Holocaust Center Posts Database of Victims
JERUSALEM -- Israel's Holocaust museum on Sunday posted on the Internet for the first time biographical information about 3 million of the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany.
The database, at www.yadvashem.org, is partly based on more than 2 million "pages of testimony" submitted to the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem since 1950 by survivors or relatives and friends of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Information was also gleaned from historical documentation, such as correspondence of Nazi officials and lists of inmates at death camps, the Web site said.
Links next to victims' names expand the search, enabling visitors to the site to view information about additional family members who perished.
THE MIDDLE EAST
• MANAMA, Bahrain -- Bahrain's king ordered the immediate release of a human rights activist who was convicted of inciting hatred of the government and sentenced to one year in prison in a case linked to criticism of the prime minister.
The intervention by King Hamad bin Isa Khalifa came hours after Abdul Hadi Khawaja was sentenced in a courtroom where scores of his supporters chanted slogans against the prime minister.
Khawaja, the executive director of the dissolved Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was detained on Sept. 25 after he called for the resignation of Khalifa bin Salman Khalifa, the prime minister, accusing him of being responsible for economic failures and human rights violations.
The king also ordered the release of 13 people who were arrested last month during a demonstration.
• JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won a rare victory in a Likud Party ballot that political analysts said might weaken party rebels opposed to his Gaza withdrawal plan.
Candidates backed by Sharon won two out of three posts at stake on the party's central committee, beating Likud rebels who ran with the hope they could use the party bureaucracy to block Sharon's planned disengagement from occupied Gaza in 2005.
africa
• WINDHOEK, Namibia -- A former comrade-in-arms handpicked by former guerrilla leader Sam Nujoma won election to succeed him as Namibian president.
Hifikepunye Pohamba, who won 76.4 percent of the vote, is widely expected to remain in the shadow of Nujoma, who will retain the leadership of his SWAPO party after stepping down as president in March.
