Algiers

In a smartly subtitled new print from Rialto Pictures, Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 masterpiece of ripped-from-events filmmaking, The Battle of Algiers, barrels off the screen and into the hearts and minds of audiences on bristling layers of political and moviemaking passion. The movie is a marvel - bold, lucid and succinct (even at 123 minutes). It's also harrowing and moving in its depiction of noncombatant men, women and children caught between terrorism and counter-terrorism. The way Pontecorvo re-creates the rise and fall of the National Liberation Front in 1954-57 and the short-term success of the elite French paratroopers who cracked down on it, he lights up even mundane moments with a dialectical electricity.

President Bush and leading Democratic presidential candidates have said a military attack on Iran is a viable option. According to the president, Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology puts the Middle East "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust." Yet the 1981 Algiers Accords, backed by Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, prohibit such an attack. The Bush administration has defended the validity of the Algiers Accords in court, and the courts agreed, so there can be no doubt of the documents' legality.

Staff Sgt. John Scally met Jeannine Ferudja in Algiers in 1943 and soon began courting the brown-eyed brunette, stumbling along with his high school-level French and translation dictionary. An interpreter guided Scally through their wedding ceremony Oct. 10, 1944, or 63 years ago today. After honeymooning in North Africa, Scally was shipped to Italy for the remainder of World War II, and the two didn't see each other for another year. The marriage did not truly begin until Jeannine Scally stepped off the Liberty ship Irvin S. Cobb on Oct. 4, 1945, becoming Baltimore's first official war bride, one of 709 who traveled from Britain, France, Italy, Poland and North Africa from 1945 to 1947 to rejoin their wartime American husbands.

Staff Sgt. John Scally met Jeannine Ferudja in Algiers in 1943 and soon began courting the brown-eyed brunette, stumbling along with his high school-level French and translation dictionary. An interpreter guided Scally through their wedding ceremony Oct. 10, 1944, or 63 years ago today. After honeymooning in North Africa, Scally was shipped to Italy for the remainder of World War II, and the two didn't see each other for another year. The marriage did not truly begin until Jeannine Scally stepped off the Liberty ship Irvin S. Cobb on Oct. 4, 1945, becoming Baltimore's first official war bride, one of 709 who traveled from Britain, France, Italy, Poland and North Africa from 1945 to 1947 to rejoin their wartime American husbands.

BOUGARA, Algeria -- Tucked into vast orange plantations at the foot of the Atlas mountains, the town looks peaceful. Robed men congregate for an afternoon discussion in the shade of the cypress trees. Barefoot children play soccer on a dirty patch of open space. Women line up at the bakeries for fresh baguettes.But the tranquillity is a facade. Less than a mile away is a farming commune where the breeze is passing through the smashed-out windows of the houses. Overturned furniture and broken pottery still cover the floors.

If the Beatles overhauled popular music, then Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut were the Lennon and McCartney of movies, exploding old boundaries, tearing American forms loose from Hollywood convention, and rooting them anew in a raucously tender sensibility. Truffaut, like McCartney, was openly emotional and lyrical. Godard was the Lennon / Lenin figure -- satiric and intellectual -- but in the years when he and Truffaut were simpatico, Godard also dared to be romantically vulnerable.

Mother Marie Antoinette de la Trinite,76, the superior general of the Little Sisters of the Poor who was instrumental in expanding the order's presence worldwide, died Wednesday in Paris.Mother de la Trinite joined the order in 1942 rather than attend medical school, as her father wanted. She took her final vows seven years later. In 1957, she was named provincial superior in Brittany. Seven years after that, she became the order's superior general, a post she held until her death.Mother de la Trinite was responsible for opening 32 missions around the world.

THIS THURSDAY, June 20, is the 360th anniversary of the Rape of Baltimore.On that terrible day, in the darkness of early morning, rowing silently with muffled oars, a motley horde of pirates raided the town, set fire to houses, killed two inhabitants and hustled 107 other unfortunates to their waiting ships, thence to be taken to Algiers. Never again were they to see their homes again.What fate awaited them after they were marched into the palace of the Bashaw of Algiers can be conjectured by what happened to other captives of the Barbary pirates.

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) -- Hijackers suspected to be Islamic fundamentalists held about 50 hostages yesterday after commandeering an Algerian passenger jet, officials said. Sources said the hijackers demanded fuel to fly to another country.State-owned Air Algerie said there were 88 people, including six crew members, aboard the Boeing 737 when it was hijacked Friday night on a domestic flight from the Saharan resort of Ghardaia to the capital, Algiers.The two hijackers, reportedly armed with at least one semiautomatic pistol, released 36 of the passengers yesterday in the eastern coastal city of Annaba, where the plane had been forced to land.

President Bush and leading Democratic presidential candidates have said a military attack on Iran is a viable option. According to the president, Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology puts the Middle East "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust." Yet the 1981 Algiers Accords, backed by Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, prohibit such an attack. The Bush administration has defended the validity of the Algiers Accords in court, and the courts agreed, so there can be no doubt of the documents' legality.

CAIRO, Egypt -- Suspected Islamic militants struck the Algerian capital yesterday morning, killing at least 23 people and injuring more than 162, an intensification of Islamic violence in a country struggling to recover from a brutal years-long civil war. One of the bombs targeted the main government building in Algiers, a modern office tower called the Government Palace, killing at least 12 people and wounding 118, according to the nation's official news...

In mid-1830s' Paris, the music world heard a totally unexpected sound from a human voice, which, the story goes, Rossini likened to "the squawk of a capon having its throat cut." But soon enough, audiences couldn't get enough of that sound, and it still heats up audiences today: The tenor's high C. The money note. Produced not by falsetto, but full-throttle from the chest, a technique first credited to Gilbert Duprez. The Italian Girl in Algiers Performances are at 7 tonight and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, with five more performances through June 3 at the Kennedy Center, Virginia and New Hampshire avenues, Northwest.

ALGIERS -- Algerian authorities said yesterday that 82 percent of eligible voters poured into the polls a day earlier, with a 97 percent majority approving a referendum that the president promoted as a way for Algeria to get past the killing and violence of a civil war that has spanned more than a decade. There was no independent oversight of the voting process or oversight of the counting process, and anecdotal reports from around the capital region suggested that the turnout was far lower than reported.

NEW ORLEANS -- Residents and business owners of this storm-ravaged city are trickling into reopened neighborhoods to resume the huge challenge of restarting lives and rebuilding. Meanwhile, the Bush administration was assessing the impact of Hurricane Rita, which roared through the Gulf Coast region Saturday and cut a swath through an area that accounts for about 29 percent of the country's domestic output of crude oil production. There were reports, though, that refineries in the hurricane zone came through the storm without significant damage.

NEW ORLEANS // The billboard on top of his apartment was in a heap by the front step, the leaky ceiling was ruining what was left of his belongings, and Robert McCalvin felt the same way that everyone else did about the hurricane that was responsible. "We got lucky," McCalvin said, sitting among the wreckage outside the Splish Splash Laundromat on Bienville Avenue, where he lives upstairs and hopes to work again if the people ever come back. "That one felt like a vacation." Perhaps only in New Orleans could so much flooding and storm damage seem like a blessing.

In a smartly subtitled new print from Rialto Pictures, Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 masterpiece of ripped-from-events filmmaking, The Battle of Algiers, barrels off the screen and into the hearts and minds of audiences on bristling layers of political and moviemaking passion. The movie is a marvel - bold, lucid and succinct (even at 123 minutes). It's also harrowing and moving in its depiction of noncombatant men, women and children caught between terrorism and counter-terrorism. The way Pontecorvo re-creates the rise and fall of the National Liberation Front in 1954-57 and the short-term success of the elite French paratroopers who cracked down on it, he lights up even mundane moments with a dialectical electricity.

NEW ORLEANS -- Residents and business owners of this storm-ravaged city are trickling into reopened neighborhoods to resume the huge challenge of restarting lives and rebuilding. Meanwhile, the Bush administration was assessing the impact of Hurricane Rita, which roared through the Gulf Coast region Saturday and cut a swath through an area that accounts for about 29 percent of the country's domestic output of crude oil production. There were reports, though, that refineries in the hurricane zone came through the storm without significant damage.

LONDON -- One of the veterans of Algeria's war of liberation, known as Commandant Ezzedine, rejects the idea that there are "moderate" Islamic fundamentalists."

In 1971, I dubbed Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song "a vile piece of ego-tripping from a black filmmaker who hopes (presumably by default) to become the `revolutionary' mass-media force of his people." And that's just what happened. Van Peebles, who directed, produced, wrote and scored the picture and also starred in it as a radicalized pimp, became, in film historian Donald Bogle's words, "a folk hero of black cinema." He positioned himself as the first filmmaker to tell a story from within black culture.

Maya Catherine Harris was one of five African-Americans in a class of 95 at the George P. Schultz Foreign Affairs Training Center in Arlington, Va. "And that's pretty representative, from what I've seen," she said about the proportion of minority diplomats in the U.S. Foreign Service. The U.S. State Department is an equal opportunity employer. Secretary of State Colin Powell has actively promoted recruitment of minorities and women to its ranks, Harris said. "One thing Secretary Powell is trying to show the rest of the world right now is that America has a diverse population," said the newly minted diplomat.