Turkey conference on Armenian genocide opens despite court order News
Turkey conference on Armenian genocide opens despite court order

[JURIST] A conference in Turkey on the alleged genocide of 1.5 Armenians [Wikipedia backgrounder] in the then-Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 went ahead on Saturday despite a court ban that prompted protests from EU representatives [JURIST report] who saw it as casting a continuing shadow over Turkey's human rights record as it seeks EU membership. The court ruling was circumvented by having the conference venue changed to Bilgi University [university website], a private institution in Istanbul. The meeting, which continued Sunday, has infuriated Turkish nationalists who deny or minimize the killings, and has been problematic under Turkey's penal law which even in its recently-revised form [JURIST report] makes promoting certain interpretations of Turkish history a criminal offence. Aljazeera has more. From Istanbul, Hurriyet provides local coverage in English.

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.