Read here a day-by-day diary of free community events to fill your week...

WASHINGTON D.C. –- Despite President Bush's win of a restriction-free $120 billion Iraqi War-funding bill, some Congressional Black Caucus members are trying to sweeten his defeat of the Democrats' war proposal by highlighting the victories for Hurricane Katrina, minimum wage and other domestic funds.
"I feel real good about what we've done. I think that we've changed direction as far as policy is concerned," said House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, D-S.C..... Of the 40 voting members of the Congressional Black Caucus, only five joined Clyburn in voting for the final passage of the war-funding bill. Thirty-three voted against it. Two did not vote.

BALTIMORE — Parren J. Mitchell, an eloquent, but soft-spoken man who was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and a champion of civil rights, has died.
Mitchell, 85, had been in intensive care and died on Memorial Day. 
He had been living in a nursing home since suffering a series of strokes several years earlier and died of complications from pneumonia, according to his nephew, former state Sen. Michael Mitchell.
"He had a very good life," Mitchell said.

When you're competing at state, it doesn't matter that you've dominated your team all season long. It doesn't even matter that you're a contender for first place in your event. 
Here's what matters: one-half inch and a twisted ankle.
One half inch is all Dominique Harris needed to win the triple jump event at the state track and field meet on May 19.....

Darryl Miles surveys the room of young men and their families inside the Jefferson High cafeteria and grins. Soon, these faces will be familiar as the year begins.
The affable 45-year-old, ex-Enron executive is jumping into one of Portland's most novel educational experiments – the same-sex academies at Jefferson.
"My hope for this school is that we can affect positive change and show these young boys what it means to become productive men," Miles says. 

Nyela Richardson, 6, left, Abrianna Tatum, center, and two other Hawthorne Elementary School Rhythm Nation Dance Team members perform during the school's annual Multicultural Night, held Wednesday May 23. This year's "One World" event included merengue, African and Mexican dancers, and Vietnamese singers.

This past Memorial Day weekend honored not only those who have sacrificed their lives for their…

WASHINGTON D.C. — Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., was indicted today on federal charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes and money laundering in a long-running bribery investigation into business deals he tried to broker in Africa.
The indictment handed up in federal court in Alexandria, Va., is more than an inch thick and list 16 alleged violations of federal law that could keep Jefferson in prison for up to 200 years.
Almost two years ago, in August 2005, investigators raided Jefferson's home in Louisiana and found $90,000 in cash stuffed into a box in his freezer.

NEW YORK -- Federal authorities said a plot by a suspected Muslim terrorist cell to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, its fuel tanks and a jet fuel artery could have caused "unthinkable" devastation.
But while pipeline and security experts agreed that such an attack would have crippled America's economy, particularly the airline industry, they said it probably would not have led to significant loss of life as intended....

JACKSON, Miss. -- The federal trial of a reputed Klansman in Mississippi presents a tableau of contrasts between the old South and the new.
Opening arguments are set to start Monday in the case of James Ford Seale, 71, who has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 beating and drowning deaths of two Black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore.
The crimes took place in the woods of rural southwest Mississippi at a time when local law officers often looked the other way as the Ku Klux Klan terrorized anyone who dared challenge the strictly segregated society....