Marines charge "abducted" corporal with desertion News
Marines charge "abducted" corporal with desertion

[JURIST] The US Marine Corps announced late Thursday that after a five-month investigation it has filed desertion charges against a corporal who disappeared from his Iraq base and who later claimed to have been abducted and held hostage by Iraqi kidnappers. Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, an Arabic translator born in Lebanon, went missing June 21, and after appearing blindfolded in a "hostage" video turned himself over to US authorities in Lebanon 10 days later. Read the official Marine Corps press release. Hassoun will be arraigned before an Article 32 hearing, but no date has been publicized. AFP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.