May 25, 2001 – BBC World Service News – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
May 25, 2001 – The collapse of a wedding hall during festivities in Jerusalem brought the instant assumption of a terrorist bombing. But after a few minutes, it was determined the Versailles Wedding Hall, hosting a wedding and reception, was the victim of faulty construction. Even so, the collapse of the upper floor, where the party was held, took some 23 lives and news of another tragedy made headlines in an already headline-plagued region of the world.
There was other news – The Democratic Republic of Congo was in the news. This time Rwandan President Paul Kagame told a visiting UN delegation they could do more to help end the conflict in the region. The UN team was already in Tanzania and Barundi, and were on their way to Uganda later on this day.
Fears were raised that the U.S. release of a film depicting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 could spike hate crimes and anti-Asian sentiment. Various Japanese-American groups were concerned the film could cause a backlash against predominately Japanese-American communities in America. It would be reminiscent of the days just after Pearl Harbor, when the U.S. entered into the War and thousands of Japanese-Americans were incarcerated in remote camps for the duration of the war.
And Bob Dylan had turned 60, prompting this BBC World Service broadcast to do a feature on the state of Protest Music in the U.S. and how, if there were any, changes in our society had come about since Bob Dylan had taken the country by storm.
All that, and a lot more for this almost hour-long broadcast of BBC World Service News as well as the program Analysis and Business Report – all of which are fascinating glimpses of how the world viewed the U.S. but also what else was going on in the world on this 25th day of May in 2001.
