Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Oct. 26. On this date one year ago, six weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist assault on the United States, President Bush signed new legislation giving law enforcement agencies expanded authority in their fight against suspected terrorists. The measure, passed overhwlemingly by Congress, extends authority to monitor and hold suspects, to wiretap telephones and examine internet usage, with greater reach for federal warrants and provides harsher penalties for terrorists and those who help them. Advertisement It was on this day in 1906 that workers in St. Petersburg, Russia, established the first "soviet," or council. After the Russian Revolution and the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II, the word "soviet" would make up the country's new name -- the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Just one day before NATO was threatening to bomb the former Yugoslavia, Serbian soldiers and police on this date in 1998 began what was said to be a significant pullback from positions in the rebellious province of Kosovo. But the massacre of ethnic Albanians in the province didn't end, and in March 1999 NATO launched air strikes after the Serbians refused to sign a peace agreement on the future of Kosovo. Advertisement A setback for the allies on this date in 1942, during the early days of U.S. involvement in World War II. In the Pacific, Japanese warships sank the aircraft carrier USS Hornet off the Solomon Islands. The Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland, Terence McSwiney, died on this date in 1920 after a two-and-a-half-month hunger strike in a British prison cell. He was demanding independence for Ireland. South Korean President Park Chung Hee was assassinated on this date in 1979 by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. And it was on this date in 1990 that Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $5,000 after being convicted on misdemeanor drug charges. Barry had been nabbed during a drug sting at a motel. After doing his time, he was reelected mayor. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
