of seven seconds the bomb goes off.’

Nazi war crimes suspect arrested in Hungary

(CNN) -- An elderly man suspected of Nazi war crimes has been arrested in Hungary, prosecutors said Wednesday, after a worldwide Jewish rights organization discovered him living in Budapest. Laszlo Csizsik-Csatary is accused of sending more than 15,000 Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the spring of 1944, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said. The center considers him its most-wanted Nazi war criminal. The Simon Wiesenthal Center found Csizsik-Csatary as part of its Last Chance project, said Efraim Zuroff, director of the center's Israel office. Csizsik-Csatary served as a senior Hungarian police officer in the city of Kosice, which is now in Slovakia but was under Hungarian rule in the 1940s, the center said. "He was a commander of a ghetto," Zuroff said. Csizsik-Csatary participated in the deportation of 15,700 Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, witnesses have told the center. He also played a role in "deportations to the Ukraine to be killed: 300 Jews," Zuroff said. "We found eyewitnesses on three different continents," Zuroff said. Those witnesses told the center about Csizsik-Csatary's cruelty to Jewish detainees and his role in the deportations to Auschwitz and Ukraine. Csizsik-Csatary denied the allegations to a reporter from the British tabloid The Sun. A witness to the August 1941 Ukraine deportations had nine family members who were deported, Zuroff said. Csizsik-Csatary made sure four of them were brought back from forced labor with the Hungarian army so they would be deported and killed, according to Zuroff. During the Auschwitz deportations, Csizsik-Csatary "forced these girls to dig a ditch with their hands -- young Jewish girls." Two of the center's witnesses were survivors of that deportation, he said. Using the last name Csizsik, Csizsik-Csatary arrived in Canada in 1949, telling immigration officials he was Yugoslavian, according to The Toronto Star newspaper. Canadian authorities later investigated allegations that he had lied to immigration authorities about his past when he arrived there. Canada revoked his citizenship in 1997 and initiated an investigation. As deportation proceedings were under way, Csizsik-Csatary voluntarily left the country. Csizsik-Csatary returned to Hungary upon leaving Canada, Zuroff said. "Hungarian authorities knew that he was back," he said. Authorities in Hungary launched an investigation in September 2011 after receiving information from Zuroff regarding Csizsik-Csatary's residence in Budapest and his role in the Auschwitz deportations, the center said. Mladic war crimes trial opens

World diamond trading group bans Zimbabwe stones

Angus Shaw, Associated Press Writer
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- In what's being hailed as an unprecedented move that will boost buyer awareness of blood diamonds, a global diamond trading network vowed Monday to expel any member who knowingly trades gems from two Zimbabwe mines where laborers have been killed and children enslaved.

The announcement by the U.S.-based Rapaport Diamond Trading Network, an industry diamond price and information provider, comes after international regulators declared the stones from the Zimbabwe mines conflict-free, backing off a ban they imposed in November and allowing 900,000 carats of diamonds to be auctioned last week.

"This is the first time that we've heard of a large group like the Rapaport group actually taking such a strong stand," said Tiseke Kasambala, a Zimbabwe specialist with Human Rights Watch.

"Consumers will certainly ask questions" about the stones they are buying, she added.

The international regulators, whose group is known as the Kimberley Process, said the two mines are operating at "minimum" international standards. The Rapaport group, though, said that does not guarantee the stones "free of human rights violations" and vowed to publish the names of members knowingly trading in diamonds from the diamond fields near the eastern city of Mutare....

China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy

SHANGHAI — After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States, according to government figures released early Monday.

The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real and that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic superpower.

The recognition came early Monday, when Tokyo said that Japan’s economy was valued at about $1.28 trillion in the second quarter, slightly below China’s $1.33 trillion. Japan’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the quarter, Tokyo said, substantially less than forecast. That weakness suggests that China’s economy will race past Japan’s for the full year.

Experts say unseating Japan — and in recent years passing Germany, France and Great Britain — underscores China’s growing clout and bolsters forecasts that China will pass the United States as the world’s biggest economy as early as 2030. America’s gross domestic product was about $14 trillion in 2009.

“This has enormous significance,” said Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It reconfirms what’s been happening for the better part of a decade: China has been eclipsing Japan economically. For everyone in China’s region, they’re now the biggest trading partner rather than the U.S. or Japan.”

For Japan, whose economy has been stagnating for more than a decade, the figures reflect a decline in economic and political power. Japan has had the world’s second-largest economy for much of the last four decades, according to the World Bank. And during the 1980s, there was even talk about Japan’s economy some day overtaking that of the United States....

NKorea fires artillery off west coast

By HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea fired about 110 rounds of artillery Monday near its disputed sea border with South Korea, the South's military said, amid high tension over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on North Korea.

The firing came shortly after South Korea ended five-day naval drills off the west coast that the North called a rehearsal for an invasion, vowing to retaliate.

All the artillery shells harmlessly landed into the North's waters and caused no damage to the South, a South Korean Joint Chief of Staff officer said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

South Korea considered the firing to be part of a military drill by North Korea but still bolstered its military readiness against further provocation, the officer said. The South also warned Pyongyang over the firing by naval radio, he said.

"This was their way of saying 'We'll respond to military drills with military drills,'" said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean studies.

Yang said the firing is also aimed at highlighting the instability of the Korean peninsula to apply pressure on the United States to start talks on the signing of a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War. The conflict ended with an armistice, thus leaving the peninsula technically at state of war.....

Lebanon, Israel clash near border; at least 4 dead

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer
ADEISSEH, Lebanon – Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border Tuesday in the most serious clashes since a fierce war four years ago, killing four people including two Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli army officer.

The violence apparently erupted over a move by Israeli soldiers to cut down a tree along the fence dividing the two countries, a sign of the level of tensions at the border where Israel fought a war in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The U.N. urged "maximum restraint" and said it was working with both sides to restore calm. After an initial clash of about five minutes, intermittent shelling and gunfire went on for several hours until the fighting stopped by mid-afternoon, witnesses said.

A Lebanese army officer said the clash started when Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border.

An Associated Press photo shows an Israeli standing on a crane reaching over the fence that Israel erected to separate the two countries. The fence, however, does not match the U.N.-drawn border in all places, and the Israeli military said in a statement that the tree was in Israeli territory.

"It was over the fence but still within Israeli territory," the military spokesman's office said. He said the tree cutting was coordinated with the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, UNIFIL....

Serbia lawmakers vow never to recognize Kosovo

By JOVANA GEC, Associated Press Writer
BELGRADE, Serbia – Serb lawmakers passed a resolution Tuesday vowing that their country will never recognize Kosovo as an independent state, despite a U.N. court ruling backing the independence declaration by the former Serbian province.

As expected, Serbia's 250-member parliament overwhelmingly approved the motion with 192 votes in favor, 26 against and two abstentions after a heated debate during which the opposition blasted the government for "the diplomatic debacle" before the World Court.

The emergency session was held after the International Court of Justice dealt Serbia's struggle to retain Kosovo a major blow by ruling last week that the former province's 2008 independence declaration was legal.

Serbia lost control of the territory during a 1998-99 war against ethnic Albanian rebels and the ensuing NATO air bombardment that led to an international administration of Kosovo.

The parliament resolution called for "peaceful negotiations" for a lasting solution. Kosovo officials have repeatedly rejected any further talks with Serbia on Kosovo's independence....

France declares war against al-Qaida

By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writer
PARIS – France has declared war on al-Qaida, and matched its fighting words with a first attack on a base camp of the terror network's North African branch, after the terror network killed a French aid worker it took hostage in April.

The declaration and attack marked a shift in strategy for France, usually discrete about its behind-the-scenes battle against terrorism.

"We are at war with al-Qaida," Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday, a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death of 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau.

The humanitarian worker had been abducted April 20 or 22 in Niger by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and was later taken to Mali, officials said.

The killers will "not go unpunished," Sarkozy said in unusually strong language, given France's habit of employing quiet cooperation with its regional allies — Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Algeria — in which the al-Qaida franchise was spawned amid an Islamist insurgency.

The Salafist Group for Call and Combat formally merged with al-Qaida in 2006 and spread through the Sahel region — parts of Mauritania, Mali and Niger.

Officials suggest France will activate accords with these countries to stop the terrorists in their tracks....

Former Nazi SS officer Steidtmann dead at 95

BERLIN – A German newspaper says that former Nazi SS officer Erich Steidtmann, suspected but never convicted of involvement in World War II massacres, has died at age 95.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Wednesday that Steidtmann died Sunday from a heart attack at his home in Hannover.

Steidtmann was a captain in the Nazi's elite SS force who led several battalions which allegedly carried out the mass murder of Jews, and he was long sought by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The center expressed its frustration to The Associated Press on Wednesday that Steidtmann died before he could be prosecuted.

Steidtmann was investigated several times for his alleged involvement in killings at the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 and two massacres in the Polish city of Lublin.

Winston Churchill's false teeth go on sale

LONDON – Part of a set of dentures used by Winston Churchill to disguise a lisp is going on sale.

The partial dentures are being put on auction with an estimated value of 4,000 pounds to 5,000 pounds ($6,200 to $7,800.)

A duplicate set is kept by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The organization says the dentures were a tool that the wartime British Prime Minister relied upon to overcome a childhood lisp.

The set to be auctioned Thursday by Keys Auctioneers is being sold by the son of the dental technician who was commissioned to make them.

Third most-wanted Nazi suspect charged in Germany

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER, Associated Press Writer
BERLIN – The world's third most-wanted Nazi suspect, who lived undisturbed for decades after World War II, has been charged in Germany with participating in the murder of 430,000 Jews while serving as a low-ranking guard at a death camp.

Samuel Kunz, 88, had long been ignored by the German justice system, partly because of a lack of interest in going after relatively minor Nazi figures. But in the past 10 years, a younger generation of prosecutors has sought to bring all surviving suspects to justice.

Authorities recently stumbled over Kunz's case as they were studying old documents from German post-wars trials about an SS training camp named Trawniki. The papers were being reviewed in connection with the trial of John Demjanjuk, the 90-year-old retired autoworker on trial in Munich for allegedly serving as a guard at the infamous Sobibor camp.

Kunz was named the No. 3 suspect in April by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He ranked fairly low in the Nazi hierarchy, but he was among the most-wanted suspects because of the large number of Jews he is accused of helping to kill.

Kunz had been living quietly at his home near the western city of Bonn. He received a letter last week saying he had been charged with three different cases of participating in the murder of Jews, authorities said.

He allegedly served as a guard at the Belzec camp in occupied Poland from January 1942 to July 1943.

In addition to those charges, he is accused of fatally shooting 10 Jews in two other incidents related to unspecified "personal excesses," prosecutor Christoph Goeke told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Prosecutors allege both Kunz and the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who was deported to Germany from the U.S. last year, trained as guards at Trawniki. In the 1960s, Kunz testified about his time there in a different trial, but he was never indicted himself....

Rare 3D film shows Warsaw devastated after WWII

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, Associated Press Writer
WARSAW, Poland – The plane slowly descends from white clouds and sweeps over a panorama of a city destroyed by the Nazis: the skeletons of bombed bridges jutting from a quiet river, the empty walls of burned-out houses, the Jewish ghetto totally flattened.

It is Warsaw in the spring of 1945, just after World War II.

The sea of rubble that Warsaw was reduced to during the war is vividly reconstructed in a 3D film that historians and computer graphics experts showed for the first time in Warsaw on Wednesday.

The goal of the film, which must be seen with special 3D glasses, is to bringing home to a young generation the scope of the wartime devastation of Poland's capital.

"Young people do not understand what it means that Warsaw was in ruins; they think it was just a few collapsed houses," Jan Oldakowski, the director of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, told reporters at a screening of the film "City of Ruins."

"Nor were we, at the museum, fully aware of what the city looked like," he said.

The 1939-45 destruction was the result of bombings carried out by Nazi Germany, which invaded Poland in 1939 and occupied it for six years, killing millions of people. Most of the damage resulted from the German army's revenge for the city's 1944 uprising against its brutal rule.

The uprising failed after 63 days of an uneven struggle, but as one of Europe's most dramatic acts of resistance to Nazi rule remains an important element of Polish national identity. The heroism shown by the insurgents — among them women and teenagers — is a source of deep pride to this day

Iran says it has 100 vessels for each US warship

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer
TEHRAN, Iran – The former naval chief for Iran's Revolutionary Guard said the country has set aside 100 military vessels to confront each warship from the U.S. or any other foreign power that might pose a threat, an Iranian newspaper reported Saturday.

Such a military confrontation in the vital oil lanes of the Persian Gulf would be of major global concern. The warning builds on earlier threats by Iran to seal off the Gulf's strategic Strait of Hormuz — through which 40 percent of the world's oil passes — in response to any military attack.

"We have set aside 100 military vessels for each (U.S.) warship to attack at the time of necessity," Gen. Morteza Saffari was quoted as saying by the conservative weekly Panjereh.

The U.S. and Israel have said military force could be used if diplomacy fails to stop what they suspect is an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran denies any aim to develop such weapons and says its nuclear work is for peaceful purposes like power generation.

The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters is based just across the Gulf from Iran in Bahrain.

Saffari said more than 100 foreign warships were currently in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, adding that their sailors were "morsels" for Iran's military to target, the newspaper reported...

NKorea vows nuclear response to US-SKorea drills

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea vowed Saturday to respond with "powerful nuclear deterrence" to joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises poised to begin this weekend, saying the drills amount to a provocation that would prompt "retaliatory sacred war."

North Korea routinely threatens war when South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an attack on the communist North. The latest threat comes amid increased tensions on the divided peninsula over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship that Seoul and Washington blame on Pyongyang.

The allies' defense chiefs announced earlier in the week they would stage the drills to send a clear message to North Korea to stop its "aggressive" behavior. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in the March sinking of the Cheonan, considered the worst military attack on the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea vehemently denies any involvement and says any punishment would trigger war.

On Saturday, North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission — headed by leader Kim Jong Il — backed that threat up by promising a "retaliatory sacred war" against South Korea and the U.S. for what it called a second "unpardonable" provocation after wrongly accusing the North in the Cheonan incident.

"The army and people of the (North) will legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises," the commission said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency....

Ex-Romanian dictator Ceausescu and wife exhumed

By ALISON MUTLER, Associated Press Writer BUCHAREST, Romania – The mystery of where former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were buried moved closer to resolution Wednesday after forensic scientists dug up their official graves in a hunt for DNA. Ceausescu ruled Romania for 25 years with an iron fist before being ousted and executed during the 1989 anti-communist revolt in which more than 1,000 people were killed. Many Romanians have doubted for years that the Ceausescus were really buried in the Ghencea military cemetery in west Bucharest. Still, they were shocked by the unannounced early-morning exhumation, part of a five-year lawsuit. "I never thought this would happen," said Ioan Mirichi, 81, a former engineer visiting a family grave early Wednesday. "I didn't believe the rumors he wasn't buried here ... but I suppose the family must decide." Conspiracy theories have ranged from the graves being empty to the Ceausescus' bodies being spirited off by supporters and replaced in their coffins by anonymous victims of Europe's bloodiest anti-communist revolt...

Russia: US alleged spy arrests Cold War throwback

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW – Russia angrily denounced the U.S. arrest of 10 alleged Russian spies as an unjustified throwback to the Cold War, and senior lawmakers said some in the U.S. government may be trying to undercut President Barack Obama's warming relations with Moscow.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it was regrettable that the arrests came amid Obama's push for a "reset" in Russian-U.S. ties.

"These actions are unfounded and pursue unseemly goals," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We don't understand the reasons which prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to make a public statement in the spirit of Cold War-era spy stories."...

Stalin monument dismantled in Georgian hometown

By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI, Associated Press Writer
TBILISI, Georgia – Authorities in Georgia have torn down a monument to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in his birthplace of Gori to make way for a memorial to the fallen in the Russian-Georgian war of 2008.

Gori is just a few kilometers from the separatist enclave of South Ossetia, where Russian forces crushed the Georgian army in a brief conflict in August 2008.

Officials say the overnight dismantlement of the towering bronze statue, approved last week by the city's parliament, was spurred by the appeals of a younger generation who have embraced Western ideals of freedom.

"A memorial to Stalin has no place in the Georgia of the 21st Century," President Mikhail Saakashvili said in televised comments....

Kyrgyzstan Asks European Security Body for Help

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Published: June 24, 2010
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — Kyrgyzstan’s interim government, which has struggled to control ethnic violence and even apparently its own police and military, has asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to send in an international police force, akin to those deployed in the former Yugoslavia.
This is the fourth plea for international help from the weak and severely destabilized government, which failed to intervene to halt ethnic rioting in the south of the country that killed thousands of people, mostly ethnic Uzbeks, and touched off a refugee crisis....

Turkey: A Warning on Security

By SEBNEM ARSU
Published: June 23, 2010
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, warned European leaders on Wednesday that Europe’s security could not be guaranteed unless European countries stepped up support for Turkey in its struggle with Kurdish rebels, including extraditing suspects sought by the Turkish authorities. “We have bilateral agreements on extradition of criminals, but which one of these have you actually complied with?” Mr. Erdogan asked at a southeast European summit meeting in Istanbul.