| October 7, 2009 | - Government ministers in the Maldives, which rising sea levels will make uninhabitable by 2100, were taking scuba lessons and practicing hand signals so that they can hold cabinet meetings underwater.
| Source:
New Zealand Herald
|
| August 6, 2009 | - Four Uyghurs formerly held at Guantanamo Bay were hired at a golf course in Bermuda to help with preparations for the PGA Grand Slam.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 2, 2009 | - The Obama Administration was shopping for a new prison to hold the Guantanamo Bay inmates, either in Kansas or in Michigan.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| June 2, 2009 | - A 31-year-old Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay who had been imprisoned since 2002 committed suicide.
Pentagon officials would not provide details about the detainee's death, but it is known that he was on a hunger strike and thus held in the psychiatric ward, where he was force-fed in a restraint chair and likely kept sedated. “They harbored some hope that President Obama would move swiftly to resolve the situation,” said David Remes, a lawyer who represents 16 other Yemeni detainees, “but they can’t see any progress so far or any light at the end of the tunnel.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 21, 2009 | -
Democrats in Congress denied President Barack Obama the $80 million he sought to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and move its prisoners to maximum-security prisons in the United States. “We don't want them around,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said of the prisoners. Obama, speaking in the rotunda at the National Archives where the Constitution is kept, insisted that he would move the prisoners despite resistance from Congress and put forth a new policy of “prolonged detention,” whereby terrorism suspects can be held indefinitely without trial. Vice President Joe Biden said that the White House had been evaluating Guantanamo prisoners with a “fine tooth comb.” “It's like opening Pandora's Box,” he said. “We don't know what's inside.”
| Source 1:
Fox News
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Newsweek
|
| March 14, 2009 | - Court papers filed by the Justice Department indicated that the Obama Administration will no longer define detainees at Guantanamo Bay as “enemy combatants” and will rely on federal and international law to justify detainee policy. “It is essential that we operate in a manner that strengthens our national security, is consistent with our values, and is governed by law,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “The government may have eliminated the term enemy combatant,” said one human rights advocate, “but it is still claiming the authority to detain people far beyond the traditional norms of humanitarian law.”
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 23, 2009 | - Upon taking office, Obama ordered all secret U.S. prisons closed immediately, and the detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed within a year; he stopped the torture of American prisoners; granted access to all U.S. detainees to the International Red Cross; ended the practice by which detainees could be sent to countries where they might be tortured; froze the salaries of all White House officials making more than $100,000; ordered all government agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure” regarding Freedom of Information Act requests; ordered all administration appointees to take an ethics pledge; ended a government ban on funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad; and revoked Executive Order 13233, which placed limits on public access to the records of former presidents.
| Source:
Whitehouse.gov and NY Times
|
| November 25, 2008 | - Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur Salim Ahmed Hamdan was released from Guantanamo Bay after spending more than five years at the detention camp.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 24, 2008 | - After a trial based predominantly on classified evidence, much of which could not be discussed with the defendants, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered the release of five Algerian prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, where they have been held without charge for seven years based on a single, unidentified source. “To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed,” said Leon, “would be inconsistent with this court's obligation.” The judge called upon the Justice Department to accept his ruling, saying that the Algerians deserve to go home and that an appeal would keep the prisoners at Guantanamo for two additional years; more than 100 cases related to the prison camp, which President-elect Barack Obama has promised to close, were under review by federal judges.
| Source 1:
AP
Source 2:
AP
|
| September 25, 2008 | -
Guantanamo Bay prosecutor Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld resigned after his superiors failed to turn over evidence to a detainee's lawyers. “I am highly concerned,” he said, “about the slipshod, uncertain 'procedure' for affording defense counsel discovery.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| June 30, 2008 | - A federal appeals court ruled that evidence against Hozaifa Parhat, a Chinese
Muslim held at Guantanamo Bay for six years, consisted of nothing more than the reassertion of his guilt in three top-secret documents. “Lewis Carroll notwithstanding,” wrote one judge, quoting “The Hunting of the Snark,” “the fact the government has 'said it thrice' does not make the allegation true.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| June 14, 2008 | - The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that detainees held as “enemy combatants” by the United States in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, have a constitutional right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. “Liberty and security can be reconciled...within the framework of the law,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the court's decision. “The Framers decided that habeas corpus...must be...a part of that law.” Dissenting, Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “So who has won? Not the detainees. The Court's analysis leaves them with only the prospect of further litigation.” Defense lawyers for the detainees moved to establish that their clients have the right to other constitutional protections and sought to halt ongoing military-commission trials, which permit hearsay and evidence gained from torture.
John McCain called the ruling “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” Barack Obama said, “I think the Supreme Court was right.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
cnn
|
| May 13, 2008 | - Curators at the Museum of Modern Art pulled the incubator plug on a tiny coat made of living mouse stem cells after it grew too fast.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 28, 2008 | -
Israel “Cachao” Lopez, one of the inventors of the mambo, died. At his funeral, as an orchestra performed his Afro-Cuban “Misa de Mambo,” a statue of Cuba's patron saint appeared to be swaying to the beat.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| February 24, 2008 | - In Cuba,
Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother Raul through an election in which Raul was the only candidate. “I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics,” wrote Castro in his resignation letter, “or its antithesis the self-flagellation.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 5, 2007 | - An inmate at Guantanamo Bay was placed under observation after he slashed his own throat with a sharpened fingernail.
| Source:
BBC
|
| November 25, 2007 | - Abraham Bolden, a former Secret Service agent, told reporters that a plot by Cuban exiles to kill President John F. Kennedy in Chicago was uncovered three weeks before his assassination in Dallas. The would-be assailants, who had allegedly rented a motel room overlooking Kennedy's motorcade route and were said to possess automatic rifles with telescopic sights, were never caught, and the investigation, Bolden claimed, was covered up.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| October 14, 2007 | -
Hugo Chavez broadcast his weekly television program, “Aló Presidente,” from Che Guevara’s mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba, to honor the fortieth anniversary of the guerilla leader’s death. “We are the Axis of Evil,” said Fidel Castro to Chavez via phone. “You will never die,” said Chavez to Castro. “You remain forever on this continent, and with these nations, and this revolution is more alive today than ever, and Fidel, you know it.”
| Source:
CBS News
|
| September 16, 2007 | -
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, an outspoken advocate of Cuban sanctions, defended his large collection of Cuban cigars. “You know,” he said, “if it's good, I smoke it.”
| Source:
St. Petersberg Times
|
| June 13, 2007 | -
President Bush became the first sitting president to visit Albania, where Prime Minister Sali Berisha welcomed him as “the greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times.” “Bush is eager for affection,” wrote Fidel Castro in an editorial published in the Cuban newspaper Granma entitled “The Tyrant visits Tirana.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| June 7, 2007 | - The U.S. military was developing lethal water guns to combat scuba-equipped
terrorists,.
| Source:
Wired
|
| May 10, 2007 | -
Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan was charged with being a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo
|
| March 15, 2007 | - At a military hearing in Guantánamo Bay Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessed to being the mastermind of the September 11 attacks; he also claimed to have been “responsible” for: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Richard Reid's attempted shoe bombing of an airplane; the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia; and plots to assassinate several former presidents, including Jimmy Carter. “For sure,” he said, “I'm American enemies.” According to the released transcript, when asked whether his statement was the result of mistreatment by his interrogators, he said, “CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning when they transferred me [REDACTED].”
| Source:
WP
|
| February 21, 2007 | - An appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the writ of habeas corpus does not apply to prisoners in the American concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 16, 2007 | -
Congress approved the Defense Department's request to spend $18 million to convert, in preparation for a post-Castro Cuba, a U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo into a shelter that could house 500,000 fleeing Cubans.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| February 14, 2007 | - The Navy announced that specially trained dolphins and sea lions may patrol a military base in Washington State that is vulnerable to attack by swimmers and scuba divers; the sea lions are trained to clamp cuffs around swimmers' legs so that the swimmers can be reeled in.
| Source:
AP
|
| February 4, 2007 | - Detainees at Guantánamo Bay complained of “infinite tedium and loneliness.”
| Source:
AP via Yahoo!NEWS
|
| January 12, 2007 | - On a radio program for federal employees and contractors, a Department of Defense official listed the names of law firms whose lawyers have represented detainees at Guantánamo Bay. “Quite honestly,” he said, “when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 13, 2006 | - Carlos Lage, the vice-president of Cuba, said that the United States was a “morally decadent empire.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 8, 2006 | -
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized for saying that Cubans and Puerto Ricans were “very hot,” due to their mixed “black blood” and “Latino blood.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 14, 2006 | - Five Uighurs found life in Albania “better than Guantánamo” but longed to move to Toronto.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| August 13, 2006 | -
Cuban leader Fidel Castro, it was reported, looked good after surgery, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visited his bedside. “I ask you all to be optimistic,” said Castro in a statement, “and at the same time to be ready to face any adverse news.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 4, 2006 | -
President Bush encouraged the people of Cuba to seek regime change.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 31, 2006 | - It was reported that detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison have attacked their guards with spit, feces, semen, and a bloody lizard tail.
| Source:
AP via Breitbart.com
|
| July 8, 2006 | -
President Bush said that he was “willing to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court” in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that the administration's scheme to try prisoners at Guantánamo in military tribunals is illegal. “It didn't say we couldn't have done—couldn't have made that decision, see?” Bush added. “They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo—whether we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 21, 2006 | - President George W. Bush said that he wanted to release all the detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, except for the “cold-blooded killers.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| June 12, 2006 | - Three detainees at the American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, committed suicide using nooses made from clothing and bedsheets. “They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own,” said Navy Rear-Admiral Harry Harris. “I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us.” All three men had been in the camp for about four years and had recently engaged in a hunger strike.
| Source:
Scotsman
|
| May 29, 2006 | - Seventy-five prisoners were on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay prison, and a charity organization published a report claiming that 60 minors ages 14 and older have been held at the prison.
| Source 1:
ABC News
Source 2:
The Age
|
| May 20, 2006 | - There was a riot at Guantánamo Bay.
| Source:
The Toronto Star
|
| May 7, 2006 | -
President Bush said he would like to see the prison at Guantánamo Bay closed.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 25, 2006 | - The United States announced that it would free 141 of the 490 "enemy combatants" at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba because they do not threaten U.S. security after all.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| April 16, 2006 | - It was reported that Donald Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the torture of Guantánamo Bay detainee Mohamed al-Qahtani, who was made to perform “dog tricks”; Rumsfeld was allegedly briefed on the progress of al-Qahtani's interrogations by phone.
| Source:
The Age
|
| March 8, 2006 | - The U.S. State Department issued a report criticizing human rights abuses in China, North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. It also criticized the rights records of Jordan and Egypt, two countries where the United States has sent detainees to be interrogated. The report noted that the United States' "own journey towards liberty and justice for all has been long and difficult," and is "far from complete."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Independent
|
| March 8, 2006 | - Details from recently released Guantánamo Bay transcripts continued to emerge. "We lost our goats," explained one prisoner. "That's why we were looking through binoculars."
| Source:
The Christian Science Monitor
|
| March 3, 2006 | - The Pentagon released the names of the inmates at Guantánamo Bay as part of 5,000 pages of hearing transcripts; one man, Abdur Sayed Rahman, a Pakistani chicken farmer, was apparently held because his name was similar to that of Taliban deputy minister Abdur Zahid Rahman.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| February 16, 2006 | - The United Nations issued a report calling on the United States to either try the approximately 500 inmates at the Guantánamo Bay
prison for their crimes or release them.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 4, 2006 | - The IAEA voted to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council because of Iran's nuclear program; Venezuela, Cuba, and Syria voted against the measure. Prior to the vote, Egypt proposed to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, but that proposal was rejected by the United States because it would interfere with Israel's weapons program.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 19, 2006 | - It was reported that several of the Guantánamo Bay hunger strikers had started to eat again, while other reports indicated that 30 of the hunger strikers were close to death.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
AfterDowningStreet.org
|
| January 10, 2006 | -
Amnesty International released reports detailing even more torture at Guantánamo Bay.
| Source:
Forbes.com
|
| December 30, 2005 | - A judge ruled that it was illegal for the Bush Administration to continue to imprison several Chinese
Muslims at Guantánamo Bay. Nine months ago a tribunal determined that the prisoners in question were not actually enemy combatants, but U.S. law will not allow them to be sent to China because China persecutes Muslims, and no other country wants the prisoners. The judge also noted that he had no power to enforce his own ruling.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| December 7, 2005 | -
Elian Gonzalez turned 12.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| November 18, 2005 | -
UN human rights experts decided not to visit Guantánamo Bay because the United States refused to allow them full access to detainees.
| Source:
Turkish Press/AFP
|
| September 14, 2005 | - At least 128 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were on hunger strike; 18 of them had been hospitalized and were being force-fed. "We're going to take care of everyone," said a prison spokesman.
| Source:
LA Times
|
| September 5, 2005 | - Fifty-five countries offered aid to the United Stateswith the disaster created by Hurricane Katrina. Cuba offered 1,100 doctors, Iran offered humanitarian aid, China offered $5 million, and Venezuela offered fuel at a reduced cost. The United States was performing a “needs assessment” to decide whose help to accept.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| July 21, 2005 | - Fifty-two prisoners were on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay.
| Source:
Science Daily
|
| July 17, 2005 | - Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, who returned to Pakistan after three years in Guantánamo Bay, said that writing poetry kept him sane while imprisoned. “They may have weapons and missiles,” he wrote, “but we can find no sign of manhood in this army.”
| Source:
SF Gate
|
| July 13, 2005 | - The twelfth major U.S. investigation into Guantánamo Bay found that forcing an inmate to behave like a dog was not inhumane.
| Source:
Bloomberg News
|
| July 10, 2005 | - The commander of Guantánamo Bay was fired.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 8, 2005 | -
Air Supply played the Karl Marx theater in Cuba.
| Source:
ABC13.com
|
| June 27, 2005 | - A group of U.S. senators visited Guantánamo Bay and said that prisoners there were being treated humanely. Prisoners “even have air-conditioning,” said Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, “and semi-private showers.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 25, 2005 | - The United States admitted to the United Nations that U.S. prisoners have been tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay.
| Source:
The Independent
|
| June 12, 2005 | - It was reported that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay tortured prisoners with the music of Christina Aguilera; it was also revealed that American military torturers performed a satirical puppet show for one victim.
| Source:
Drudge Report
|
| May 31, 2005 | - President George W. Bush said that allegations made by Amnesty International, claiming that the prison at Guantánamo Bay is a “gulag,” were absurd. Bush accused Amnesty of listening to “people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble--that means not tell the truth.”
| Source:
Whitehouse.gov
|
| May 31, 2005 | - Several prisoners at Guantánamo Bay said they were sold to the United States by Pakistani tribesmen who wanted a bounty.
| Source:
AP
|
| May 30, 2005 | -
Amnesty International released a report calling the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay “the gulag of our time.” General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the prison camp was “a model facility” and pointed out that 1,300 Korans had been handed out at the prison in the last four years.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 13, 2005 | - The United States was investigating claims that someone flushed a copy of the Koran down a Guantánamo Bay toilet. In Afghanistan, news of the flushing led to riots, where hundreds chanted “death to America” and at least fifteen people died.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 29, 2005 | -
Venezuela opened a new branch of its state oil company in Cuba.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 9, 2005 | - Transcripts of legal proceedings at Guantánamo Bay were released. “I don't care about international law,” said the president of a military tribunal in one transcript. “I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law."
| Source:
AP
|
| March 30, 2005 | - A federal judge refused to let the Bush Administration, which opposes torture, send prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to other prisons abroad without granting the prisoners access to the courts.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 11, 2005 | - The United States announced plans to reduce the number of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay by freeing some and sending others to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| December 28, 2004 | - and tourism was up in Cuba.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 25, 2004 | -
Cuba discovered a new crude oil deposit off the coast near Havana.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| November 17, 2004 | -
Soldiers at Fort Lewis, Washington, were throwing chocolate pudding and lemon-lime Gatorade at each other in order to prepare for duty at Army detention centers like Guantánamo Bay. “I feel good about this mission,” said one soldier. “I get to be part of the solution.”
| Source:
The Olympian
|
| November 15, 2004 | -
Cubans were building a new Russian Orthodox church.
| Source:
Detroit Free Press/AP
|
| April 29, 2004 | - It was reported that last year the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control assigned only four employees to work on terrorist cases; in contrast, almost two dozen were investigating violations of the Cuban embargo. Since 1990, the office has opened 93 investigations into terrorist finances and 10,683 relating to Cuba.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| April 5, 2004 | - The Treasury Department indicated that scholarly publications might be able to edit articles produced by evil countries such as Iran, Cuba, Libya, or North Korea without risking fines of up to $500,000 and ten years in prison.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 28, 2004 | - Treasury Department officials have declared that it is a criminal offense to edit writings from countries under a trade embargo, such as Cuba or Iran.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 10, 2003 | -
President Bush decided to get tough on Cuba.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 25, 2003 | -
Three more detainees at Camp X-Ray in Cuba tried to kill themselves.
| |
| May 14, 2002 | -
Jimmy Carter went to Cuba.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | -
Russia announced that it would close its electronic eavesdropping station in Cuba.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | -
Granma,
Cuba's
Communist newspaper, accused the United States of waging “biological war” against Cuba, resulting in the loss of $2 million of their honey output.
| |
| August 14, 2001 | - After hiring a plane in order to have sex in mid flight, an elderly couple attempted to hijack the plane and force the pilot to fly to Cuba.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | - After two weeks of flying lessons, a Pizza Hut employee took off in an airplane from the Florida Keys on his first solo flight and ended up in Cuba, where he suffered a “hard landing” and was hospitalized.
| |
| May 15, 2001 | -
Argentina recalled its ambassador to Cuba after Fidel Castro denounced the current Argentine government as “bootlickers of the Yankees.”
| |
| 0, 2000 | - Fourteen Americans were killed in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, and the Department of Defense announced that 72 members of the U.S. military had recently died while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, the Seychelles, the Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen, as well as at Guantanamo Bay.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Washington Post
|
| November 14, 2000 | - The U.N. General Assembly for the ninth time called on the United States to lift its embargo of Cuba; the vote was 167-3; only the Marshall Islands and Israel voted with the U.S.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | - Elián González appeared once again on the front page of newspapers; it was his first day of school; he recited a pledge that included the line: “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che!” One wire service noted that Elián was “arguably Cuba's most famous boy.”
| |
| August 29, 2000 | - Tropical Storm Debby was threatening Cuba.
| |
PDF
TEXT
IMAGES
