Newly released files show Julia Child was a spy

Television cooking personality Julia Child prepares a French delicacy in her cooking studio in this Nov. 24, 1970 file photo. Child shared a secret with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt. The secret comes out Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the U.S.'s first centralized intelligence effort. The National Archives will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.(AP Photo/FILE)

By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - Before Julia Child became known to the world as a leading chef, she admitted at least one failing when applying for a job as a spy: impulsiveness.

At 28 as an advertising manager at W&J Sloane furniture store in Beverly Hills, Calif., Child clashed with new store managers and left her job abruptly.

"I made a tactical error and was out," she explained in a handwritten note attached to her application to join the Office of Strategic Services, a World War II-era spy agency. "However, I learned a lot about advertising and wish I had been older and more experienced so that I could have handled the situation, as it was a most interesting position."

Child was not yet married and was applying for the job under her maiden name, McWilliams, according to previously top-secret records released by the National Archives on Thursday. She was hired in the summer of 1942 for clerical work with the intelligence agency and later worked directly for OSS Director William Donovan, the personnel records show.

Details about Child's background and nearly 24,000 other OSS employees are revealed in the newly released documents, withheld from public view as classified records for decades by the CIA.

The 750,000 documents identify the vast spy network managed by the OSS, which later became the CIA. President Franklin Roosevelt created the OSS, the country's first centralized intelligence operation.

The OSS files offer details about other agents, including Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, major league catcher Moe Berg, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and film actor Sterling Hayden.

Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt; and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

Some of those like Child on the list have been identified previously as having worked for the OSS, but their personnel records never have been available before. Those records would show why they were hired, jobs they were assigned to and perhaps even missions they pursued while working for the agency.

The release of the OSS personnel files unmasks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part was later folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945.

"I think it's terrific," said Elizabeth McIntosh, 93, a former OSS agent now living in Woodbridge, Va. "They've finally, after all these years, they've gotten the names out. All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS."

The CIA long resisted releasing the records. But a former CIA director, William Casey, himself an OSS veteran, cleared the way for transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the spy agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest documents to be made public.

Information about OSS involvement was so guarded that relatives often could not confirm a family member's work with the group.

Walter Mess, who handled covert OSS operations in Poland and North Africa, said he kept quiet for more than 50 years, only recently telling his wife of 62 years about his OSS activity.

"I was told to keep my mouth shut," said Mess, now 93 and living in Falls Church, Va.

The files provide new information even for those most familiar with the agency. Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society created by former OSS agents and their relatives, said the nearly 24,000 employees included in the archives far exceed previous estimates of 13,000.

The newly released documents will clarify these and other issues, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives.

"We're saying the OSS was a lot bigger than they were saying," he said.

___

On the Net:

CIA OSS page: http://tinyurl.com/6bvmhf

Index to National Archives OSS personnel files: http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/

Remains of cemetery found in Sahara

This undated handout photo provided by the National Geographic Society shows a triple burial containing a woman and two children, their limbs entwined, discovered at the Gobero site during the 2006 field season.(AP Photo/Mike Hettwer, National Geographic Society)

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert.

The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find, detailed at a news conference Thursday at the National Geographic Society.

"Part of discovery is finding things that you least expect," he said. "When you come across something like that in the middle of the desert it sends a tingle down your spine."

Some 200 graves of humans were found during fieldwork at the site in 2005 and 2006, as well as remains of animals, large fish and crocodiles.

"Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don't live in the desert," said Sereno. "I realized we were in the green Sahara."

The graveyard, uncovered by hot desert winds, is near what would have been a lake at the time people lived there. It's in a region called Gobero, hidden away in Niger's forbidding Tenere Desert, known to Tuareg nomads as a "desert within a desert."

The human remains dated from two distinct populations that lived there during wet times, with a dry period in between.

The researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine when these ancient people lived there. Even the most recent were some 1,000 years before the building of the pyramids in Egypt.

The first group, known as the Kiffian, hunted wild animals and speared huge perch with harpoons. They colonized the region when the Sahara was at its wettest, between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago.

The researchers said the Kiffians were tall, sometimes reaching well over 6 feet.

The second group lived in the region between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago. The Tenerians were smaller and had a mixed economy of hunting, fishing and cattle herding.

Their burials often included jewelry or ritual poses. For example, one girl had an upper-arm bracelet carved from a hippo tusk. An adult Tenerian male was buried with his skull resting on part of a clay vessel; another adult male was interred seated on the shell of a mud turtle.

And pollen remains show the woman and two children were buried on a bed of flowers. The researchers preserved the group just as they had been for thousands of years.

"At first glance, it's hard to imagine two more biologically distinct groups of people burying their dead in the same place," said team member Chris Stojanowski, a bioarchaeologist from Arizona State University.

Stojanowski said ridges on the thigh bone of one Kiffian man show he had huge leg muscles, "which suggests he was eating a lot of protein and had an active, strenuous lifestyle. The Kiffian appear to have been fairly healthy — it would be difficult to grow a body that tall and muscular without sufficient nutrition."

On the other hand, ridges on a Tenerian male were barely visible. "This man's life was less rigorous, perhaps taking smaller fish and game with more advanced hunting technologies," Stojanowski said.

Helene Jousse, a zooarchaeologist from the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, Austria, reported that animal bones found in the area were from types common today in the Serengeti in Kenya, such as elephants, giraffes, hartebeests and warthogs.

The finds are detailed in reports in Thursday's edition of the journal PLoS One and in the September issue of National Geographic Magazine.

While the Sahara is desert today, a small difference in Earth's orbit once brought seasonal monsoons farther north, wetting the landscape with lakes with lush margins and drawing animals and people.

The research was funded by National Geographic, the Island Fund of the New York Community Trust, the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

___

On the Net:

PLoS One: http://www.plos.org/

National Geographic: http://www.nationalgeographic.ngm.com/

People of the Green Sahara: http://www.projectexploration.org/



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White Americans no longer a majority by 2042

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042, according to new government projections. That's eight years sooner than previous estimates, made in 2004.

The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority residents, especially Hispanics.

It is also growing older.

"The white population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "The future of America is epitomized by the young people today. They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future."

The Census Bureau Thursday released population projections through 2050, based on rates for births, deaths and immigration. They are subject to big revisions, depending on immigration policy, cultural changes and natural or manmade disasters.

The U.S. has nearly 305 million people today. The population is projected to hit 400 million in 2039 and 439 million in 2050.

That's like adding all the people from France and Britain, said Steve A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that advocates tighter immigration policies.

White non-Hispanics make up about two-thirds of the population, but only 55 percent of those younger than 5.

By 2050, whites will make up 46 percent of the population and blacks will make up 15 percent, a relatively small increase from today. Hispanics, who make up about 15 percent of the population today, will account for 30 percent in 2050, according to the new projections.

Asians, which make up about 5 percent of the population, are projected to increase to 9 percent by 2050.

The population 85 and older is projected to more than triple by 2050, to 19 million.

___

On The Net:

Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov

Ancient Roman Ruins Discovered in Jewish Capital

Ancient Roman Ruins Discovered in Jewish Capital
LiveScience StaffLiveScience.com 57 minutes ago
Roman temple ruins from the 2nd century A.D. have emerged from excavations at the ancient Jewish capital of the Galilee in Israel.
The discovery shows that the city of Zippori housed a significant pagan population which built a temple in the city center during the Roman period. The central location of the temple lies within a walled courtyard, and may help archaeologists better understand the urban layout of Zippori in the Roman era.
A church from the later Byzantine period sits on top of the ancient temple, as revealed by the Noam Shudofsky Zippori Expedition headed by Zeev Weiss of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The building of the church on the foundation of the temple testifies to the preservation of the sacred section of the city over time. The new finding not only sheds light the religious life, culture and society in Roman and Byzantine Zippori, but also indicates that Jews, pagans and later Christians lived together and developed their hometown with various buildings.
The newly discovered temple is located south of the decumanus, or colonnaded street, that ran from east to west and was the main thoroughfare in the city during the Roman through Byzantine period. The temple, measuring approximately 79 by 39 feet (24 by 12 meters), was built with a decorated façade facing the street. The temple's walls were plundered in ancient times and only its foundations remain.
No evidence has been found that reveals the nature of the temple's rituals, but some coins dating from the time of Antoninus Pius, minted in Diocaesarea (Zippori), depict a temple to the Roman gods Zeus and Tyche. The temple ceased to function at an unknown date, and a large church, the remains of which were uncovered by the Hebrew University excavation team in previous seasons, was built over it in the Byzantine period.
North of the decumanus, opposite the temple, a monumental building was partially excavated this summer. Its role is still unclear, although its nature and size indicate that it was an important building. A courtyard with a well-preserved stone pavement of smooth rectangular slabs executed in high quality was uncovered in the center of the building, upon which were found a pile of collapsed columns and capitals, probably as a result of an earthquake. The decoration on these architectural elements was executed in stucco.
Beyond a row of columns, an adjacent aisle and additional rooms were discovered. Two of them were decorated with colorful, geometrical mosaics.
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Original Story: Ancient Roman Ruins Discovered in Jewish Capital

Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks

The annual Perseid meteor shower is set to peak on Tuesday, Aug. 12, after the moon sets in the wee hours of the morning. The best time to view the meteor shower will be between 4 and 5 a.m., according the American Meteor Society. At left, a Perseid shower over Rhyolite, Nev., on Aug. 13, 2007.(Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks August 12
Joe Rao SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist SPACE.com Fri Aug 8, 7:01 AM ET

Every August, just when many people go vacationing in the country where skies are dark, the best-known meteor shower makes its appearance.

It is also the month of "The Tears of St. Lawrence," more commonly known as the Perseid Meteor Shower.
Laurentius, a Christian deacon, is said to have been martyred by the Romans in 258 AD on an iron outdoor stove. It was in the midst of this torture that Laurentius cried out:
"I am already roasted on one side and, if thou wouldst have me well cooked, it is time to turn me on the other."
The saint's death was commemorated on his feast day, Aug. 10. King Phillip II of Spain built his monastery place, the "Escorial," on the plan of the holy gridiron. And the abundance of shooting stars seen annually between approximately Aug. 8 and 14 have come to be known as St. Lawrence's "fiery tears."
Viewing prospects
In 2008, the Perseids are expected to reach their maximum on Aug. 12.
The exact time of maximum should be about 11h Universal Time (UT) Aug. 12, according to Margaret Campbell-Brown and Peter Brown in the 2008 Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. If so, the timing is very good for meteor watchers observing before dawn in North America, especially in the western states. And that morning, the waxing gibbous moon sets around 1:30 a.m. local daylight saving time, leaving a dark sky for the next 3 hours.
Take full advantage of that moonless period. Next year, a last quarter moon will illuminate the after-midnight sky with its light and will hinder observation of the Perseids.
Comet bits
We know today that these meteors are actually the dross of the Swift-Tuttle comet. Discovered back in 1862, this comet takes approximately 130 years to circle the sun. And in much the same way that the Tempel-Tuttle comet leaves a trail of debris along its orbit to produce the Leonid meteors of November, Comet Swift-Tuttle produces a similar debris trail along its orbit to cause the Perseids. Indeed, every year during mid-August, when the Earth passes close to the orbit of Swift-Tuttle, the material left behind by the comet from its previous visits rams into our atmosphere at approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) per second and creates bright streaks of light in our midsummer night skies.
Comet Swift-Tuttle made its most recent appearance sixteen years ago, in December 1992. For several years before and after its 1992 return, the Perseids were a far more prolific shower, appearing to produce brief outbursts of as many as several hundred meteors per hour, many of which were dazzlingly bright and spectacular. The most likely reason was that the Perseids parent comet was itself passing through the inner solar system and that the streams of Perseid meteoroids in the comet's vicinity were larger and more thickly clumped together — hence the reason for the brighter meteors and much-higher-than-normal meteor rates.
But with the comet now far back out in space, Perseid activity has pretty much returned to normal.
Meteor clumps
A very good shower will produce about one meteor per minute for a given observer under a dark country sky. Any light pollution or moonlight considerably reduces the count. The August Perseids are among the strongest of the readily observed annual meteor showers, and at maximum activity nominally yield 50 or 60 meteors per hour. However, observers with a wide-open view of exceptionally dark skies often record even larger numbers on the order of 90 or even 100 per hour.
But while 60 meteors per hour correspond to one meteor sighting every minute, keep in mind that this is only a statistical average. In reality, what usually is seen is what some have called, "the clumping effect." Sometimes you'll see two or even three Perseids streak across the sky in quick succession, all within less than minute. This is usually followed by a lull of several minutes or more, before the sky suddenly bears fruit once again.
When and where to look
Typically during an overnight watch, the Perseids are capable of producing a number of bright, flaring and fragmenting meteors, which leave fine trains in their wake.
On the night of shower maximum, the Perseid radiant is not far from the famous "Double Star Cluster" of Perseus. Low in the northeast during the early evening, it rises higher in the sky until morning twilight ends observing. Shower members appearing close to the radiant have foreshortened tracks; those appearing farther away are often brighter, have longer tracks, and move faster across the sky. About five to 10 of the meteors seen in any given hour will not fit this geometric pattern, and may be classified as sporadic or as members of some other (minor) shower.
Watching for the Perseids consists of lying back, gazing up into the stars and waiting. Perseid activity increases sharply in the hours after midnight, so plan your observing times accordingly. We are then looking more nearly face-on into the direction of the Earth's motion as it orbits the Sun, and the radiant is also higher up. Making a meteor count is as simple as lying in a lawn chair or on the ground and marking on a clipboard whenever a "shooting star" is seen.
Counts should be made on several nights before and after the predicted maximum, so the behavior of the shower away from its peak can be determined. Usually, good numbers of meteors should be seen on the preceding and following nights as well. The shower is generally at one-quarter strength one or two nights before and after maximum.
A few Perseids can be seen as much as two weeks before and a week after the peak. The extreme limits, in fact, are said to extend from July 17 to Aug. 24, though an occasional one might be seen almost anytime during the month of August.
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Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York
Original Story: Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks August 12

Deliberate Decisions Are the Best

Deliberate Decisions Are the Best
LiveScience StaffLiveScience.com Mon Aug 11, 2008

When it comes to making life-changing decisions, neither snap judgments nor "sleeping on it" trump good old-fashioned conscious thought, new research suggests.

The finding contradicts research reported in 2006, which suggested unconscious thought is optimal for making complex decisions, including whether to buy a certain house or car. The 2006 findings, made by Dutch researchers and published in the journal Science, supported ideas of making quick decisions or leaving complex choices to the powers of unconscious thought."Claims that we can make superior 'snap' decisions by trusting intuition or through the 'power' of unconscious thought have received a great deal of attention in the media," said Ben Newell, a psychologist at the University of New South Wales and lead researcher of the new study that was announced today.

Newell and colleagues presented participants with complex decisions and asked them to choose the best option immediately, after a period of conscious deliberation or after a period of distraction (the "sleep on it" method), which is thought to encourage unconscious thought processes.

In all experiments, there was some evidence that conscious deliberation can lead to better choices and little evidence for superiority of choices made "unconsciously," the researchers said.
Faced with making decisions such as choosing a rental apartment or buying a car, most participants made choices predicted by their individual preferences for certain features (for example, safety, security, color or price), regardless of the mode of thinking employed.
Unconscious decision-making was thought to be best in certain situations because it is not limited by how much stuff can be shuffled through the mind - a limitation thought to hobble conscious thought. And so, scientists had said the benefits of unconscious thinking are greatest when a decision is complex, with multiple options and attributes.

"Our research suggests that unconscious thought is more susceptible to irrelevant factors, such as how recently information has been seen rather than how important it is," Newell said. "If conscious thinkers are given adequate time to encode material, or are allowed to consult material while they deliberate, their choices are at least as good as those made 'unconsciously.'"
The results will be published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

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Original Story: Deliberate Decisions Are the Best

Dollar soars higher on euro zone woes

Friday August 8, 2008 4:44 pm ET
By Tali Arbel, AP Business Writer

Dollar soars against major currencies as euro area struggles, commodities sell off

NEW YORK (AP) -- The dollar soared Friday in what analysts are calling a game-changing move as concerns about the deteriorating euro zone economy gripped investors and commodities sold off.

In late trading in New York, the euro came off its lows to $1.5013 from $1.5328 late Thursday. Earlier in the day, it sank as low as $1.5004. It is the highest point for the dollar since late February, and a rapid recovery from July 15, when the euro hit a record against the dollar at $1.6038.

"There's a real capitulation under way," said David Gilmore, partner at Foreign Exchange Analytics in Essex, Conn. "In 24 hours it's gone from $1.55 to $1.50, which is highly unusual. That changes your game plan for the marketplace."

The euro also sank against the British pound and the Japanese yen -- both of which are also weakening against the dollar.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank and Bank of England left their key interest rates unchanged at 4.25 percent and 5 percent, respectively. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet issued a warning on inflation and said economic growth figures for the second and third quarters of 2008 would be much weaker than in the early part of the year. He signaled that an interest-rate increase to counter inflation would probably not be forthcoming.

Higher interest rates can buck up a currency, as investors transfer assets where they can get better yields, while lower interest rates can weaken a currency.

The pound, meanwhile, recovered slightly $1.9198 after earlier selling as low as $1.9145, its lowest point since November 2006. On Thursday, the pound sold for $1.9436. But the dollar leaped to 110.24 Japanese yen from 109.45 yen, its highest level since January.

"This is payback time for the European currencies against the dollar," said Ashraf Laidi, currency strategist at CMC Markets. "These currencies have to retreat to better reflect the sharp deterioration in economic fundamentals in (the euro zone) region. This is not to say there's been an improvement in U.S. fundamentals."

Earlier in the week, the Federal Reserve maintained the benchmark federal funds rate at 2 percent.

Comments by ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet after Thursday's decision "confirmed that the window of opportunity for further rate hikes has been slammed shut by the cold blast of negative data releases that swept through the euro zone in the last few weeks," said Marco Annunziata, an economist at UniCredit in London.

Recent economic indicators from major euro zone economies such as Germany, France and Italy have painted a gloomy picture.

The ECB last month moved to cool inflation by raising borrowing costs for the first time in a year, by a quarter percentage point to 4.25 percent, while the Bank of England has left rates unchanged since April, when it reduced its benchmark figure by a quarter of a percentage point to 5 percent.

Crude oil futures, meanwhile, dropped below $116 a barrel, and oil-producing countries' currencies sold off. Gold is at two-month lows.

"Lots of investors have been on high commodity prices and a low dollar, and those bets are getting destroyed," Gilmore said.

The Canadian dollar, which leapt higher last fall on the back of surging oil and other commodities, is back down again to 12-month lows against the U.S. dollar, while the Australian dollar is back to mid-January levels. The New Zealand dollar is at 11-month lows.

The dollar rose to 1.0685 Canadian dollars from 1.0517, and hit a six-month high of 1.0837 Swiss francs before retreating to 1.0810 francs. On Thursday, the dollar bought 1.0625 francs.

AP Business Writer George Frey contributed to this report.