Timeline 2014 January - March
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2014 Jan 1, In northern California Rev. Eric Freed was found dead at the St. Bernard Church rectory in Eureka. Surveillance video captured images of suspect Gary Lee Bullock (44) and he was arrested the next day.
(SFC, 1/2/14, p.A8)(SFC, 1/9/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 1, In San Francisco an arson attack destroyed the main entrance of the Chinese Consulate. On Jan 3 Yan Feng (39), who lives south of the city, surrendered to police after confessing to the attack.
(SSFC, 1/5/14, p.A5)(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Colorado the nation’s first recreational pot industry opened as business owners threw open their doors for shoppers at 8 am.
(SFC, 1/2/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 1, In New York city Bill de Blasio (b.1961) began serving as mayor. 63,000 homeless people lived in shelters as de Blasio office.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_de_Blasio)(Econ, 3/25/17, p.25)
2014 Jan 1, In Central African Republic clashes between Muslims and Christians in Bangui killed three as angry residents threw grenades and torched homes.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, China began requiring the disclosure of offshore holdings.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.35)
2014 Jan 1, Cuba enacted a law banning the resale of clothes imported from abroad.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.30)
2014 Jan 1, In Prague Jamel al-Jamal (56), the Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic, died in a blast that occurred when he opened an old safe that had been left untouched for more than 20 years.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Guinness World Records said Dubai shattered the world record for the largest ever pyrotechnic display on New Year's Eve with a show involving more than half a million fireworks.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities said 96 artifacts, mostly small figurines and beads, have disappeared from the Aswan Museum's storehouse. Authorities said evidence pointed to an insider theft.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Egypt 2 people were killed in violent clashes that erupted late today between pro-Islamist protesters and police in Alexandria.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, The European Commission said Romanians and Bulgarians now have the right to work in any of the European Union's 28 countries but "no major increase" in emigration is expected.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Greece assumed the presidency of the EU, starting 2014 with a promise by the government to pull the country out of a six-year recession, keep a balanced budget, and effectively end a financial crisis that rattled the euro.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Hong Kong thousands marched to demand a greater say in choosing their future leaders, expressing fears China will limit long-awaited political reforms, but turnout fell short of expectations.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Iraq militants freed more than 100 prisoners, clashed with security forces and burned police stations in Fallujah and Ramadi. In Mosul a car bomb exploded near an army checkpoint, killing a civilian and four soldiers, including three officers.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Jordan took over the UN Security Council presidency, the first day of its two-year stint on a 15-nation body struggling to cope with conflicts in Syria, South Sudan.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Latvia celebrated the new year as the 18th member of the eurozone, which for all its dents and bruises still represents stability and security to the Baltic country's leaders.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Lebanon’s defense minister said Lebanese troops have arrested Saudi citizen Majid al-Majid, the "emir" of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, an al-Qaeda-linked group that claimed a double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut in November. DNA testing confirmed the identity of al-Majid.
(AFP, 1/1/14)(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Mexico Yeudi Estrada (28), a US citizen and martial arts instructor in Quintana Roo, was found dead on arrival at police headquarters in the resort of Playa del Carmen after his arrest. A finding revealed that he died of asphyxia by strangulation. Six Mexican police officers were arrested Jan 3 on suspicion of killing Estrada.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Pakistan a suicide bomber killed two Shia pilgrims on their way home from Iran.
(CSM, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 1, In South Korea a man, calling for the president’s resignation, died after setting himself on fire.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.32)
2014 Jan 1, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir declared a state of emergency in Unity and Jonglei states. Negotiators from the two warring sides arrived in Ethiopia for peace talks.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Somalia two car bombs exploded outside the Jazira Hotel in Mogadishu that often is used by foreigners and government officials. A third car bomb exploded as it was searched by security forces. At least 11 people were killed. Al-Shebab rebels claimed responsibility.
(AP, 1/1/14)(Reuters, 1/1/14)(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 1, South African police found Patrick Karegeya, Rwanda's former spy chief, dead, possibly strangled, in Johannesburg's plush Michelangelo Towers hotel. Rwanda opposition leaders immediately accused President Paul Kagame of ordering his assassination. Karegeya had died a day earlier. The Kigali government swiftly denied any involvement and said the former intelligence chief was himself to blame.
(AP, 1/2/14)(AP, 1/17/19)
2014 Jan 1, Syrian warplanes bombed a barren range of Lebanese hills used by Syrian rebels and refugees to cross between the two countries, wounding at least 10 Syrians who were rushed to hospital in a nearby Lebanese town.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, The Syrian Electronic Army, an amorphous hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for hacking into the social media accounts of Internet calling service Skype.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, An NGO said more than 73,000 people were killed in Syria in 2013.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Ukraine about 15,000 people marched through the streets of Kiev to mark the 105th birthday of Stepan Bandera (d.1959), glorified by some as a leader of Ukraine's liberation movement and dismissed by others as a Nazi collaborator.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, The UN said that violence claimed the lives of 7,818 civilians in Iraq in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 2, The influential New York Times and Britain’s Guardian newspapers hailed fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden as a "whistleblower" and threw its weight behind calls for him to be shown clemency.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, British author Elizabeth Jane Howard (b.1923) died. She was best known for "The Cazalet Chronicles," which followed the tangled lives and loves of several generations of an aristocratic household in the run-up to World War II.
(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 2, A Chinese helicopter rescued all 52 passengers from the MV Akademik Shokalskiy Russian research ship that has been trapped in Antarctic ice since Christmas Eve after weather conditions finally cleared enough for the operation. The passengers were all transported to an Australian icebreaker in the area.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, A Cameroon security official said 7 people, including two Cameroonian soldiers, have been killed in an attack in the east by an armed group from the Central African Republic.
(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, Canadian lawmaker Rathika Sitsabaiesan said she was intimidated and warned she could be deported during an ongoing visit to her birthplace of Jaffna, the war-battered Tamil heartland of Sri Lanka.
(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, In CongoDRC Colonel Mamadou Ndala (34), the commander of government troops fighting Ugandan Islamist rebels in the restive east of country, was killed along with two bodyguards in an ambush.
(AFP, 1/2/14)(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 2, Egyptian authorities produced what they said was a confession by the son of a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood. An Alexandria court sentenced seven activists to two years in prison on several charges including protesting without a permit and clashing with police last month.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, In western India a bus plunged into a 120m (400-feet) deep gorge, splitting open on the rocky ground below, killing at least 30 people.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, Iraqi security forces arrested a controversial Shiite cleric who leads an Iranian-backed militia, a move apparently aimed at bolstering Sunni support as the Shiite-led government and allied tribes battled Islamic militants who rose up in multiple Sunni-dominated cities. Fighting continued in Fallujah and Ramadi. A truck packed with explosives blew up in Balad Ruz, killing at least 19 people. At least 35 people were reported killed in Anbar province. Militants bombed a major oil pipeline in the north, causing a fire and forcing pumping to be suspended.
(AP, 1/2/14)(AFP, 1/2/14)(SFC, 1/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 2, Italy-based Fiat secured full ownership of Chrysler in a $4.35 billion agreement.
(SFC, 1/3/14, p.C4)
2014 Jan 2, In Kenya 10 people were wounded when attackers hurled a grenade into a restaurant in Diani, a popular coastal tourist resort town.
(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, In Lebanon a large car bomb killed 5 people and wounded at least 20 in a Hezbollah bastion in south Beirut. The al Qaeda-linked militant group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS aka ISIL)) soon claimed responsibility. On Jan 6 an employee of Hezbollah's Al-Manar television died from wounds sustained in a suicide bombing.
(AFP, 1/2/14)(Reuters, 1/4/14)(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 2, Libyan troops found the bodies of Mark De Salis, a British man, and a New Zealand woman shot dead southwest of Tripoli.
(AFP, 1/3/14)(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 2, Islamic authorities in Malaysia seized 321 Bibles from a Christian group because they used the word Allah to refer to God.
(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, Morocco launched an operation to give residency permits to tens of thousands of immigrants living in the country illegally, after the king expressed concern about their harsh treatment by the police.
(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, Myanmar's Pres. Thein Sein gave his backing for amending a military drafted constitution and indicated support for changes that would make Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi eligible to lead the country.
(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, A Palestinian man (85) died after inhaling tear gas fired by the Israeli army to disperse local protesters landed in his home in the occupied West Bank.
(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, South Korea's military said it would fight a court ruling quashing its move to kick an officer candidate out of the elite Army Academy for having sex with his girlfriend while on leave.
(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, A South Sudanese military official says rebels are trying to march on Juba from Bor, a town under the control of rebel forces. South Sudan's army (SPLA) advanced towards Bor.
(AP, 1/2/14)(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 8 people held by the Syrian government in Aleppo's central prison have died over the past two days from malnutrition. Five staffers of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) were taken from a house they were using in Syria.
(AFP, 1/2/14)(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 2, Tunisia says four Ansar al-Shariah militants have been arrested after late-night gunbattles between militants and security forces in the southern city that was the cradle for the Arab Spring revolutions.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 3, A major snowstorm producing blizzard-like conditions hammered the northeastern United States, causing 2,000 US flight delays and cancellations. At least 15 deaths were blamed on the storm.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)(SFC, 1/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 3, In San Jose, Ca., police Officer Dondi West shot Vietnamese immigrant Hung Lam in the back as Lam allegedly walked backward on his front lawn with a knife in her direction. Lam was left paralyzed and restricted to a wheel chair. In 2017 a federal appeals court said San Jose must pay Lam, a mentally disturbed man, $11.3 million.
(http://tinyurl.com/yd5nf2lx)(SFC, 9/6/17, p.D1)
2014 Jan 3, Rock & Roll singer Phil Everly (b.1939), the younger brother of Don Everly (b.1937), died. Phil helped make the Everly Brothers one of the biggest rock and country acts of the 1950s and early 1960s.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)(SFC, 1/4/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 3, Argentina’s government agreed to roll over the debt of 18 provinces to help ease their financial strains.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.29)
2014 Jan 3, In Cambodia At least 4 people were killed when police outside Cambodia's capital opened fire to break up a protest by striking garment workers demanding a doubling of the minimum wage.
(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, The health minister of Alberta, Canada, said an H1N1 flu outbreak in Alberta has sickened nearly 1,000 people and killed five over the past few weeks. He urged everyone to get vaccinated.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Egyptian riot police clashed with supporters of former Islamist Pres. Morsi across the country, leaving 17 dead and 62 injured as the Muslim Brotherhood renewed calls to protest ahead of a key referendum later this month.
(AP, 1/3/14)(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 3, An Egyptian security official said police have found a murdered Swiss couple buried in the garden of their house in the Red Sea resort town of Hurgada. They were reportedly killed by the house's guard and two of his friends who wanted to rob the couple.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, In Ethiopia South Sudan's warring parties began negotiations to end nearly three weeks of raging conflict which has left thousands feared dead and taken the world's youngest nation to the brink of all-out civil war. Fighting intensified as the army moved on rebel-held Bor.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, In western Germany a World War II bomb exploded during construction work in Euskirchen, near Bonn, killing one person and wounding at least eight others.
(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Indian PM Manmohan Singh ruled out serving another term after an election due by May and threw his support behind Nehru-Gandhi dynasty scion Rahul Gandhi to lead the country if their party wins the vote.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, In Iraq Sunni Muslim tribesmen backed by Iraqi troops fought al Qaeda-linked militants for control of Anbar province. More than 100 people were killed as police and tribesmen battled ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, aka ISIL) fighters, Al-Qaeda-linked militants who took over parts of Fallujah and Ramadi.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)(AFP, 1/3/14)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.39)
2014 Jan 3, Israeli war planes carried out a series of strikes in the Gaza Strip, shortly after a rocket from the enclave struck the Jewish state.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, The Italian navy over the last 24 hours rescued more than 1,000 migrants from boats trying to reach Europe.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Madagascar’s electoral commission said that former finance minister Hery Rajaonarimampianina, the candidate backed by outgoing President Andry Rajoelina who spearheaded the coup nearly five years ago, won 53.5 percent of the December 20 vote.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, In Mexico 9 people were killed during a gunfight at a prison in Guerrero state, after a gang dressed as police officers gained entry.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 3, In Pakistan Iram Ramazan, a 10-year-old maid, died in Lahore after being beaten by the wife of the household for stealing a few rupees.
(SSFC, 1/5/14, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/mhrtzx3)
2014 Jan 3, In Pakistan two senior Sunni leaders were killed in Islamabad.
(CSM, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 3, A Palestinian youth, identified as Adnan Abu Khater (16), died of his wounds after he was shot a day earlier by Israeli soldiers near the border fence in the northern Gaza Strip.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Spanish police said they have caught two women flying in from Brazil with more than a kilo (two pounds) of cocaine each hidden under their wigs. The two women, who were Portuguese and aged 18 and 28, arrived at Madrid's Barajas airport on different days from Sao Paulo.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, A Turkish court ordered the release from jail of two Kurdish lawmakers being tried for links to militants in a potential boost to a fragile peace process. Turkish prosecutors said they have charged 36 protesters with terrorism over mass anti-government demonstrations that swept the country last year.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Zimbabwe's black empowerment agency said at least 90 percent of foreign shop owners don't have bank accounts and are hiding away money or smuggling it out of the country, worsening cash shortages in the troubled economy.
(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 4, This issue of the Economist reported that most non-African humans carry around 2% of Neanderthal DNA.
(Econ, 1/4/14, p.28)
2014 Jan 4, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck outside joint NATO-Afghan in the Nangarhar province's Ghani Khail district. One US solider and 5 Taliban attackers were killed. Hours later an explosion hit one of the entrances to Camp Eggers in Kabul.
(AP, 1/4/14)(SSFC, 1/5/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 4, Bahrain named Ali Mafoudh al-Moussawi, a Bahraini citizen who lives in Iran, as a main suspect in planned "terrorist acts" and said he and his collaborators had received training and other help from Tehran.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In Bangladesh scores of polling booths were torched and a train set alight on the eve of elections as the opposition launched a strike against the vote "farce."
(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, Cambodia's government launched a broad crackdown on the political opposition, clearing its main protest site, banning its street demonstrations and having a court call in opposition party leaders for questioning on charges of inciting social unrest.
(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, An Egyptian soldier was killed and at least two were wounded when a roadside bomb targeted their armored vehicle in the restive Sinai peninsula.
(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In India a five-story building under construction in the southern state of Goa collapsed, killing at least 15 workers and leaving dozens more feared trapped under the rubble.
(AFP, 1/4/14)(AP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 4, The Lebanese army said Saudi citizen Majid al-Majid, the "emir" of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades fighting in Syria, died while undergoing treatment at the central military hospital.
(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In western Mexico a small plane crash-landed, killing one person and injuring four others, including the leader of a vigilante group fighting drug cartels.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin reversed a blanket ban on protests at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, bowing to pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, Senegal said its navy has boarded a Russian ship that was allegedly illegally fishing in its waters and is escorting it toward Dakar. The Russian trawler left the port of Dakar on Jan 22 following an agreement by Moscow to pay $1 million.
(AFP, 1/4/14)(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 4, South Sudan’s rebel and government sides met mediators from the regional IGAD grouping in Ethiopia for a second day but did not sit down together.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In Syria an alliance of Islamist and other rebel factions battled fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) across the north-west in apparently coordinated strikes against the powerful al Qaeda-linked group.
(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, Tunisian lawmakers rejected Islam as the main source of law for the country that spawned the Arab Spring as they voted for a second day on a new constitution.
(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, The Tunisian coast guard fired on three Egyptian fishing boats intercepted in its territorial waters. One boat captain was killed.
(SFC, 1/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 4, A Turkish court ordered the release from jail of three Kurdish lawmakers, in addition to two freed a day earlier.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In Yemen renewed clashes in the north between rebels belonging to a Shiite-branch of Islam and ultraconservative Salafis backed by allying tribes killed 17 people.
(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 5, A US Coast Guard heavy icebreaker left Australia for Antarctica to rescue more than 120 crew members aboard Chinese and Russian icebreakers trapped in pack ice near the frozen continent's eastern edge.
(AP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Colorado a co-pilot was killed and two pilots injured when a private jet crashed and burst into flames at the airport that serves Aspen.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, Bangladesh held parliamentary elections. The ruling Awami League won 232 of the 300 elected seats as about half the seats were uncontested due to a boycott by the main opposition party. At least 21 people were killed in election-related violence. Alleged ballot stuffing by the ruling party pushed the turnout just over 40%.
(Reuters, 1/5/14)(AP, 1/6/14)(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 5, In Burkina Faso 75 officials announced their resignation from the ruling party, ratcheting up political tension before elections scheduled for next year. They said democracy had "disappeared" from President Blaise Compaore's Congress for Democracy and Progress party.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 5, In the CAR a hand grenade attack on a Bangui market left four people injured, including two women and a Burundian soldier from MISCA, the African force deployed in the Central African Republic.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In China worshippers at the Beida Mosque in Guyuan, Ningxia region, were handing out traditional cakes when a rush for food triggered a stampede that left 14 dead.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 5, An Egyptian court gave suspended one-year sentences to 12 activists including youth leaders of the 2011 uprising for an attack on a former presidential candidate's headquarters.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Iraq a new wave of bombings hit Baghdad, killing at least 20 people. Government forces battling an al Qaeda offensive near the Syrian border launched an air strike on Ramadi killing 25 Islamist militants. 22 soldiers and 12 civilians were killed in the fighting.
(AP, 1/5/14)(Reuters, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Israel over 30,000 African migrants, many holding banners demanding freedom for compatriots jailed as illegal job-seekers, protested in a main Tel Aviv square against a new open-ended detention law.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Lebanon one man was shot dead and six people were wounded in clashes in Tripoli between districts that support rival sides in neighboring Syria's civil war.
(Reuters, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, Libya's navy blocked an oil tanker from illegally loading crude at an eastern port that has been held for months by armed protesters demanding more autonomy from Tripoli.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 5, Portuguese football legend Eusebio (71), the top scorer in the 1966 World Cup, died. The Mozambique-born striker made his name at Benfica, winning 11 league titles and one European Cup during a 15-year spell there.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Saudi Arabia human body parts fell from the sky in the city of Jeddah, with police saying they could be the remains of a person trapped in an airplane's wheel bay.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, A Saudi court jailed five people for up to 30 years on charges including plotting to blow up an oil refinery on behalf of Al-Qaeda.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 5, Fighting continued across South Sudan, even as peace talks between the government and rebels were set to begin in Ethiopia.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, Spanish police arrested Abdeluahid Sadik Mohamed at Malaga airport after arriving on a flight bound from Istanbul. He was suspected of belonging to an al-Qaida linked terror organization and participating in the Syrian conflict.
(AP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In southern Switzerland 4 skiers were killed and another was in a critical condition after a series of avalanches hit the Alps.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, Syrian opposition fighters seized a compound garrisoned by an al-Qaida-linked rebel faction, in some of the most serious infighting to date within the vast array of rebel groups trying to topple Pres. Assad.
(AP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Thailand thousands of anti-government protesters marched through Bangkok, a prelude to a broader action next week when they say they will shut down the city in their bid to scuttle a February election and topple PM Yingluck Shinawatra.
(Reuters, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In northern Yemen at least 10 people were killed in a 2nd day of clashes between Shiite rebels and Sunni tribesmen fighting alongside hardline Salafists. In Hadramawt province a tribesman was killed at an army checkpoint.
(AFP, 1/5/14)(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, The US Senate confirmed Janet Yellen as the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve.
(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 6, The US Supreme Court blocked further same-sex marriages in Utah while state officials appeal a decision allowing such unions.
(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 6, In Pennsylvania Colleen LaRose (50), aka “Jihad Jane," was sentenced to ten years in prison for plotting to kill a Swedish artist. She had pleaded guilty and helped in the indictment of two others.
(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 6, Airlines canceled more than 4,400 flights as extreme cold in the US Midwest and Northeast froze fuel lines to airplanes and posed exposure hazards for employees working on the tarmac.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Three Chicago-bound trains came to a halt after running into impassable snow and ice. More than 500 passengers spent the night on board Amtrak trains in northwestern Illinois, stranded due to the harsh winter weather.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, Dennis Rodman and former NBA players arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea. They planned a "birthday present" game for leader Kim Jong Un.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Bangladesh’s PM Sheikh Hasina held to her stance that fresh polls could be called only if her rivals halt violence. The opposition already called a 48-hour strike and 7 people were killed in clashes.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Extreme cold in Canada disrupted flights and school classes. Temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit) plunged the western Prairies region into a deep freeze, heightening risks of frostbite and hypothermia.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, China temporarily lifted a 14-year-old ban on selling video game consoles, paving the way for Sony Corp, Microsoft Corp and Nintendo Co Ltd to enter the world's third largest video game market in terms of revenue.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, China destroyed about 6 tons of illegal ivory from its stockpile in an unprecedented move wildlife groups say shows growing concern about the black market trade by authorities in the world's biggest market for elephant tusks.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, China, the biggest investor in South Sudan's oil industry, called for an immediate ceasefire in the world's newest state as rebel and government negotiators haggled over the scope of peace talks meant to end three weeks of fighting.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In the Czech Republic the left-wing Social Democrats, the first-place party in October's parliamentary election, signed a deal with two other parties to form a new coalition government.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, France's interior minister said that local officials have the right to ban shows on a national tour of comic Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala whose performances are considered anti-Semitic.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, In France two Goodyear managers were trapped in a conference room with angry workers demanding more money in exchange for the inevitable loss of their jobs in Amiens. The managers were released after police intervened on Jan 7.
(AP, 1/6/14)(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, Iraq's PM Nouri al-Maliki urged residents and tribes of Fallujah to "expel" al-Qaida militants from the Sunni-dominated city to avoid an all-out battle. An army officer and 4 soldiers were captured in Fallujah.
(AP, 1/6/14)(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Israel several thousand African migrants protested outside Western embassies in Tel Aviv, demanding freedom for compatriots jailed by Israel in a desert facility under a new open-ended detention law.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Israel gave final approval for building 272 new apartments in two isolated West Bank settlements as US Sec. of State John Kerry wrapped up his latest mediating mission in the region.
(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 6, Latvia Pres. Andris Berzins nominated Laimdota Straujuma as the next prime minister.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.45)
2014 Jan 6, In Libya an explosion at a guard post outside a courthouse in Benghazi killed one judiciary policeman and seriously wounded another.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Nigeria gunmen shot and killed at least 30 people, burned down 40 homes and made off with scores of cattle from a mainly Christian village in Plateau state. Muslim Fulani herdsmen were blamed.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Nigeria a dozen men were formally charged by the Bauchi State Sharia Commission with belonging to a gay club and having received funding from the United States for an apparent membership drive. Four were convicted on March 6. Seven were granted bail on March 11. A Christian suspect awaited his case heard before a secular court.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Pakistan an explosion from a suspected artillery shell stored in a house killed 10 members of a family in the Tirah Valley village of Dars in the Khyber tribal region.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Pakistan Aitzaz Hasan (17) was running late for school when he and friends were interrupted by a stranger in school uniform who was asking for directions. Suspicious of the query, Aitzaz tackled the man as he walked away in Hangu, a district in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The man then blew himself up, taking both lives. On Jan 10 PM Nawaz Sharif said Hasan should be honored with the nation's highest civil award of bravery.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 6, Hamas PM Ismail Haniya reached out to West Bank rivals Fatah saying its members would be allowed back into Gaza, in efforts to promote Palestinian reconciliation.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Former Romanian prime minister Adrian Nastase was sentenced to four years in jail for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to appoint a businesswoman to a senior government post. He was released from prison in 2013 after serving a third of a previous corruption sentence.
(AFP, 1/6/14)(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 6, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir arrived in Juba calling for an end to three weeks of fighting in South Sudan as mediators struggled to get peace negotiations under way in neighboring Ethiopia.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Syria rival Islamist rebel groups fought in Raqqa, as local fighters tried to drive out a foreign-led al Qaeda affiliate which has also seized towns across the border in Iraq. The al-Qaida-linked ISIL (aka ISIS) group killed 50 people before surrendering its Aleppo base.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)(AP, 1/7/14)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.40)
2014 Jan 6, Tunisia's national assembly voted to enshrine gender equality "without discrimination" in its draft constitution, a key step towards safeguarding the most liberal laws in the Arab world on women's rights. Unemployed Tunisian youths ransacked an empty police post in the impoverished central region of Gafsa overnight and torched its contents.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Venezuela Monica Spear (29), a popular soap-opera actress and former Miss Venezuela (2004), was shot and killed along with her ex-husband Thomas Henry Berry, a 39-year-old British citizen, during a highway robbery between Puerto Cabello and the provincial capital of Valencia. Their daughter (5) was wounded. Police in Puerto Cabello soon arrested five suspects, some under the age of 18. In 2015 a court sentenced two boys aged 15 and 17 to four years in prison after it said they admitted taking part in the attack. Three other young men got terms of between 24 and 26 years. In 2016 a court sentenced three men to 30 years in prison for the murders.
(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 2/13/16)
2014 Jan 6, In Yemen tribesmen in Hadramawt province blew up a major oil pipeline in retaliation for the killing by the army of one of their men.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, Zambian police arrested and charged opposition leader Frank Bwalya with defamation, after he referred to Pres. Michael Sata as a “Chumbu Mushololwa." The Bemba term literally refers to a sweet potato that breaks when it is bent and is used to describe someone who does not heed advice.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, The IRS said it is seeing a big jump in thieves stealing Social Security numbers to fraudulently claim US tax returns.
(SFC, 1/8/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 7, JPMorgan reached an accord with the US Justice Dept. and will pay $2.6 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations that it failed to stop Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
(SFC, 1/8/14, p.C5)
2014 Jan 7, The United States put to death its first inmate of the year in Florida, after a drop in executions during 2013. Askari Abdullah Muhammad (62), previously known as Thomas Knight, was convicted of abducting and killing a Miami couple in 1974 and fatally stabbing a prison guard six years later using a sharpened spoon. He appealed his conviction numerous times.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Former NYC police officers and firefighters were among 106 people indicted over a massive disability fraud worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The scheme was estimated to date back to 1988 with some connected to the September 11, 2001, attacks.
(AFP, 1/8/14)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.26)
2014 Jan 7, A blast of bone-chilling cold snarled air travel, closed schools and prompted calls for people to stay inside in the United States and Canada, as temperatures plunged to lows not seen in two decades. At least 9 people were reported dead due to the weather.
(AFP, 1/7/14)(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In eastern England HH-60G Pave Hawk chopper, based at the US-run Lakenheath air base, crashed at a nearby nature reserve in Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, while flying low on night time training exercise. 4 airmen were killed. Investigators later reported that the chopper had flown into flock of geese likely startled by its noise.
(AFP, 1/8/14)(AP, 7/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Cambodia tens of thousands of garment workers returned to work, ending a two-week pay dispute after authorities used deadly force to quell a strike and thwart a protest by their political allies seeking a re-run of a July election. An estimated 65-70% returned to work.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Canada a freight train carrying crude oil and propane derailed in New Brunswick province. One locomotive and 17 cars derailed. 5 cars carried oil and 4 carried propane.
(AP, 1/8/14)(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 7, A Chinese icebreaker and a Russian research vessel -- broke free from thick Antarctic ice where they had been trapped for days.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Greek Government officials said a strict review would be made of how those convicted of terrorism and other severe crimes are granted leave from prison. A day earlier Christodoulos Xiros (55) failed to make an obligatory daily appearance at a police station. He was convicted in 2003, along with two of his brothers, of belonging to the November 17 group and had served 10 years of his term for involvement in a string of shootings and bombings.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Hong Kong movie and TV mogul Run Run Shaw (b.1907) died. He had built an empire that nurtured rising talents like actor Chow Yun-fat and director John Woo, inspired Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and produced the sci-fi classic "Blade Runner" (1982).
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Iraq efforts to retake Ramadi left 4 civilians dead and 14 wounded. Missile strikes outside Ramadi killed 25 militants. Troops delayed an assault on Fallujah as fierce clashes erupted between government special forces and al-Qaida-linked militants outside the city.
(AFP, 1/7/14)(SFC, 1/8/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 7, In Israel thousands of African asylum seekers demonstrated in Tel Aviv for a third straight day of protests against immigration policies.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Myanmar dozens of journalists staged a rare demonstration in Yangon to protest a jail term given to a reporter who was working on a story about corruption.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Nigeria gunmen shouting "God is great" fired into a mosque in Kwankwaso village, Kano state. 3 people were killed and 12 wounded.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 7, Russia launched the largest security operation in Olympic history with one month to go before Vladimir Putin kicks off the Winter Games in Sochi amid renewed fears of suicide bombings.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, South African authorities revealed that a phosphate mine spillage, into a tributary of the Olifants River in late December, has killed thousands of fish and caused "extensive pollution" to the river in the country's famed Kruger National Park.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, South Sudanese rebels and a government delegation started face-to-face peace talks in Ethiopia to try to end fighting that has left the world's newest state on the brink of civil war.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Princess Cristina (48), the younger daughter of Spain's King Juan Carlos, was charged with tax fraud and money-laundering.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Syria's Information Minister said the Syrian people have decided President Bashar al-Assad should be nominated for another term and would pressure him to stand in elections this year.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Syria moved the first batch of chemical weapon materials out of the country after transporting it from two sites to the port city of Latakia and onto a Danish vessel.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Syria Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, called for a ceasefire between opposition factions who have clashed for five days in the bloodiest episode of infighting since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began. A suicide car bombing by al-Qaida-linked ISIL fighters killed at least 20 rebels near the northern city of Darkoush. 3 staff members of Prague-based "People in Need" were killed in a mortar attack.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Thailand protesters trying to topple PM Shinawatra marched in Bangkok to drum up support for their plans to bring the capital to a halt next week by blockading major roads and preventing the government from functioning.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan's government purged hundreds of police officers overnight, as part of a crackdown on a rival he accuses of trying to usurp state power by tarring him with a specious corruption investigation. Despite the dismissals police and prosecutors continued arrests, targeting the state railway company and a western port. Police detained some 25 people in the city of Izmir for questioning over a new bribery and fraud investigation.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 7, Turkey’s Anadolu state news said military prosecutors have dropped a case against five officers who were being investigated for negligence in the military air strike on Dec 11, 2011, that killed 34 smugglers mistaken for Kurdish rebels, saying there was no ground for any legal action.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In eastern Yemen tribesmen Hadramawt province blew up an oil pipeline for the second time in two days, disrupting an important source of revenue for the impoverished state. Gunmen shot dead an army colonel and a car bomb injured a senior intelligence officer in Aden.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 8, The US White House pushed back against harsh criticism in a new book “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War," by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates that questions President Barack Obama's war leadership and rips into VP Joe Biden.
(AP, 1/9/14)(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 8, The Obama administration pressed the nation’s schools to abandon overly zealous discipline policies that send students to court instead of to the principal’s office.
(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 8, Seventeen people related to the San Diego street gang BMS were arrested in California and New Jersey by police and FBI agents for operating a prostitution ring that spanned 46 cities in 23 states.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 8, Former Georgia banker Aubrey Lee Price (47) pleaded non guilty to stealing millions from investors before vanishing for 18 months. Prosecutors said he misspent, embezzled and lost some $21 million.
(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A40)
2014 Jan 8, Omaha police said an African-American toddler, who was cursed at buy adults and encouraged to curse in return in a posted video, has been placed in protective custody. Three other children were also removed from the same home.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 8, New Jersey officials released e-mails that appeared to show Gov. Chris Christie's staff plotting the lane closures in September to retaliate against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, because he had not endorsed the governor's re-election campaign.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 8, The Utah governor’s office said that the state will not recognize more than 1,000 same-sex marriages performed over the past two weeks as it appeals a legal ruling that had overturned the state’s ban on such unions.
(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 8, A US navy helicopter went down in the Atlantic off of Virginia killing 2 crew members and wounding two others. A 5th remained missing.
(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 8, Dennis Rodman sang "Happy Birthday" to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before leading a squad of former NBA stars in a friendly game as part of his "basketball diplomacy" that has been criticized in the US as naive and laughable. Tourists said Rodman singing "Happy Birthday" to Kim Jong-Un was akin to Marilyn Monroe performing for JFK.
(AFP, 1/8/14)(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, In Afghanistan US forces accidentally shot dead a four year old boy.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 8, A Bahraini court sentenced 22 Shiites to 15 years in prison over the killing of a policeman and the wounding of another in an attack outside Manama.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, In Belgium Emiel Pauwels (95), a European masters athletics champion, committed euthanasia because he suffered from cancer. Pauwels held the over-90 60 meters European title he won last year.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Britain’s Electoral Commission said voters should have to prove their identity at polling stations, as it launched a study into fraud concerns around ethnic South Asian communities.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Canada announced the first H5N1 avian flu death in North America, of a patient who had just returned from China.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, China's foreign minister said Beijing was tackling illegal gold mining in Ghana, after hundreds of his compatriots were arrested and sent home for extracting the mineral without permission.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, A Croatian court ruled that Josip Perkovic, a communist-era intelligence chief, could be extradited to Germany where he is wanted over a killing of a Yugoslav dissident in 1983. On Jan 24 Perkovic was flown to Germany.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 8, German authorities said they have charged Werner C. (88), a former member of an SS armored division, with 25 counts of murder over allegations that he took part in the June 10, 1944, slaughter in Oradour-sur-Glane in southwestern France, the largest civilian massacre in Nazi-occupied France.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, A German court dropped the case against Siert Bruins (92), a former member of the Nazi SS, ruling that there are too many gaps in the evidence to deliver a verdict. Bruins was accused of killing resistance fighter Aldert Klaas Dijkema in September 1944 in Appingedam, near the German border in the northern Netherlands.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Greece formally assumed the European Union's rotating six-month presidency with a ceremony attended by EU commissioners.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Greek authorities charged 25 people and arrested three following an investigation into allegedly inadequately secured loans from the former Hellenic Postbank to local businessmen.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, India chipped away at America's diplomatic perks, ordering the envoys to obey local traffic laws and warning that a popular US Embassy club violates diplomatic law because it is open to outsiders.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, In India a fire on an overnight train killed at least nine people near Mumbai with sleeping victims overcome by flames and smoke as the blaze ripped through three carriages.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Iraq's PM al-Maliki urged al-Qaida-linked fighters who have overrun two cities west of Baghdad to give up the battle, vowing to press forward with a push to regain control of the mainly Sunni areas. NGOs said more than 13,000 families have fled Fallujah.
(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Iraq's self-ruled northern Kurdish region said it has unilaterally started sending its crude to Turkey and is going ahead with plans to export oil despite objections by the central government in Baghdad. The flow of oil to Turkey started in early January.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, In Israel thousands of African migrants demanding to be recognized as refugees protested outside of Israel's parliament, part of a series of mass demonstrations over their status in Israel.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Libya's PM Ali Zeidan warned oil tankers trying to reach ports seized by armed protesters must stay away or they could be sunk by the navy. Libya said it will sue any foreign firms trying to buy oil from eastern ports seized by armed protesters and stop doing business with them.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Nauru, the tiny Pacific island that hosts a controversial Australian immigration detention centre, was reported to be hiking visa costs for foreign journalists by 40 times, fuelling concerns over secrecy surrounding Australia's asylum seeker policy.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Dutch pension asset manager PGGM, one of the largest in the country, said it was divesting from five Israeli banks because they finance Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Gaza's Hamas government freed seven imprisoned Fatah members, as part of efforts to mend relations between the Islamist movement and its West Bank-based Palestinian rival.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, An Islamic Jihad militant was killed near Gaza City in what medics and family said was an Israeli drone strike.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, In southern Russia the bodies of 6 men were found shot to death in four cars abandoned on the outskirts of Pyatigorsk.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, Officials in the semi-autonomous Somalia region of Puntland confirmed Abdiweli Mohammed Ali Gaas, a former Somali prime minister, as the region's new leader.
(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, South Korean prosecutors arrested an IT contractor for stealing the personal information of around 20m credit card holders.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.62)
2014 Jan 8, South Sudan's government and rebels were locked in fierce battles across the country, as peace talks taking place in neighboring Ethiopia appeared to flounder.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Syrian rebels seized control of a hospital used as a headquarters by an al-Qaida affiliate in the northern city of Aleppo, part of a widening campaign against the extremist group in the country's opposition-held north. Rebels overran the Aleppo headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as claims emerged that the Al-Qaeda linked group had massacred prisoners there in cold blood.
(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, In central Tunisia clashes broke out between police and demonstrators protesting economic hardship in Kasserine, as discontent mounts over new taxes and government failure to improve living conditions, three years after the revolution.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Turkey's deputy police chief was sacked overnight, the most senior commander yet targeted in a purge of a force heavily influenced by cleric Fethullah Gulen PM Tayyip Erdogan accuses of plotting to seize the levers of state power. The police chief of Izmir was among 16 senior police officials reassigned to new posts.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, In Yemen 2 suspected al Qaeda militants were killed in a US drone strike in the southeastern province of Hadramout.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 9, President Barack Obama spoke about how he will target job creation, housing, law enforcement and education in the poorest US communities, part of his pledge to narrow the gap between rich and poor in America. He planned to create "promise zones" in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 9, The SEC charged Diamond Foods and two former top executives with accounting fraud. Diamond will pay $5 million to settle the charges. Former CEO Michael Mendes agreed to pay $125,000 to settle. He had previously given back $4 million in bonuses to the company. Litigation continued against former DFO Steven Neill.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.C1)
2014 Jan 9, New Jersey Gov. Chris dismissed deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly, who had sent e-mails calling for trouble at a key commuter choke point and repeatedly apologized in a two-hour news conference.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, Amiri Baraka (b.1934), poet, playwright and black nationalist, died in New Jersey. He was born as Everett LeRoi Jones and changed his name in 1965 following the assassination of Malcolm X. His play “Dutchman" won the 1964 Obie Award for best American play.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 9, In Oklahoma an African American man was put to death for murdering a store manager with a baseball bat. This was the second US execution of 2014. Michael Lee Wilson (38) was the third man put to death for the murder of Richard Yost, beaten with a baseball bat and found in the freezer of his supermarket in Tulsa in February 1995.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, In West Virginia a spill of 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM), a chemical used in the coal industry, occurred on the Elk River in Charleston, West Virginia's capital and largest city. It took Freedom Industries, a maker of specialty chemicals, 12 days to disclose the additional presence of polyglycol ethers (PPH). Over the next year six top company officials pleaded guilty to charges relating to the spill.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)(AP, 1/23/14)(SFC, 8/20/15, p.A5)
2014 Jan 9, IBM said DBS Group Holdings Ltd. of Singapore will begin to use the Watson supercomputer to aid financial planners in guiding its wealth management unit’s affluent customers.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.C2)
2014 Jan 9, Health experts launched Action on Sugar, a drive to cut sugar levels in food in an effort to tackle obesity and diabetes.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Dennis Rodman apologized for comments he made in North Korea about a detained American missionary, saying he had been drinking and was under pressure as he organized a game with former NBA players.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Afghanistan said it has enough evidence to try only 16 of 88 prisoners that the United States considers a threat to security and plans to free the remaining detainees. Pres. Karzai ordered the release of all but 16 of the 88 prisoners.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 9, In northwest Australia the temperature in the Pilbara region reached 122 degrees.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 9, In Chad African leaders began talks to tackle the sectarian violence wracking the Central African Republic, with the pressure piling on the country's embattled Pres. Michel Djotodia.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Chile's supreme court ruled in favor of local fishermen who say Endesa Chile's Bocamina coal-fired facility kills marine life and pollutes ocean water, but it said halting its operations was a decision for environmental authorities.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, Chinese officials said famed film director Zhang Yimou must pay more than $1.2 million in fines for having three children in violation of China's strict family planning rules.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Egyptian courts convicted 113 Muslim Brotherhood supporters on charges including attacking police, rioting and weapons possession in three separate cases brought after protests against the army-backed government.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, A European Parliament committee voted to invite Edward Snowden to testify via video link in its investigation of US surveillance practices.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, A French court suspended a ban the city of Nantes imposed to prevent a show tonight by comic Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala whose performances are considered anti-Semitic.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, A French court ruled that dissident Kazakh Mukhtar Ablyazov, accused of embezzling up to $6 billion from his former bank BTA, should be extradited from France to Ukraine or Russia.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, French engineering group Alstom said it has won a contract worth 120 million euros ($163 million) to build Israel's first hydroelectric storage facility.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Germany said it has accepted a UN request to destroy remnants of Syria's chemical weapons on its own soil as part of a bid to eliminate the arsenal by June 30.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, In Iraq a suicide bomber blew himself up at a military recruiting center in Baghdad killing at least 21 people. Human Rights Watch said that Iraqi forces appear to have used mortar fire indiscriminately in civilian areas in recent days in their effort to dislodge militants in Anbar province.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, The Kenyan military killed at least 30 Islamic militants in an airstrike on a militant camp in Somalia.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, In southern Libya a militia chief linked to Awled Sleiman was killed. The tribe accused Toubou tribesmen, traditionally black oasis farmers, of murdering him.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 9, Nigeria's military reportedly killed as many as 38 Boko Haram fighters early today during counter-insurgency operations in Borno state.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, In Pakistan Chaudhry Aslam, a senior police investigator known for arresting dozens of Pakistani Taliban, was killed along with two other officers in a car bombing in Karachi.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Palestinians threw rocks at a West Bank hotel, shattering windows and breaking up a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists. Residents of Palestinian refugee camps burnt tires and closed roads in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in protests stemming from a month-long strike by the UN agency that operates the camps.
(AP, 1/9/14)(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, South Sudanese government forces battled to retake the key rebel-held town of Bentiu, as thousands of civilians continued to flee fighting and peace talks appeared deadlocked.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, In Syria a powerful car bomb exploded near a school in al-Kaffat village, Hama province, killing at least 16 people and causing massive damage to a residential area. Jihadists battling rebels in the north fought to recover lost turf nearly a week after a new front opened in the conflict gripping the country. Syrian government forces killed dozens of rebel fighters overnight who tried to break an army siege of Homs.
(AP, 1/9/14)(AFP, 1/9/14)(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, Disparate Syrian opposition groups, including several Islamist rebel representatives, met for the first time in the Spanish city of Cordoba to seek common ground ahead of peace talks with President Bashar al-Assad's government later this month.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Thai protesters trying to topple PM Shinawatra marched in Bangkok again, testing support for a planned "shutdown" of the capital next week.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Tunisia's Islamist PM Ali Larayedh, who was tortured under the ousted Ben Ali regime, resigned as part of a plan to end months of political deadlock. He is to be replaced within 15 days by premier designate Mehdi Jomaa at the head of a government of technocrats that will lead the country to fresh elections this year under a new constitution.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 10, President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration for the state of West Virginia, ordering federal aid in the aftermath of a chemical spill that has left up to 300,000 people without tap water, closed schools and businesses. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency for nine counties.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Arkansas Gov. Mark Darr said he will leave office Feb 1. He was under pressure to resign over ethics violations including making personal use of over $30,000 of his campaign funds.
(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A10)
2014 Jan 10, Larry Speakes (b.1929), press secretary to Ronald Reagan, died in Mississippi. He became press secretary to Pres. Reagan following the 1981 attempted assassination of Reagan and the wounding of press secretary James Brady.
(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A15)
2014 Jan 10, New Jersey legislators planned to release nearly 1,000 pages of documents that may shed new light on a probe of four days of traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge apparently orchestrated by Republican Governor Chris Christie's top aides to settle a political score.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, In eastern Afghanistan 2 US service members and a civilian were killed in an aircraft crash.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, A new analysis of British census figures said almost one in 10 babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, illustrating the growth of the minority community.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Central African Republic's interim President Michel Djotodia and his prime minister resigned, according to a statement issued after a two-day summit in neighboring Chad. Alexsandre-Ferdinand Nguendet took over as Acting President.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.50)
2014 Jan 10, China defended its new fishing restrictions in disputed waters in the South China Sea against criticism from the United States, saying the rules were in accordance with international law.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, In Egypt hundreds of Islamists rallied in Cairo and across the country, calling for a boycott of an upcoming constitutional referendum as clashes with security forces killed 3 people.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, French President Francois Hollande threatened legal action over a Closer magazine report saying he is having a secret affair with actress Julie Gayet.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, India ordered the United States to withdraw one of its diplomats from New Delhi, as Devyani Khobragade (39), the Indian consul at the center of the dispute between the two countries, flew home after being indicted in New York for visa fraud.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, India's overcrowded financial capital unveiled its long-awaited $2 billion new airport terminal. Mumbai’s renovated Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport was delayed for nearly two years and overran its construction budget by 25 percent.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Indonesia's anti-graft agency arrested a former senior member of President Yudhoyono's party, in a long-running case that has damaged the ruling party's popularity ahead of elections.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Iranian state television reported that talks with the European Union have ended with an agreement over outstanding issues about the practical details of implementing a nuclear agreement.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, In Iraq fierce clashes erupted between special forces and al-Qaida-linked militants in al-Bubali, a village between Fallujah and Ramadi in western Anbar province.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Israel announced plans to build 1,400 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Police said suspected Jewish extremists cut down fruit trees belonging to Israeli Arabs overnight in an apparent revenge attack for Palestinian villagers beating up Jewish settlers.
(AP, 1/10/14)(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Israel's cultural and financial capital unveiled a memorial honoring gays and lesbians persecuted by the Nazis, the first specific recognition in Israel for non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Namibia wildlife authorities defended the auction of permits to hunt black rhino, saying the kill was aimed at conserving the endangered species.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Nigeria's military confirmed that it was to release 167 people who were detained as part of counter-insurgency operations against Boko Haram militants in three northeast states.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Pakistani police found two workers shot to death at a small Sufi Muslim shrine in Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, The Philippines and Vietnam condemned a new Chinese law that requires foreign fishermen to seek Beijing's approval to operate in much of the South China Sea, but China's Foreign Ministry insisted it has the right do so.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Romanian education authorities fired a teacher Dana Blandu, who was filmed aggressively demanding money as gifts from students in a case that has made local headlines. It is customary in Romania to give presents to teachers.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Russia designated a park in the town of Khosta as a protest zone for the Winter Olympics. Khosta is 7 miles away from there the athletes will compete in Sochi.
(SFC, 1/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 10, Russia's powerful Orthodox Church proposed a referendum on banning gay relations in the face of Western pressure over human rights ahead of next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, In Singapore two men were charged with kidnapping after the elderly mother of supermarket tycoon Lim Hock Chee was abducted two days earlier and held for ransom.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, It was reported that al-Shabab, Somalia's al-Qaida-linked group, has ordered telecom companies to shut down mobile internet services over fears the US can use the data to target militants.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, South Sudan said that government troops retook Bentiu, the capital of Unity state, after a 2.5-hour battle. Rebels still controlled Bor, a state capital outside Juba, the country capital.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, A Spanish court ordered the extradition of Aurea Vazquez Rijos (33), a Puerto Rican woman, wanted by US federal authorities for allegedly hiring a hit man to kill her wealthy Canadian husband. Adam Anhang was beaten and stabbed to death in Puerto Rico on Sep 23, 2005, while he walked with Vazquez near a bar he had bought for her.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Tunisia's new premier Mehdi Jomaa took office to lead a caretaker government until elections this year.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Turkey's top judicial body hit back at government's plans to curb its powers, adding fuel to a bitter row over a vast corruption probe engulfing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, The UN refugee agency warned that fighting in South Sudan could by April drive more than half a million people from their homes, doubling the number of those already affected.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Zimbabwe police said they are investigating the murder of four suspected illegal ivory buyers whose bodies were found in a wrecked car in western Zimbabwe.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 11, Luxury merchant Nieman Marcus confirmed that thieves stole some of its customers’ payment card information and made unauthorized charges over the holidays.
(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A11)
2014 Jan 11, Sean Penn’s 3rd annual Help Haiti Home benefit in Beverly Hills raised nearly $6 million.
(SFC, 1/13/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 11, In Argentina police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse some 3,000 rowdy youths participating in a “rolenzinho," a social network convened gathering, at the Shopping metro Itaquera in eastern Sao Paulo.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.30)
2014 Jan 11, In Australia US stage hypnotist Scott Lewis plunged to his death from the balcony of a Sydney apartment. Lewis was in Sydney performing his hypnosis act along with six other performers in the show "The illusionists 2.0," which opened at the Sydney Opera House last week.
(AP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Austria two men died after a hand grenade apparently exploded in their Bulgarian-registered car in Vienna.
(AP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In CAR deadly violence including reports of cannibalism and widespread looting erupted in Bangui after the resignation of its ex-rebel president, The International Organization for Migration began an airlift of thousands of foreigners out of the strife-torn country following appeals from neighboring countries. Former president Michel Djotodia traveled to Benin where he will go into exile.
(AFP, 1/11/14)(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In southwest China a fire raged for nearly 10 hours and razed an ancient Tibetan town popular with tourists, burning down hundreds of buildings as fire engines were unable to get onto the narrow streets of Dukezon, part of scenic Shangri-La county in Deqen prefecture.
(AP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In CongoDRC 4 people were killed and two seriously injured in a clash between Virunga national park rangers and suspected Rwandan FDLR rebels.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Greece two Golden Dawn lawmakers were placed in pre-trial detention late in Athens in an ongoing crackdown against the far right group.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Inflation in Iran was reportedly running at 36%.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.42)
2014 Jan 11, Ariel Sharon (b.1928), former Israeli prime minister (2001-2006), died in a hospital near Tel Aviv eight years after a debilitating stroke put him into a coma.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Thousands of Kurdish demonstrators from around Europe marched in Paris to call for a speedier investigation into the murder of three Kurdish activists a year ago.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Libya fighting broke out in the southern town of Sebha and nearby Murzuq and Al-Shati pitting gunmen from the Arab Awled Sleiman tribe against tribesmen from the Toubou minority.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, A permit to hunt a black rhino in Namibia sold for $350,000 at an auction in Dallas with proceeds going to protect the endangered animals despite protests from animal rights groups that saw the sale as immoral conservation.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Russian authorities detained five terror suspects in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkar Republic, 185 miles east of Sochi, site of the upcoming Winter Olympics.
(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 11, South Sudanese government troops battled to recapture Bor, the last remaining rebel-held town.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Three African envoys of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional grouping of east African nations that initiated the talks, met with South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar in an effort to agree the terms of truce, but he turned them down. His demand for the release of detainees remains a stumbling block to a ceasefire deal.
(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Spain tens of thousands of protesters marched in Bilbao in support of jailed members of the Basque separatist group ETA. A high court judge had vetoed the march, which was initially organized by prisoners' supporters to call for inmates to be moved to jails closer to their homes.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Syria the ISIL al-Qaeda affiliate battled rival rebels across the country's north and dozens of bodies piled up in a hospital in the insurgent-held city of Raqqa. Government shelling killed more than 20 people in the central city of Homs.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, Tanzania said its elephant population, beset by poaching for ivory, has plummeted by two-thirds in the past three-and-a-half decades.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Thailand seven people were wounded after gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on anti-government protesters in Bangkok.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Tonga declared a state of emergency in some parts as powerful Cyclone Ian slammed into the South Pacific island nation. At least one person was killed.
(AFP, 1/11/14)(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, Riots over Tunisia's economy flared overnight in towns around the country, leaving one dead and posing an immediate challenge to the new prime minister and the country's path to democracy.
(AP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Turkish politicians threw punches and water bottles during a debate about government control over the appointment of judges and prosecutors. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ankara in protest against PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Ukraine's ex-interior minister turned opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko (49) was in intensive care in hospital after being beaten in fresh clashes between pro-EU demonstrators and club-wielding police.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Fighting in north Yemen between Shi'ite Muslim Houthis and Sunni Salafis stopped as a ceasefire deal took effect, according to a presidential committee trying to help end the conflict. In the south armed tribesmen attacked troops assigned to guard oil wells near a facility operated by Norway’s DNO. 2 soldiers were killed.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Zimbabwe the pilot of a US-built helicopter died when he crashed into a wooded mountainside in the country's remote southwest. State media later reported that the pilot, identified as a prominent Zimbabwean businessman based in South Africa, was flying alone to visit relatives in the American 4-seat Robinson R44 model.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 12, The Cygnus cargo ship from Orbital Sciences delivered Christmas presents along with needed supplies to the Int’l. Space Station.
(SFC, 1/13/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 12, In Afghanistan a Taliban suicide bomber riding a bicycle detonated himself next to a police bus in Kabul, killing a policeman and a civilian in the first major attack in the Afghan capital this year.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Afghanistan Daniel Menard, a former Canadian brigadier-general and head of Canadian forces in Afghanistan, was detained for alleged gun smuggling. He was currently working for security firm Garda World. Menard had resigned from the military after pleading guilty in 2011 to having an affair with a female corporal under his command.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina was sworn in for a third spell as prime minister after a deadly general election boycotted by the opposition amid an ongoing political crisis.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, Central African Republic’s local Red Cross said scattered violence in Bangui, including two consecutive nights of intense gunfire in some neighborhoods, has killed 13 people since Michel Djotodia announced his resignation from the presidency on Jan 10. Rival militiamen struck a truce and hugged each other in a neighborhood of Bangui on the eve of consultations aimed at replacing the president who resigned under international pressure.
(AP, 1/12/14)(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Egypt hundreds of students supporting ousted Pres. Morsi battled security forces at three Cairo universities, two days before a referendum that officials say will be protected by a massive deployment of soldiers and police.
(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In western Germany a small jet crashed near an airfield near Trier and four people on board were killed.
(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, A 2009 Indonesian law banning the export of unprocessed minerals took effect, with the government aiming to boost local operations and create more jobs and mining companies warning of losses.
(AP, 1/12/14)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.64)
2014 Jan 12, Iran's foreign ministry said that the “joint plan of action," the landmark agreement the Islamic republic clinched with world powers on its disputed nuclear program, will take effect from January 20. Under the JPA Iran would freeze its nuclear program for six months.
(AFP, 1/12/14)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.47)
2014 Jan 12, Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki threatened to cut central government funding for Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region if the Kurds pursued a drive to pipe oil exports to Turkey without Baghdad's approval.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Iraq two car bombs exploded in Baghdad killing at least 21 people. Government employees returned to work under tight security in Ramadi, but militants still held parts of the Anbar provincial capital and all of Fallujah.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)(AFP, 1/12/14)(SFC, 1/13/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 12, In the Israeli occupied West Bank at least 50 people were hurt in a clash between Palestinian police and residents of the Jalazoun refugee camp protesting against a strike in a UN aid agency that has paralyzed services.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Libya assailants in Sirte gunned down a deputy minister Hassan al-Droui overnight, in the first killing of a government member since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi. The toll from tribal clashes in the southern town of Sebha rose to 27 dead, with another 72 people wounded in the unrest.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, The leaders of Mali and Mauritania signed an accord to boost military cooperation and information sharing in the battle against "armed groups or terrorists" plaguing the west African neighbors.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In western Mexico vigilantes seized a drug cartel's bastion in the Michoacan state town of Nueva Italia, sparking a shootout as the civilian militia gained new ground in their struggle against the Knights Templar in the violence-plagued region.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Pakistan a bomb attack targeting an aide of the prime minister killed 5 people in the Swat Valley. The official escaped unharmed. Hours later gunmen fatally shot Mian Mohammad Mushtaq, an anti-Taliban politician, along with two aides on the outskirts of Peshawar. Private guards working for the lawmaker, Abdul Rehman Khetran, attacked police at a checkpoint, beat them up and stole their weapons. Police then raided the lawmaker's fortified home in Baluchistan province and found a private dungeon at his home in which five people were found chained up. Khetran is a legislator for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a conservative, religious party.
(AP, 1/12/14)(Reuters, 1/13/14)(SFC, 1/13/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 12, A Saudi court sentenced to death an Al-Qaeda militant and jailed 10 others over the May 1, 2004, attack that killed six Westerners and a policeman.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 12, Syrian state media and anti-government activists said a mortar attack has killed at least 19 people in the central city of Homs. Activists said the al Qaeda-linked Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has executed dozens of rival Islamists over the last two days as the group recaptured most territory it had lost in Raqqa province.
(AP, 1/12/14)(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Tanzania clashes broke out in the Embroi Murtangosi nature reserve in Manyara province, when armed Masai herdsmen launched an attack on farmers. At least 10 people were killed over the next few days.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 12, Thai protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban ruled out talks with the government in a published interview, but said he would stand down his movement if, as some fear, violence escalates and civil war looms.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Ukraine an estimated 50,000 pro-Western protesters massed in the heart of Kiev amid swelling anger over the bloody beating of prominent former minister turned opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, The UN’s refugee agency said around 10,000 people have fled north to Sudan from South Sudan where government troops and rebels have battled for the past month.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, Pope Francis named his first batch of cardinals, choosing 19 men from Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, including the developing nations of Haiti and Burkina Faso.
(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, Yemeni tribesmen tried to overrun an army camp on the outskirts of al-Shihr, Hadramout province, killing 4 soldiers.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 13, Negotiators from the US Senate and House of Representatives unveiled a $1 trillion spending bill late today, eliminating the threat of another government shutdown, at least until October.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 13, The US Supreme Court declined to review an appeals court ruling that said an Arizona law banning abortions starting at 20 weeks of gestation is unconstitutional, meaning the restrictive state law is struck down.
(Reuters, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, The US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Mohamed Ali Samantar, a former top official in Somalia, who has been ordered to pay Somali torture victims $21 million. Samantar, now living in Virginia, was a top official in dictator Siad Barre's regime in the 1980s and early 1990s.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In Florida an argument over texting in a movie theater led retired police captain Curtis Reeves (71) to fatally shoot Chad Oulsen (43).
(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 13, Gerald Rosen, the mediator in the Detroit bankruptcy, announced that local and national foundations have pledged $330 million in an effort to shore up the city’s ailing pensions and protect the artwork at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 13, New Mexico Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash ruled that the ability of competent, terminally ill patients to choose aid in dying is a fundamental right under the state constitution.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 13, An emotional Dennis Rodman appeared to break down as he apologized on his return from a controversial trip to North Korea, where he sang "Happy Birthday" to regime leader Kim Jong-Un. He added that he would visit the North again next month for "another game," but gave no further details.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Google said that it is buying Nest Labs, a startup that makes internet-connected thermostats, for $3.2 billion.
(http://tinyurl.com/lpo27do)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.7)
2014 Jan 13, Australian officials said one man died a day earlier and four other people were missing after a fast-moving wildfire destroyed at least 49 homes in Perth. Firefighters continued to fight the blaze.
(AFP, 1/13/14)(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 13, In Brazil 10 public buses were destroyed after 12 people were shot and killed overnight in Campinas, Sao Paulo state. Police said the surge of violence began with the murder of an off-duty policeman.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Britain vowed to honor all government debt up until the date of Scotland's possible independence, should Scottish people vote to break away from the United Kingdom later this year.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, A Cambodian court freed Russian real estate tycoon Sergei Polonsky and he will not be extradited to Russia to face embezzlement charges there.
(Reuters, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In southern China an explosion at an illegal gambling hall in Kaili, Guizhou province, killed 14 people and injured seven others.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, France's Total said it has agreed to explore for shale gas in Britain, making it the first major oil company to enter the country's market in the face of widely publicized environmental protests.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, German antitrust authorities fined a group of beer brewers a total of 106.5 million euros ($145 million) for illegal price-fixing between 2006 and 2008.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, An Indian official said police arrested napkin seller (38) over the weekend for allegedly torturing an 11-year-old maid who was forced to eat chilies, which were also rubbed on her body. He and his wife had bought the girl in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh for 15,000 rupees ($240) from her parents about a year ago on the pretext that she would be well looked after and given a better education.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Iraq’s PM Nuri al-Maliki publicly rebuked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's call for the country to halt executions while standing beside him at a joint news conference. Ban Ki-moon called for Iraqi leaders to address the "root causes" of a surge in bloodshed as security forces clashed with gunmen in violence-wracked Anbar province. A series of attacks in the Baghdad area, including four car bombs targeting civilians, killed at least 30 people
(AFP, 1/13/14)(AP, 1/13/14)(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 13, In Ireland Saverio Bellante (34) of Italy was charged with the murder of Tom O'Gorman. Bellante said he was guilty of cutting open his Dublin landlord's chest and tried to eat his heart following a fight over a chess match.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Japan said it has signed an agreement with Palau to allow Japanese companies to earn carbon credits by helping the small Pacific island cut greenhouse gas emissions.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 13, A spokesman said Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has approved the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill 2013 banning gay marriage and same-sex partnerships. The law also criminalizes homosexual associations, societies and meetings.
(AFP, 1/13/14)(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 13, Officials in the Philippines said two days of heavy rains set off floods and landslides in the southeast have left at least 20 people dead, 13 missing and thousands displaced.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In the Philippines the Sandiganbayan antigraft court said the former fist lady Imelda Marcos should forfeit all jewelry after ruling that it was ill-gotten.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 13, In South Africa Mike Tshele and Osia Rahube people were killed during a clash with police when residents of a village marched to the Madibeng municipality buildings in North West province to protest about water shortages. A 3rd person shot by police died on Jan 19.
(Reuters, 1/13/14)(http://tinyurl.com/ogeafwt)(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 13, South Sudanese government troops advanced on Bor, the last state capital still in rebel hands, as ceasefire talks in neighboring Ethiopia were called off for the day.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Swedish Dr. Mats Brannstrom said nine women have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives and will soon try to become pregnant.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In Syria the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the northern town of al-Bab. American and Russian negotiators in Paris said Syria's government and the opposition have agreed to consider opening humanitarian access in the run-up to a peace conference that would bring the sides together for the first time. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ISIL had executed 46 Islamists from the Ahrar al-Sham in an ambush in Kantari and killed 14 prisoners today in Homs province.
(AP, 1/13/14)(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 13, US and Russian envoys said Syria’s government and the main opposition group have agreed to allow humanitarian aid into some blocked-off parts of the country.
(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 13, In Thailand tens of thousands of anti-government protesters came out in an effort to "shut down Bangkok" and try to force caretaker PM Yingluck Shinawatra to resign in favor of an unelected "people's council" that would initiate political reforms.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In Thailand an American woman went missing in Kaeng Krachan National Park. Her body was found five days later, apparently trampled by elephants.
(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 14, The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed the FCC’s online access rules arguing that Internet providers built their networks and therefore have the right to manage their costs and services.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p. A1)
2014 Jan 14, A Chicago federal court sentenced H. Ty Warner (69), the billionaire businessman behind Beanie Babies, to two years probation for not paying taxes on $25 million he had hidden.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 14, The NY Times reported that the National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world, but not in the United States, that allows the US to conduct surveillance on those machines.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, In New Mexico a boy (12) drew a shotgun from a band instrument case and shot two classmates at the Berrendo Middle School in Roswell. A boy (11) and a girl (13) were seriously wounded. The shooter was described as a smart and nice kid.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A4)(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A9)
2014 Jan 14, West Virginia officials lifted a ban on drinking tap water for 35,000 customers who had been affected by a Jan 9 chemical spill that left the state's water supply nearly unusable for hundreds of thousands.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Lawyers said Britain has granted asylum to an atheist from Afghanistan due to fears he would be prosecuted back home, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Chinese doctor Zhang Shuxia, who abducted and sold newborn babies, was given a suspended death sentence in a case that drew widespread outrage with child trafficking a chronic problem in the country.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In China a fire at the Dadong factory in Wenling, Zhejiang province, killed 16 people. Safety exits were blocked.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 14, Egyptians voted on a new constitution in a referendum that will pave the way for a likely presidential run by the nation's top general months after he ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. 11 people were killed on the 1st day of the vote.
(AP, 1/14/14)(AFP, 1/14/14)(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, The European Investment Bank (EIB) said it has raised a further 350 million euros ($477.9 million) on its Climate Awareness Bond (CAB), making it the largest ever "green bond" at 1.5 billion euros.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Germany's No.2 utility RWE said it is preparing to sue for millions of euros of damages after a federal court confirmed that a state's decision to shut down the company's Biblis nuclear plant for three months in 2011 was illegal.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In India a Danish tourist (51) was gang-raped, robbed and beaten in New Delhi after she got lost and approached a group of men for directions back to her hotel near Connaught Place. Nine attackers took her to a secluded spot, robbed her and raped her repeatedly at knifepoint. On June 10, 2016, five men were sentenced to life in prison for the attack. One of the accused men died during trial in February. Three who were younger than 18 at the time of the attack were handed to the Juvenile Justice Board to remain in custody until they are 18 and reformed.
(AP, 1/15/14)(AP, 6/10/16)
2014 Jan 14, In India the body of a woman, killed by a tiger prowling for food, was found Uttar Pradesh state. She was the animal’s 7th victim.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 14, It was reported that canine distemper virus has killed four tigers and several other animals across northern and eastern India.
(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 14, In Iraq at least 12 people were killed in violence across the country, mostly in bombings and shootings in Baghdad. Al-Qaida militants blew up an explosives laden fuel tanker at an army checkpoint, killing 3 soldiers, on a small bridge near Saqlawiya.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 14, Rose Fostanes, a Filipina who has spent nearly half her life as a carer overseas, won Israel's first "X Factor" TV talent competition.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, Japanese engineering giant JGC Corp. said it has won a contract to help build a Canadian liquefied natural gas plant in a deal reportedly worth $9.4 billion.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Mexican federal forces launched an offensive to take over security in Michoacan state, seizing a drug cartel's bastion and clashing with vigilantes who refused to disarm.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In Mexico Juan Gelman, the celebrated Argentine poet and fierce critic of the South American nation's "dirty war" against leftists, died in Mexico City.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In Myanmar a Buddhist mob reportedly killed at least 48 Muslims, including many women and children, in Du Char Yar Tan, Rakhine state. Security forces had surrounded Du Char Yar Tan after Rohingya Muslim residents allegedly abducted and killed a police sergeant.
(AP, 1/16/14)(AP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 14, In New Zealand at least 13 pilot whales were beached on a remote coastline and conservation officials desperately battled to prevent another 50 from reaching the shore.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In northeaster Nigeria a car bomb exploded at a military post in a Maiduguri, causing pandemonium with blood-spattered bystanders running away and vehicles colliding as drivers rushed to flee. 19 people were killed.
(AP, 1/14/14)(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, Local and international groups fighting AIDS warned that a new Nigerian law criminalizing same-sex marriage and gay organizations will jeopardize the fight against the deadly disease. Human rights activists reported that dozens of gay men were being arrested in northern Nigeria in an apparent response to the law.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that journalist David Satter, author of three books on Russia and the Soviet Union, was prevented from returning to Russia last month after grossly violating visa regulations. Satter, who is critical of President Vladimir Putin, was barred from returning for five years.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In Russia’s Dagestan region a shootout between security forces and militants killed 5 people.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, In South Africa protester Lerato Theodore Seema (27) was allegedly pushed from a moving police van during violent demonstrations near Pretoria. He was confirmed dead the next day from head wounds.
(AFP, 1/15/14)(http://tinyurl.com/ogeafwt)
2014 Jan 14, In South Sudan some 200 people fleeing warfare died after a boat crossing the Nile River sank, as fighting between rebels and government forces moved closer to Juba, the national capital.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, The Syrian said it has retaken territory around the northern city of Aleppo, after two weeks of rebel infighting that has weakened the insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Thailand's PM Shinawatra insisted she wouldn't quit as protesters seeking her ouster blocked key roads in the heart of Bangkok for a second day, leaving the country's political crisis firmly deadlocked.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was ready to withdraw a contentious bill aimed at curbing the powers of the judiciary as he battled to contain the worst crisis of his 11 years in office.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Turkish anti-terrorism police carried out raids in six cities, detaining at least five people with alleged links to al-Qaida.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, A Ugandan military spokesman said that Ugandan and South Sudanese army officials are drafting what he called a "status of forces agreement" that will soon be signed by both countries after Pres. Kiir requested the Ugandans to extend their deployment.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, The UN human rights office said a UN human rights team has gathered testimony that Chadian citizens, including peacekeepers, carried out mass killings during chaotic violence in the Central African Republic. The team also received reports that French disarmament of ex-Seleka forces left Muslim communities vulnerable.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 15, US Air Force leaders said 34 officers in charge of launching nuclear missiles have been suspended for cheating on a proficiency test. The scandal at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana marked the latest in a series of damaging revelations dogging the country's nuclear force.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, Police in San Jose, Ca., arrested Patrick William Brennan (48) as the suspected arsonist responsible for over a dozen fires that began Jan 7. On Dec 22 Brennan pleaded guilty to nine counts of arson and four counts of attempted arson.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A9)(SFC, 1/17/14, p.D1)(SFC, 12/24/14, p.E2)
2014 Jan 15, The Archdiocese of Chicago released 6,000 pages of documents as part of a settlement with sex abuse victims.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 15, In Nebraska a Payton Benson (5) was killed in Omaha after being hit by a stray bullet while eating breakfast. 4 men later faced charges in the death of the girl.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 15, West Virginia officials said they have lifted a ban on drinking tap water for two-thirds of the customers affected by a chemical spill, but warned pregnant women to avoid it until the chemical is completely flushed from the pipes.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, In eastern Afghanistan a NATO service member was shot and killed by insurgents. A NATO bombing strike on the village of Wazghar, Parvan province, reportedly left 13 civilians dead. NATO later said the Afghan army called for the strike. One Afghan and one NATO soldier died in the action.
(AP, 1/15/14)(Econ, 2/1/14, p.31)
2014 Jan 15, Australian officials said lightning strikes ignited more than 250 fires across the southeast. Firefighters battled to put out the flames as the country sweltered under a heatwave.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Bosnia's president and a Qatar minister opened a new library in the heart of the Ottoman-era Old Town section of Sarajevo to house books and more than 100,000 manuscripts saved from the 1992-95 siege. The oldest is a handwritten Islamic encyclopedia that was written in Arabic in 1105. Qatar donated $9 million to the project.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, British actor Roger Lloyd-Pack (69), best known for playing dim-witted street-sweeper Trigger on the sitcom "Only Fools and Horses" (1981-1991), died at his home in London.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, China's commercial capital, Shanghai, introduced emergency measures to tackle air pollution, allowing it to shut schools and order cars off the road in the case of severe smog.
(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Chinese police detained economics Prof. Ilham Tohti, an outspoken scholar of the Turkic Uighur ethnic minority. They raided his home in Beijing, seizing computers, cellphones and even his students' thesis manuscripts. On Jan 25 Tohti was accused of leading a separatist group that advocates violence to overthrow Chinese rule in Xinjiang. In late July Tohti (44) was charged with separatism.
(AP, 1/16/14)(AP, 1/25/14)(SFC, 7/31/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 15, Chinese police in Urumqi arrested Akbar Imin, a Uighur AIDS activist, for endangering national security in the troubled far western region of Xinjiang, home to the largely Muslim Uighur people. His arrest was only made public in March.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Jan 15, Egyptians lined up to vote on the second and final day of a key referendum on the country's new constitution.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, French business leaders hailed promises by President Francois Hollande to cut taxes and spending, but the left accused him of lurching to the right.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Guinea's PM Mohamed Said Fofana stepped down and handed in the resignation of his cabinet as part of a transition to a new government after elections.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In Indonesia at least 13 people were killed after torrential rain triggered flash floods and landslides on northern Sulawesi island. Some 40,000 fled their homes as water surged through the city of Manado and surrounding areas.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In Iraq a wave of attacks, including car bombs in Baghdad, killed at least 73 people as militants took more territory from security forces in crisis-hit Anbar province. Overnight clashes erupted periodically in Ramadi and on the outskirts of Fallujah, leaving 2 children killed and 13 civilians wounded.
(AFP, 1/15/14)(Reuters, 1/15/14)(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Suspected Jewish extremists torched the entrance to a mosque in the West Bank, in an apparent revenge attack for Palestinians beating and detaining Israeli settlers last week.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Donors gathered in Kuwait as the UN sent out a distress signal, warning that nearly half Syria's population needs urgent humanitarian assistance and that some 245,000 Syrians faced severe food shortages. Western and Gulf Arab nations pledged $1.4 billion for UN aid efforts in Syria. This included $500 million from Kuwait and 380 million from the US.
(AFP, 1/15/14)(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Mozambican police say they have arrested four Rwandans, including Lt. Col. Francis Gakwerere, a senior official in the Rwandan armed forces, for the Jan 1 murder in South Africa of former Rwandan spymaster Col. Patrick Karegeya. The four were arrested last week.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Civilians from the Nigerian town of Banki fled across the border to Cameroon to escape heavy gunfire. Cameroonian forces responded to repel Boko Haram attackers who also tried to cross over. One woman in Cameroon was killed and five other shooting victims were taken to hospitals.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, Norway's Yara, the world's biggest mineral fertilizer producer, said it has been hit with a hefty fine by Norwegian authorities following an international corruption investigation. The affair centered on bribes to senior government officials in Libya and India, and to a supplier in Russia from 2004-2009.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In southern Pakistan a truck slammed into a bus bringing schoolchildren home from an outing, killing at least 17 pupils and three adults in Sindh province.
(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, The Philippines launched anti-corruption reforms including cashless and checkless government transactions.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 15, South Sudan's military battled rebels in the streets of the key northern oil town of Malakal, as violence in the world's newest nation entered its second month.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In Spain police clashed with demonstrators in Madrid as thousands of people marched across the country to protest against costly plans to redevelop a street in the northern city of Burgos, where protests continued for a 6th day.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Roughly 60 migrants entered Spain's north African territory of Melilla after charging a barbed-wire border fence bordering Morocco.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In Syria a car bomb planted by rebels linked to al Qaeda killed at least 26 people in the northern city of Jarablus, most of them rival opposition fighters.
(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Turkey's embattled Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared open war on what he labelled an "empire of fear" created by an Islamic rival at the heart of a deepening political crisis.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Uganda confirmed its troops are fighting alongside South Sudan's government against rebels.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, Pope Francis named an oversight commission of cardinals for the Vatican Bank, replacing all but one of the appointees made by his predecessor Benedict XVI.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 15, Venezuela’s Pres. Nicolas Maduro delivered his annual state-of-the-nation address. He blamed soap operas for crime saying they are spreading “antiglares."
(AP, 1/22/14, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/m9v8dz7)
2014 Jan 15, A Yemeni farmer was killed in a US drone strike in what witnesses said was an attack apparently intended for suspected Islamist militants in southeastern Yemen.
(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 16, The Catholic diocese of Stockton, Ca., filed for bankruptcy after paying millions of dollars to plaintiffs who made sexual abuse allegations during the past two decades.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 16, Albrecht Muth (49), an eccentric German who pretended to be an Iraqi general, was convicted in DC of killing his socialite and journalist wife, Viola Drath (91) in August, 2011. On April 30 Muth was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A7)(SFC, 5/1/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 16, Bud Spangler (b.1938), jazz drummer, DJ and producer, died in Oakland, Ca.
(SFC, 1/20/14, p.C4)
2014 Jan 16, In northern Indiana a man fatally shot two women in a grocery store and was waving a gun at a kneeling store manager when police arrived and killed the gunman in Elkhart.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 16, Judge Steven Rhodes overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy turned down a $169 compromise with major banks saying the amount was too high.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 16, In Ohio Dennis McGuire (53) was executed by a new combination of lethal drugs for the 1989 rape and murder of Joy Stewart (22), who was pregnant. The execution took nearly 25 minutes from injection to death and left him gasping for air in the final minutes.
(SFC, 1/8/14, p.A5)(http://tinyurl.com/kdp2x6z)(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 16, In Utah 5 people were found dead after co-workers reported that police officer Joshua Boren (34) failed to show up for his shift at the Lindon Police Dept. Boren had shot and killed his wife, mother-in-law and two children before killing himself. Kelly Boren had just confronted her husband about raping her and told him their marriage was over.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A4)(AP, 7/8/14)
2014 Jan 16, American actor Russell Johnson (89), best known for his role as the Professor on “Gilligan’s Island" (1964-1967), died at his home on Bainbridge Island, Washington state.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 16, British police working alongside counterparts in the Philippines and Australia said they had dismantled a pedophile ring that streamed live sexual abuse of Filipino children as young as six over the Internet, with victims' parents involved in some cases.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, It was reported that a study by Canadian researchers identified seven nations as the top sources for global warming. The report said Brazil, Britain, China, Germany, India, Russia and the US accounted for over 60% of all heat-trapping gas emissions between 1750 and 2005.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.C6)
2014 Jan 16, In the Central African Republic at least 7 people were killed in overnight clashes in Bangui.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Egypt's state media said the new constitution was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum. A senior official said an overwhelming majority of Egyptians who voted on the country's new constitution have backed the draft charter. An international monitoring group criticized the clampdown ahead of the vote and said authorities had imposed "severe limits" on freedom of expression.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Indian police said that they were closing in on six homeless men in the Jan 14 gang rape of a 51-year-old Danish tourist in New Delhi.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight wounded a woman and four children, with Israel saying it had struck in retaliation for rocket fire.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, In Kenya an explosive device blew up a trash can and part of the ceiling of the Java House restaurant near the entrance of an international departure terminal at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Four suspects, including a man identified as a Somali diplomat, were soon arrested.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Jan 16, In Lebanon a suicide car bomber killed 3 people in a Hezbollah stronghold on the northern border with Syria.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan replaced his entire military leadership without explanation as he struggles with an Islamist insurgency and political crisis within his ruling party.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, In northwestern Pakistan a bomb ripped through a crowded Sunni Islamic seminary, killing seven people and wounding 55 at the Tableeghi Jamaat religious school on the outskirts of Peshawar.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report detailing atrocities in South Sudan and warning that "appalling crimes have been committed against civilians for no other reason than their ethnicity."
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, In Spain Catalan lawmakers voted in favor of asking for the right to hold a referendum on independence.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Supporters of Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yanukovich rammed a sweeping law through parliament in an attempt to curb anti-government protests, sparking an outcry from the opposition and raising tensions on the streets.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, In central Yemen suspected al-Qaida militants attacked a military camp on the outskirts of Radda. Militants killed 10 soldiers in three simultaneous attacks on army positions in the central province of Bayda.
(AP, 1/16/14)(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 17, President Barack Obama curtailed the reach of massive US National Security Agency phone surveillance sweeps, but said bulk data collection must go on to protect America from terrorists.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The US Election Assistance Commission denied requests from Arizona, Georgia and Kansas to modify the federal registration form for their residents. It said heightened proof-of-citizenship requirements would likely hinder eligible citizens from voting in federal elections.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 17, California Gov. Jerry Brown formally declared a state-wide drought.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.D1)
2014 Jan 17, A Pennsylvania judge struck down a state requirement that voters show photo identification at the polls.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 17, In Pennsylvania a school shooting wounded two students at the Delaware Valley Charter High School. Raisheem Rochwell (17) was charged the next day as an adult.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 17, In West Virginia Freedom Industries, the company blamed for the Jan 9 chemical spill that left 300,000 people in the state without safe drinking water, field for bankruptcy.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 17, In Afghanistan a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near a Lebanese restaurant frequented by foreigners in Kabul and bursts of intense gunfire ensued. The assault against La Taverna du Liban included 18 foreigners and 8 Afghans, all civilians.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AP, 1/18/14)(Econ, 11/29/14, p.35)
2014 Jan 17, Austria's government agreed to raise the wages of its 200,000 civil servants by 1.9 percent this year after big protests against the new government.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Brazilian authorities said the death toll in last weekend's flash flooding in the southern town of Itaoca has risen to 17, with nine people still missing.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Central African Republic attackers ambushed Muslims fleeing sectarian violence outside the town of Bouar killing 22 people.
(SFC, 1/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 17, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov said rebel leader Doku Umarov, who vowed to disrupt the Sochi Winter Olympics, is dead. Russian security services did not confirm the claim.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China began to implement the loosening of its controversial one-child policy as Zhejiang province announced it has made it legal for couples to have two children if one parent is an only child.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China called on the Philippines to meet it halfway on new Chinese fishing rules in the disputed South China Sea, adding that Beijing was always willing to make efforts to resolve such issues via talks.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China announced 4 more cases of H7N9 bird flu.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 17, Czech President Milos Zeman appointed center-left leader Bohuslav Sobotka prime minister, opening the way for the former finance minister to pursue looser fiscal policies and closer links with the core of Europe.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, CongoDRC forces attacked Ugandan Islamist rebels in the lawless east, launching a UN-backed offensive to clear insurgents from the mineral-rich zone.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Egypt at least 4 people was killed in clashes between police and Islamists, as the country awaited results of a constitutional referendum billed as an endorsement of president Mohamed Morsi's overthrow.
(AFP, 1/17/14)(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Haiti a judge concluded the investigation into one of the country’s most notorious political assassinations, accusing nine people of having a hand in the 2000 killing of radio journalist Jean Dominique, including several close associates of former Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In India Sunanda Pushka, the wife of government minister Shashi Tharoor, was found dead in a New Delhi hotel room having earlier accused her husband of adultery. Her death was described as "sudden" and "unnatural" following an autopsy. In 2015 a medical board concluded that she had been poisoned.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)(AP, 1/7/15)
2014 Jan 17, In India Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (102), the head of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, died in Mumbai.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, Indonesia said that it would increase naval patrols after territorial violations by Australia as it tried to turn back asylum seekers. The Australian government apologized unreservedly to Jakarta after its navy "inadvertently" violated Indonesian waters during border security operations.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The Israeli army fired live rounds and tear gas at protesters near the border fence in the Gaza Strip, wounding two Palestinians. Troops fired at some 300 demonstrators who were protesting against Israel's destruction of farmland for its 300-meter buffer zone.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Lebanon rocket fire into the border town of Arsal killed at 8 people, including 5 children. At least 20 rockets launched from Syria struck Lebanese frontier areas.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Madagascar declared Hery Rajaonarimampianina (55), a Canadian-educated former finance minister backed by strongman Andry Rajoelina, as the country's new president.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Mali's army arrested Houka Houka Ag Alfousseyni, a hardline Islamist judge. He had ordered floggings, amputations and the stoning of women for adultery during a 10-month occupation by rebels linked to al Qaeda.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Pakistan a bomb exploded on a train as it was en route from Peshawar to Karachi. 3 passengers were killed and 15 wounded. Taliban gunmen killed 3 men working for a private TV station in Karachi.
(AP, 1/17/14)(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In the Philippines thousands of people fled rising floods and an approaching storm in a fresh round of evacuations as the death toll from a week of foul weather rose to 37.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Romania a British diplomat (46) plummeted from the highest floor of a hotel in the northern city of Baia Mare after leaving a farewell note.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, It was reported that Sochi residents are blaming the Olympic Games for ecological damage. Environmental experts said that Russia’s Olympic construction, which has consisted of pouring soil into lowland swamps, helped cause the flooding that created a state of emergency in the area in September and could increase the risk for more flooding.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Sources said that Russia in recent weeks has stepped up supplies of military gear to Syria, including armored vehicles, drones and guided bombs, boosting President Bashar al-Assad just as rebel infighting has weakened the insurgency against him.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Scotland the body of a missing Edinburgh youngster was found in Fife shortly before midnight. The mother of Mikaeel Kular (3) was detained following the discovery. The boy was last seen on Jan 15.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In northern Sri Lanka the discovery of a mass grave containing more than 30 skulls fuelled speculation that there may be many more like it containing the remains of thousands who went missing during the island nation's nearly three-decade war. Residents of Mannar said that the area was controlled mainly by the army from 1990.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The Sudan People's Liberation Army-North reportedly "managed to destroy" a government convoy at Malkan, Blue Nile state. They claimed to have killed dozens of soldiers and disabled a tank during battle, but the military said it was the victor.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 17, Syria's foreign minister said his country is prepared to implement a cease-fire in the war-torn city of Aleppo and exchange detainees with the country's opposition forces as a confidence building measure ahead of a peace conference opening next week in Switzerland.
(AP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Syrian rebels ousted al Qaeda-linked faction ISIL, from Saraqeb, one of its northwestern bastions.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Taiwan lifted a ban on imports of Canadian beef-on-the-bone as part of its efforts to promote investment talks with the country and its participation in regional trade blocs. The new measure will take effect in mid-February.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Tanzania one person was killed in clashes between police and thousands of villagers who stormed a gold mine operated by a subsidiary of Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Thailand 35 people were wounded in Bangkok when a grenade blast ripped through a crowd of marching anti-government demonstrators. One person was killed.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, Turkish authorities seized the assets of the main opposition candidate for the post of Istanbul mayor in the run-up to local polls in March. Turkey's Savings Deposit Insurance Fund announced the decision after Mustafa Sarigul and nine other people failed to repay a loan worth $3.5 million (2.6 million euros) dating back to 1998.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Uganda a spokesman for Pres. Yoweri Museveni said the president has refused to approve a controversial bill that would have seen homosexuals jailed for life despite viewing gays as "sick" and "abnormal." In a letter to parliament, the president had suggested homosexuality was caused by a genetic flaw, or a need to make money.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych signed legislation curbing anti-government protests, civic activism and free speech.
(AFP, 1/17/14)(SFC, 1/20/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 17, It was reported that Pope Benedict XVI defrocked 384 priests from 2011-2012 for sexually molesting children. This was a dramatic increase over the 171 priests removed in 2008 and 2009, when the Vatican first provided details on the number of priests defrocked.
(AP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Yemen clashes between armed militants and the army killed three militants in the southern city of al-Dalea (Daleh). 2 soldiers were killed in the fighting.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 18, The film “American Hustle," directed by David O. Russell, won the Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding cast.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A9)
2014 Jan 18, The 75,000 deadweight ton Liberian-flagged fuel tanker MT Kerala lost contact with its Greece-based owner Dynacom off the coast of Angola. A pirate attack was suspected making it the most southerly attack to date by pirates off West Africa. On Jan 26 Angola's navy said the crew of the oil tanker had turned off communications to fake an attack.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Brazil an estimated 150 black and leftist militants staged a boisterous rally outside the JK Iguatemi shopping mall in Sao Paulo to protest attempts to bar underprivileged youths from shopping malls in middle-class areas.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Brazilian police said that they had broken up a bank robbery scheme that had diverted 73 million reais ($31 million) from a lottery run by state-owned lender Caixa Economica Federal.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, BBC presenter Komla Dumor (41), one of Ghana's best known journalists, died suddenly. Dumor, a presenter on the BBC’s World News channel and its "Focus on Africa" program, suffered a heart attack at his London home.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 18, Burkina Faso's opposition staged the country's biggest demonstration in decades to protest against an attempt by President Blaise Compaore's party to abolish constitutional term limits.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, A Canadian pilot was among two people feared dead when the small plane he was flying went down in Guyana's thick Amazon jungle two minutes after takeoff.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Central African Republic fresh fighting broke out as the deadline closed for candidates to register for a vote by the transitional parliament for a new interim president.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Egypt’s elections chief said voters have approved a new constitution by 98.1 percent.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Police in central Greece said they had arrested seven people including five Bulgarians for attempted baby trafficking.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Guinea's President Alpha Conde said he had reinstated PM Mohamed Said Fofana just three days after accepting his resignation to make way for a new administration following parliamentary elections.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 18, India and Pakistan agreed to allow round-the-clock movement of trucks and containers through their main Wagah-Attari border crossing in Punjab.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In India a pre-dawn stampede killed 18 people as tens of thousands of people gathered in Mumbai to mourn the death of Muslim spiritual leader Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, the head of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Iraq clashes between militants and government troops as well as two bombings at marketplaces killed 6 people. At least a half-dozen car bombs killed 25 people and left more than 70 wounded.
(AP, 1/18/14)(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Libya's General National Congress declared a state of emergency, after fresh clashes erupted in the south when gunmen group seized a military base. Libya sent troops to the restive south after gunmen stormed an air force base in Sabha. In the east two Italian construction workers were reported abducted in the Islamist stronghold of Derna.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Morocco the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee of Muslim nations ended talks and urged the international community to put pressure on Israel to stop building Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 18, Russian news said 7 suspected militants were killed today by security forces in a shootout near Makhachkala, Dagestan.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, South Korea confirmed the outbreak of highly pathogenic bird flu and said it would expand the culling of birds to a radius of 3-km (1.9 mile) around a duck farm.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, South Sudanese government forces said they seized the flashpoint town of Bor back from rebels. Uganda's army claimed credit for the operation.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Officials say Spanish police have arrested Juegers Veloz (37), a Dominican fugitive wanted by US authorities for a multimillion dollar cellphone fraud in 2009-2011.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces voted to send a delegation to an int’l. peace conference set to begin next week in Geneva.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 18, In Syria food aid entered the besieged Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp for the first time in four months. The delivery of food followed reports that dozens of people in the camp in southern Damascus have died of hunger and lack of medical care.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Thailand anti-government protesters marched defiantly through Bangkok, with one group entering a police compound, undeterred by a grenade explosion the day before. The military urged both sides to settle their differences.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Turkey riot police in Istanbul used water canons against hundreds of people protesting a government plan to expand controls over the public’s use of the Internet.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 18, State media said Turkey has extended a purge of official bodies to the banking and telecoms regulators and state TV, firing dozens of executives in moves that appear to broaden PM Tayyip Erdogan's backlash against a corruption investigation.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Turkmenistan's Pres. Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedo said his government will begin installing gas meters in households, ending the unlimited supply of free gas to citizens. The nation is estimated to have the world's fourth-largest natural gas reserves, and gas, electricity and water have been supplied free to households since 1993.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Yemen Ali Asghar Asadi, Iran's economic attaché in Sanaa, was killed in a drive-by shooting. A military intelligence officer was killed in a drive-by shooting by gunmen who fled on a motorbike in Huta. In Al-Milah armed men ambushed an army vehicle and shot dead 2 soldiers.
(AP, 1/18/14)(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 19, In NYC Deisy Garcia (21) and her two daughters, ages 1 and 2, were found stabbed to death in their Queens apartment. Police searched for Miguel Mejia Ramos (28), the father of the girls, as a suspect.
(SFC, 1/21/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 19, Afghanistan's Pres. Karzai said the US can no longer carry out military operations or airstrikes and must jump-start peace talks with the Taliban before his country signs a security deal to keep American troops in Afghanistan after 2014.
(AP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, British athletics great Chris Chataway (82), best known for being one of the pacemakers for Roger Bannister's landmark four-minute mile run in 1954, died after a long battle with cancer. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1995 for his services to the aviation industry.
(www.bbc.com/sport/0/athletics/25801188)
2014 Jan 19, Canadian PM Stephen Harper began his first official visit to Israel, with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu hailing him as a "great friend" of the Jewish state.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Colombia’s army said at least 9 Marxist FARC rebels have been killed in a clash in Tame even as peace talks were being held between the two sides in Cuba.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi (Morsi) was ordered to stand trial for insulting the judiciary, alongside 24 others including liberal activists who opposed his Islamist rule but have also been critical of the new army-backed order.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, In southeastern France "historic" floods left two people dead and more than 150 were airlifted to safety.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Hong Kong thousands of people rallied to demand justice for a young Indonesian maid who was badly beaten by her employer in a case that has sparked widespread outrage and a police investigation into accusations of torture.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Indonesia monsoon rains inundated parts of Jakarta, forcing more than 30,000 people to evacuate.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Iraqi tribesmen backed by police special forces and helicopter gunships assaulted al Qaeda-linked militants in the eastern and southern outskirts of the city of Ramadi. Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Ramadi to try to avert civilian casualties. Iraq hanged 26 people convicted of "terrorism" offences.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 19, Israel decided to end a decades-old policy of issuing gas masks to the public in an apparent sign of confidence in Syria's chemical weapons disarmament.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Libya unknown gunmen kidnapped Han Seok-woo, a South Korean trade official, in Tripoli.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 19, Mexican security forces said they have arrested 38 people in the region of Michoacan, including Jesus Vasquez Macias (37), a leading figure of the notorious Knights Templar drug cartel.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, The Nauru government deported Peter Law, its Australian resident magistrate, and barred its Australian chief justice, Geoffrey Eames, from re-entering the country.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.34)
2014 Jan 19, In Pakistan a bombing claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, killed 26 soldiers and wounded 30 when it ripped through a military convoy in Bannu, North Waziristan. Army helicopters fired missiles killing 3 militants, in apparent retaliation for the Taliban bomb attack.
(AFP, 1/19/14)(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 19, Two Palestinians were hurt, one critically, in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City. The Israel military said it had targeted a senior Islamic Jihad militant.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Pres. Putin in broadcast comments defended Russia's anti-gay law by equating gays with pedophiles and said Russia needs to "cleanse" itself of homosexuality if it wants to increase its birth rate. At the same time he offered new assurances to gay athletes and fans attending the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics next month.
(AP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, South African press reported that at least two police officers who took part in the deadly crackdown on Marikana miners in 2012 were implicated in the killing of three protesters this week.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, South Korean regulator Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) revealed the full scale of personal information theft on more than 100 million South Korean credit cards. Some 20 million people were victims of data theft a three credit card companies.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)(SFC, 10/15/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 19, South Sudanese troops fought to win back the key oil town of Malakal from rebels loyal to sacked vice president Riek Machar.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Thailand 28 people were wounded, seven seriously, in explosions at a camp of anti-government protesters in Bangkok.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Ukraine protesters attacked riot police with sticks in Kiev and tried to overturn a bus blocking their path to parliament, as up to 100,000 massed in defiance of sweeping new laws aimed at stamping out anti-government demonstrations.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, The UAE cabinet approved a draft law making it compulsory for Emirati men to serve in the military for up to two years.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Iran has been invited to attend a Jan 22 meeting of foreign ministers in the Swiss city of Montreux ahead of internationally brokered peace talks between Syria's warring factions. The UN invite sparked a boycott call from the opposition and President Bashar al-Assad ruled out a power-sharing deal.
(AP, 1/19/14)(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 19, Pope Francis' newly chosen Spanish cardinal, Fernando Sebastian Aguilar (84), described homosexuality as a "defect" that can be corrected with treatment, sparking condemnation from gay rights groups.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Yemen unidentified gunman shot and killed Police Director Abd el-Wali el-Turkmi in the southwest city of Taiz.
(AP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Nebraska there was an explosion at the Int’l. Nutrition building in Omaha. At least two people were killed and 10 others injured at the animal feed processing plant.
(SFC, 1/21/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 20, In southern Afghanistan 9 Taliban militants launched a suicide assault against a US base killing one NATO soldier.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, Canada’s PM Stephen Harper said the staunch Israeli ally would provide additional financial support for the West Bank, as he met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Central African Republic Catherine Samba-Panza, the mayor of Bangui, was elected interim president and tasked with restoring peace to the country torn by sectarian bloodshed.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, The EU foreign ministers decided to send up to 1,000 soldiers to help stabilize Central African Republic, deploying its first major army operation in six years.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, A small fishing boat crammed with 28 people entered Greece illegally from Turkey. The Greek Coast Guard said it was towing the boat to a nearby Greek island when it capsized. The mishap killed at least two and left 10 missing. Survivors later recounting in tears how they watched their children drown while coast guard officials looked on. Three Afghans who survived the sinking of a migrant boat later described how Greek authorities had tried to forcibly tow them back to Turkey.
(AP, 1/24/14)(Reuters, 1/24/14)(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 20, Law Wan-tung (44) of Hong Kong was arrested on suspicion of abusing her Indonesian maids as she tried to leave for Thailand. The case sparked widespread outrage and drawn fresh attention to the risks faced by the migrant community. Erwiana Sulistyaningsih (23), a maid who said she had been badly beaten by her employer, was recovering at a hospital in Sragen, central Java, after flying out from Hong Kong in early January.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)(SFC, 1/23/14, p.A2)(AP, 4/4/14)
2014 Jan 20, In India Arvind Kejriwal, New Delhi's chief minister, and his supporters launched a sit-in against the city police, creating traffic chaos and a standoff with hundreds of officers in the latest radical step by the anti-graft crusader who has shaken up a national election. Kejriwal called on the public to join him in a ten-day protest to demand the police be transferred from the Home Ministry to his control.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In India a woman (20) was assaulted by 13 men in Birbhum district in West Bengal. Police later said was gang-raped on the orders of a village court as punishment for having a relationship with a man from a different community. The village chief and all 13 men were soon arrested.
(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 20, Iran halted production of 20 percent enriched uranium, marking the entry into force of an interim deal with world powers on its disputed nuclear program. The United States eased some sanctions on Iran, pausing efforts to reduce Iranian crude oil exports, as part of a nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers that went into effect. The EU also agreed to suspend some economic sanctions against Iran as part of the ground-breaking nuclear deal.
(AFP, 1/20/14)(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, Iran rebuffed a precondition for taking part in Syria peace talks in Geneva this week, saying it could not accept a plan for a Syrian political transition agreed at talks in the Swiss city in 2012. In response UN leader Ban Ki-moon withdrew his surprise invitation to Iran, less than 24 hours after he announced it.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 20, In central Iraq a series of bombs killed 28 people, mostly in Baghdad, as security forces battled Sunni Muslim militants around the western cities of Falluja and Ramadi.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)(SFC, 1/21/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 20, Claudio Abbado (80), conductor, died in Bologna. He was a star in the great generation of Italian conductors who was revered by musicians in the world's leading orchestras for developing a strong rapport with them while still allowing them their independence.
(AP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, Lebanese medical and security sources said sectarian sniper fire in Tripoli has killed 5 people since Jan 18.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Nigeria Boko Haram suspects tracked a man to his house in Wulgo, killed him and injured another man who was hospitalized.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Pakistan a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near the country's main military headquarters in Rawalpindi, killing 13 people.
(AP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Romania a small British plane crashed on a mountain. All seven aboard initially survived but two people died while waiting for medical assistance. Hypothermia was among the causes of death.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 20, In South Korea the heads of three big credit card firms apologized and resigned over the largest-ever thefts of customer data.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.62)
2014 Jan 20, South Sudan's army said it has seized back full control of the strategic town of Malakal, the last major settlement under rebel control.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Thailand anti-government protesters besieged government offices in a dozen southern provinces as part of their campaign to force PM Yingluck Shinawatra from power.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, Vietnam sentenced 30 drug smugglers to death in the communist country's largest ever narcotics case, involving scores of male and female defendants and nearly two tons of heroin.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In northern Yemen at least 12 people were killed overnight after Sunni Muslim tribesmen fought with a Shi'ite group which was trying to capture a mountain.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Dublin, Ca., BART police officer Michael Maes accidentally shot and killed Sgt. Tom Smith (42), another BART officer, during a routine mission to gather evidence at an apartment. On May 30 Alameda County prosecutors said no charges would be filed against Maes. In 2016 BART settled a federal lawsuit with the Smith family for $3.1 million.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A1)(SFC, 5/31/14, p.A1)(SFC, 11/19/16, p.C1)
2014 Jan 21, In Indiana Cody Cousins (24) shot and stabbed to death Andrew Boldt (21). On Sep 19 Cousins was sentenced on to 65 years in prison for killing his fellow Purdue engineering senior whom he envied, in front of about a dozen students in a lab class.
(AP, 9/19/14)
2014 Jan 21, A snowstorm hit the mid-Atlantic and Northeast US. It stretched a thousand miles between Kentucky and Massachusetts. Manalapan, NJ, got 16 inches of snow.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 21, Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife were indicted on 14 counts of federal corruption charges. They were charged with accepting over $165,000 in gifts and loans from the CEO of a dietary supplements company.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A5)(SFC, 7/29/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 21, In Abu Dhabi a court jailed a group of 10 Emiratis and 20 Egyptians to terms ranging from three months to five years for forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Australia’s federal government granted an exemption from environmental laws to approve a Western Australian shark mitigation plan, which is aimed at reducing the risks to water users after six fatal attacks in the past two years.
(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Britain told Iran to stop supporting the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad militarily, urging it to back efforts to broker peace in Syria instead.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Central African Republic French intelligence services reported the discovery some 15 bodies in a new mass grave near Bangui.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, An official Chinese newspaper said China will base a 5,000-ton civilian patrol ship on Woody Island, which China calls Sansha city, on the Paracel Islands in the disputed South China Sea and begin regular patrols, a move likely to add fuel to territorial disputes with neighbors.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, China executed a man who held six women as sex slaves in an underground prison and killed two of them, in a crime which shocked the nation. Li Hao (36) was convicted of murder and rape in Luoyang Intermediate People's Court in the central province of Henan in 2012.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, France said it will create new outposts and broaden its military presence in Africa's turbulent Sahel region to better fight the terror threat from extremist groups like al-Qaida. Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France is moving toward a regional counterterrorism approach in former colonies like Chad, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security said an analysis of hijacked computer networks has turned up about 16 million compromised online accounts.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 21, In India police clashed with protesters led by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, the first violence during a two-day rally in the capital that has put a focus on the radical politics of the man shaking up a national election.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, An Indonesian court sentenced an Islamist militant to 7½ years in prison for masterminding a plot to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 21, Iraq's Shiite-led government said it has decided in principle to create three new provinces from contested parts of the country in an apparent attempt to address Sunni grievances and counter the expansion of the Kurdish self-rule region.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Iraqi forces pressed their attack on anti-government fighters holding parts of the restive city of Ramadi. Violence elsewhere killed 10 people. The UN warned of "an exponential increase in the number of displaced and stranded families", with more than 22,000 families having registered as internally displaced.
(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, It was reported that Israel's government has approved plans to build 381 new homes in a settlement near annexed east Jerusalem.
(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Fishermen in Japan began slaughtering dozens of bottlenose dolphins in Taiji, ignoring protesters’ calls to spare the animals and a rare public show of concern by the US government.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Kurds in northeast Syria, on the eve of peace talks in Switzerland, declared a provincial government in the area.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Lebanon a suicide bomber killed 4 people in a residential district of southern Beirut known for its support of the powerful Shi'ite Muslim military and political movement Hezbollah.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, The political arm of Libya's Muslim Brotherhood withdrew its ministers from the Cabinet of embattled PM Ali Zidan, after failing to secure enough support in the divided parliament for a no-confidence vote.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Nigeria suspected Islamist extremists attacked a farming settlement in northeast Borno state, killing 10 people and razing homes.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 21, Pakistani fighter jets and helicopters attacked suspected Taliban hideouts in a tribal area in North Waziristan killing up to 40 people. At least 28 people were killed when a bomb exploded near a bus carrying Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims to the city of Quetta.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 21, Gunmen in Karachi, Pakistan, attacked two teams of polio workers, killing 3 members of the teams and wounding a 4th before fleeing.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Emergency workers evacuated thousands of people across the southern Philippines, including many already made homeless by a typhoon in November, after three days of rain flooded towns and farmland.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Russia’s National Anti-Terror Committee said police have killed Eldar Magatov, a senior Islamist militant, in a shootout in the Dagestan region ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2012 Jan 21, In Somalia gunmen kidnapped an American man in the northern town of Galkayo. Michael Scott Moore, freed on Sep 23, 2014, was kidnapped while researching a book on piracy. Bilal-Berjawi, a British-Lebanese commander of the al-Shabab militant group, was killed along with two others when a US drone missile struck the car they were traveling in outside Mogadishu. Another airstrike killed six people near the insurgent stronghold of Kismayo.
(AP, 1/21/12)(AP, 1/22/12)(AP, 9/24/14)
2014 Jan 21, In South Africa Petra Diamonds said a 29.6-carat blue diamond has been found at the Cullinan mine, source of some of the world's most famous diamonds.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 21, A report on Syria, commissioned by the government of Qatar, detailed photographic and documentary evidence of systematic torture and killing of some 11,000 detainees between march 2011 and August 2013.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.38)(http://tinyurl.com/qhbyqde)
2014 Jan 21, Thailand's government declared a 60-day state of emergency in Bangkok and surrounding areas to cope with protests that have stirred up violent attacks, adding to the country's monthslong sense of crisis.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Uganda said 9 of its soldiers have been killed and 12 others wounded during a month fighting in South Sudan, dismissing rebel claims to have killed scores.
(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Ukraine top opposition leader Vitali Klitschko headed for talks with the Pres. Yanukovych after yet another night of violent street clashes between anti-government protesters and police.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Vatican Monsignor Nunzio Scaran, already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy, was arrested in Salerno in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Yemen unidentified gunmen assassinated Ahmed Sharaf el-Din, a lawyer and the top envoy of a northern rebel movement in Sanaa. The son of powerful Islamist Al-Islah (Reform) party's secretary general was badly injured when his father's car exploded in Sanaa. In the north a day of clashes between Shiite rebels and gunmen from the powerful Hashid tribe left 20 people dead.
(AP, 1/21/14)(AFP, 1/21/14)(AFP, 1/22/14)(Econ, 1/25/14, p.39)
2014 Jan 22, The New York Yankees signed Japanese pitching ace Masahiro Tanaka to a $155 million contract.
(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 22, The Washington-based Int’l. Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) said it has obtained documents showing the identities of nearly 22,000 owners of companies and trusts in the British Virgin Islands, Samoa and other offshore centers. It said they include the brother-in-law of China’s Pres. Xi, former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son and son-in-law and relatives of other ruling party figures.
(SFC, 1/23/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 22, The northeastern United States dug out from a storm that dumped more than 15 inches of snow in some places with frigid, windy weather closing some schools and offices and delaying or canceling thousands of flights.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, California Governor Jerry Brown (75) took credit for his state's fiscal rebound in a state of the state address.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, Texas executed Edgar Tamayo Arias (46), a Mexican convicted of killing a policeman, despite a diplomatic outcry and pressure from the US federal government to further review his case.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 22, US hotel giant Marriott announced it had finalized a deal to buy the South Africa-based Protea group, Africa's largest hotel chain, for $186 million.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, TransCanada began delivering oil from Cushing, Oklahoma, to customers in Nederland, Texas, through the southern portion of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
(SFC, 1/23/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 22, Azerbaijan said it had repelled a cross-border raid by Armenian forces in the latest outbreak of violence over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In the Central African Republic the Red Cross said it has found 11 corpses, most burnt beyond recognition, dumped in Bangui. At least 10 people were killed in clashes between former Seleka fighters and civilians in Bangui. Hundreds of Christians went on a rampage in Bangui, looting and setting fire to Muslim-owned homes and businesses and threatening to go on a killing spree as the country prepared to inaugurate a new interim president.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)(AFP, 1/22/14)(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 22, The Chinese government condemned a report on the wealth of the country's elite being hidden in overseas tax havens as illogical and having ulterior motives, as the government blocked websites and censored mention of the story online.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In southern India forest officials in Tamil Nadu state shot dead a tiger suspected of killing three people, ending its three-week reign of terror which forced dozens of schools to close.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Indonesia Andrea Waldeck, British woman, was jailed for 14 years but escaped the death penalty after admitting that she smuggled crystal methamphetamine into Indonesia from China. she had confessed to taking the drugs through the airport in Surabaya.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Iraq several neighborhoods in south Fallujah were hit by shelling late today, with four people killed and 18 others wounded.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, An Israeli air strike killed 2 Palestinians including one militant in northern Gaza. Israel blamed one of them for firing rockets across the border during former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's funeral last week.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, Israel said it has arrested an Al-Qaeda-run militant cell in annexed east Jerusalem which was planning to bomb the US embassy.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, Israel moved forward with plans for 261 new homes in two settlements located deep in the occupied West Bank. The plans included 256 housing units in Nofei Prat settlement, between east Jerusalem and Jericho, and another five in the sprawling Ariel settlement in the north.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, Italian police seized 27 pizzerias, cafes and other eateries in the heart of Rome and elsewhere in a probe highlighting the seemingly legitimate business fronting for organized crime in places far from the mobsters' Naples base.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, The Latvian parliament approved the country's first woman prime minister, Laimdota Straujuma, who pledged to stick to the fiscal discipline of the previous cabinet and to push ahead with liberalizing the country's gas market.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Mali Issaka Sidibe, a high-ranking ruling party lawmaker and relative of the president, became the country’s second most powerful politician as he was elected to lead the nation's new parliament.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In northern Nigeria thousands of protesters threw stones into the Shariah court in Bauchi city, urging the speedy convictions and executions of 11 men arrested for belonging to gay organizations. Suspected Islamist extremists attacked another farming settlement in northeast Borno state, killing another 8 people and razing homes.
(AP, 1/22/14)(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Pakistan gunmen opened fire on police escorting Spanish cyclist Javier Colorado through Baluchistan province, killing six officers and wounding the Spaniard. He was reported to be cycling around the world.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In northwest Pakistan a bomb rigged to a bicycle exploded next to a police patrol on its way to guard a polio vaccination team outside Peshawar. 6 officers were killed as well as a boy who was nearby.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Switzerland peace talks intended to carve a path out of Syria's civil war got off to a rocky start in Montreux as a bitter clash over President Bashar Assad's future threatened to collapse the negotiations even before they really begin. On Jan 24 the talks moved to Geneva.
(AP, 1/22/14)(Econ, 1/25/14, p.37)
2014 Jan 22, Syria hailed the reopening of Aleppo international airport after a year's closure as a military victory over rebels. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported clashes between government forces and opposition fighters in the suburbs of Damascus, Daraa in the south, Idlib and Aleppo in the north and the central province of Homs.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In northeast Thailand a leading pro-government activist was shot and wounded. A 60-day state of emergency began in Bangkok where protesters were trying to force PM Yingluck Shinawatra from power.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, A Ugandan court ordered the deportation of Bernard Randall (65), a British man, facing criminal charges related to images of him having sex with another man.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Ukraine Unity Day protests left 5 people dead. The bodies of 2 protesters were found near the site of clashes with police in Kiev. Prosecutors said they were shot with live ammunition, the first deaths after two months of largely peaceful protest. Some 25 people went missing. Yanukovich met opposition leaders in an attempt to defuse street violence in which 3 people were killed overnight.
(AP, 1/22/14)(Reuters, 1/22/14)(Econ, 1/25/14, p.41)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.20)
2014 Jan 23, In Oakland, Ca., Justice Toliver was shot and killed by her brother (14) with a hand gun following a quarrel over laundry. The boy fled the scene but surrendered after a few days. On Jan 30 he was charged in juvenile court with murder.
(SFC, 1/31/14, p.D3)
2014 Jan 23, A group of dead pilot whales, 16 females and 9 males, were spotted by boaters near Kice Island, Florida. Earlier this week, eight other whales were found dead after they swam into shallow waters near Fort Myers. Necropsies began the next day.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)(SFC, 1/25/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 23, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced a plan to ask Pres. Obama for 50,000 visas for immigrants willing to move to Detroit.
(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 23, NYC police arrested Vincent Asaro (78) and charged him with helping direct the Dec 11, 1978, Kennedy Airport robbery that netted almost $6 million in cash and jewelry. Asaro was named along with his son, both captains in the Bonanno crime family, and three other defendants in a wide-ranging indictment.
(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A22)
2014 Jan 23, Virginia's attorney general has concluded that the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. His office said he will no longer defend it in federal lawsuits challenging it.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Afghanistan a gunman on a motorcycle opened fire at a group of local cricket players, killing 5 of them during a game in eastern Laghman province. Police found the body of slain journalist Noor Ahmad Noori in southern Helmand province.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, The Algerian army killed 4 armed Islamists overnight in an ambush south of the capital.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Australian police revealed they had cracked a major global money-laundering ring with operatives in more than 20 countries and funds syphoned off to groups reported to include Hezbollah.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Australian police said an American man (58) has been charged with dealing with suspected proceeds of a crime after finding $5 million in cash in suitcases in a Sydney apartment.
(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 23, In Canada an early morning fire at a Quebec residence for elderly people killed at least 32 people. Eight of the 32 remained missing.
(AFP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/25/14)(Reuters, 1/26/14)(SSFC, 2/2/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 23, In China the parents of activist Xue Mingkai were detained in Qufu city, Shandong province. After being held for six days, Xue and his wife, Wang Shuqing, fled and sought protection at a local prosecutor's office but were caught and separated. Days later, Wang was informed by authorities that her husband was dead. Authorities said he had killed himself by jumping from the fourth floor of a prosecutor's building. Many people suspected murder.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Jan 23, Ecuadorean airline Tame suspended its once-daily flights to and from Venezuela until that country's cash-strapped government pays it $43 million owed for ticket sales.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Egypt clashes between rival students at a university in Alexandria killed at least one student. Masked gunmen riding on motorcycles opened fire at a police checkpoint in central Egypt, killing five policemen and wounding two.
(AFP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Ghana said it deported 4,700 illegal miners last year, most of them Chinese nationals.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani told the World Economic Forum in Davos that Tehran was ready to help create a new multilateral body tasked with stabilizing global energy supplies. Rouhani also called for free and fair elections in Syria, saying it would respect any outcome.
(AFP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Iraq hanged 11 people convicted of terrorist offences.
(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, A Kenyan court sentenced 24 Somalis to seven years each in prison for attempting to hijack an Iranian merchant vessel, FV Ariya, in the Gulf of Oman in October 2010.
(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Japanese fishermen in Taiji killed more than two dozen striped dolphins, as global outrage over the slaughter grew.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Kyrgyzstan 11 people, believed to be members of a militant group of ethnic Uighurs, were killed after illegally crossing the border from China.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Mexico Karen Rodríguez (20) was kidnapped in San Fernando. Her mother Miriam Rodríguez began tracking the people responsible for the kidnapping and murder of her daughter. In three years she captured nearly every living member of the crew that had abducted her daughter for ransom. On Mother’s Day, 2017, weeks after she had chased down one of her last targets, she was shot in front of her San Fernando home and killed.
(NY Times, 12/13/20)
2014 Jan 23, Dutch authorities said they have detained Jean Baptiste M. (54), a former Rwandan politician suspected of compiling death lists during the country's 1994 genocide, and would send him home for court hearings.
(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In northwest Pakistan a car bomb hauled into a car repair shop in Peshawar killing 6 people.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Pakistan Muhammad Asghar (69), a Briton with a history of mental illness from Edinburgh, was sentenced to death for blasphemy. His lawyers were barred from the courtroom partway through the trial. Asghar was arrested in 2010 after writing letters to a lawyer and politician claiming to be a prophet.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 23, Hamas accused Twitter of censorship as an account of its armed wing has been suspended by Twitter administrators.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Russia's Supreme Court ordered the release of Platon Lebedev (57), Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky's business partner, after a decade in jail, but refused to drop a tax claim that is keeping the former oil tycoon abroad.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In South Africa tens of thousands of platinum miners went on strike, demanding higher wages. Striking workers at the top three platinum producers agreed to take part in government-brokered talks aimed at ending the dispute and limiting economic damage.
(AP, 1/23/14)(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, South Sudan's government and rebels signed a peace deal in Ethiopia aimed at ending the month-old conflict as fighting continued in oil-rich Unity state and in Jonglei state.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 23, In central Turkey at least 21 people were killed when a bus tipped over on an icy road.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Tensions in Ukraine spread far from Kiev as hundreds of people in the city of Lviv stormed into the regional governor's office and forced him to write a letter of resignation. President Yanukovich called for an emergency session of parliament to end the crisis which has brought thousands of anti-government protesters on to the streets and caused violent clashes with police. PM Mykola Azarov accused opposition protesters of trying to stage a coup d'etat.
(AP, 1/23/14)(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Human Rights Watch hit out at the United Arab Emirates for preventing it from holding a news conference to release a report criticizing rights violations in the Gulf state.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Yemen 3 suspected al Qaeda militants were killed in Maarib province in what local officials and tribal sources said was a strike by a US drone.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In South Carolina Justin Singleton (19) was arrested soon after he killed student Brandon Robinson (20), a member of the school’s football team.
(CSM, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 24, Argentina said it is relaxing restrictions on the purchase of US dollars following a sharp, sudden slide in the value of the local peso.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Air Canada suspended ticket sales in Venezuela, adding to a rising number of airlines protesting a government devaluation of the local currency just for travelers.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In Central African Republic Dr. Joseph Kalite, a former government health minister who had supported last year's rebellion by Muslim fighters, was assassinated at the Central Mosque in Bangui.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Chinese police shot dead six people during a "terrorist" attack in the restive western region of Xinjiang and six more died when explosives they were carrying detonated.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 24, In CongoDRC an explosion at an arms depot killed over 20 people near the diamond-mining hub of Mbuji-Mayi.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 24, Leading Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer was arrested after meeting with European diplomats in Havana.
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 24, In Egypt a bomb planted on a road hit a convoy of security forces on a busy street in Cairo, killing one person in the fourth bombing in one day. A suicide car bomber blew himself up in the parking lot of a top security compound in central Cairo, killing at least four people.
(AP, 1/24/14)(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, President Francois Hollande spoke of "convergence" on international issues after talks with Pope Francis amid a swirling scandal over the French leader's love life and divisions in France over issues like abortion and euthanasia.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba named a new prime minister, Daniel Ona Ondo, following municipal and regional elections.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Iran's foreign minister, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, called for all "foreign elements" to leave Syria so its people can decide their future themselves.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In Iraq violence in parts of Anbar province held by anti-government fighters killed 3 people. A UN report said more than 140,000 Iraqis have fled parts of Anbar province over clashes between security forces and al-Qaida militants since its brutal 2006-08 sectarian conflict.
(AFP, 1/24/14)(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Israeli forces shot dead Bilal Samir Oweida (20) and wounded another man in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army said a group of Palestinians had entered "a prohibited area" in northern Gaza where they damaged the security fence, hurled rocks and rolled burning tires at IDF (Israel Defense Forces).
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In northern Mali a French counter-terrorism offensive ended with 11 Islamist militants killed and a French soldier wounded.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, North Korea proposed reunions of families separated since the Korean War six decades ago, continuing its latest campaign of reconciliation that included a call for South Korea and the United States to cancel joint military drills.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In South Africa four police officers were arrested after the fatal shooting of a protester during a demonstration that turned violent on the outskirts of Johannesburg. A 28-year-old man was shot and killed earlier this week after protesters blocked roads with stones and burning tires in the Roodepoort area.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, The World Food Program said looters in South Sudan have stolen UN food aid that would have fed over 220,000 people for a month.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, A Syrian activist group said 63 people have died since last June in the besieged Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp from a lack of food and medicine.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Direct talks in Geneva were scrapped between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the Western-backed opposition that wants to overthrow him. Barrel bomb attacks on Aleppo's outlying industrial city and the Sheikh Najjar districts killed 10 people,
(AP, 1/24/14)(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 24, Thailand's Constitutional Court opened the way to put off a general election the government has set for February 2, piling pressure on Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra who looks increasingly cornered by legal challenges to her grip on power.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, UAE President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (65) suffered a stroke. His condition after surgery was reported as stable.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Arizona’s Republican Party censured Sen. John McCain (77) citing his voting record as too liberal.
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 25, In Maryland a shooter at the Mall in Columbia killed 2 young employees of the Zumiez skateboard shop and then took his own life. On Jan 26 police identified the shooter as Darion Marcus Aguilar (19) of College Park.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Utah some 4,000 protesters gathered in Salt lake City to protests against poor air quality.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.24)
2014 Jan 25, Michaels Stores said that it is investigating a potential security breach involving customers’ credit card information.
(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.A13)
2014 Jan 25, In Brazil at least 1,000 demonstrators protested in Sao Paulo against the World Cup, due to open on June 12, in a demonstration that devolved into violence late in the night.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, Central African Republic Pres. Catherine Samba-Panza’s office announced the appointment of Andre Nzapayeke, a former regional banking official, as the new prime minister.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, Chilean port workers negotiated a settlement with management and ended a more than three-week-old strike that had slowed copper, fruit and other shipments from the world's top copper producer.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Ecuador stressed it wanted the number of US military staff on its territory reduced, and warned it also would not allow US "espionage equipment."
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Egypt at least 49 people were killed during anti-government marches as thousands rallied in support of the army-led authorities on the third anniversary of the country's 2011. A helicopter crash in the Sinai Peninsula killed 5 Egyptian soldiers.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)(AFP, 1/25/14)(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Egypt Mahmoud Mohammed Ahmed (18), a high school student, was arrested at a checkpoint north of Cairo for wearing a T-shirt with a slogan against torture. He was released on March 25, 2016.
(AP, 3/24/16)
2014 Jan 25, French Pres. Francois Hollande announced his separation from first lady Valerie Trierweiler following a media storm over allegations he is having an affair with an actress nearly 20 years his junior.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, An Iranian embassy official who was kidnapped in Sanaa in July was found beheaded in Naarib province, central Yemen.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Iraq at least 17 people were killed in violence that included car bombs and a mortar attack on a Shi'ite Muslim village near Baquba.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Ivory Coast an angry mob "ransacked" the headquarters of the country’s most prominent gay rights organization, following days of anti-gay protests in a country generally seen as moderate on the issue.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Libya kidnappers seized Egypt's cultural attache and three other embassy staff in Tripoli, a day after another of its diplomats was abducted.
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Madagascar a grenade blast left a toddler dead and over 50 wounded just hours after the inauguration of the island's new president.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, The Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country's largest Muslim rebel group, completed talks on a deal to end four decades of fighting.
(AP, 1/25/14)(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 25, Somalia's Shebab insurgents called for renewed attacks against foreign forces, after arch-enemy Ethiopia joined the African Union force battling the extremists.
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Residents in parts of Somalia under militant control said at least one cellular telephone company has shut down data services in response to a threat from al-Qaida-linked extremists.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, South Sudan's government said that rebel fighters had attacked government troops after the cease-fire had come into force. New satellite images showed that fighting has resulted in the intentional burning of some 750 homes near the town of Bentiu.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Syria's air force struck rebel-held areas near Damascus and Aleppo.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Switzerland the first face-to-face meeting between Syria's government and the opposition hoping to overthrow President Bashar Assad ended after barely a half-hour, with the two sides facing each other silently as a UN mediator laid groundwork for talks.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Ukraine anti-government protesters seized a regional administration building. Officials warned that police could storm the Kiev city hall to free two policemen allegedly captured by demonstrators.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych offered the prime minister's post to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, one of the opposition's most prominent leaders. Police clashed with protesters who blockaded a building in central Kiev and the fate of the government was uncertain after embattled Pres. Viktor Yanukovich offered opposition leaders key posts.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 25, Yemen's feuding factions wrapped up months of national dialogue aimed at drafting a new constitution and establishing a federal state in a country where southerners were clamoring for independence.
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 26, Daft Punk's infectiously catchy song "Get Lucky" won the Grammy Awards' record of the year.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, The cost of a US first-class stamp rose 3 cents to 49 cents.
(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 26, Charlie Shrem (b.1989), American entrepreneur and founding member of BitInstant, was arrested in NYC. He was accused of helping to supply bitcoins to users of online drug markets. In 2015 Shrem pleaded guilty to lesser charges and served a year in jail.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Shrem)(SSFC, 12/24/17, p.D5)
2014 Jan 26, Randolph L. Braham (91), a Romanian-born American professor and prominent Holocaust survivor and scholar, said he was handing back a 2011 Hungarian state award in protest at the government's "falsification of history."
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Ohio an apartment building fire killed two firefighters in Toledo. On Feb 3 building owner Ray Abou-Arab (61) was arraigned on charges of aggravated murder and arson.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 26, The Royal Caribbean cruise line ended a 10-day trip in the Caribbean early after hundreds of passengers and crew members on the Explorer of the Seas were sickened with a gastrointestinal illness consistent with norovirus. Health officials boarded the ship at St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.
(AP, 1/27/14)(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 26, In Afghanistan a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near an Afghan military bus in Kabul, killing 2 officers and 2 civilians.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In northern Australia a crocodile was suspected to have taken a boy (12) after attacking his friend as they swam in a water hole in at Mudginberri Billabong in World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, A shark was shot and killed in Western Australian under a new strategy to protect swimmers.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.35)
2014 Jan 26, Bahraini police firing teargas and birdshot clashed with stone-throwing protesters in a village west of the capital after the funeral of Fadhel Abbas (20) who died in custody. Abbas was detained on Jan 8 on suspicion of smuggling weapons and explosives and died late on Jan 25.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Central African Republic new PM Andre Nzapayeke said he will meet with all fighting factions to bring an end to atrocities throughout the country, as gunfire rang out in Bangui.
(AP, 1/26/14)(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, A Chinese court sentenced Xu Zhiyong, one of the country’s most prominent rights advocates, to four years in prison. He had campaigned for the rights of children from rural areas to be educated in cities and for officials to disclose their assets.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Cuban activists said dozens of dissidents have been detained in a "wave of political repression" ahead of a major international summit in Havana.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Egypt gunmen killed 3 soldiers in an attack on a bus in the Sinai Peninsula.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In France some 17,000 people marched through central Paris to criticize President Francois Hollande.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Germany’s ARD TV quoted Edward Snowden saying the US NSA does not limit its espionage to issues of national security and he cited German engineering firm, Siemens as one target.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, At least 21 people died after a boat carrying Indian tourists capsized off India's Andaman Islands. The boat carried no life jackets.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Iraq militants appeared to have captured 5-22 Iraqi soldiers near Fallujah. At least 13 people were killed elsewhere amid a nationwide surge in unrest.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, An Israeli court extended by two days the detention of two Palestinian men it suspects of planning to bomb the US Embassy in Tel Aviv under instructions from al-Qaida.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Israel said it will allow the entry of about 1,000 tons of cement and building materials to the Gaza Strip for storm damage restoration and other projects of UN agencies.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Italian police and campaigners said 13 Moroccan migrants held in a reception center in Rome for more than two months have sewed their mouths shut in protest at the length of their detention. They sewed their mouths shut the previous evening, repeating a protest they staged at the end of last year.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Kenya officials said poachers have slaughtered a rhino in the capital's Nairobi National Park, a brazen attack flouting tough new laws designed to stem a surge of such killings.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Nigeria suspected Islamic extremists used explosives to attack Kawuri village in the northeast, killing 52 people and razing more than 300 homes. Boko Haram gunmen fired on worshippers during a service at a Roman Catholic church in neighboring Adamawa state. At least 26 people were killed.
(AP, 1/27/14)(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 26, In northwest Pakistan a hand grenade killed six children who found it while playing in a field in Hangu.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In southern Somalia a US missile strike killed Ahmed Mohamed Amey, a chemicals expert also known as Isku Dhuuq. He was a senior al Shabaab commander who had masterminded suicide attacks by the al Qaeda-linked militant group.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 26, South Sudan's government and rebels traded accusations that each had breached a ceasefire deal by attacking the other, but insisted they were committed to ending weeks of brutal conflict.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Syrians on opposite sides of their country's civil war tried again to find common ground in Geneva. The UN mediator said the two sides have reached a deal to allow women and children to leave Homs, a city under government siege for more than a year.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Thailand anti-government demonstrators swarmed dozens of polling stations to stop advance voting for next week's general elections. One protest leader was shot dead.
(AP, 1/26/14)(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Thailand police detained 531 men, women and children in a raid at a camp near the town of Sadao in the southern province of Songkhla, on a well-established route for human smugglers near the border with Malaysia. It was the first raid on illegal Rohingya smuggling camps since January 9, 2013.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 26, Tunisian lawmakers voted on a new constitution, three years after its revolution, with the premier-designate to unveil his cabinet on a landmark day for the Arab Spring's birthplace.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In eastern Yemen Lt. Colonel Ahmed Amir al-Mahthouthi, a senior officer in the investigative branch of state security, was shot outside his home in Hadramout.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Colorado a boy (16) at a suburban Denver high school set himself on fire in an apparent suicide attempt.
(SFC, 1/28/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 27, In western Colorado a helicopter, believed to be inspecting power lines, crashed near Silt killing 3 people on board.
(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 27, Pete Seeger (b.1919), legendary American banjo player and folksinger, died in NYC. His song “Turn! Turn! Turn!" was made famous by the Byrds in 1965. He also wrote “Where Have All the Flowers Gone."
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.A10)
2014 Jan 27, In Las Vegas the Prince and Princess pet store was torched. Firefighters rescued 27 puppies alive. Videos showed Gloria Eun Hye Lee, a US citizen originally from South Korea, and a man torching the store. Lee was arrested on Feb 7 and accomplice Kirk Bills was arrested in Indiana.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Jan 27, Google said that it had agreed to buy British artificial intelligence start-up company DeepMind. The company, co-founded Demis Hassabis, was purchased for $400 million.
(AFP, 1/27/14)(Econ, 6/25/16, SR p.4)
2014 Jan 27, In Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado succeeded Porfirio Lobo Sosa as president. During Mr. Lobo’s presidency the social security system was defrauded of $300 million. A small amount of money from firms linked to the scandal helped finance Mr. Hernandez’s campaign.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Orlando_Hern%C3%A1ndez)(Econ, 4/15/17, p.30)
2014 Jan 27, Afghan authorities said a border police officer has opened fire on fellow officers, killing 5 and wounding two at a checkpoint in Herat province. The US military said the Afghan government has ordered the release of 37 "dangerous" prisoners who it believes pose threats to the country and the region.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, A bus heading from Athens, Greece, to the Albanian capital of Tirana with 21 passengers on board, was attacked on a highway near the city of Tepelene. A passenger (25) died in the hospital from gunshot wounds. Police soon arrested 4 suspects, aged between 20 and 32, and said they were under the influence of marijuana.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 27, Cambodian riot police used smoke grenades and electric batons to disperse demonstrators in the capital demanding a government license for an independent television station.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Colombia a fire at a prison in Barranquilla killed at least 10 inmates.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Egypt the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces "unanimously delegated" army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (el Sissi) to run in presidential elections during an hours-long meeting. The announcement was made shortly after interim Pres. Adely Mansour promoted him to field marshal.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, In a coordinated swap, Egypt released a Libyan militia commander detained over suspected links to the Muslim Brotherhood while six abducted Egyptians, including two diplomats, were released in Libya.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, The EU announced the release of 140 million euros in aid to Guinea, its first development package to the West African nation after a five-year suspension.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, European news channel Euronews said it will launch Africa's first multi-language news channel in the middle of next year in partnership with the state television of the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville).
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, Hungary’s Pres. Janos Ader, on Holocaust Memorial Day, clearly stated that Hungarian officials had collaborated with the Nazis during WWII.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.44)
2014 Jan 27, In Iraq a suicide bomber killed 4 troops near Fallujah while attacks elsewhere in the country killed 4 people.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, An Israeli data protection expert said hackers earlier this month attacked 15 Israeli computers including one used by the defense ministry department dealing with civilians in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, Israeli troops shot and seriously wounded a Palestinian man (34) close to the Gaza side of the border. Soldiers opened fire after a blast which occurred as a military vehicle passed on the Israeli side of the border fence. Israeli authorities demolished four Palestinian homes in annexed east Jerusalem that had been built without construction permits.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, The World Bank warned Myanmar against corruption as it unveiled a $2-billion aid package designed to provide better health care and improve supplies of electricity.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Peru a long-contested expansion of the Camisea natural gas filed won regulatory approval, despite UN concerns that it could endanger Amazon tribes living in voluntary isolation in the area.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/pqw2xl2)
2014 Jan 27, Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny launched an interactive website painting a vivid picture of the suspected cost overruns and conflicts of interest at the Sochi Winter Olympics.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, South Africa’s Pres. Zuma signed a “DNA Act" to match more sexual offenders, including many who break the law more than once, with their crimes, exonerate the wrongly accused and crack cold cases.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Jan 27, UN aid chief Valerie Amos arrived in war-torn South Sudan amid a growing humanitarian crisis, with rebels and government accusing each other of breaking a ceasefire aimed at ending the conflict.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Geneva the first meeting meant to discuss the issue of a Syrian transitional government broke up less than an hour after it began following a tense session that one delegate described as "a dialogue of the deaf." UN envoy Brahimi broke up the meeting and was scheduled to meet with both sides separately later in the day.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki and the head of the National Assembly signed a new constitution, enshrining one of its last steps toward full democracy after a 2011 uprising that inspired the Arab Spring.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, The Ukrainian government said in a statement it was issuing $2 billion in Eurobonds to Russia on the same terms as in December, bringing the total amount borrowed - over two years at an interest rate of 5 percent - to $5 billion.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, Ukraine's justice minister threatened to call for a state of emergency unless protesters leave her ministry building, which they occupied during the night. The body of a man (55) was found dead hanging from the framework of a huge artificial 'New Year tree' in central Kiev.
(AP, 1/27/14)(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 28, Pres. Obama made his State of the Union address saying would be a “year of action" and that if Congress wasn’t willing to work with him, he was prepared to act on his own.
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.A1)
2014 Jan 28, A report by the US Office of the Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said an estimated half of Afghan security forces remained illiterate despite a 3-year-old $200 million US program to bolster their literacy rates.
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 28, Officials said the cheating scandal inside the Air Force's nuclear missile corps is expanding, with the number of service members implicated by investigators now roughly double the 34 reported just a week ago.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, A rare blast of snow, sleet and ice hit the US South, prompting schools to close, airlines to cancel flights and emergency officials to warn of icy roads. Forecasters predicted 1 to 2 inches of snow in parts of middle and north Georgia including the Atlanta area, prompting dozens of school closings. In Mississippi 4 people were killed in a fire in a mobile home blamed on a faulty space heater.
(Reuters, 1/28/14)(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 28, Bolivia's government declared a national emergency to deal with flooding that has claimed at least 30 lives and forced some 21,000 families from their homes over the past two months.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Brazil a dump truck smashed into a pedestrian bridge on a busy highway in northern Rio de Janeiro, causing the walkway to collapse onto three cars and a motorcycle below. At least 4 people were killed.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Britain announced it would take in hundreds of vulnerable Syrian refugees, targeting those most traumatized by the 3-year civil war.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Debut author Nathan Filer won Britain's Costa Book Award for his novel "The Shock of the Fall", which draws on his experience as a mental health nurse.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Burundi's top lawyer, Isidore Rufyikiri, was sacked after criticizing the government and being accused of urging the people to rebel.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 28, Canada's BMO Financial Group said it will acquire UK-based financial manager F&C for 1.3 billion Canadian dollars (860 million euros).
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In China an Indian oil tanker being repaired at a shipyard at Haizhou Shipyard in the port city of Zhousha exploded and caught fire, killing 7 Chinese workers.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Cuba Latin American and Caribbean leaders (CELAC) opened a regional summit in Havana.
(AP, 1/28/14)(Econ, 2/1/14, p.28)
2014 Jan 28, A Cyprus Forestry Department official said illegal logging in the bailed-out island nation has picked up sharply as people turn to firewood to save on heating bills.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Egypt gunmen on a motorbike killed General Mohamed Saeed, head of the technical office of the minister of interior, outside his home in Cairo.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, European Union officials demanded Croatia slash its budget shortfall and reduce spending to bring the country's deficit back under the bloc's allowed ceiling.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Europe's top human rights court in Strasbourg, France, ruled that Ireland's government failed in its duty to protect children in the case of a woman sexually abused by a lay teacher at a state-backed Roman Catholic school in 1973. Louise O'Keeffe (48) said she was abused by her teacher during lessons in his classroom when she was 9 years old. She argued that the Irish state failed to put in place appropriate measures to stop "systematic abuse" at the Dunderrow National School.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, A French court barred the return to France of a Roma family including Leonarda Dibrani, the teenage girl whose arrest in front of her schoolmates and expulsion to Kosovo became a cause celebre.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, France's crackdown on Dieudonne M'bala M'bala intensified with police raiding premises linked to the controversial comic as part of a probe into suspected fraud.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Hong Kong culled around 20,000 chickens after finding the deadly H7N9 bird flu virus in poultry imported from mainland China. Fears over avian flu have grown following the deaths of two men from the H7N9 strain in Hong Kong since December.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Indonesia two landslides triggered by torrential rain killed at least 19 people and left 10 others missing on the main island of Java.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Iraq gun attacks north of Baghdad killed 7 members of the security forces.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, A Kenyan court ordered a Chinese man to pay $230,000 in fines or be jailed seven years for ivory smuggling in the first of what will likely be many cases as authorities implement a stringent new law to deter illegal trading in wildlife products.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Mexican officials said that they are launching a nationwide effort to fight kidnapping, a crime that has risen to epidemic levels across the country.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Nicaraguan lawmakers approved constitutional changes that would allow Pres. Daniel Ortega to be re-elected indefinitely, a move that his critics say is designed to keep the Sandinista leader in power for life.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Pakistan a senior official in Bannu said 23,000 refugees in North Waziristan had fled to the town fearing a major military operation by armed forces.
(Reuters, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, A Polish court convicted seven Poles for attacking Mexican cadets last year in a massive beach fight on the Baltic coast, and sent them to jail. Some 300 Poles had attacked 57 Mexican naval cadets who were on a training voyage aboard a sailing vessel docked in Gdynia.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, South Africa's main opposition Democratic Alliance party under Helen Zille merged with the smaller Agang group to jointly challenge the ruling ANC party. Mamphela Ramphele will stand as the presidential candidate of the new coalition.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, South African police shot dead two protestors in a northern village during a siege a day earlier of their station by an angry mob throwing stones and petrol bombs. The violence near Tzaneen was sparked by community anger over a recent killing in the area.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Sri Lanka thousands of protesters from opposition parties, human rights groups, trade unions and media groups marched in Colombo in a rare show of dissent against the government.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Sudan a Russian diplomat and his wife were stabbed in Khartoum by a man anguished by the death of his brother in violence-plagued Central African Republic.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Togo police said they have arrested 3 men after discovering nearly two tons of ivory in a container marked for shipping to Vietnam.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Turkey's central bank hiked all of its key interest rates in dramatic fashion at an emergency midnight policy meeting, ignoring opposition from PM Tayyip Erdogan as it battles to defend the country's crumbling lira currency. The key rate rose from 4.5% to 10%.
(Reuters, 1/28/14)(Econ, 2/1/14, p.59)
2014 Jan 28, Ukraine PM Mykola Azarov resigned. Pres. Yanukovych accepted Azarov’s resignation but asked him to stay on in an acting role until a new government is formed. Parliament repealed anti-protest laws that had set off violent clashes between protesters and police.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, The Vatican library and four Japanese historical institutes agreed to inventory, catalogue and digitize 10,000 documents from a lost Japanese archive detailing the persecution of Christians in Japan in the 17th-19th centuries.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Venezuelan journalists and journalism students protested on one of Caracas' avenues to demand that the government auction off dollars to allow newspapers to buy newsprint after nine regional dailies shut down and some of the main media chains are experiencing difficulties.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 29, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that North Korea has expanded the size of its uranium enrichment facility at its Nyongbyon nuclear complex and restarted a plutonium reactor that was shut down in 2007.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, A rare winter storm gripped the US South, killing five people in Alabama, stranding children overnight at their schools, gnarling traffic across many states and canceling flights at the world's busiest airport.
(Reuters, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, A California school teacher was arrested as investigators found as many as 350 living and dead pythons stacked inside the Santa Ana home of William Buchman.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 29, California state and federal authorities arrested 11 people in the Modesto area in a large drug trafficking operation.
(SFC, 1/31/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 29, In San Francisco Michael Kwong (42) was cited for being in violation of a 2011 state ban on shark fins. Authorities seized 2,138 pounds of shark for sale at his Kwong Yip Inc. business.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.C2)
2014 Jan 29, Google said it is ridding itself of a financial headache by selling Motorola Mobility's smartphone business to Lenovo for $2.9 billion. The deal came less than two years after Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.4 billion in the biggest acquisition of Google's 15-year history.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 29, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber killed two Afghan soldiers in a market in Ghazni. 15 Taliban fighters were killed in an operation conducted by the Afghan Security Forces in Ghazni's Andar district.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In Brazil an anti-corruption law went into effect. It made companies liable for bribes paid by their employees and for acts of corruption against domestic and foreign public officials.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, A cold spell and snowstorms was sweeping across parts of central and eastern Europe, disrupting power supplies, travel and schools. Bulgaria reported 4 deaths in recent days due to the weather.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, Czech President Milos Zeman swore in a new government, ending seven months of political instability.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, Egypt's chief prosecutor referred 20 journalists from the Al-Jazeera TV network, including four foreigners, to trial on charges of allegedly joining or assisting a terrorist group and spreading false news that endangers national security.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In France Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery and Real Madrid forward Karim Benzema were acquitted on charges of soliciting an underage prostitute, ending a case that has lasted more than three years and tarnished both players' reputation.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 29, Israeli soldiers north of Ramalla shot dead Mohammad Mubara (19), a Palestinian from the Jalazun refugee camp. Eye-witnesses said Mubarak was not armed, and had been harassed by soldiers who made him remove his clothes.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In Pakistan three bomb blasts including a suicide attack targeting security forces killed at least 4 people in Karachi. PM Nawaz Sharif dismissed speculation he would launch an offensive against the Taliban and called on militants to observe a ceasefire.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In the Philippines a 2-day operation left as least 37 Islamic fighters dead. The Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement opposed peace talks and had staged attacks in Maguindanao province.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 29, Saudi health authorities announced a new MERS death, bringing to 59 the number of people who have died from the coronavirus in the country with the most fatalities.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In Somalia African Union forces heralded a push into the heartland of militants in south-center Somalia.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.46)
2014 Jan 29, South Africa's Reserve Bank announced a shock rise of half a percentage point in its main interest rate, amid sustained pressure on the rand and rising inflation.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, South Sudan released to Kenya seven of the 11 key leaders held after an alleged coup bid last month, as Nairobi accepted to host the group.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, Int’l. charity Save the Children said a third of the children in Spain are at the risk of poverty or social exclusion due to ongoing austerity measures.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 29, Syrian negotiators in Geneva discussed the establishment of a transitional government body for the first time.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, Tunisia's new technocratic government under PM Mehdi Jomaa (51) was sworn in.
(AFP, 1/29/14)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.49)
2014 Jan 29, Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Iran to bolster trade and energy relations.
(Reuters, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 30, Royal Dutch Shell said it will suspend drilling in offshore Alaska after a US court decision and as the oil major streamlines operations following a slump in annual profits.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Napa, Ca., Kayleigh Slusher (3) died. Her body was found in her bed on Feb 1. On Feb 4 her mother Sara Kreuger (23) and boyfriend Ryan Scott Warner (26) were charged with the child’s murder. In May 2017, separate juries found Ryan Warner and Sara Krueger guilty of first-degree murder. In 2019 the city of Napa and Napa County settled a suit in the case agreeing to pay $2.5 million to Kayleigh's father and his parents.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.E1)(http://tinyurl.com/y8ssbr4n)(SFC, 1/3/19, p.C1)
2014 Jan 30, In western Kentucky 8 children and their mother, LaRae Watson (35), were killed in a house fire.
(SFC, 1/31/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 30, In Utah Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui (27) shot and killed Sheriff’s Sgt. Cory Wride following a 50-mile chase near Eagle Mountain. A 2nd deputy was wounded. Garcia was also wounded and died the next day. Garcia’s girlfriend Meagan Grunwald (17) survived the shootout and faced nearly a dozen charges in the crime rampage. In April she pleaded innocent to all charges. On May 9, 2015, Grunwald was convicted and faced up to life in prison.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A6)(SFC, 5/13/14, p.A5)(AP, 5/9/15)
2014 Jan 30, A Bangladesh court sentenced Motiur Rahman Nizami (70), leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, and 13 others to death over a huge 2004 arms smuggling racket, sparking fears of new political unrest.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Leaders of the 54-member African Union met in Ethiopia for a two-day summit with the conflict in the Central African Republic and South Sudan dominating the agenda.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, England-based Oxfam confirmed accepting US actress Scarlett Johansson's decision to step down, saying her promotion of Israeli drinks firm SodaStream, which has a factory in a settlement east of Jerusalem, was "incompatible" with her role at the international aid agency.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, A small socialist party quit Denmark's coalition government amid discord over plans to sell a stake in state-controlled Dong Energy to Goldman Sachs and other investors.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Egyptian security forces arrested 11 Muslim Brotherhood members accused of running Facebook pages inciting violence against the police. A government air raid in the Sinai Peninsula hit militants linked to the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. 7 militants were reported killed.
(AP, 1/30/14)(AFP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, In France about 20 percent of flights in and out of Paris' airports were canceled because air traffic controllers are on strike over plans to combine European air space. Controllers in several other European countries also plan work stoppages.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Greek police detained dozens of people during a protest at the merchant marine minister's office over the deaths of immigrants whose boat sank as it was being towed by the Coast Guard.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Iraq at least 6 gunmen burst into the state-run Company for Transportation ministry building in Baghdad and killed at least 2 people. Police shot and killed 4 of the militants while two others blew themselves up. Officials blamed the Sunni Muslim ISIL (ISIS) rebels. Attacks across the city left 11 dead.
(Reuters, 1/30/14)(SFC, 1/31/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 30, In Italy Amanda Knox (26) and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted a 2nd time for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher (21) in 2007 while the two were students together in the Italian university town of Perugia. Neither her 28½-year sentence nor the 25-year prison term handed to Sollecito will have to be served pending further appeals.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Japan about 1,400 people filed a joint lawsuit against three companies that manufactured reactors at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, saying they should be financially liable for damage caused by their 2011 meltdowns.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Nature published two papers by a team led by Haruko Obokata of the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Japan. The team claimed to have found a simple way to reprogram ordinary mouse cells, persuading them to transform themselves into pluripotent cells.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.79)
2014 Jan 30, In Libya gunmen kidnapped the son of the army's special forces commander, the latest high-profile abduction in the eastern city of Benghazi where the military has been battling Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Panama’s judicial authorities ordered the release of 32 of 35 crew members of a North Korean ship detained last July for carrying hidden arms from Cuba. The Chon Chon Gang was carrying Cuban fighter jects and missiles. Owners this month agreed to pay a $670,000 fine.
(SFC, 1/31/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 30, In the Philippines nearly 200 inmates complaining of hunger and squalid conditions escaped from a provincial jail in an eastern province that was devastated by a monster storm in November. Authorities recaptured 148 of the 182 escapees hours after they stormed out of the Leyte provincial jail in Palo town.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Romania’s National Center of Cinematography viewed Danish director Lars von Trier's movie "Nymphomaniac II" for a second time and decided to lift the ban it had imposed the day before.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee identified the Dec 29 Volgograd bombers as Asker Samedov and Suleiman Magomedov and called them members of the "Buinaksk Terrorist Group." It also said two suspected accomplices have been arrested in Dagestan province.
(Reuters, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Syria at least 11 people, including three children, were killed by explosive-packed barrels dropped from government army helicopters over the town of Daraya.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Tunisia's central bank expressed "optimism" after the IMF released a delayed $506 million loan to support the fragile economy following major steps this week to end months of political turmoil.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Turkey hundreds of police were transferred from their posts in Ankara and Izmir, and dozens more were affected in Istanbul and the southeastern city of Gaziantep. Altogether, more than 5,000 police officers have been dismissed or transferred since the graft inquiry became public on December 17 with the arrest of businessmen close to PM Tayyip Erdogan and three cabinet ministers' sons.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, Uganda's government said it is planning to double expenditure on anti-retroviral drugs in an effort to reverse a worsening trend in HIV infections.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Ukraine's embattled President Viktor Yanukovych took sick leave, leaving it unclear how involved he may be in efforts to resolve the country's political crisis in which protesters are calling for his resignation.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Ukraine Dmytro Bulatov (35) a member of Automaidan, a group of car owners that has taken part in the protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, was discovered outside Kiev. His face and clothes were covered in clotted blood, his hands were swollen and bore the marks of nails. He had gone missing on Jan 22.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, A Yemeni cargo ship ran aground and sank off the coast of Yemen killing all 12 crew.
(Reuters, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, Former basketball star Dennis Rodman said he was willing to trade places with Kenneth Bae, an American missionary imprisoned in North Korea, the next time he visits his friend, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, A US federal judge gave Hosam Amara, a former Agriprocessors Inc. manager, a 41-month prison term for exploiting immigrant workers at a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. 389 workers were arrested in a May, 2008, raid at the plant.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 31, A man shot two students at Michigan State Univ. in East Lansing. Dominique Nolff was pronounced dead the next morning.
(SFC, 2/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 31, The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena, Montana, filed for bankruptcy protection in advance of proposed settlements for two lawsuits that claim clergy members sexually abused 362 people over decades and the church covered it up.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, Christopher Jones, former actor and film star, died in Orange Ct., Ca. His films included Three in the Attic" (1968), “Wild in the Streets" (1968), “The Looking Glass War" (1969) and “Ryan’s Daughter" (1970).
(SFC, 2/10/14, p.C6)
2014 Jan 31, In Afghanistan the Taliban attacked three police checkpoints overnight in the southern province of Helmand, killing one officer before police repelled the attackers. 4 policemen were killed when a roadside bomb explosion hit a police vehicle in Kandahar province.
(AP, 1/31/14)(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, In Australia a government agency approved a plan to dump sediment within the area of the Great Barrier Marine Park in an expansion project of the Abbot Point coal port in northern Queensland.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 31, Red Cross officials warned that Central African Republic's capital of Bangui is experiencing "unprecedented levels of violence" with at least 30 people killed in the last three days.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, China celebrated Lunar New Year, the year of the horse, a celebration also known as the Spring Festival.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.36)
2014 Jan 31, Activists from around China began arriving at the eastern town of Qufu during the Chinese New Year holiday to demand an investigation into the death of a fellow activist's father at a government building on Jan 29.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Jan 31, Egyptian military aircraft struck suspected positions of al-Qaida-inspired fighters overnight in villages of the Sinai Peninsula, killing 13 people.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancso (b.1921), winner of the best director award at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, died. Jancso won his Cannes award for "Red Psalm," about a 19th-century peasant revolt.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, In India Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal named a string of high-ranking Indian politicians he described as corrupt and said his anti-graft Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) would target them in an upcoming general election.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, In Iraq a suicide car bomb killed 5 soldiers and destroyed a bridge in Hit, Anbar province.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 31, In Libya Abdel Fatah Al Barasi, a retired police colonel, died after being shot in the head while in his car in the eastern city of Benghazi. Salah Abd Al Razak and Zakaria Abdullah Al Darsi, both sons of colonels, were also shot and killed in the street by assailants.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, Humanitarian groups warned that more than 800,000 Malians are desperate for food while another three million risk going without meals as the country struggles to emerge from months of armed conflict.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, In Nigeria gunmen ransacked the mainly Christian village of Sabon Garin Yamdula in Adamawa state, killing a pastor before vigilante youths firing guns set them to flight and soldiers later deployed. A bus set off an improved explosive device on the highway through nearby Kuthra village, Borno state, killing 7 passengers.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, Philippine officials said 3 child soldiers recruited by hardline Muslim rebels were among 53 people killed in a five-day military offensive in the restive south.
(AFP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, In Senegal a judge sentenced two men to six months' jail in a rare conviction of a gay couple on criminal charges.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, In northern Serbia strong winds created meters-high snow drifts, trapping up to 60 people in cars and buses.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, The Syrian Observatory for Human Right said fighting in Syria has killed nearly 1,900 people, including at least 430 civilians, during the week of UN-hosted peace talks in Switzerland. Negotiations in Geneva wrapped up and were likely to resume from February 10.
(AP, 1/31/14)(AFP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, The UN distributed food in the Syrian capital's besieged Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp for a second day in a bid to help tens of thousands of trapped civilians. Government shelling killed at least 16 people in a rebel-held area of the northern city of Aleppo.
(AFP, 1/31/14)(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, A Thai court ordered more than $1.4 million in assets seized from a former top civil servant whose wealth was revealed when burglars robbed his house. The Civil Court said former Transport Ministry Permanent Secretary Supoj Saplom could not prove his wealth was honestly earned.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych signed a measure offering amnesty to those arrested in two months of protests, but only if demonstrators vacate most of the buildings they occupied, and repealed anti-protest legislation.
(AP, 1/31/14)(Reuters, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, In southern Yemen suspected al-Qaida militants launched a surprise attack on an army checkpoint in Shibam, Hadramawt province, killing 15 soldiers and wounding five others.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan, Chicago endured a cold snap. Temperatures fell to -27°C, the lowest since 1884.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.68)
2014 Jan, Jaime Garcia Covarrubias, a former member of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s secret police, was ordered to remain in Chile while an inquiry continued into his alleged role in the deaths of 7 people in Temuco weeks after the US-backed Pinochet coup on Sept. 11, 1973. He had taught at the US National Defense Univ. in Washington, DC, for 13 years.
(http://tinyurl.com/ka5az7g)(SFC, 3/13/15, p.A2)
2014 Jan, Colombia’s government began exploratory talks with the rebel National Liberation Army.
(SFC, 6/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan, Colombia halted coal exports from a port operated by Drummond, an American miner. Environmentalists in 2013 had photographed an incident in 2013 in which 500 tons of coal were dumped into the Bay of Santa Maria to stop a barge from sinking. Drummond operations generated $66 million a month in royalties and taxes to the government. Exports were resumed in March, 2014.
(Econ, 3/15/14, p.61)
2014 Jan, German officials seized a box packed with 14 condoms filled with cocaine from South America. The 340 grams of cocaine, valued at 40,000 euros ($55,200), was seized at the international airport in Leipzig and was addressed to the main postal center at the Vatican.
(AFP, 3/23/14)
2014 Jan, In Indonesia construction began on the Pertamina Energy Tower, a 99-story, 530 metres (1,740 ft) skyscraper in Jakarta. Designed and planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) it will be the tallest building in Indonesia upon completion in 2020.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pertamina_Energy_Tower)
2014 Jan, Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe visited the Ivory Coast, Mozambique and Ethiopia to counter China’s success in building diplomatic support and winning access to raw materials.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.34)
2014 Feb 1, In Afghanistan an insurgent ambush killed 4 soldiers and wounded another four in an attack on an Afghan National Army foot patrol along the main highway in Farah province. Gunmen shot dead two members of former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah's team in Herat, dealing an early blow to hopes of a peaceful presidential campaign.
(AP, 2/1/14)(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, Austrian-born actor Maximilian Schell (b.1930), a fugitive from Adolf Hitler who became a Hollywood favorite and won an Oscar for his role as a defense attorney in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961), died overnight in Innsbruck.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung volcano, that has been rumbling for months, unleased a major eruption killing at least 15 people just a day after authorities allowed thousands of villagers who had been evacuated to return to its slopes.
(AP, 2/1/14)(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Lebanon a car bomb blew up near a gas station in the Shiite town of Hermel in the northeast, killing at least 3 people.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Libya over 54 detainees escaped from a prison in Tripoli. Officials said the prison was short five guards at the time of the breakout.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, In the southern Philippines a homemade bomb, likely set off by Muslim rebels, wounded 12 people, including six soldiers and two television journalists.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, In South Africa Duduzane Zuma (29), the son of President Jacob Zuma, crashed his Porsche into a minibus taxi just before midnight. Zimbabwean national Phumzile Dube (30) was killed. Police later confirmed an investigation of manslaughter against Duduzane.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 1, South Sudan government forces and allied militias reportedly attacked northern Leer town and surrounding villages in Unity state, killing an unknown number of people and destroying property. Rebels' defensive positions in Upper Nile state also came under attack.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Spain thousands of people marched in Madrid to protest against a government plan to limit abortions that has caused unusually open divisions in the ruling conservative People's Party.
(Reuters, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, Sudan’s Secretary of the National Council for Press and Publications Obeid Murawah told the Sudanese state news agency that all restrictions on the opposition "The People's Opinion" daily had been lifted and that the paper could resume printing after completing the appropriate procedures. Three other newspapers remained banned.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, Sudan suspended activities of the international Red Cross because it violated guidelines for working in the war-torn country.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Syria at least 9 people were killed when Syrian regime helicopters dropped explosive-filled barrels on two neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo. At least 7 people killed in a double car bombing carried out by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targeting a rebel headquarters in Aleppo.
(AFP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Thailand gunfire rang out across an intersection in Bangkok for more than an hour as government supporters clashed with protesters trying to derail tense nationwide elections before the vote begins.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov said in a resolution published in the official government newspaper that each person would still be allowed up to 50 cubic meters of gas for free, but anything over that amount would cost $7 per thousand cubic meters.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Yemen a battle, that began a day earlier, between Shiite and Sunni tribesman over land in the northwest left more than 65 dead. Armed tribesmen bombed Yemen's main oil pipeline, halting crude flow to the country's main export terminal less than a month after it was repaired.
(AP, 2/1/14)(Reuters, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 2, The Seattle Seahawks defeated the Denver Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII played in New Jersey.
(SFC, 2/3/14, p.B1)
2014 Feb 2, In Florida Doreen Landstra (79) backed her SUV into a group of people in Bradenton killing 3 with 5 others hospitalized.
(SFC, 2/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 2, In Illinois Michael Worsham (43) was found dead in his house after he killed his wife (42), son (17) and daughter (15) in Robbins, a suburb of Chicago.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 2, Philip Seymour Hoffman (46), who won the Oscar for best actor in 2006 as writer Truman Capote, was found dead in his apartment in NYC with what law enforcement officials said was a needle in his arm. His films included “Scent of a Woman" (1992), “Boogie Nights" (1997), "The Big Lebowski" (1997), “Along Came Polly" (2004), “Doubt" (2008) and “Synecdoche, New York" (2008).
(AP, 2/2/14)(Econ, 2/8/14, p.86)
2014 Feb 2, In North Carolina a leaking pipe dumped 82,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River in Eden. A permanent plug was installed and tested on Feb 8.
(SFC, 2/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 2, Tens of thousands of people are without electricity in Austria, Croatia and Slovenia after icy rain and sleet caused major disruptions. Hundreds of motorists were evacuated overnight from their vehicles in Serbia, where massive snow drifts have caused widespread travel chaos.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In the Central African Republic witnesses said international forces have retaken Sibut, a strategic town occupied for days by Muslim Seleka fighters.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Costa Rican held presidential elections. None of four candidates had a clear lead in the polls.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, El Salvador held presidential elections. With 58% of the votes counted VP Salvador Sanchez had a 49% lead over San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano of ARENA with nearly 39%. A 2nd round was scheduled for March 9.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9bfgfxl)(Reuters, 2/2/14)(SFC, 2/3/14, p.A3)
2014 Feb 2, Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Paris and Lyon in a renewed protest against France's legalization of gay marriage.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In France a video, posted on Facebook, was filmed in the southeastern town of Fontaine showing two boys pushing an 18-year-old mentally-disabled man in a park, making him fall and shouting at him before shoving him into a stream, from which the bewildered-looking victim emerges and walks away. Over the next two days four boys were detained over the assault and one (12) was released.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 2, In Germany Frankfurt’s 116-meter (380-foot) University Tower, built in 1972, was brought down with explosives in one of the biggest such operations in Europe.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, German conductor Gerd Albrecht (78) died in Berlin. He had led orchestras in the Czech Republic, Japan and Denmark and worked to bring music to children.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 2, Iraqi government forces pressed their assault on militant strongholds in Anbar province as attacks elsewhere killed 13 people.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In Kenya gunfire erupted in and around a mosque in the port city of Mombasa following a raid by armed police who had received a tip-off that Muslim youths were being radicalized and trained for militant attacks. At least one officer and a young man were killed.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Mauritania's PM Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf and his cabinet resigned, a move that had been expected after the ruling party scored a sweeping victory in legislative and local elections last year.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, The Pakistani Taliban said in a statement that it wants five well-known political and religious figures including ex-cricketer Imran Khan to represent them in peace talks with the government.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In the Philippines 5 people were injured when motorcycle-riding men hurled a grenade into a church in Zamboanga, a city known for Muslim rebel activity.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In Russia several thousand protesters marched through central Moscow to call for the release of 20 people who were arrested after clashes between police and demonstrators in May 2012.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Saudi Arabia put into effect jail terms of up to 20 years for belonging to "terrorist groups" and fighting abroad, as it struggles to deter Islamist Saudis from becoming jihadists.
(AFP, 2/3/14)(SFC, 2/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 2, In Spain several thousand people marched from a Coca-Cola bottling plant in a southwestern suburb to downtown Madrid to protest the company's plan to close four plants in Spain and lay off 1,253 workers.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Syrian military helicopters dropped more improvised "barrel bombs" on the northern city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said, bringing the death toll to at least 83 people in the latest episode of a campaign many consider a war crime. A twin car bombing killed a senior leader in an Islamic brigade opposed to al-Qaida near Aleppo.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In northern Syria ISIL fighters freed more than 400 people from a prison, who had been held by the rival Islamist Liwa al-Tawhid unit. In the eastern province of Deir al-Zor ISIL seized the Koniko gas field from the Nusra Front and other Islamist rebels who had controlled it for several weeks after wresting it from tribal gunmen.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 2, Thailand held nationwide elections without bloodshed despite widespread fears of violence. Although balloting was largely peaceful, protesters forced thousands of polling booths to close in Bangkok and the south, disenfranchising millions of registered voters.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Yemen tribal sources said Shi'ite rebels have overrun strongholds of a rival Sunni tribal group in fighting that has killed at least 40 people in the north in the last two days.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Yemeni tribesmen said they had kidnapped a German man to press their government to free jailed relatives.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 3, Idaho police arrested dozens of gay rights activists as they pressed for antidiscrimination protections and blocked entrances to the state Senate chambers in Boise.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 3, St. Louis-based Post Holdings Inc. said it is buying the PowerBar and Musashi brands from Nestle SA, further diversifying its business by expanding into the active nutrition category. Musashi is a leading sports nutrition brand in Australia.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, CAR priest Cassien Kamatari that 75 Christians have been killed during fighting over the last five days in the town of Boda.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Costa Rica with 76% of the ballots counted, Centrist Luis Guillermos -- a historian by training and candidate for the Citizen Acton Party (PAC) -- won 30.8% of the vote, narrowly ahead of Johnny Araya from the ruling right-wing National Liberation Party (PLN), who had 29.6%. Solis will now face a ruling party candidate in a run-off vote in April.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Egyptian troops backed by helicopters raided suspected militants' hideouts in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, killing at least 20 and wounding 25.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, An official EU report said corruption affects all member countries of the European Union and costs the bloc's economies around 120 billion euros ($162.19 billion) a year.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala was banned from entering Britain after he reportedly planned to visit to support Nicolas Anelka over the footballer's use of the "quenelle" gesture. The "quenelle" is Dieudonne's trademark stiff-armed gesture that critics say is a disguised Nazi salute but that he defends as a generic "up yours" to the French establishment.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Germany a group of computer hackers and human rights campaigners announced that they are suing their government for allegedly breaking the law by aiding foreign spies.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung shot hot ash and rocks high into the air again, halting a search for any more victims from its Feb 1 eruption.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Iran’s state news said a first tranche of $550 million in sanctions relief agreed to under an interim nuclear deal has been paid into an Iranian Central Bank account in Switzerland.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Iraqi army troops and allied tribesmen killed 57 ISIL fighters in Anbar province. A series of attacks in and around Baghdad, including a spate of car bombings, killed 17 people.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Haaretz newspaper said Israel has offered Turkey $20 million in compensation to the families of those killed and wounded in its botched 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Kenyan police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse Muslim youths rioting for a second day in protest against a raid on a mosque used by firebrand preachers in the port city of Mombasa.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Lebanon a suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt inside a public minibus in Choueifa, home to a mixed Christian and Druze population, killing at least one person.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Libyan PM Ali Zeidan said he has ordered the army to lift the blockade imposed by protesters on the main oil terminals in the east of the country.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Macedonia's parliament adopted a bill imposing chemical castration on repeat offenders convicted of sexually abusing children. On Feb 5 the country's leading child protection group said that the law is still too lenient.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 3, A Palestinian official accused Jewish settlers in the West Bank of attacking olive groves belonging to Palestinians and uprooting some 1,700 seedlings.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Peruvian officials said more than 400 dead dolphins were found last month on its northern Pacific coast.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 3, In Russia a Moscow high-school student shot a teacher and a police officer dead and held more than 20 other students hostage in a classroom in a possible revenge attack. The student was disarmed and detained less than two hours after the shooting following negotiations aided by his father.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, A pest control company which has been killing stray dogs in Sochi for years said that it has a contract to exterminate more of the animals throughout the Olympics.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah issued a royal decree that punishes citizens who fight in conflicts outside the kingdom with prison sentences ranging from 3 to 20 years.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 3, Al Qaeda's general command said it had no links with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in an apparent attempt to reassert its authority over fragmented Islamist fighters in Syria's civil war.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Tunisia a gun battle began after police raided a house in Tunis where weapons, explosives and suicide bomb belts were found. By the next day 7 Islamist militants and a policeman were killed. The dead included Kamel Ghadghadi, a senior member of the banned Islamist militant group Ansar al-Shariah.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A3)
2014 Feb 3, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich returned to his desk after four days of sick leave, while the political opposition pressed for further concessions to end more than two months of street protests.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, The UN launched a bid to raise $2.0 billion (1.48 billion euros) from international donors in 2014 to help more than 20 million people threatened by famine in Africa's Sahel region.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Yemen gunmen abducted a Westerner identified by a police source as a British oil worker in Sanaa.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 4, In NYC four people were arrested in lower Manhattan with more than 350 bags of heroin as part of an investigation into the overdose death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 4, Microsoft announced that Satya Nadella will replace Steve Ballmer as CEO. John Thompson (64) will replace Bill Gates as chairman.
(AP, 2/4/14)(SFC, 2/5/14, p.C3)
2014 Feb 4, The head of Bangladesh's largest opposition party, the BNP, accused the government of being involved in the killing or disappearance of more than 300 activists around the time of the country's election.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, In Bosnia workers from five privatized companies began protesting in Tuzla after their companies were stripped of assets.
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.48)
2014 Feb 4, In Brazil at least 6 people were killed during shootouts between officers and suspected drug gang members in Rio de Janeiro.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, A Cuban doctor working in Brazil has sought political asylum in the office of a conservative party complaining that Cuba's government takes too big a slice of her pay. Under an agreement signed last year with Cuba through the Pan-American Health Organization, or PAHO, the Cubans get only one fifth of the 10,000 reais ($4,100) a month that Brazil pays each physician in the program. The rest goes to the Cuban state.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 4, Egypt's Health Ministry said swine flu has killed 24 people across the country over the past two months.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, In Iraq attacks in and around Baghdad killed 18 people as government forces made steady progress against militants in Anbar province.
(AFP, 2/4/14)(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 4, Kuwait said its coastguard has arrested six suspected Iranian drug smugglers and seized their boat when it entered the Gulf state's territorial waters.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Libya's armed forces said they have not received orders from PM Ali Zeidan to move against eastern oil ports and use force to end a six-month blockade there by protesters.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Libyan officials said they have destroyed the last stockpile of chemical weapons from the end of the Khadafy era.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A3)
2014 Feb 4, Saudi authorities beheaded two citizens after convicting them of two separate murders.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Saudi officials signed an agreement with SunEdison Inc. of Belmont, Ca., to explore building a $6.4 billion solar panel factory in Saudi Arabia. SunEdison moved from Maryland to Belmont in 2011.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.C4)
2014 Feb 4, In South Africa a fire broke out about 1.7 km beneath the surface at the Doornkop mine, triggered by 2.4 earthquake. Emergency workers raced to rescue nine miners missing deep underground in the burning gold mine west of Johannesburg. Eight of the miners were found dead the next day.
(AFP, 2/5/14)(AFP, 2/6/14)(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 4, Spanish police said drug traffickers used a sophisticated system of floating backpacks with a tracking system to try to smuggle 900 kg (2,000 pounds) of cocaine into the country.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Syrian forces dropped a barrel bomb on the Uthman Bin Affan mosque that was being used as a school in a rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo, killing at least 5 people, including children. Barrel bombs were also dropped over other rebel-held neighborhoods in Aleppo.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Pressure on Thailand's embattled government mounted, when a flagship rice-buying scheme vital to its support stumbled closer to collapse. The commerce minister said China had canceled an order for 1.2 million tons of rice due to a corruption probe, while state-run Krung Thai Bank (KTB) joined other lenders in saying it would not provide loans urgently needed to rescue it. The opposition filed legal challenges that could void a disrupted weekend election.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, In Ukraine 12 people were killed and five others injured when a train and minibus collided at a railway crossing point in the north-eastern Sumy region.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, The UN issued an urgent appeal for $1.27 billion for aid for South Sudan, hit by a seven-week-old conflict that has forced close to a million people from their homes.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, In northern Yemen Shi'ite Muslim rebels and Sunni tribesmen agreed a local ceasefire after clashes between the rivals killed about 60 people there last week.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 5, Texas executed Suzanne Basso (59) for the 1998 slaying of Louis Musso (59), a mentally disabled man, to rob him of his cash and collect insurance.
(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 5, In Argentina 9 first-responders were killed and seven others injured battling a fire of unknown origin that destroyed an archive of bank documents at the iron Mountain warehouse in Buenos Aires.
(AP, 2/5/14)(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 5, Brazil police said the bodies of 3 men whose disappearance led to a clash between an Amazon tribe and settlers have been found in Amazonas state. Last week police arrested five Tenharim men on suspicion of kidnapping and killing the outsiders in December.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In the Central African Republic soldiers and recruits killed a suspected rebel with knives and concrete blocks just moments after the president and other VIPs left the area.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, It was reported that a new strain of avian influenza, H10N8, has been confirmed in two people in China. Cases of H7N9 were reported to be surging with some 300 cases and more appearing every day.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 5, In southwest England more than 8,000 homes were without power after fresh storms battered the region, sending huge waves crashing onto the coastline and damaging sea defenses.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Millions of commuters in London faced delays and disruption after Tube staff went on strike over plans to close London Underground ticket offices.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, The European Union's antitrust watchdog accepted "far-reaching" concessions offered by Google to settle allegations it is abusing its dominant position in Internet searches, bringing the three-year-old case close to an end.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, The Luno, mostly empty Spanish cargo ship, broke in two after hitting a sea wall off the southwestern coast of France in high winds and was leaking some fuel into the water.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, A German newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) bugged the phone of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder from at least 2002, compounding the most serious row between the allies in a decade.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Germany's government approved increasing the number of soldiers sent to Mali from 180 to 250 as part of an EU-led mission to train the national army for its fight against Islamic extremists.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Germany a fire at an asylum home in Hamburg killed a woman from Pakistan and her two children. On Feb 7 a boy (13), a member of the city's youth fire department, admitted to setting the fire.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Iraq multiple bombings rocked central Baghdad, striking mainly near the heavily fortified Green Zone where key government offices are located, killed at least 34 people.
(AFP, 2/5/14)(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 5, Israel's finance minister said he will stop funding for ultra-Orthodox seminaries whose students do not enlist into the military. Yair Lapid's announcement was in response to an order from the Israeli Supreme Court.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Israel's Jerusalem municipality approved building plans for 558 new homes in the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians want for a future state.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Japanese composer Mamoru Samurogochi (50) confessed that he had employed a ghostwriter since the 1990s to compose most of his music. The ghostwriter then came forward and accused Samurogochi of faking his deafness.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A7)
2014 Feb 5, Uke Rugova, a Kosovo lawmaker who is also a son of late President Ibrahim Rugova, was arrested by European Union police and justice workers for alleged involvement in organized crime and fraud.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Libya a bomb rocked the playground of a primary school in Benghazi during recess, wounding 12 children, hours after gunmen had rampaged through the streets.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Pakistani anti-drone activist Kareem Khan was taken from his home by around a dozen men in police uniforms who bundled him into a police vehicle in front of his wife, children and neighbors. He was tortured and interrogated before being dumped blindfolded on the outskirts of the capital early on Feb 14.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 5, A planned extension of the Panama Canal, one of the world's most important shipping routes, was thrown into doubt after a group of companies, led by Spanish builder Sacyr, said its talks with Panama's government over how to expand the canal had fallen apart. Panama Canal Authority head Jorge Quijano said the expansion project will be completed in 2015 with or without a Spanish-led consortium.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Puerto Rico's governor said he is renegotiating the payment of short-term debt and has ordered all government agencies to reduce their current budgets by 2 percent after the island's credit rating was downgraded to junk status.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, A Romanian court charged and arrested Rudel Obreja, a former chairman of Romania's Boxing Federation (2004-2012), with influence peddling for allegedly offering to try to influence a sentencing hearing in return for money.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Russian security forces surrounded a group of militants who had holed up in the Dagestani town of Izberbash. Dzhamaldin Mirzayev (30), who was suspected of having been involved in training the bombers and sending them to Volgograd, was killed in an exchange of gunfire.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In South Africa demonstrators set several buildings, including a clinic, on fire in the Bronkhorstspruit district, east of Pretoria, to protest what they say are high utility bills.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In South Sudan government forces and allied militia attacked rebel defensive positions in the northern part of Jonglei state, close to the border with Upper Nile. Government soldiers mutinied in Lakes state while they were being sent to fight the rebels in Panyijar county in neighboring Unity state.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 5, Syria missed a deadline to hand over all the toxic materials it declared to the world's chemical weapons watchdog, putting the program several weeks behind schedule and jeopardizing a final June 30 deadline.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Turkey's parliament approved internet controls enabling web pages to be blocked within hours in what the opposition decried as part of a government bid to stifle a corruption scandal.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 5, A UN human rights committee urged the Holy See to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed their crimes saying the Vatican "systematically" adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 6, In Florida a motorboat was found capsized about 75 miles northeast of West Palm Beach. It had carried at least 12 people and 4 were confirmed dead.
(SSFC, 2/9/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 6, In Pennsylvania a winter storm left some 849,000 people without power for a 2nd day. The 2nd winter storm this week in the mid-Atlantic had dumped more than a foot of snow in some places.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 6, Human Rights Watch said Bangladeshi garment factory owners use beatings, the threat of murder and sexual intimidation to stop workers from forming trade unions.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Bolivia’s government said rains and floods have left 38 people dead as forecasters predicted more rain.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 6, Bosnian police used tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters who threw stones at the building of the local government in Tuzla, demanding action against owners of four former state-owned companies who filed for bankruptcy after they were privatized.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Millions of commuters faced a second day of travel chaos due to a 48-hour strike by London Underground workers angry over ticket office closures and job cuts.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, In France more than 3 tons of illegal ivory seized by customs agents was pulverized into dust in Europe's first destruction of a stockpile of the banned elephant tusks.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Hungary's parliament authorized a deal with Russia to build two reactors at the country's only nuclear power plant in Paks.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, In eastern Indonesia a police officer and a suspected Islamic militant were killed in gunfire near a mountainous village believed to be a terrorist hideout. Preliminary investigation indicated that the men were part of a terrorist group led by Abu Wardah Santoso, Indonesia's most wanted terror suspect.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Five Iranian border guards were kidnapped by militants in the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan by militants who allegedly took them across the border to Pakistan. On Feb 17 Iran said it would send forces into Pakistan to free them if Islamabad did not take measures to secure their release. The kidnapping was later claimed by Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), a Sunni Muslim rebel group. One of the guards was killed in March. On April 4 Iran’s Fars News reported that the other four were have been released.
(Reuters, 2/17/14)(Reuters, 4/4/14)
2014 Feb 6, In Iraq seven car bombs exploded across Baghdad, killing at least 13 people in apparently coordinated attacks that targeted mainly Shi'ite Muslim districts.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Human Rights Watch said Iraqi authorities are illegally detaining thousands of women, many of whom are subjected to torture and ill-treatment including the threat of sexual abuse. Many were rounded up for alleged terrorist activities by male family members.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, In Israel thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews blocked highways across the country to protest plans to enlist them into the military.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Fifteen migrants drowned while trying to swim to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from a beach in neighboring Morocco. Authorities said "around 400 sub-Saharans" had taken part in the desperate bid to reach EU territory. On Feb 13 Spain said border police had fired rubber bullets in an attempt to turn back around 200 migrants who tried to cross the frontier. Videos later showed police firing rubber bullets. Police denied the action contributed to the drowning. On Feb 11, 2015, the Ceuta court said 16 Civil Guard officers will appear for questioning in March.
(AFP, 2/6/14)(Reuters, 2/13/14)(AP, 2/11/15)
2014 Feb 6, Myanmar media reported that the government has arrested 4 journalists of a private weekly following the publication of a story about the construction of a defense factory in Pauk. The Unity journal quoted villagers as saying the factory was for the production of chemical weapons.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 6, Nigeria's secret police said that it was holding Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, leader of the outlawed Niger Delta Volunteer Force, in the latest crackdown on potential trouble before elections next year.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, North Korea threatened to cancel reunions of Korean War-divided families because of upcoming US-South Korean military drills and accused the United States of raising tensions by flying nuclear-capable B-52 bombers near the Korean Peninsula.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Peace talks between the Pakistani government and representatives of the Taliban began in Islamabad after a short delay.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, In Puerto Rico Pablo Casellas, the son of a US district court judge, was sentenced to 109 years in prison for killing his wife in July, 2012.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, South African police fired stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse thousands of rioters demanding basic government services in communities near Pretoria and Johannesburg.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, South Sudan rebels fighting government troops said that 700 men from the government side have defected with all their equipment and were heading to join the rebels.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, The Syrian government reached an agreement with the UN to secure the evacuation of hundreds of trapped civilians from besieged parts of Homs. A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of a prison in Aleppo and opposition fighters stormed in freeing hundreds of prisoners. State-run Syrian television said the army foiled an attempt by "terrorist groups" to attack the prison.
(AP, 2/6/14)(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 6, In Yemen government mediator Abdulqader Hilal announced his resignation via Facebook. Hilal, tasked by President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi with ending the fighting between Huthi rebels and tribesmen, has accused Ansarullah (Sunni Islamists) of failing to respect the terms of a truce agreed last weekend.
(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Pres. Obama signed into law an agriculture spending bill that will spread benefits to farmers while trimming the food stamp program.
(SFC, 2/8/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 7, In Argentina a truck driving on the wrong side of a highway crashed head on with passenger bus killing at least 18 people on National Hwy 7 in Mendoza province.
(SSFC, 2/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 7, Protesters in Bosnia set fire to government buildings and fought with police as anger over unemployment and political inertia fuelled a 3rd day of the worst civil unrest in the country since its 1992-95 war.
(Reuters, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In Cambodia a boy (8) died of H5N1 bird flu, the country’s first case this year. His sister (2) also died the same day.
(AP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 7, In Central African Republic thousands of Muslims fled for their lives from Bangui, with Christian crowds cheering as truckloads of Muslim families made their way out of town. One man who fell off a truck was subsequently killed and his body mutilated, highlighting the savagery faced by those Muslims who stayed behind. A convoy of some 500 cars, trucks and motorcycles was guarded by armed soldiers from Chad. The UN's refugee agency said nearly 9,000 people, mainly Muslims, have fled to Cameroon in just over a week to escape communal bloodshed in the CAR.
(AP, 2/7/14)(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In China villagers of Baha in Yunnan province smashed the offices and equipment of a local metalwork factory and clashed with police after the boss refused to meet with them over smoke and pollution concerns. Xinhua News later said police were arresting people involved and had identified 16 suspects.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 7, In Egypt six policemen were wounded in double bombing attack in Cairo, hours before clashes between police and Islamist protesters in several cities killed 3 people. Ajnad Misr, Arabic for Egypt's Soldiers, claimed responsibility for the bomb attack. Late day airstrikes targeted hideouts of "terrorist, extremely dangerous takfiri" militants in the eastern border town of Sheikh Zuweyid. 16 militants were reported killed.
(AFP, 2/7/14)(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 7, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed outrage over a leaked phone conversation in which Victoria Nuland, a top US diplomat, used the f-word regarding the European Union's handling of the crisis in Ukraine. An angry US State Department pointed the finger at Russia for allegedly bugging the diplomats' phones.
(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, India acceded to Italy's request and said it won't invoke an anti-piracy law carrying the death penalty when it tries two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Aid agencies working in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem expressed alarm at a spike in Israeli demolitions of Palestinian property coinciding with renewed US-backed peace negotiations.
(Reuters, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Mali’s Ministry of Defense said around 30 ethnic Tuaregs have been killed in the northern Gao region in local fighting with ethnic Peuls.
(Reuters, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Pakistan's fledgling peace talks with the Taliban suffered a fresh blow as a negotiator for the militants said he would take no further part until the agenda included the imposition of Islamic sharia law.
(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In the northern Philippines a bus veered off a mountain road and fell into a ravine, killing at least 14 people.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In Puerto Rico Pedro Rodriguez Colondres was indicted on accusations that he ran a fraud scheme obtaining at least half a million dollars in veteran's benefits under a false name from 1984 to 2011.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 7, Russia opened the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Police arrested four gay rights activists protesting in St. Petersburg.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In South Africa striking miners clashed with police after using rocks and burning tires to block a road leading to Anglo American Platinum's Union mine near Northam town. One protester was killed.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 7, Spain’s Cabinet approved a bill amending previous legislation that granted nationality by naturalization to Sephardic Jews who chose to apply for it. The reform will allow dual nationality, enabling people who can prove Sephardic ancestry to also retain their previous citizenships.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Famished and traumatized Syrians were able to leave besieged parts of Homs for the first time in more than a year as part of a potentially ground breaking agreement between the Syrian government and the United Nations.
(Time.com, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman said one of its journalists, Mahir Zeynalov (27) from Azerbaijan, has been ordered to leave the country for criticizing PM Tayyip Erdogan on Twitter.
(Reuters, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In central and southern Uruguay flooding caused by torrential rains forced the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 7, In Yemen Fresh clashes between Shiite rebels and tribesmen backed by Sunni Islamists erupted near Sanaa.
(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Albania a speeding minivan carrying eleven people lost control and hurtled 100 meters down a cliff, killing 6 people and seriously injuring the five others.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, A huge falling rock derailed a train in the French Alps, killing two people and partly pushing one of its carriages over the edge of a mountain slope.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Guatemala 20 men stormed a house in a village in Peten killing 9 people including a girl (5) and baby (3 months). The area was know to be contested by drug traffickers.
(SFC, 2/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 8, In India an angry crowd gathered outside a Delhi police station to protest poor policing and racist treatment of people in the northeast after a 14-year-old girl from that part of India filed charges of rape in the capital.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, Moroccan authorities banned a sit-in by hundreds of judges who want greater independence for the judiciary, deploying dozens of riot police to central Rabat and closing off streets around the Justice Ministry.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Russia some 40 people gathered in downtown Moscow to protest the decision of leading Russian cable and satellite companies to drop the channel, Dozhd (TV Rain). Except for women with children, most were immediately detained.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Saudi Arabia a hotel fire in Medina killed 13 people including 9 Egyptian pilgrims.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 8, A Russian animal rights activist was detained in Moscow after he and two others protested the country's policy of killing stray dogs in Sochi.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Spain thousands of women marched in the streets of Madrid to protest against the Spanish government's plan to restrict access to abortion.
(AFP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Syria new aerial bombardment from explosives-packed barrel bombs in Aleppo killed at least 20 people. Renewed fighting broke a cease-fire in Homs and halted a plan to evacuate civilians and bring supplies into rebel-held areas under siege.
(AFP, 2/8/14)(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Ukraine Thousands of people angered by months of anti-government protests in Kiev converged on one of the protesters' barricades, but retreated after meeting sizeable resistance.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 9, Michael Sam, a defensive end form the Univ. of Missouri, publicly came out as gay. He was expected to be a 3rd A10of 4th round pick at the NFL draft.
(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 9, Bahamas’ military said it has taken 40 Dominican fishermen into custody on suspicion of poaching in Bahamian waters.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Bosnia hundreds marched in Sarajevo to protest alleged police abuse of people arrested during anti-government protests and to call for their release. Police said all but 10 of 44 people have been let go.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Severe flooding and landslips cut off rail links to large parts of southwest England for more than 24 hours as the government came under pressure for its handling of storms battering Britain.
(Reuters, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Violence in Central African Republic's capital, including mob attacks and an apparent assassination attempt targeting the country's former justice minister, killed at least 10 people over the last 24 hours. Gunmen murdered politician Jean-Emmanuel Djarawa, a Christian representative for eastern Haute-Kotto province, outside his house in Bangui.
(AFP, 2/9/14)(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 9, Denmark’s Copenhagen Zoo killed a 2-year-old giraffe and fed its remains to lions as visitors watched, ignoring a petition signed by thousands and offers from other zoos and a private individual to save the animal.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Gabriel Axel (b.1918), the first Dane to win an Oscar for best foreign film with "Babette's Feast" (1987) which he directed, died.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 9, Egypt's interior ministry said it has broken up a "military wing" of the Muslim Brotherhood, allegedly formed to attack policemen, in the most detailed accusation yet implicating the group in militant attacks.
(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Egypt's Health Ministry said the number of people killed by swine flu in the country since December has reached 38.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Danish director Lars von Trier brought an extra-long version of his "Nymphomaniac Volume I" to the Berlin International Film Festival, a cut that increases to nearly 2½ hours the first installment of the two-part drama about a woman's sexual life from girlhood to age 50.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In northern India a tiger prowling near villages killed its 10th person in six weeks, a day after eluding a trap set by hunters with a live calf as bait.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 9, Iran agreed to start addressing UN nuclear agency suspicions that it may have worked on designing an atomic weapon, a potential breakthrough in unblocking a long-stalled investigation into Tehran's disputed atomic activities.
(Reuters, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Iraq 9 people were found dead in two brutal incidents, one where militants forced Shiite policemen to pray before killing them, and another where decapitated heads were left in a market.
(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Israel denied entry permits to some 50 Palestinian medical patients from the Gaza Strip because the words "State of Palestine" was on the letterhead of their application.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 9, A Palestinian militant was in critical condition after an Israeli air strike on central Gaza that the army said targeted a "key" figure responsible for cross-border rocket fire.
(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Russia a man employed as a private security guard (24) opened fire in a cathedral on Russia's Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, killing a nun and a parishioner and wounding six others.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Swiss voters narrowly backed proposals to reintroduce immigration quotas with the European Union. 50.3% backed the so-called "Stop mass immigration" initiative.
(Reuters, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Syria the governor Homs said that over 600 people have been evacuated from rebel-held parts of the city, in a rare 3-day cease-fire with rebels. Government aircraft dropped barrel bombs on Aleppo, killing at least 11 people. Extremist Islamic rebels overran Maan village in Hama province, populated by the Alawite minority, and killed at least 40 people
(AP, 2/9/14)(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 9, Ukraine's security agency warned of a heightened risk of terrorism, including from nearly three months of anti-government protests. An estimated 70,000 pro-Western Ukrainians thronged the heart of Kiev vowing never to give up their drive to oust President Viktor Yanukovych for his alliance with old master Russia.
(AP, 2/9/14)(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Yemen Shiite rebels and Yemeni tribesmen agreed a ceasefire after deadly clashes between the two sides in the Arhab district near Sanaa. A bomb planted in the car of a Yemeni intelligence colonel exploded near the oil ministry, killing the officer and wounding 3 people.
(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 10, Shirley Temple Black (b.1928), child film star and US diplomat, died at her home in Woodside, Ca.
(SFC, 1/26/06, p.E3)(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A1)
2014 Feb 10, In Afghanistan a car bomb in Kabul killed two US contractors for the international security force ISAF. A coalition soldier was killed in a separate attack in the east.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 10, Brazil’s Band TV said that 49-year-old journalist Santiago Andrade remains in a coma on life support, but that doctors have declared him brain dead. He was hit in the head on Feb 6 by a powerful flare fired during a protest against a 10-cent hike in bus fares in Rio.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Thousands of Bosnian protesters called for the resignation of their regional government, ratcheting up demands on the sixth straight day of demonstrations over unemployment, corruption and political paralysis.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, The River Thames burst its banks after reaching its highest level in years, flooding riverside towns upstream of London.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, In Burundi at least 60 people perished in flooding and landslides following a night of torrential rain in Bujumbura that swept away hundreds of homes and cut off roads and power.
(AFP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, The EU agreed to launch negotiations with Cuba to increase trade, investment and dialogue on human rights in its most significant diplomatic shift since Brussels lifted sanctions on the island in 2008.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Greek police arrested four foreigners and seized weapons and explosives in a raid by the country's anti-terrorist unit on residences in the greater Athens area. Media said they appeared to be Turkish nationals suspected of belonging to the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP/C.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Penguin Books India agreed to withdraw from sale all copies of "The Hindus: An Alternative History" (2011) by Wendy Doniger, a book that takes an unorthodox view of Hinduism, and will pulp them as part of a settlement after a case was filed against the publisher.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 10, In Iraq militants accidentally set off their own car bomb at a training camp in an orchard in the village of al-Jalam, leaving 21 dead and resulting in two dozen arrests.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, In Kenya gays and lesbians joined a global effort to protest against an anti-homosexuality bill passed by Uganda's parliament that is now in the hands of the country's president.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, In the Netherlands former health minister Els Borst (81), a woman who drafted the nation's landmark 2002 law permitting euthanasia, was found dead in her garage. Police ruled out natural causes.
(AP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 10, Saudi state media said a court has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison for protesting and disseminating photos of demonstrations online.
(AP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 10, In Somalia two car bombs exploded in Mogadishu, wounding at least five people including a government official.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Spanish High Court Judge Ismael Moreno sought international arrest orders for former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, ex-PM Li Peng and others on allegations of genocide in Tibet.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Syria shipped out a third consignment of chemical weapons materials and has also destroyed some materials on its territory.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition resumed in Geneva.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Thai police made their first arrest of a senior leader of the antigovernment protests. Sonthiyarn Cheunruethainaitham was arrested for violating the country’s emergency law.
(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 10, Yemen's president and main parties agreed to transform the unrest-riven country into a six-region federation as part of a political transition. The move was immediately rejected by some southerners who insist on a separate state.
(AFP, 2/10/14)(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 11, Voters in Fremont, Nebraska, decided to keep an ordnance that requires renters to get a $5 permit and swear they have legal permission to live in the US.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A14)
2014 Feb 11, The websites of casinos owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp. were hacked. These included sites for a Sands casino in Bethlehem, Pa., as well as casinos in Nevada and Macao.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 11, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said he was suspending the use of the death penalty for as long as he’s in office.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 11, The Afghan public health ministry said it has launched an emergency polio vaccination campaign in Kabul after a girl contracted the disease, the city's first case since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, An Algerian military transport plane crashed in the country's mountainous east with but one survivor. 76 people were killed, including women and children.
(AP, 2/11/14)(AP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 11, Brazil’s Environment Ministry said it will begin a program to save the endangered three-banded armadillo, the mascot for this year’s World Cup.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 11, Barclays PLC faced widespread criticism after the scandal-plagued bank announced plans to slash up to 12,000 jobs this year while also setting aside more money to pay bonuses.
(AP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, The Burundi Red Cross said torrential rains and landslides have left at least 77 people dead and about 12,000 displaced.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, China and Taiwan held talks in Nanjing, their highest level talks since splitting amid a civil war in 1949.
(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 11, Cyprus Pres. Nicos Anastasiades met with Dervis Eroglu on the UN’s “green line" and put forward a “road-map" where their two communities would unite under a federation but run their affairs as “constituent states."
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.48)
2014 Feb 11, Czech Rep. media reported that former PM Petr Necas has been charged with bribery for his alleged role in offering state posts to three former members of parliament who had been rebelling against the previous government’s austerity program, in return for them leaving office.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/nyjfczk)
2014 Feb 11, French Pres. Francois Hollande arrived in the US for a formal state visit.
(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 11, German and Dutch authorities arrested five men in a sting operation against a website allegedly used to sell illegal drugs and weapons.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 11, In India Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi's new chief minister, took his anti-graft campaign to new heights, ordering an investigation into India's richest man, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, and policymakers over gas pricing.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Iraq militants in pick-up trucks ambushed army outposts protecting a major oil export pipeline in Nineveh province overnight, killing at least 16 soldiers by shooting them and slitting their throats.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, Police in Italy and New York broke up a major trans-Atlantic mafia ring, arresting 24 people accused of plotting to move hundreds of millions of dollars in drugs between South America, Italy and the USA.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, The value of Kazakhstan currency, the tenge, fell by 19%.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.35)
2014 Feb 11, Libyan media said six journalists have been kidnapped in recent days in Tripoli, and though one has been released the whereabouts of the other five remained unknown.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 11, In northeast Nigeria gunmen from Islamist sect Boko Haram killed 51 people in an attack on Konduga, Borno state.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Pakistan unknown assailants lobbed grenades into a cinema in Peshawar, killing 10 people and wounding 16.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, Serbia's war crimes court jailed nine former members of the "Jackals," a Serbian paramilitary group, for killing more than 120 ethnic Albanian civilians during the Kosovo conflict in 1999.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, South Africa issued a black-and-white commemorative stamp to celebrate the life and legacy of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela who died last year.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Syria the evacuation of civilians from besieged rebel-held areas of Homs was suspended, as a mediator said peace talks in Switzerland were making little progress.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Tanzania the UN-backed court for Rwanda acquitted on appeal former paramilitary police chief Augustin Ndindiliyimana and ex-elite battalion commander Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye of charges related to the 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In central Ukraine Oleksandr Lobodenko (34), a judge who placed several anti-government protesters under house arrest, was murdered overnight in Kremenchuk.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 11, In western Venezuela armed pro-government groups attacked and shot at people protesting against President Nicolas Maduro's government, injuring five.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Yemen northern Shiite rebels and a faction demanding southern autonomy rejected a six-region federation plan for Yemen, agreed by parties during the "national dialogue" aimed at securing the country's political transition.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Yemen a British teacher was abducted on his way from an educational institute in Sanaa and reportedly taken to Marib.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, Pres. Obama signed an executive order raising the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal contractors.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A9)
2014 Feb 12, A US federal judge ordered that Kentucky recognize same-sex marriages that had been legally performed in other states, opening the door for activists to strike down the state’s ban entirely.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A9)
2014 Feb 12, In Kentucky a sinkhole collapsed part of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green damaging eight cars. The sinkhole and damaged cars were later turned into part of the museum exhibit.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A7)(SFC, 8/15/15, p.A4)
2014 Feb 12, It was reported that Comcast has agreed to buy Time Warner Cable Inc. for $45.2 billion in stock or $158.82 per TWC share, which closed at $135.31.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A13)
2014 Feb 12, Sid Caesar (b.1922), former TV comedian, died at his home in Beverly Hills. His “Your Show of Shows" dominated the Saturday viewing habits of millions of Americans from 1950-1954.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 12, In Bangladesh a mortar shell exploded accidentally during firing practice at a military training base, killing five military and border guard personnel and injuring 14 others.
(AP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, In Brazil some 15,000 landless peasants demanding land reform engaged police in Brasilia. At least 32 people were injured.
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 12, British police searched a home in the southeastern town of Crawley as part of an investigation into reports that a man named as Abdul Waheed Majid (41) was responsible for a suicide attack in Syria.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) arrested Sudhir Choudhri, an Indian-born donor to one of Britain's ruling political parties, and his son as part of an investigation into Rolls-Royce's dealings in Asia.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 12, Flooded communities in Britain faced a fresh battering from storms and high winds as emergency efforts in stricken areas picked up following criticism of a sluggish response.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, China's Cabinet announced that 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) has been set aside this year to reward cities and regions that make significant progress in controlling air pollution, highlighting how the issue has become a priority for the leadership.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, Amnesty International said the exodus of tens of thousands of Muslims from Central African Republic amounts to "ethnic cleansing." French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian pledged on a visit to CAR to continue disarming both Muslim and Christian fighters. African Union peacekeepers uncovered a mass grave at a military camp in Bangui occupied by the Muslim Seleka rebels.
(AP, 2/12/14)(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, In China a strong and shallow 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the far western region of Xinjiang, but in a sparsely populated area.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, CongoDRC Pres. Joseph Kabila, announced an amnesty for former members of the defeated M23 rebel army.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, A municipal planning committee advanced a plan to build a Jewish seminary in the heart of an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem, triggering angry Palestinian accusations that Israel was undermining already troubled Mideast peace efforts.
(AP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, Italy's constitutional court struck down a drug law that tripled sentences for selling, cultivating or possessing cannabis and which has been blamed for causing prison overcrowding.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, In Kenya 70 men arrested during a raid on a mosque in the port city of Mombasa were formally charged with being members of Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, Lebanon's army arrested Naim Abbas, a senior al Qaeda-linked militant, described by security sources as a "mastermind of car bombs" that targeted Shi'ite areas of the country.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, Niger police detained three journalists from the Anfani private radio station as well as a union leader who criticized President Mahamadou Issfouou on air.
(Reuters, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, Nigeria said it would open a probe into claims of state-sponsored killings dating back to the era of military rule, raising hopes that perpetrators will finally be brought to book.
(AFP, 2/12/14)0
2014 Feb 12, Russian geologist Yevgeny Vitishko, a leading activist who campaigned against environmental damage caused by preparations for the Winter Olympics, was sentenced to three years in a penal colony. A court in Krasnodar converted a 2012 suspended sentence to a prison term.
(AFP, 2/12/14)(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 12, South African police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at supporters of the ruling ANC party who attacked an opposition rally in Johannesburg, amid escalating tensions ahead of a crunch general election.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, Syrian government forces and fighters from Lebanese ally Hezbollah pounded Syria's strategic border town of Yabroud in apparent preparation for a new offensive to flush out rebels. At least 51 people were reportedly killed in Aleppo, mainly by barrel bombs dropped on eight rebel-held districts from helicopters.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, UN leader Ban Ki-moon condemned what he said was the use of cluster bombs in the war in South Sudan.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, In Venezuela 3 people were killed in Caracas as protests against Pres. Maduro turned violent. Armed members of a pro-government vigilante arrived on motorcycles and began shooting at more than 100 anti-Maduro student protesters clashing with security forces.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A2)(Econ, 2/15/14, p.30)
2014 Feb 13, US federal authorities said they have detained 57 migrants from Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Brazil in separate incidents near Puerto Rico's west coast. Authorities planned to prosecute 19 of those migrants, five of them on human smuggling charges.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, A US federal judge found Virginia’s ban on same sex marriage unconstitutional.
(SFC, 2/14/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 13, The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies said that North Korea has accelerated excavation at a remote mountain site used for underground nuclear test explosions. However, it did not see signs of an imminent test.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Nevada Wayne Burgarello shot and killed Cody Devine (34) and wounded Janai Wilson (29) after confronting them sleeping at his vacant duplex in Sparks. On May 29, 2015, Burgarello (74) was found not guilty after insisting he was acting in self-defense.
(http://tinyurl.com/pks2m5o)(SSFC, 5/31/15, p.A6)
2014 Feb 13, Ralph Waite (85), actor, died. He played the patriarch in the TV series “The Waltons" (1972-1981).
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.C14)
2014 Feb 13, Afghanistan released 65 accused militants from a former US prison despite protests from the American military, which says the men are Taliban fighters who will likely return to the battlefield to kill coalition and Afghan forces.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Afghan women marched in Kabul to protest violence against women and decry a new draft law that activists say will severely limit justice for victims of domestic abuse.
(SFC, 2/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 13, Albanian authorities said they have seized 2 metric tons of marijuana hidden in a rocky part of a bay and destined for Greece or Italy.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Argentina a new consumer price index, developed with help from the IMF, registered inflation at 3.7% for January, the highest official rate since 2002 and much higher than the 1.4% posted in December.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.32)
2014 Feb 13, In Belgium lawmakers voted to extend a decade-old law allowing euthanasia for adults after months of often heated public debate. Belgium's House of Representatives lifted all age restrictions on the right of the incurably sick to end their lives.
(AFP, 2/13/14)(SFC, 2/14/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 13, Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp., the world's largest gold miner, announced massive losses while forecasting rising costs and less gold to dig for profitably.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In the Central African Republic Richard Bejouane, the self-proclaimed leader of the CAR’s Christian-dominated vigilantes (anti-balaka), warned Pres. Catherine Samba Panza against any crackdown against his group.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, The UN mission in CongoDRC (MONUSCO) said more than 70 men and women have been summarily executed in the restive eastern part of the country late last month and early this month.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In India a lawmaker sprayed pepper spray inside Parliament, creating chaos that left his colleagues coughing and crying as they were ushered from the hall. Lawmakers had been set to vote on a long-contentious proposal to create the new southern state of Telangana from mostly poor, inland districts of Andhra Pradesh state.
(AP, 2/13/14)(SFC, 2/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 13, In northern Iraq gunmen seized part of Sulaiman Bek and nearby villages. Bombs killed at least two people at a historic Baghdad market and set it ablaze.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian and wounded another in the Gaza Strip. Relatives said Ibrahim Mansour (26) was collecting gravel to sell from his donkey cart when he was shot dead. The Israeli military said soldiers fired at Palestinians tampering with Israel's border security fence.
(Reuters, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Italian leftist leader Matteo Renzi called for a new government in his first direct challenge to PM Enrico Letta.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Jamaica authorities arrested a police officer and two others accused of transporting 23 pounds (10 kg) of marijuana.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 13, A top Kenyan official, Francis Kimemia, accused the United States of trying to overthrow Kenya's government by supporting activists even as baton-wielding police used tear gas to break up an anti-government protest in downtown Nairobi. Kimemia served as the chairman of the National Security Advisory Committee and the secretary of the president's Cabinet.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Nigeria's Senate said it is ordering a forensic audit to track down billions of missing petrodollars after the Senate Committee heard that the amount of unaccounted petrodollars has grown to $20 billion. The World Bank has estimated that at least $400 billion has gone missing from government coffers since independence.
(AP, 2/14/14)(Econ, 2/15/14, p.43)
2014 Feb 13, In Nigeria a mob armed with wooden clubs and iron bars, screaming that they were going to "cleanse" their neighborhood of gay people, dragged 14 young men from their beds and assaulted them in Gishiri, a shantytown with mud roads near central Abuja.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Pakistan an explosion targeting a bus of policemen killed 12 of them and wounded 58 near Karachi.
(Reuters, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Saudi Arabia said Yemen has handed over 29 Saudis wanted for suspected links to Al-Qaeda.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Somalia at least 6 people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack targeting a UN convoy close to Mogadishu's heavily-fortified international airport.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Syrian activists said government shelling and airstrikes using makeshift barrel bombs have killed about 400 people in Aleppo so far this month. The governor of the central province of Homs says a cease-fire has been extended for three days as of today.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Yemen 29 people convicted "of various terrorist and criminal charges" escaped a Sanaa prison when a blast breached the facility's outer wall.
(AFP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, President Obama visited the San Joaquin Valley to focus on California’s severe drought, and announce new measures in the ongoing federal effort to address it. Obama toured parts of California's drought zone and pledged to speed help to the No. 1 farm state.
(AP, 2/14/14)(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In New Mexico unusually high levels of radioactive particles were found at an underground nuclear waste site in what a spokesman said looked like the first real alarm since the plant opened in 1999. Investigators in June said they have found five other potentially explosive barrels in West Texas that came from the same Los Alamos waste stream.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)(SFC, 6/11/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 14, The snow-weary eastern US was digging out from yet another mammoth storm, as the deadly weather crept through New England and eastern Canada and another storm approached.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, About $2.5 million of Bitcoin was apparently stolen from Silk Road 2.0, a website used to trade mainly illegal drugs. A flaw in Bitcoin’s code was discovered earlier this month.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.65)
2014 Feb 14, In Bahrain a blast struck a bus carrying police as anti-government activists clashed with police on the third anniversary of the uprising in the small Gulf island nation. One policeman died of wounds sustained in the bomb blast. 26 people were arrested. Another 29 were arrested a day earlier.
(AP, 2/14/14)(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Cambodia Dave Walker (58), a Canadian filmmaker, went missing. His body was found April 30 in the woods near the famous Angkor temple complex.
(AP, 5/1/14)
2014 Feb 14, In the Central African Republic thousands of Muslims who tried to flee the violence in Bangui were turned back by peacekeepers, as crowds of angry Christians shouted "we're going to kill you all." France announced that it is increasing the number of its troops on the ground in CAR by 400 for a total of 2,000.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In China 11 "terrorists" were reported killed during an attack in Wushi County in the Aksu Prefecture of Xinjiang.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, The Chinese government sacked the police chief of the southern "sin city" of Dongguan following a candid report by the state broadcaster on the underground sex industry there.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In eastern China a wedding hall collapsed killing 10 people in Yazhuang village, Zhejiang province.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, The CongoDRC government said 22 Congolese soldiers and 230 Ugandan rebels have been killed in a nearly month-long offensive in restive eastern DRC.
(AFP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Egypt police and residents clashed with supporters of ousted Pres. Morsi leaving a man shot dead in Damietta and a child killed in Minya.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, In Germany Agriculture Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich announced his resignation over claims he leaked confidential information about an international child porn probe.
(AFP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In India anti-graft activist Arvind Kejriwal quit as the top elected official in the New Delhi state government after lawmakers blocked the introduction of a bill to create a strong ombudsman in the capital. He said he would recommend that new elections be held in New Delhi.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Indonesia a volcanic eruption on Java sent a 17 km (10 mile) ash cloud into the air. More than 56,000 people were forced to flee their homes and four 4 were killed when Mount Kelud erupted.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Indonesia seven Japanese divers went missing off the resort island of Bali as strong winds and heavy rains hit Crystal Bay. Five of the divers were found alive on Feb 17.
(AP, 2/15/14)(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 14, Googoosh, an Iranian pop star living in Amsterdam, released a music video promoting gay rights. It was clicked on half a million times in the first 24 hours. Navid Akhavan, an Iranian-born Germany, wrote and directed the video for the song “Behesht" (Heaven).
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 14, Iraqi troops backed by helicopter gunships regained ground in the northern town of Sulaiman Pek, a day after parts of it were overrun by Sunni Islamist insurgents. At least 12 militants were killed by the army.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, Italy’s Premier Enrico Letta drove himself to the president's palace and resigned after he was sacked by his own party in a back-room mutiny designed to catapult Florence's young Mayor Matteo Renzi into the helm of Italy's government.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Ivory Coast Michel Gbagbo, son of former president Laurent Gbagbo, was arrested at the airport while attempting to leave the country on a flight to Paris.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Jamaica Leroy Russell, a dancehall deejay, was charged in a multimillion-dollar lottery scam.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, Libya's government and armed forces moved to quash rumors of an impending coup after retired Gen. Khalifa Hifter called for parliament and the government to be suspended.
(AFP, 2/14/14)(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, North and South Korea agreed in a rare high-level meeting to stop insulting each other and to go ahead with planned reunions of Korean War-divided families next week despite a dispute over upcoming US-South Korean military drills.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Syria a car bomb killed at least 32 people the town of al-Yaduda (Yadouda) near the border with Jordan. At least 5 soldiers were killed when Islamist rebels detonated mines under the Carlton hotel in Aleppo. In Geneva Syrian government and opposition delegates said talks to end their country's civil war have reached an impasse, with the US and Russia backing the rival camps and trading accusations over the deadlock. International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi told delegates that he plans to take the talks into a third round.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)(AP, 2/14/14)(AFP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an al Qaeda splinter group (ISIL) has executed at least 13 people including relatives of fighters from rival rebel groups before withdrawing from a town near Aleppo. It did not say when the incident took place in Haritan.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, Thailand riot police cleared anti-government protesters from a major boulevard in Bangkok.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, Ukraine authorities provisionally freed the last of 234 detained protesters under an amnesty offer aimed a diffusing protracted street protests.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, It was reported that a UN Commission of Inquiry has found that crimes against humanity have been committed in North Korea and recommends that its findings be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, Louis Willis, the former director of the US Virgin Islands' Internal Revenue Bureau, turned himself in under charges of tax evasion.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Venezuela soldiers fired tear gas and deployed water cannons to break up hundreds of student demonstrators blocking a highway in protest against President Nicolas Maduro. Authorities freed 25 student protesters pending trial and said that 74 others arrested after this week's deadly political turmoil would be processed within hours.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, Yemeni military and security officials says that the death toll from a prison break in Sanaa has reached 10, and that al-Qaida received help from inside the prison to facilitate the escape of 29 inmates.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, Zambian ex-diplomat and son of former president Rupiah Banda was sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of corruption. Andrew Banda (53) was arrested in 2012 on charges of soliciting a kickback from Italian company Fratelli Locci, which was awarded a contract to build roads.
(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In California a woman and her 4 children were killed in their SUV near Riverdale after a driver in a minivan failed to yield at a stop sign.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 15, In Colorado an avalanche killed two skiers and injured three others on Star Mountain near Leadville.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A13)
2014 Feb 15, In New Jersey Julio Lopez-Cruz (18) was attacked as he headed to his New Jersey home with some groceries. He died a short time later. On Feb 27 authorities said that they have arrested Michael Holman (18) and Dante Martin (18) and charged them with murder.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 15, In NYC Jerome Murdough (56, a mentally ill former veteran, was found dead in his jail cell on Rikers Island. The temperature in the cell was recorded at 101 degrees due to equipment malfunction. He had been arrested on Feb 7 on a misdemeanor tresspassing charge for sleeping in an enclosed stairwell. In May his mother planned to file a $25 million lawsuit against NYC. On Oct 31 NYC reached a $2.5 million settlement with the mother of Murdough.
(SFC, 5/17/14, p.A7)(SFC, 11/1/14, p.A7)
2014 Feb 15, In southern Afghanistan an improvised explosive device killed a NATO service member.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Bahrain supporters of the main Shiite opposition bloc joined the anniversary rally called by the opposition Al-Wefaq movement to press its campaign for a constitutional monarchy. Thousands clashed with security forces and brought the streets of Manama to a standstill.
(AP, 2/15/14)(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A7)
2014 Feb 15, Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that water is being rationed to nearly six million people living in eleven states.
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 15, Apple opened a retail store in Rio de Janeiro, its first retail store in South America. Its 16GB iPhone 5s was priced at $1,076.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.39)
2014 Feb 15, Two people died in weather-related incidents as storms continue to batter Britain. Officials said that 22 severe flood warnings are in place. More heavy rain and winds were expected.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In the Central African Republic French and African peacekeepers seized weapons from militia in Bangui, but failed to detain a wanted leader of the rogue groups.
(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In CongoDRC journalist Germain Kennedy Muliwavyo (30) died after being shot in the head and stomach during an ambush 60 km outside of Beni.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, Iraqi troops fought to retake full control of Sulaiman Pek from militants who overran parts of it earlier this week. South of Baghdad ISIL militants killed at least 8 soldiers in overnight clashes in Jurf al-Sakha. 12 militants were also killed. Fighting erupted in Ramadi between militants and security forces backed by tribesmen. PM Nuri al-Maliki announced over $83 million in construction funds and training for allied tribal militia during a visit Saturday to Ramadi.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Iraq Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who led revolts against US forces in Iraq before their pullout and became a major influence in the government, said he is leaving political life and has dissolved his movement.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Israel two gunmen on a motorcycle killed a man as he drove near Tel Aviv’s beachfront. Police believed it was a gangland attack.
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 15, Jordanian forces wounded 7 and arrested 3 after 10 gunmen from Syria opened fire on troops patrolling a northern border area.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, Lebanon announced a new government, breaking a 10-month political deadlock during which spillover violence from neighboring Syria worsened internal instability.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, Montenegro police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing protesters who were blaming the government for high unemployment, economic mismanagement and alleged corruption, and demanding its resignation.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Nigeria gunmen suspected of being Boko Haram Islamists reportedly killed as many as 63 people, mostly Christians, in Izghe village, Borno state.
(AFP, 2/16/14)(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 15, In Pakistan a cleric ordered that a woman be stoned to death after her husband found her with another man. She was stoned to death and an autopsy revealed that her skull had been shattered with a brick, and that she had multiple ax wounds. Six people were arrested on Feb 17 in connection with the stoning.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 15, A Philippine Christian sect, Iglesia ni Cristo, broke two records for organizing the largest charity walk in an effort to raise funds for survivors of last year's Typhoon Haiyan.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, Turkey's parliament approved a law boosting government control over the appointment of judges and prosecutors, after a heated debate and a brawl that left one opposition lawmaker hospitalized.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Turkey thousands of Kurds demonstrated in towns across the south east, some clashing violently with riot police as they called for the release of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan on the 15th anniversary of his capture.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, Venezuelan security forces searched for Leopoldo Lopez (42), looking to arrest the hard-line opposition leader who President Nicolas Maduro blames for 3 deaths at recent anti-government protests.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Venezuela a priest (79) and lay worker (84) were killed during a robbery in the city of Valencia. A 17-year-old was arrested the next day and a 14-year-old was being sought.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Colorado 3 people were killed in a single-engine plan crash near Telluride.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 16, A winter storm hit New England overnight with more than a foot of snow in parts of Massachusetts. Thousands on Cape cod were left without power.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 16, In Pennsylvania the FBI said it was in contact with Sunbury police regarding Miranda Barbour (19) who says she wants to plead guilty to the killing Troy LaFerrara last November. She said she has also killed at least 22 people across the country over the last six years as part of her involvement in a satanic cult.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 16, In the Central African Republic troops of the MISCA African Union force clashed with anti-balaka militias at Cantonnier, near the border with Cameroon. 8 people, including 6 civilians, were killed in the firefight.
(AFP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Egypt a suicide bomber on a tourist bus in the Sinai peninsula killed the Egyptian driver and 3 South Koreans. At least a dozen other tourists on the bus were wounded.
(AP, 2/16/14)(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, Japanese media said the second heavy snowfall in a week has killed up to a dozen people and injured hundreds over the weekend, while paralyzing traffic and causing power outages. A record 45 inches of snow fell on Yamanashi.
(AP, 2/16/14)(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 16, In Almaty, Kazakhstan, protesters waived their knickers in a protest ostensibly over a rule regulating synthetic underwear. The “pantie protesters" were rounded up and led away. The real anger was over the recent devaluation of the country’s currency.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.35)
2014 Feb 16, In Libya the wreckage of a helicopter was found near es-Sider port. Authorities began searching for the bodies of the five people who were on board.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Macedonia an explosion wounded five Roma children in western town of Tetovo. Three people were soon detained in the case.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, In west Nepal a small plane owned by state-run Nepal Airlines Corporation crashed with 18 people aboard in bad weather. Rescuers found the wreckage of the 43-year-old de Havilland Twin Otter the next day near Machinelek.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, In North Korea John Short (75), an Australian missionary, was questioned and then arrested in his Pyongyang hotel, a day after he arrived there. He has lived in Hong Kong for 50 years and has been arrested previously in China for evangelizing.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 16, In southwest Pakistan a bomb placed by an ethnic separatist group derailed a train, killing 8 people in Kashmor district, Sindh province. A roadside bomb killed a police officer guarding a polio vaccination drive in the outskirts of Peshawar.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, A faction of the Pakistani Taliban announced that they had killed 23 soldiers, who they said had been kidnapped in 2010.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, A spokesman for Gaza's Hamas rulers said that the Islamic militant group will oppose any international force in a future Palestine, adding a new complication to US-brokered peace efforts.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, In the southern Philippines Suspected Abu Sayyaf extremists kidnapped a Filipino couple, adding to a group of hostages they are holding that includes two European tourists.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Saudi Arabia another man died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 60 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, South African rescuers worked to reach more than 200 illegal miners reported trapped underground in an abandoned gold shaft in Benoni, a suburb just east of Johannesburg. 22 miners were arrested as they emerged over the next 24 hrs. An unknown number of other miners refused to come up.
(AP, 2/16/14)(Reuters, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, Switzerland told the newest EU member, Croatia, that it will not be able to sign a labor market pact as planned on July 1, following a shock referendum vote in favor of immigration curbs.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, The Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) appointed a new military chief. Brig. Gen. Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir replaces Gen. Salim Idris, who was criticized by many in the opposition for being ineffective.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Tunisia armed militants operating a fake checkpoint in the northwest killed 4 people and wounded four others.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Ukraine anti-government demonstrators in Kiev ended their nearly three-month occupation of City Hall as promised in exchange for the release of all jailed protesters.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, Venezuela’s Pres. Nicolas Maduro ordered the expulsion of three US consular officials that he accused of infiltrating universities.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 17, In California 2 CHP officers were killed as they responded to a multi-vehicle crash on Hwy. 99 near Kingsburg.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 17, In Miami, Florida, local artist Maximo Caminero (51) smashed a colored vase, valued at $1 million, by Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. Caminero was charged with criminal mischief. Caminero said he was protesting against favoritism for int’l. rather than local art.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 17, In Idaho an avalanche buried four people killing one man 36 miles north of Ketchum.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 17, Cambodian police arrested two Vietnamese men who were trying to smuggle almost 80 kg (176 pounds) of illegal ivory from Angola.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Colombia 5 policemen were killed by FARC guerrillas.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.32)
2014 Feb 17, Ethiopian Airlines co-pilot Hailemedehin Abera Tagegn (31) locked his colleague out of the cockpit, hijacked a Rome-bound plane and landed in Geneva, all in an attempt to seek asylum in Switzerland. On March 16, 2015, Tagegn was convicted in absentia by Ethiopia’s high court.
(AP, 2/17/14)(AFP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Georgia Vano Merabishvili, a top ally of former President Mikhail Saakashvili, was convicted of embezzlement and abuse of office and sentenced to five years in prison.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, Greek authorities said they have charged the head of a demining charity, his wife and seven other people with fraud and money laundering involving 9 million euros ($12 million) in public funding.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, Iran's ambassador to Moscow said Russia could build the Islamic republic a second nuclear power reactor under a proposed oil-for-goods swap that has raised grave concern in Washington.
(AFP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Israel an explosion atop 5-story building in Acre collapsed three floors leaving 5 people dead. It was reported as an act of sabotage meant to take out a cellular antenna placed on the roof by the owner.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 17, Niger security officials said they have arrested about 20 Boko Haram Islamist militants from neighboring Nigeria who were suspected of planning attacks in Niger's south east border town of Diffa.
(Reuters, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In the southern Philippines a bombing suspect was killed in a gunbattle when he clashed with police commandos. Police were trying to serve a warrant to Muslim militant Yusop Kusain for his alleged involvement in a deadly 2007 bombing.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In South Korea at least 10 people were killed and 50 more feared trapped after the Manua Ocean Resort auditorium collapsed under heavy snow in the city of Gyeongju. Some 560 students from Busan Univ. Foreign Studies had gathered there for a 2-day freshman orientation.
(AFP, 2/17/14)(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 17, A wave of around 250 African migrants managed to breach the high defenses of the Spanish enclave of Melilla in Morocco, with more than half making it into the EU territory.
(AFP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, A UN panel warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he may be held accountable for orchestrating widespread crimes against civilians. The UN Human Rights Council delivered a 400-page report on human rights violations in North Korea.
(AP, 2/17/14)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.33)
2014 Feb 17, Syrian government troops took control of the village of Maan after destroying the last "hideouts of terrorists, who came into the village and committed a massacre." Anti-Assad Islamic fighters overran the village on Feb 9.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Venezuela a student protester (17) died after being hit by a vehicle in Carupano. This was the 4th fatality from political unrest over the past week.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Zimbabwe former US Rep. Melvin Jay Reynolds (62) was arrested on suspicion of possessing pornography and an immigration offence. Reynolds, an Illinois Democrat, resigned from his congressional seat in 1995 after he was convicted of 12 counts of statutory rape, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. On Feb 21 a judge dismissed the pornography charges but ordered Reynolds to pay a fine or face jail time after pleading guilty to charges of violating the country's immigration laws.
(AP, 2/18/14)(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 18, Pres. Obama announced his intention to nominate Jane Chu (56), a pianist and arts administrator from Kansas City, Mo., to lead the National Endowment for the Arts.
(SFC, 2/19/14, p.F5)
2014 Feb 18, In Chicago an elderly nun who broke into what was supposed to be one of the most carefully guarded nuclear facilities in the US was sentenced to 35 months in prison. Sister Megan Rice (84) cut through fences and several layers of security at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee along with two other members of Transform Now Plowshares -- a pacifist group -- in July 2012. Fellow anti-nuclear activists Michael Walli (64) and Greg Boertje-Obed (58) were sentenced to five years and two months in prison because of their criminal histories.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 18, Egyptian authorities charged two Israelis and two Egyptians with forming an espionage ring for Israel, the second such trial to be called for in a month.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, French police arrested a 48-year-old man in connection with the Sep 2012 killings of a British-Iraqi family and a cyclist in the Alps, in their first breakthrough in the case.
(AFP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh called homosexuals "vermin."
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, A German court sentenced Onesphore Rwabukombe, a Rwandan Hutu, to 14 years in jail for his role in the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, ending Germany's first trial related to the mass killings in central Africa.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, In Guinea at least one person was killed and six others injured in Conakry when protests against frequent power cuts turned violent. The offices of a Brazilian construction firm were attacked.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, In Iraq bombs exploded in predominantly Shi'ite Muslim districts of Baghdad killing 14 people. Another 35 people were killed in seven car explosions in the southern city of Hilla and nearby towns.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, Irish drugmaker Actavis PLC said it plans to buy Forest Laboratories Inc. in an approximately $25 billion deal that will boost the company's presence in US primary-care doctor offices and bulk up its portfolio of branded drugs.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, In Libya security guards forced Benghazi airport to close for six hours to demand back wages as well as an investigation into the crash of a helicopter which took off from the airport last week.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, Pakistani Taliban fighters opened fire at an army car and killed a senior officer.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, In Papua New Guinea police opened fire after hundreds of men broke out of an Australia-run detention camp for asylum seekers. One inmate was killed.
(SFC, 2/19/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 18, Polish prosecutors said they have charged a Catholic priest (Wojciech G.) with four counts of sex abuse against children in Poland and in the Dominican Republic, where he was working in a rural parish.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, Saudi crown prince Alwaleed bin Talal and deputy prime minister Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud concluded a three-day-visit to Pakistan. Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced the creation of the new fund, the Pakistan Development Fund, to channel money from "friendly countries" like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Feb 18, South Sudan rebel forces launched a major assault against the key oil-hub of Malakal, as a ceasefire agreement with the government appeared to be in tatters. The government admitted that the rebels controlled some parts of the town. A top government general was seriously wounded in the attack said to involve tens of thousands of rebel fighters. 10 people were killed in "inter-communal clashes" within a peacekeeping base in Malakal.
(AFP, 2/18/14)(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 18, Human Rights Watch said Saudi Arabian authorities have deported more than 12,000 migrants held under "appalling conditions" back to their native Somalia. The International Organization for Migration said the Somali government expects Saudi Arabia to deport another 30,000 people in the coming weeks.
(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 18, Two American security officers, Mark Daniel Kennedy (43) and Jeffrey Reynolds (44) were found dead Port Victoria, Seychelles, in a cabin on the Norfolk-based Maersk Alabama. The ship had grabbed headlines in a 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates, an incident dramatized in the movie "Captain Phillips" starring Tom Hanks. Police later said that a syringe and traces of heroin were found in their cabin. On April 29 Seychelles police said a mixture of heroin and alcohol caused the deaths of the two former US Navy SEALs.
(AP, 2/20/14)(AP, 2/24/14)(AP, 4/29/14)
2014 Feb 18, A Syrian government barrel bomb landed next to a school in the village of Mzairib. 18 people were killed, including 15 Palestinian refugees.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.40)
2014 Feb 18, In Thailand gunbattles broke out as hundreds of riot police made their strongest attempt to clear anti-government protest sites around Bangkok. At least 4 people and one policeman were killed and 64 others injured.
(AP, 2/18/14)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.34)
2014 Feb 18, Uganda’s Pres. Museveni said in a statement that he would not sign a proposed antigay law until after a hearing from scientists.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 18, In Ukraine riot police stormed Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev. The deadly clashes between police and anti-government protesters left at least 25 people dead and hundreds injured, raising fears of a civil war.
(AP, 2/18/14)(AFP, 2/18/14)(AP, 2/19/14)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.19)
2014 Feb 18, Venezuelan protest leader Leopoldo Lopez (42) surrendered to troops after speaking to over 10,000 people gathered in Caracas. This followed his spearheading three weeks of often rowdy demonstrations.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)(SFC, 2/19/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 18, In Yemen secessionist rebels attacked an army truck carrying food to a unit in the southern Dali province, killing 7 soldiers and wounding nine. 14 soldiers were captured. An opposition leader said the clashes were prompted by the army's 33rd brigade random shelling of three districts in Dali that destroyed five houses and killed six people including a child.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 19, A $425 million Powerball drawing went to Ray Buxton of the SF Bay Area. He had purchased the ticket at a Chevron station in Milpitas.
(SFC, 4/2/14, p.E5)
2014 Feb 19, In Missouri the body of a girl, believed to be Hailey Owens (10), was found in the home of Craig Michael Wood (45), a middle-school football coach. She had been kidnapped a day earlier. Wood was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A6)(SFC, 2/24/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 19, A Nebraska judge struck down a 2011 law that allowed the Keystone XL pipeline to proceed through the state.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 19, In Pennsylvania Herbert and Catherine Schaible were sentenced to 3½ to seven years in prison in the death of a 2nd child who never saw a doctor despite being stricken with pneumonia.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 19, Facebook said it will pay $19 billion in cash and stock to buy WhatsApp, a mobile messaging company founded in 2009. This was the most ever paid for a venture-capital-backed company.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.C6)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.54)
2014 Feb 19, In Austria ambitious nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers entered a second day in Vienna with Tehran's foreign minister saying a deal was achievable.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Europe's largest defense contractor BAE Systems says the governments of the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia have agreed on new pricing for a massive sale of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets.
(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, In the Central African Republic heavy fighting erupted near the airport in Bangui, as Christian militia tried to block the evacuation of Muslims and disrupted a visit by a top United Nations aid official.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Egypt’s interim Pres. Adly Mansour ordered a pay raise for police after some of them joined factory workers, doctors and pharmacists increasingly on strike over the last month.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 19, French industrialist and senator Serge Dassault (88), the billionaire manufacturer of fighter jets, was taken into custody for alleged vote buying in his former fiefdom east of Paris from 2008-2010.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Kuwait’s loss-making state-owned Kuwait Airways Co signed contracts with Airbus to buy 25 planes, its first order for new aircraft in more than 20 years.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, In Lebanon 2 suicide bombers targeted the Iranian cultural center in Beirut, killing 8 people and themselves in an attack claimed by Sunni militants who said it was a response to the intervention of Iran and Hezbollah in the Syrian war. On March 8 the al-Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades issued a statement on militant websites apologizing for the civilian deaths.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)(AFP, 2/20/14)(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Feb 19, In Libya a threat by powerful militias to dissolve parliament ramped up pressure on the weak central government on the eve of a vote to elect a constitution-drafting panel.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Libya said it will offer compensation to women raped during the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled Moammar Khadafy.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 19, In northeast Nigeria an attack on Bama town by suspected Islamic extremists left 115 people dead.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 19, Poland's deputy foreign minister said consensus has been reached among EU states about imposing sanctions on Ukrainian officials over the violence in Kiev that has killed dozens of people.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, South Africa's top three platinum companies issued a take-it-or-leave-it wage ultimatum to striking miners, hoping to break a month-long stoppage that has crippled production. Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin said they would not raise an already rejected wage offer and warned of impending job losses.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, South Sudan's army said that it has lost contact with its troops in the key oil hub of Malakal following a major offensive by rebels.
(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Sri Lanka's government said that it was considering a process similar to South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal the wounds of the island nation's decades-long civil war.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 19, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich accused pro-European opposition leaders of trying to seize power by force after at least 26 people died in the worst violence since the former Soviet republic gained independence. Defiant protesters seized control of Kiev’s central post office, hurling fire bombs and rocks and standing their ground against officers in riot gear. Opponents of the president declared political autonomy in the major western city of Lviv.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, In Venezuela Imprisoned protest leader Leopoldo Lopez (42) urged supporters to keep fighting for the departure of the socialist government, even as he was due in court accused of fomenting unrest that has killed at least 4 people.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 20, In northern California Cherie Lash Rhoades (44), a member of the Cedarville Rancheria tribe, killed 4 people at the tribe’s headquarters, including 3 members of her own family. She was recently ousted as chairwoman of the tribe and was under investigation over at least $50,000 in missing federal grants. The tribe had just 35 members and owned 26 acres in the area.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.C3)
2014 Feb 20, A court in Cape Coral, Florida, ruled that living off the grid is illegal. Robin Speronis has been fighting the city of Cape Coral since November when a code enforcement officer tried to evict her from her home for living without utilities.
(http://tinyurl.com/lcgxy9h)
2014 Feb 20, In Georgia Sarah Jones (27), a camera assistant, was killed by a freight train on the set of the film “Midnight Rider." On July 3 prosecutors announced indictments against three filmmakers on charges of involuntary manslaughter. On March 9, 2015, director Randall Miller was sentenced to two years in jail as part of a plea deal.
(SFC, 7/4/14, p.A6)(SFC, 3/10/15, p.A6)
2014 Feb 20, Guantanamo Bay prisoner Ahmed al-Darbi (39) of Saudi Arabia pleaded guilty to war crimes charges for helping plan the suicide bombing of an oil tanker off Yemen in 2002 that killed a crewman and wounded a dozen others.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was convicted on 20 counts accepting bribes.
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.28)
2014 Feb 20, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber on foot killed a security guard and wounded four civilians outside a hospital in northern Kabul.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Albania more than 5,000 opposition supporters marched peacefully through the capital Tirana, accusing the government of failing to fight poverty and unemployment.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks (45) was acquitted of one charge at Britain's phone hacking trial as she began her defense against four more.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone won a multimillion-dollar case at London's High Court relating to the sale of F1 in 2005.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the world's largest bloc of Islamic countries, agreed to send a high-level fact-finding mission to the Central African Republic. The Saudi Arabia-based OIC also agreed to appoint a special representative to coordinate efforts with the African Union and the United Nations.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, China's capital Beijing issued an emergency pollution alert for the first time, warning residents to reduce outdoor activities and construction sites to control dust given a forecast of heavy smog over the next three days.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Egypt two Al-Jazeera journalists who went on trial with other colleagues shouted from the defendants' cage that they faced "psychologically unbearable" conditions in prison.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, German police raided the homes of nine elderly men suspected of serving as SS guards at the Auschwitz death camp and arrested three of them on allegations of accessory to murder.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, India's Parliament approved a plan to create a 29th state following days of political mayhem over the division of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In India police found the body of Erin Willinger, an American woman, in a deserted part of Agra near the Taj Mahal. Police said she was stabbed to death by her husband, Bunty Sharma, who then committed suicide by igniting cooking gas. They had been married for four months.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 20, Rights groups criticized an agreement between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia aimed at giving Indonesian maids more protection in the kingdom, with one saying "justice is still far away" for them.
(AFP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Iran and world powers agreed a timetable and framework for the ambitious and arduous process of hammering out a lasting nuclear accord by July 20 that satisfies all sides.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Italy's parliament passed a law that will phase out state financing of political parties, in response to public anger over its high cost and the tendency for it to breed waste and corruption.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Lebanon Abdelrahman Diab (Abdel Rahman Youssef), an Alawite official in the Arab Democratic Party, was gunned down in Tripoli. A 2nd man, a Sunni, was also killed.
(AFP, 2/20/14)(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Libyans voted on who should draft a new constitution they hope will help defuse a potentially deadly conflict between powerful militias and parliament members backed by armed factions.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In North Korea dozens of elderly North and South Koreans separated for six decades reunited at North Korea’s Diamond Mountain resort, weeping and embracing in a rush of words and emotion.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Pakistani air force jets bombed militant hideouts in the country's volatile northwest after government efforts to negotiate a peace deal with the Pakistani Taliban broke down earlier this week. 15 people were reported killed.
(AP, 2/20/14)(AFP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Two Saudi security officers and two people they were trying to detain were killed in a gunfight in the eastern town of al-Awamiya, an area where minority Shi'ite Muslims have staged regular anti-government protests.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In northern Syria a powerful explosion rocked the Bab al-Salama border crossing with Turkey, killing at least 5 people and wounding many others.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Thailand protesters campaigning to oust PM Yingluck Shinawatra turned to Facebook and other social media to attack businesses linked to her family and rallied outside the offices of a property developer whose share price tumbled.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Ukraine protesters, fearing that a call for a truce was a ruse, tossed firebombs and advanced upon police lines in Kiev. Government snipers shot back and the almost-medieval melee that ensued left at least 70 people dead. Ukraine's Interior ministry says 67 police were captured by protesters. The head of Kiev's city administration quit the party of President Viktor Yanukovich in protest at the bloodshed on the streets.
(AP, 2/20/14)(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Venezuela security forces faced off with demonstrators in streets blocked by burning barricades in several cities in an escalation of protests against President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Yemen police opened fire on a protest march on Khor Maksar late today, killing one demonstrator and wounding 12 others.
(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, US officials announced that California’s Central Valley farmers would get no irrigation water from the federal government due to the current drought.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A1)
2014 Feb 21, California state Sen. Ron Calderon (56) and his brother, former Assemblyman Tom Calderon (59), were indicted on a broad range of federal public corruption charges.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.C2)
2014 Feb 21, US District Judge Sharon Johnson ruled that same-sex marriages can begin immediately in Cook County, Ill.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 21, The head of Croatia's Bishops Conference, Archbishop Zelimir Puljic, said the Rev. Nedeljko Ivanov has been found guilty of sexually abusing minors in 1980s and 1990s. Ivanov was ordered to apologize to the victims and donate part of his pension to charity.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 21, The EU bloc's executive Commission added Bavarian pretzels to its "protected origins" list.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, In Germany a strike by security staff at Frankfurt airport caused nearly 50 flight cancellations and delayed thousands of passengers, bringing chaos to Europe's third largest hub.
(Reuters, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, India came under pressure over the deaths of over 450 nationals in almost two years in Qatar, the host of the 2022 World Cup. Amnesty International called on the Indian government to release more information about the deaths amid mounting criticism over safety and working conditions in Qatar.
(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, A Myanmar state minister said a jade boulder weighing up to 50 tons was discovered by miners just over a week ago in the northern region of Hpakant.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 21, In Pakistan Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said there was still hope peace negotiations might resume.
(Reuters, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 21, Philippine authorities killed at least 7 alleged drug traffickers and arrested 36 others in raids in in Davao city's coastal Tibungco district.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, In Russia 200 people were arrested near a Moscow court as it convicted eight defendants of mass riots and attacking police at a 2012 protest against Pres. Putin, a case widely seen as a crackdown on dissent.
(AFP, 2/21/14)(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 21, In Somalia 9 al-Shabab militants wearing military fatigues and carrying guns and grenades died after attacking the presidential palace with two car bombs, in an assault the president called a "media spectacular" by a "dying animal." 2 government officials were killed.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, In Spain international mediators said the armed Basque separatist group ETA has placed a small quantity of guns and explosives out of use in what is seen as a first step toward an unconditional total disarmament.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, A Spanish court ruled that Arthur Budovsky (40), accused of being behind Liberty Reserves, one of the world's biggest money laundering businesses, can be extradited to the US to face charges there.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 21, The Syrian army intensified its aerial bombardment of southern Syria as opposition fighters were preparing to launch a wide offensive in a province bordering Jordan. In Geneva the UN’s refugee agency called on countries to make commitments to provide resettlement for an additional 100,000 Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016. A group of 38 male evacuees from besieged parts of Homs were released after investigation, leaving almost 200 others still being held.
(AP, 2/21/14)(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, In Tunisia an Islamist official in Libya's government and 10 other passengers and crew were killed when a Libyan military plane carrying medical patients crashed near Tunis.
(Reuters, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, Ukraine's opposition leaders signed a deal with the president and European and Russian mediators for early elections and a new government in hopes of ending a deadly political crisis. Ukraine's parliament voted to return the ex-Soviet country to its 2004 constitution, which limits the president's powers and gives lawmakers the right to appoint key ministers.
(AP, 2/21/14)(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, The UN refugee agency said around 28,000 people have fled from conflict-torn Central African Republic to neighbouring Cameroon since the start of this month.
(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, Yemeni forces shot dead one protester and wounded 16 others as secessionists in the southern city of Aden defied a ban on protests.
(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 22, A barge ran into a towboat on the Mississippi River near Vancherie, La. A 65-mile stretch of the river was closed to traffic for a day as crews cleaned up some 31,500 gallons of spilled oil.
(SFC, 2/24/14, p.A5)(SFC, 2/25/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 22, Afghan President Karzai's High Peace Council said it has held meetings with a breakaway faction of senior Taliban leaders in Dubai. The Taliban has denied links to the faction, organized by former Taliban finance minister Aga Jan Mohtism.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Brazil 9 members of a gang that specialized in blowing up teller machines were killed in a shootout with police after some 80 officers confronted 15 armed men after they used dynamite to blow up a cash machine in Itamonte, Minas Gerais state.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 22, In Central African Republic 3 Muslim civilians were shot dead when the taxi carrying them was stopped by an angry mob in Bangui.
(AFP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, An Egyptian court acquitted six police officers on charges of killing 83 protesters during the country's 2011 revolution, the latest in a string of trials that rights group say failed to hold the country's security forces accountable for demonstrators' deaths.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, Iran some 100 French corporate bigwigs held business talks in Tehran. American business representatives were also in town.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.39)
2014 Feb 22, Iraq's defense ministry announced a 72-hour halt to military operations in Fallujah, which has been held by anti-government fighters for weeks. The announcement raised the possibility of negotiations to end the crisis, during which gunmen have also seized parts of Ramadi. 4 military officers and five soldiers were killed as bombs targeted an army patrol in al-Saadiyah. In Tikrit blasts near the homes of local security and civilian officials killed five people and wounded 18. A military helicopter crashed in a remote area west of Baghdad, killing its four-member crew.
(AFP, 2/22/14)(AP, 2/22/14)(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, Italy swore in a new coalition government under Matteo Renzi (39). His Democratic Party was propped up by supporters of former premier Mario Monti and former loyalists of Silvio Berlusconi.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 22, In Lebanon a suicide bombing against soldiers killed at least 3 people in Hermel. The Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-linked group, soon claimed responsibility.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, Libyan police arrested six Qataris at Benghazi airport as they tried to board a plane to Turkey using forged Libyan passports and carrying almost $146,000.
(Reuters, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, Mexican marines in Mazatlan arrested Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin Guzman (56). His dominance of the drugs trade and ability to elude the law since escaping from prison in 2001 had lent him almost mythical status.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A3)
2014 Feb 22, In Pakistan 9 militants were killed in helicopter gunship attacks targeting insurgent hideouts in the Hangu region.
(Reuters, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, The World Health Organization began a campaign to prevent outbreaks of cholera in temporary camps in South Sudan housing thousands of people who have fled the country's two-month-old conflict.
(AFP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, Syrian state TV said government forces have captured two rebel-held areas on the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In the northeast Kurdish members of the “People's Protection Units" captured Tel Brak in a battle left some 19 people dead.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Syria Akram al-Bunni, a prominent leftist writer and former political prisoner, was abducted by government intelligence agents as he left a wedding reception at a Damascus hotel.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Thailand a 5-year-old girl was killed and about three dozen people wounded in an attack on an anti-government rally in the eastern province of Trat.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, Turkey's interior ministry said 1,000 police officers have been removed in the wake of a major corruption probe against key government allies but said these were only "routine" re-assignments.
(AFP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Ukraine protesters took control of Kiev, seizing the president's office as parliament voted to oust him and form a new government. President Viktor Yanukovych described the events as a coup and insisted he would not step down. Parliament voted to call early presidential elections for May 25. Leaders of mainly Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine that are loyal to the president challenged the legitimacy of the national parliament and said they were taking control of their territories.
(AP, 2/22/14)(Reuters, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, The heads of four Ukrainian security bodies, including the police's Berkut anti-riot units, appeared in parliament and declared they would not take part in any conflict with the people. Yulia Tymoshenko left imprisonment and spoke to a massive, adoring crowd, while President Viktor Yanukovych decamped to eastern Ukraine and vowed he would remain in power.
(Reuters, 2/22/14)(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, Vatican Pope Francis appointed his first batch of cardinals, as his predecessor Benedict made a surprise rare appearance at the ceremony.
(AFP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Venezuela tens of thousands of opponents of Pres. Maduro filled the streets of Caracas in their biggest rally to date.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A9)
2014 Feb 23, In Wisconsin three men broke into a Madison home looking for money, found a couple lying in bed and assaulted the woman, who was six months pregnant. Efemia A. Neumaier told the assailants they'd find at least $1,500 in cash in the home of the man she was seeing, but that the men broke into the wrong home. Michon A. Thomas, Eric D. Bass and Kristopher J. Hughes all faced robbery and sexual assault charges.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Feb 23, The Afghan Taliban killed 21 soldiers in an assault on in a remote mountainous region in Kunar province. Six soldiers were missing after the militants' most deadly assault on the security forces in months.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Sidney, Australia, finance chiefs from the 20 largest economies (G-20) agreed to implement policies that will boost world GDP by more than $2 trillion over the coming five years.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Bangladesh gunmen opened fire and tossed bombs at a prison van carrying militants of a banned Islamist movement to a court house, freeing three of their colleagues and killing a policeman.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Brazil a 34-year-old football fan was beaten to death by supporters from a rival team following a high-profile match in the Sao Paulo state championship.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks in Baghdad on issues ranging from trade to arming Iraq's hard-pressed security forces, on the first such visit in over a decade.
(AFP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Hong Kong thousands rallied outside government headquarters demanding the city's leader uphold media freedoms amid growing anger towards perceived behind-the-scenes intrusions on local media outlets.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Israel Samuel Sheinbein (34), an American-Israeli prisoner, reportedly stole a gun from one of his guards before special forces shot him dead. An initial investigation revealed that the weapon was actually brought in from the outside. Sheinbein, was tried in Israel in 1999, and sentenced to 24 years for his slaying and dismemberment in Maryland of 19-year-old Alfredo Enrique Tello Jr.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, In the Ivory Coast at least 4 soldiers and several attackers were killed when suspected gunmen from Liberia raided a border town in the west of the country.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In southern Lebanon 2 UN peacekeepers died and three were injured in a car accident.
(AFP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In northern Mali a miner said that 8 armed men closed the large Taoudenie salt mine by forcing more than 800 workers to leave.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Mali 5 bodies were discovered in two graves near the Kati military barracks outside Bamako. The victims were wearing military clothing but their identities had not been confirmed.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, Nigeria’s military said it has sealed its northern border with Cameroon in an effort to shut out Islamist militants using its neighbor as a launch pad for attacks.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, Shell Nigeria closed a 6,000-km (3,700-mile) oil pipeline to repair leaks from oil theft.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 23, In northwest Pakistan a bomb planted at a busy bus terminal near a police station exploded, killing 14 people and wounding 15 in Kohat near the country's lawless tribal region. Pakistani fighter jets attacked suspected militant hideouts in Tirah valley, killing at least 18 insurgents.
(AP, 2/23/14)(Reuters, 2/23/14)(SFC, 2/24/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 23, Vladimir Putin ordered officials to start work on taking control of Crimea. This was weeks before a referendum which, the Kremlin later asserted, prompted the region's annexation from Ukraine. This information was not made public until March 8. , 2015.
(Reuters, 3/9/15)
2014 Feb 23, The Winter Olympics In Sochi, Russia, ended after 17 days with a handoff to the next Winter Games host city, Pyeongchang in South Korea. Russian athletes claimed 33 medals, their largest haul ever.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Saudi Arabia a woman (81) died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 61 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Syria 2 suicide bombers killed a senior al-Qaida operative, blowing themselves up inside the militant leader's compound in Aleppo. Rebels said Abu Khaled al-Suri was the representative of al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri in Syria. A car bomb exploded near a charity field hospital close to the Turkish border. At least one person was killed. Another 60 boys and men, who were being held by Syrian authorities after their evacuation from besieged Homs, were released.
(AP, 2/23/14)(AFP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Thailand an apparent grenade attack against anti-government protesters occupying an upscale shopping area of Bangkok killed 3 people, including 2 children. On Sep 4, 2015, a court sentenced four men to life imprisonment over the deaths. The verdict was commuted from the death sentence because they had confessed to the charges.
(AP, 2/23/14)(AFP, 9/4/15)
2014 Feb 23, In Togo 18 people were killed and 40 others injured, 25 of them seriously, in a collision between a bus and a lorry.
(AFP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, Ukraine’s Parliament voted to hand the president’s power to speaker Oleksandr Turchinov, a top opposition figure, plunging Ukraine into new uncertainty after a deadly political standoff.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 24, Harold Ramis (b.1944), American writer, director and actor, died at his Chicago-area home. His film work included Meatballs" (1979), “Caddyshack" (1980), “Ghostbusters" (1984), “Groundhog Day" (1993), and “Analyze This" (1999).
(SFC, 2/25/14, p.C2)
2014 Feb 24, In Central African Republic Chadian peacekeepers shot dead 3 civilians in a Christian neighborhood of Bangui. Witnesses said anti-Balaka Christian militiamen killed at least 70 Muslims in the remote southwest village of Guen earlier this month.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, The military-installed government of Egyptian PM Hazem al-Beblawi said it has resigned, ahead of a presidential poll which will likely bring army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power. Beblawi said his government would remain in a caretaker role until the interim president signs off on the resignations.
(AFP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, France passed the Florange law in response to ArcelorMittal’s 2013 closure of the Florange blast furnace in northeast France. It was set to go fully into force in March 2016 at which point shareholders in listed French companies will see their voting rights double.
(http://tinyurl.com/loqnsvl)(Econ., 5/2/15, p.12)
2014 Feb 24, Indian attorney general Ghoolam Vahanvati told the Supreme Court the prosecution did not intend to proceed against Italian marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, accused of killing two fisherman, under the anti-piracy section of the Suppression of Unlawful Acts. The sailors said they mistook two fishermen for pirates during the incident in February 2012, off the coast of Kerala state.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Indian soldiers killed 7 rebels in a gunbattle in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Indonesian officials said floods and landslides triggered by torrential rains killed at least 11 people in Papua province.
(SFC, 2/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 24, In Iraq Atheel al-Nujaifi, governor of Nineveh province and the parliament speaker's brother, survived the third attempt on his life this month, as violence across the country killed 35 people.
(AFP, 2/24/14)(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 24, Two Israeli raids hit a Hezbollah target on the border of Lebanon and Syria. Lebanon's National News Agency soon confirmed the report, adding that the raids struck the countryside of the Lebanese border town of Nabi Sheet.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Lebanon actress and UN special envoy Angelina Jolie completed a surprise 3-day visit to Lebanon to draw attention to the challenges facing thousands of Syrian refugee children and to highlight the massive displacement Syria's three-year conflict has created.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Libyan police found 7 Egyptian Christians shot dead on a beach outside Benghazi. This was the second such execution-style killing in Libya since the start of the year.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Morocco hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants armed with sticks and stones stormed the six-meter (20-foot) high double barbed wire border fence in a bid to enter Spain's northwest African enclave of Melilla, with about 100 of them making it across.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, In northwest Pakistan unknown gunmen near Miranshah killed Asmatullah Shaheen Bitani, a senior commander of the Pakistani Taliban, along with 3 of his aides. 2 security guards were killed and more than a dozen people wounded in a suicide bombing outside the Iranian consulate in Peshawar.
(AFP, 2/24/14)(Reuters, 2/24/14)(SFC, 2/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 24, Hamas authorities said Gaza police have arrested family members over the deaths of two Palestinian teenage girls, one of them the victim of a suspected "honor" killing."
(AF P, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, A Russian court sentenced seven activists to prison terms of up to four years over a protest against President Vladimir Putin as police detained hundreds of supporters outside.
(AFP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was jailed for a week by a court for resisting arrest at a protest over the convictions of activists for attacking police at a 2012 rally against President Putin. On Feb 28 a Moscow court put Navalny under house arrest, forbidding him from using the Internet or communicating with anyone outside his family.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Saudi Arabia three security officers were wounded, one critically, by gunfire outside a police station in a flashpoint village in the mostly Shi'ite Muslim area of Qatif.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 24, In central Syria air raids on rebel-held towns killed 18 people. Airstrikes killed some 10 people in the northern city of Sheikh Khader.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra, the target of anti-government protests in Bangkok, has been staying outside the city and ruled out resigning despite a series of deadly attacks heaping pressure on her administration.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, A taped conversation of Turkey’s PM Erdogan speaking with his younger son Bilal was posted on You Tube. It dated to Dec 17 when police raided the homes of several members of Erdogan’s cabinet and business allies as part of a corruption probe.
(Econ, 3/1/14, p.53)
2014 Feb 24, Uganda's Pres. Museveni signed a law imposing harsh penalties for homosexuality, defying protests from rights groups, criticism from Western donors and a US warning that it will complicate relations.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Ukraine's acting government issued an arrest warrant for President Viktor Yanukovych, accusing him of mass crimes against the protesters who stood up for months against his rule. The head of the city administration in Sevastopol quit amid the turmoil, and protesters replaced a Ukrainian flag near the city hall building with a Russian flag. Andriy Klyuyev, President Viktor Yanukovych's chief of staff until Sunday, was wounded by gunfire and hospitalized.
(AP, 2/24/14)(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Uruguay Carlos Paez Vilaro (90), a self-trained painter, sculptor, screenwriter, musician and architect, died. He championed Afro-Uruguayan Candombe music and dance, created colorful murals in dozens of cities around the world, and built a huge "living sculpture" that became an iconic 50-room hotel.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Pope Francis announced the first major overhaul of the Vatican's outdated and inefficient bureaucracy in a quarter-century, creating an economics secretariat to control all economic, administrative, personnel and procurement functions of the Holy See.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Venezuela anti-government demonstrators set up barricades in Caracas, snarling traffic, despite calls from within the opposition to rein in protests in which at least 11 people have died in the OPEC nation.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 25, California authorities said police officers in King City had taken part in a scheme in which over 200 cars belonging to poor Hispanic people were impounded and later sold when owners could not pay fees. Four officers were arrested in the case. The arrests, which also included a former police chief, came after a six-month probe of the police department launched in September when a visiting investigator — there to check out a homicide — heard from numerous sources that the community didn't trust its police department.
(SFC, 2/26/14, p.A6)(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 25, Jim Lange (1932), former TV game host, died in Mill Valley, Ca. His shows included “The Dating Game" (1965-1978), “Hollywood Connection," “$100,000 Name That Tune" and “The Newlywed Game."
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.D2)
2014 Feb 25, British police arrested former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg and three other people in the latest in a string of detentions linked to suspected terror offences relating to Syria.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Canada-based BlackBerry said it will release a low-cost phone in Indonesia in April and plans a broader release of a phone that restores a beloved row of control keys with a track pad.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, A Chinese state-run newspaper, the Yanzhao Metropolis Daily, reported that man in a smog-ridden northern city has become the first person in China to sue the government for failing to curb air pollution.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Croatia's trade unions, representing both public and private sector employees, staged a nationwide two-hour strike, firing a warning shot against the government's plan to make labor rules more flexible.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Egypt's interim Pres. Adly Mansour named construction magnate Ibrahim Mehlib to replace Hazem el-Beblaw. Mehlib had led Arab Contractors, Egypt's biggest construction company.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Members of the European Parliament voted through the world's toughest carbon dioxide standards for new cars, prompting a cautious welcome from environmental campaigners.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Ghana's Pres. John Dramani Mahama was heckled by opposition lawmakers while he outlined plans to boost the country's economy, as a free-falling currency sparks frustration over living costs.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Guinea secondary school student Moussa Mara was hospitalized after being kicked in the stomach during a football match in his neighborhood. Conakry doctors reportedly demanded 300 euros ($410) from his family to treat the boy, but they were unable to pay. Classmates stumped up the cash but Mara died on the operating table.
(AFP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Iraq attacks, including a suicide bombing near the Anbar provincial council headquarters in Ramadi, killed 12 people.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Japan’s government published a draft energy plan which put nuclear power at the core.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.43)
2014 Feb 25, The website of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox was returning a blank page today. The disappearance of the site follows the Feb 23 resignation of Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, a group seeking legitimacy for the currency, and a withdrawal ban imposed at the exchange earlier this month.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Malawi President Joyce Banda (63) faced calls to resign, after an audit revealed $32 million dollars of state funds had been stolen by corrupt officials between April and September of 2013.
(AFP, 2/25/14)(Econ, 5/24/14, p.44)
2014 Feb 25, An independent human rights group presented evidence directly implicating the Myanmar government in abusive and discriminatory policies targeting members of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In northeastern Nigeria gunmen from the Islamist group Boko Haram stormed a boarding school early today, killing 59 people, many of whom died in flames as the school was burned to the ground in Buni Yadi, Yobe state.
(AFP, 2/25/14)(Reuters, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 25, The Norwegian defense group Kongsberg says it has been charged with corruption relating to its activities in Romania. The charges were linked to deliveries of communication equipment to Romania from 1999 to 2008.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Pakistan said that work on a pipeline to import gas from Iran cannot proceed because of sanctions imposed by the United Sates and the European Union on Tehran.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Pakistani military jets and helicopter gunships killed nearly 25 insurgents in the latest tribal area strikes.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In the Republic of Congo a former minister under ousted president Francois Bozize, Patrice Edouard Ngaissona -- who calls himself the coordinator of the mostly Christian "anti-balaka" (anti-machete) militia, was arrested along with two aides and transferred to Brazzaville.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 25, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was jailed for a week by a court for resisting arrest at a protest over the convictions of activists for attacking police at a 2012 rally against President Putin.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In South Africa 5 illegal miners were found dead in an abandoned shaft near Johannesburg.
(Reuters, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Syria Abu Mohammed al-Golani, leader of the Nusra Front, called on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group to agree to arbitration by religious scholars to end more than a year of feuding which has turned violent in some areas.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Thailand announced a slump in trade figures with the biggest drop in imports in more than four years in January, as months of anti-government protests extended their economic toll.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Thailand an accident at a hospital construction site near Bangkok killed at least 11 people and injured 18 others.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned leaked recordings of him and his son allegedly discussing how to hide large sums of money as a "vile attack" by rivals, as calls mounted for his beleaguered government to resign. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse several hundred people protesting against the government at an Ankara university.
(AFP, 2/25/14)(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, A Ugandan newspaper published a list of what it called the country's "200 top" homosexuals, outing some Ugandans who previously had not identified themselves as gay one day after the president enacted a harsh anti-gay law.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Zimbabwe a petrol bomb hit the home of top opposition official and former finance minister Tendai Biti, the second such attack in three years.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 26, A US appeals court ordered YouTube to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent riots in parts of the Middle East and death threats to the actors. The 2012 video that led to rioting and deaths because of its negative portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. The company argued that the filmmakers and not the actors of "Innocence of Muslims" owned the copyright and only they could remove it from YouTube.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill designed to give added protection from lawsuits to people who assert their religious beliefs in refusing service to gays.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 26, In Colorado the body of Nancy Pfister (57) was found in a closet at her home in Aspen. Her parents had co-founded the Buttermilk ski area. William Styler III (65) and his wife Nancy (62) were arrested on March 3 on suspicion of murder. Katherine Carpenter (56) was arrested on March 14 also on suspicion of murder.
(SFC, 3/17/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 26, In New Jersey Trenton Mayor Tony Mack (48) was removed from office by a judge 19 days after a jury found him guilty of corruption.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 26, In Texas a federal judge declared the state’s same-sex marriage unconstitutional, but allowed enforcement of the ban pending an appeal.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 26, In Bahrain Jaffar Mohammed Jaffar (23), suffering from sickle-cell anemia, died a week after being taken to the hospital. Jaffar was one of several suspects detained in connection with an operation in December that resulted in the seizure of stocks of weapons and explosives, including some being smuggled in by sea.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, The Cambodian Anti-Drug Authority said it has banned the import, sale and promotion of e-cigarettes and shisha tobacco, a favorite of hookah-using smokers.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Canadian anesthesiologist Dr. George Doodnaught (65) was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting 21 sedated women.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 26, An Egyptian court convicted 26 people of forming a terrorist group to launch an attack on the country's vital Suez Canal waterway, with almost all receiving death sentences in absentia.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in a phone call that the Ukrainian opposition to president Viktor Yanukovych may have been involved in sniper attacks (Feb 18-20). News of the call was leaked in early March and prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to call for an OSCE investigation.
(AFP, 3/8/14)(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 26, EU lawmakers voted for the larger warning labels with the inclusion of gruesome pictorials plus a ban on most flavored tobacco products and tighter regulation of e-cigarettes.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Germany's top court struck down the country's 3% electoral threshold for political parties to win seats in the European Parliament.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Greek dock workers across the country walked off the job in a 24-hour strike to protest plans to sell a stake in the Piraeus Port Authority, the country's largest port.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, In Guinea hundreds of youths "armed with sticks, clubs and even knives looted, ransacked and set fire to the police station" and two local government buildings in Fria. They were protesting against the killing by police of a teenager accused of possessing drugs. Conakry school pupils took to the streets after the death of one of their classmates in a hospital, accusing doctors of "negligence."
(AFP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, Hong Kong newspaper editor Kevin Lau (49), who became the center of controversy last month after being sacked from his post, struggled for his life after being stabbed multiple times by an unknown attacker in Hong Kong. On August 13, 2015, Yip Kim-wah and Wong Chi-wah were convicted of causing "grievous bodily harm with intent" in the stabbing. On August 21 both men were jailed for 19 years. The two men told police they had each been paid HK$100,000 ($12,900) to attack Lau but refused to say who paid them.
(http://tinyurl.com/q9yfu92)(AP, 2/26/14)(Reuters, 8/13/15)(Reuters, 8/20/15)
2014 Feb 26, India's navy chief resigned after a submarine accident off the coast of Mumbai saw two sailors missing and another seven injured on the Russian-built INS Sindhuratna. Rescuers a day later found the bodies of two Indian navy officers inside the submarine.
(AFP, 2/26/14)(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, The International Criminal Court led calls for the government of Democratic Republic of Congo to arrest visiting Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who is wanted on charges of genocide in Darfur.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, A Kenyan court dropped charges against 41 men and released on bail 29 others arrested on Feb 2 during a raid on a mosque accused of supporting Islamist extremists.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, In Mexico hundreds of people marched on the streets of Culiacan demanding that authorities free Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the boss of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. Many said he provides needed jobs in poor mountain areas.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, Nigerian soldiers abandoned checkpoints and fled into the bush, leaving five northeastern villages and a town at the mercy of Islamic extremists who killed at least 33 people and firebombed a theological college in overnight attacks that lasted hours.
(AP, 2/27/14)(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 26, Pakistan vowed to press on with deadly air attacks on Taliban militants as it unveiled its first ever counter-terrorism policy after battling a homegrown Islamist insurgency for a decade.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Ministers from Romania's Liberals resigned from the government, a day after the party quit the ruling coalition in a break-up that will trigger a confidence vote and has changed the dynamics of a presidential election in November.
(Reuters, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Moscow granted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych protection "on the territory of Russia," shortly after the fugitive leader sought help from the Kremlin.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, Saudi Arabia beheaded one its citizens in Eastern Province after he was convicted of murdering a compatriot.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, In South Sudan Doctors Without Border said that the extreme violence and lack of respect for health care workers shown by warring sides has made the group's work almost impossible. Sick patients have been shot to death in their beds and medical facilities have been looted and burned to the ground.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Syrian state media said army troops killed 175 rebels in an ambush south of Damascus, a major attack targeting mostly al-Qaida-linked fighters as part of a government effort to secure the capital.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Turkey's president approved a controversial bill limiting the independence of the judiciary — a law that is widely interpreted as a government response to corruption allegations brought by prosecutors that have recently implicated PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Parliament approved a watered-down version of a new Internet law that would give Turkey's telecommunications authority the power to shut down websites for privacy violations, although it would have to obtain court approval within 24 hours.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, In Ukraine fistfights broke out between pro- and anti-Russian demonstrators in the strategic Crimea region as Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered massive military exercises just across the border.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution authorizing sanctions against individuals and organizations threatening peace, security or stability in Yemen.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 27, Yahoo Inc. strongly condemned a reported multiyear effort by American (NSA) and British (GCHQ) spy agencies to snatch webcam images from the Internet’s giant’s user accounts in a program code-named Optical nerve starting in 2008.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.C1)
2014 Feb 27, In San Francisco five police officers and a former officer faced federal corruption charges following a 3-year investigation. Surveillance video showed officers abusing and stealing from residential hotel dwellers.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A1)
2014 Feb 27, Google gave the SF Municipal Transportation Authority (MUNI) $6.8 million to fund two years of free transit for kids.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A1)
2014 Feb 27, In Hawaii a small plane crashed after takeoff from Lanai Island killing 3 people and leaving three others injured.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 27, In southwestern China a bus in Guiyang caught fire near an elementary school with about 50 people inside. 6 people were killed. A man suspicious of his wife's infidelity later admitted to setting the fire.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 27, Huber Matos Benitez (95), Cuban revolutionary-turned-political prisoner, died in Miami.
(Econ, 3/15/14, p.86)
2014 Feb 27, French Pres. Francois Hollande arrived in Abuja and said France stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nigeria in its battle against Boko Haram. He arrived as a guest of honor for celebrations to mark 100 years since Nigeria's unification.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, In Germany former Pres. Christian Wulff (54) was acquitted of corruption charges from his time as a regional governor.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 27, In Iraq at least 21 people were killed in bombings around the capital, Baghdad.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Israeli forces opened fire and killed Muataz Washaha (24), a Palestinian they were seeking to arrest in the occupied West Bank, after the man had barricaded himself inside his house.
(Reuters, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Malawians marched on the streets of Blantyre in anger at their government after a damning audit revealed that corrupt officials had stolen over $30 million from state coffers.
(AFP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, In North Korea Kim Jung Wook, a South Korean Baptist missionary, told reporters he is sorry for his “anti-state" crimes and appealed to North Korean authorities to show him mercy by releasing him from their custody. He was arrested over four months ago for allegedly trying to establish underground Christian churches.
(AP, 2/27/14)(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 27, The Philippines called on Malaysia, Vietnam and other claimants to join its legal challenge to China's massive territorial claim in the South China Sea.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, In Qatar 12 people including two children were killed when a gas tank exploded at a Turkish restaurant in Doha.
(Reuters, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, In Somalia a car bomb blast in a normally quiet Mogadishu neighborhood blew the facade off a tea shop where intelligence officers are known to congregate, killing at least 11 people.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Syrian TV said a mortar shell landed near a hospital in a government-controlled neighborhood of Homs, killing at least 5 people.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Uganda shrugged off foreign aid cuts and int’l criticism of its tough new anti-gay law, saying it could do without Western aid. Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands cut aid over Uganda’s anti-gay law.
(AFP, 2/27/14)(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 27, Ukraine's new prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk accused the government of ousted President Viktor Yanukovich of stripping state coffers bare and said 37 billion dollars of credit it had received had disappeared. Armed men seized the parliament in the Crimea region and raised the Russian flag, alarming Kiev's new rulers, who urged Moscow not to abuse its navy base rights on the peninsula by moving troops around.
(Reuters, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, The United Arab Emirates' state news agency said two crew members have been killed in the crash of a military training aircraft.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Michigan a Macomb County court convicted James Brown (25) in the killing of 4 women at his Sterling heights home in December, 2011. Their bodies were stuffed in car trunks and left miles away in a Detroit neighborhood.
(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 28, In Rhode Island former Central Falls mayor Charles Moreau, convicted in 2012 of corruption, was freed from prison after pleading guilty to accepting a bribe. An appeals court had thrown his earlier conviction into question.
(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 28, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed a NATO service member.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, British authorities said anti-fraud police have arrested 110 people in Europe and the United States in an international crackdown on gangs selling bogus shares that cost some investors their life savings.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, China’s Public Security Ministry said police have rescued 382 abducted babies and arrested 1,094 suspects in a national operation that busted four major Internet-based baby trafficking rings.
(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 28, In Egypt gunmen killed a policeman who was on a security team guarding the home of a judge in the jailbreak trial of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. Sergeant Abdallah Metwally was shot dead as he rode his motorbike across a bridge over the Nile in the city of Mansoura.
(AFP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Germany two lawyers were attacked at an office in Duesseldorf. One was killed and the other soon died of his wounds A third person was killed at another lawyers' office in nearby Erkrath before the suspected assailant, a Chinese-born resident, was arrested.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Feb 28, A Germany rescue helicopter crashed during a training flight off the Baltic Sea coast, killing 3 people. One person on board survived.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, An Israeli aircraft hit a suspected rocket launch site in the north of the Gaza Strip late today.
(AFP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, Japan-based Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange in Tokyo filed for bankruptcy protection and chief executive Mark Karpeles said 850,000 bitcoins, worth several hundred million dollars, are unaccounted for. On March 11 Mt Gox filed for bankruptcy in the US.
(AP, 2/28/14)(Econ, 3/15/14, p.71)
2014 Feb 28, Latvia's Olympic Committee secretary general said a second player on its national men's ice hockey team is suspected to have tested positive for a banned substance at the Sochi Winter Games.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Libya gunmen shot dead Colonel Wanis Massoud al-Barghathi, an officer in the air defense branch in Benghazi.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Malaysia Abdul Taib Mahmud, the chief minister of Sarawak, retired after ruling the state for 33 years. Environmentalists said Sarawak under his rule has lost 90% of its virgin rainforest, mostly due to conversions to lucrative palm oil concessions.
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.35)
2014 Feb 28, Doctors Without Borders said it has been expelled from Myanmar and that tens of thousands of lives are at risk. The decision came after the humanitarian group reported it treated nearly two dozen Rohingya Muslim victims of communal violence in Rakhine state, which the government has denied.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Pakistan a band of families, led by a 72-year-old marching in protest over missing relatives, reached the edge of Islamabad. They began Oct. 27 in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.
(AFP, 2/28/14)(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Singapore Autumn Radtke (28), the American CEO of First Meta, was found dead at her home. Her company was a virtual currency exchange for Bitcoin.
(SFC, 3/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 28, Jihadi social media said Islamist militants trying to enforce their religious strict code in rebel-held areas of Syria have cut off the hand of an alleged thief in Aleppo province. Members of an al-Qaida-breakaway group (ISIL) withdrew from parts of Aleppo, ahead of a March 1 deadline issued by another rebel group. Residents found at least two mass graves in their wake, one with 17 and the other with 5 bodies.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)(AP, 2/28/14)(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Feb 28, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein moved to freeze assets and bank accounts of up to 20 Ukrainians including ousted president Viktor Yanukovich and his son, after Ukraine's new rulers said billions had gone missing.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In eastern Thailand at least 15 people, including 13 children, were killed when a bus carrying students on a trip to the seaside collided with a lorry.
(AFP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, Turkey's state-run news agency said five remaining suspects jailed in a vast corruption investigation have been released on parole pending trial. Turkey's main opposition party asked the top court to overturn a law tightening government control of the judiciary, which it sees as a bid by PM Tayyip Erdogan to snuff out a corruption scandal.
(AP, 2/28/14)(Reuters, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, Turkey's parliament passed legislation to shut down private preparatory schools many of which are an important source of income and influence for an Islamic cleric PM Tayyip Erdogan accuses of running a covert campaign to topple him. Lawmakers set a deadline of September 1, 2015, to close the schools.
(Reuters, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, In southeastern Turkey suspected PKK gunmen abducted Abdurrahman Ecer (50), the top elected official of Cigli village.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Feb 28, Ukraine accused Russia of a "military invasion and occupation," saying Russian troops have taken up positions around a coast guard base and two airports on its strategic Crimea peninsula. Russia kept silent on the accusations, as the crisis deepened between two of Europe's largest countries.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In northern Yemen at least 13 people died when Shi'ite Muslim fighters clashed with security forces. The violence erupted after members of the Houthi group staged a protest in al Hazm.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb, The US Navy announced that it had discovered cheating on qualification exams by an estimated 20-30 sailors seeking to be certified as instructors at the nuclear training unit at Charleston, SC. In August at least 34 sailors were kicked out of the Navy for their roles in a cheating ring that operated undetected for at least seven years.
(SFC, 8/21/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb, Citibank said it had lost $400 million at its Mexican subsidiary, Banamex. On May 29 Mexican authorities arrested Mr Yanez, the boss of Oceanografija, an oil services firm, on fraud charges after Banamex found fake invoices for contract work with Pemex.
(Econ, 6/7/14, p.78)
2014 Feb, In southern California Xu Ting became a legal permanent US resident by virtue of being married to someone with an advanced degree or "extraordinary ability". She had already been sued for counterfeiting by eight luxury brands, including Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and owes Chanel Inc. $6.9 million in damages.
(AP, 7/12/15)
2014 Feb, The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System began operating in the Mohave Desert on the California-Nevada border. Birds began to immediately catch fire and burn in flight from the intense radiation of the heliostat mirrors. Trials in September, 2013, counted 34 bird deaths.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility)(SSFC, 8/24/14, p.C10)
2014 Feb, In San Francisco construction workers discovered human remains at the site of the new Transbay Transit Center. They were later dated back about 7,500 years.
(SFC, 10/21/14, p.D1)
2014 Feb, In New Mexico Wilson Joe Chiquito (75) was beaten to death at his home in the Navajo community of Counselor. In 2020 the FBI issued its first poster in a Native American language seeking information on the death of Chiquito.
(https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/wilson-joe-chiquito)(SFC, 4/14/20, p.A3)
2014 Feb, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police laid fraud and breach-of-trust charges against suspended Sen. Patrick Brazeau and former Sen. Mac Harb that stemmed from claims they made for housing and living expenses.
(Reuters, 4/10/14)
2014 Feb, A declaration against the trade in illegal wildlife products was signed by 41 countries including, China, the EU and Japan.
(Econ, 7/19/14, p.54)
2014 Feb, An Indian team visited Moscow to firm up a deal under which it will pay Russia to supply arms and equipment to the Afghan military as foreign combat troops prepare to leave the country. An agreement was signed in April in a move that risked infuriating Pakistan.
(Reuters, 4/30/14)
2014 Feb, In Moldova Mihail Formuzal, governor of Gagauzia, organized a referendum in the province in which an overwhelming majority called for Moldova to join a Russian-led customs union rather than a political and trade pact with the EU. After the referendum Russia offered an exemption for the winemakers of Gagauzia to its general ban on wine from Moldova.
(Reuters, 3/30/14)
2014 Feb, In Tunisia Imed Dghij, a senior figure with the League for the Protection of the Revolution (LPR), was arrested after threatening authorities in a video posted online. He was sentenced in March to eight months in jail for inciting violence and six months for attacking others on social networks. In April an appeals court sharply reduced the first sentence to three months and quashed the second one after reclassifying the offence.
(AFP, 5/10/14)
2014 Mar 1, In Nevada a US fighter jet crashed during a training exercise because of a snow storm in mountainous terrain. The pilot was later identified as Marine Capt. Reid Nannen (32).
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A6)(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 1, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it has agreed to provide a 331 million euros ($457 million) loan over three years to support Albania's economic reforms.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Algerian police used clubs to break up a small demonstration by some opposed to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's decision to run for a fourth term in elections next month. The Algerian army shot dead an Islamist in a mountainous region east of Algiers in an area between Tizi-Ouzou and Boumerdes.
(AP, 3/1/14)(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 1, In southwestern China a group of knife-wielding men attacked the Kunming Railway Station in Yunnan province. The rampage killed 31 people and wounded 141. Police fatally shot four of the assailants, putting the overall death toll at 33. Xinjiang separatist forces were blamed. The Ministry of Public Security later said a "terrorist gang" of six men and two women led by a person identified as Abdurehim Kurban was responsible for the attack. 4 attackers were killed and 4 faced death sentences.
(AP, 3/1/14)(AP, 3/2/14)(AP, 3/3/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 1, In China a crash in the Yanhou Tunnel in Shaanxi province involved more than 40 vehicles, including those carrying hazardous materials. At least 31 people were killed and a resulting fire burned for three days.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 1, In Egypt the youngest son of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was detained by police on suspicion of drug possession.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, French filmmaker Alain Resnais (91) died. His cryptic "Last Year at Marianbad" (1961) extended its influence across generations. His films included the acclaimed "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959) and most recently "Life of Riley," honored at the Berlin Film Festival just weeks ago.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 1, Israeli troops close to the border shot dead Amena Atiyyeh Qdeih (57), a mentally ill Gazan woman, near to the southern city of Khan Yunis.
(AFP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Hundreds rallied in Tokyo to protest Japanese prosecutors' decision to drop charges over the Fukushima nuclear crisis, with no one yet punished nearly three years after the "man-made" disaster.
(AFP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Japan pledged more than $200 million in aid to help the Palestinian Authority, as representatives in Indonesia from 22 nations reiterated their support of the Palestinians' quest for their own state.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb, In the Netherlands the Allard Pierson museum opened the "Crimea — Gold and secrets of the Black Sea" exhibition. In April curators said they are not sure where to return the objects on display when it ends in August due to Russia’s takeover of Crimea.
(AP, 4/4/14)
2014 Mar 1, In Nigeria twin car bombs at a bustling city marketplace in Maiduguri blasted buildings to rubble and tore apart bodies. An attack on the Mainok farming village razed every thatched-roof hut and left at least 51 dead. Over 100 people were reported altogether.
(AP, 3/2/14)(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 1, In northwest Pakistan militants killed 12 members of the security escort for a polio vaccination team, detonating a roadside bomb before opening fire on their convoy. In western Baluchistan province a roadside bomb killed 3 members of a government paramilitary force in Sorab. Shortly afterwards, the paramilitary Frontier Corps announced it had killed 10 men in Sui, 300 km southeast of Quetta.
(Reuters, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, The Pakistani Taliban announced that the group will observe a one-month cease-fire as part of efforts to negotiate a peace deal with the government, throwing new life into a foundering peace process.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Russia's parliament granted Pres. Vladimir Putin permission to use the country's military in Ukraine and also recommended that Moscow's ambassador be recalled from Washington over comments made by Pres. Obama. Ukrainian PM Arseny Yatsenyuk opened a Cabinet meeting in Kiev by calling on Russia not to provoke discord in Crimea.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Sergei Aksyonov, the pro-Russian prime minister of Ukraine's Crimea region, claimed control of the military and police there and appealed to Russia's President Vladimir Putin for help in keeping peace.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, In Spain armed Basque separatist group ETA pledged to give up all its weapons but warned the government that any attack or obstacle could impact negatively on the disarmament process.
(Reuters, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, In northwest Syria government airstrikes killed at least 13 people in Kfar Takharim, Idlib province.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 1, Ukraine's Pres. Viktor Yanukovich sent a letter to Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, asking him to use Russian army and police forces to restore order in Ukraine.
(Reuters, 1/24/19)
2014 Mar 2, At the Hollywood Academy Awards “12 Years a Slave," directed by Steve McQueen of Britain, won the Best Picture Oscar. Matthew McConaughtey won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in “Dallas Buyers Club." Cate Blanchett won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in “Blue Jasmine." Actress Lupita Nyong'o (31) of Kenya won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the movie "12 Years A Slave." Jared Leto won the Best Supporting Oscar for his role in “Dallas Buyers Club." Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron won the Best Director Oscar for “Gravity," which won a total of seven Oscars.
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.C4)(Econ, 3/8/14, p.58)(SFC, 11/24/18, p.E1)
2014 Mar 2, British director Malcolm Clarke won the documentary short prize for "The Lady in Number 6," a profile of musician and Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer (d.2014 at 110).
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 2, The Italian film "The Great Beauty" won the Oscar for best foreign-language film.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 2, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez signed legislation to ban texting. 41 other states have already banned texting by all drivers.
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 2, A massive winter storm system packing cold air, snow and freezing rain pummeled the central US and headed for the East Coast.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, In eastern Afghanistan a militant car bomb prematurely exploded overnight, killing 9 insurgents and 4 civilians. A lone suicide bomber entered a police station in Kandahar province, though officers' fire forced him to detonate his explosive vest early, only wounding one civilian. 12 Taliban escaped from the 1,200-inmate Kandahar Prison after a prison employee falsely put their names on a list of detainees who were scheduled for release. Two were soon recaptured.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, In Bolivia 4 people were killed and over 60 injured when a metal footbridge collapsed onto a group of musicians marching in the opening parade of Carnival in Oruro.
(SSFC, 3/2/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 2, In Hong Kong thousands marched to support press freedom and denounce violence following the Feb 26 attack on Kevin Lau Chun-to, former editor of the Ming Pao newspaper.
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 2, In Iraq attacks in predominantly Sunni Arab areas north and west of Baghdad killed 6 people, all members of the security forces.
(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews held a mass prayer in Jerusalem in protest at a bill that would cut their community's military exemptions and end a tradition upheld since Israel's foundation.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Jamaican police said they have seized over 2,100 pounds (952 kg) of marijuana and arrested a suspect in a 2-day operation at a container terminal in Kingston.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, In Libya gunmen shot dead French engineer Patrice Real in Benghazi. A member of the security forces was also killed by a bomb placed under his car and a former policeman was seriously wounded. Five unidentified bodies were found in and around the city.
(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Pakistani warplanes bombed the hideout of militant leader Mullah Tamanchey, killing 5 insurgents, only a day after the Pakistani Taliban declared a one-month ceasefire to pursue stalled peace talks with the government. Tamanchey had directed the deadly assault a day earlier against a convoy carrying a polio vaccination team.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, South Africa's biggest trade union, the 340,000-strong National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), said it was laying the ground for a new "working class" political party. The United Front Movement for Socialism would group together left-leaning organizations to fight for better education, healthcare and municipal services for South Africa's poor.
(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, In Syria gun battles and shelling hit the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk in southern Damascus, breaking a truce in place since mid-February.
(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Ukraine mobilized for war and Washington threatened to isolate Russia economically, after President Vladimir Putin declared he had the right to invade his neighbor.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Ukraine's new PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk and world leaders urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull back his military as hundreds of armed men surrounded a Ukrainian military base in Crimea. Ukraine's navy chief announced he had switched allegiance to the pro-Russian authorities of the flashpoint peninsula of Crimea, a day after he was appointed to the post by interim leader Oleksandr Turchynov.
(AP, 3/2/14)(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Venezuela released dozens of anti-government protesters and an Italian photographer, but that did nothing to appease demonstrators set for more rallies against President Nicolas Maduro. Thousands marched peacefully in Caracas. Afterwards some 1,500 erected barricades and clashed with National Guard troops.
(AFP, 3/2/14)(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 2, In central Yemen gunmen ambushed a colonel in the security forces, killing him and wounding his guard. Armed tribesmen clashed with security forces on the southern edge of Sanaa, leaving two gunmen dead and three soldiers wounded.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 3, In Michigan Raulie Casteel was sentenced to 18-40 years in prison for shooting at two dozen vehicles on a busy southeastern highway.
(SFC, 3/4/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 3, The US Supreme Court refused to hear a final appeal against the expulsion of Uwe Romeike, his wife and their seven children, from Morristown, Tenn. They had lived their since fleeing Baden-Wurttemberg in 2008, where it was against the law to home-school their children.
(Econ, 4/5/14, p.29)
2014 Mar 3, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb destroyed a police vehicle in Uruzgan province, killing 5 policemen and wounding one.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In Bahrain an explosion that went off while policemen were dispersing demonstrators killed three police personnel. 25 people were arrested over the next 24 hours on suspicion of involvement.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 3, In Indian-controlled Kashmir suspected rebels ambushed a police vehicle and killed two officers outside a court in Pulwama town.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In Iraq violence killed at least 10 people. Sabah Noori, spokesman for Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service, said its forces had killed 52 jihadist militants in fighting over the last 24 hours in Ramadi.
(AFP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, Libya's parliament moved into a five-star Tripoli hotel, a day after rioters armed with knives and guns stormed the legislature building, torching furniture, killing a guard and wounding six lawmakers in the latest episode of turmoil in the country.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In northern Nigeria suspected Islamic militants killed 3 policemen in Katsina. The police were killed while pursuing four gunmen on motorcycles who had attacked a checkpoint.
(SFC, 3/4/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 3, In Pakistan gunmen burst into a court in a busy shopping area in the heart of Islamabad, killing at least 11 people in a suicide-bomb and gun attack likely to shatter any prospect of meaningful peace talks with Taliban insurgents.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In the southern Philippines gunmen abducted two children, their nanny and a driver while on the way to school in a region notorious for ransom kidnappings by Islamic militants.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, Romania's ethnic Hungarian opposition party UDMR voted to join the leftist government of PM Victor Ponta, and will be given the environment and culture ministry portfolios.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, Syrian troops seized control of a village near the strategic rebel bastion of Yabroud as they pushed closer to the town. Food deliveries to thousands of people living in a blockaded area in southern Damascus ground to a halt after a truce collapsed and clashes broke out between rebels and forces loyal to the government. Fighting in and around Yabroud killed dozens of people, including about 17 rebels, 15 government and allied militia fighters and at least 4 Hezbollah fighters.
(AFP, 3/3/14)(AP, 3/3/14)(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 3, Uganda said it will send about 400 extra troops to Somalia to protect UN personnel in Mogadishu.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In Ukraine pro-Russian demonstrators occupied the first floor of the regional government building in Donetsk, the latest in days of rallies that Kiev says are organized by Moscow as a pretext to invade. Interfax news agency quoted a source in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry as saying Russia's Black Sea Fleet has told Ukrainian forces in Crimea to surrender by 5 a.m. on March 4 or face a military assault. The OSCE said it will start deploying in Ukraine late today, but Russian objections mean the body has yet to agree on a full-scale mission. The UN said 16,000 Russians have been deployed in Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)(AFP, 3/3/14)(SFC, 3/4/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 3, In Ukraine Reshat Ametov, a Tatar construction worker and father of three, was seized by unidentified men after taking part in a pro-Ukraine rally in Crimea. His body, bearing signs of torture was found on March 16.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.23)
2014 Mar 3, The United Arab Emirates' top court in Abu Dhabi convicted Qatari Dr. Mahmoud al-Jaidah and sentenced him to seven years behind bars on charges linked to cooperating with an illegal clandestine organization that aimed to overthrow the government.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, The UN Environmental Program marked its first ever World Wildlife Day to raise awareness about an illicit global trade in illegal timber, elephant ivory and rhino horns worth an estimated $19 billion.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, The United Nations' highest court banned Australia from making any use of documents it seized from a lawyer working for East Timor in an arbitration case over a multibillion-dollar oil and gas deal between the two nations.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, The African Union-UN Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) said arson and looting by militia has displaced about 20,000 people in Darfur.
(AFP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In southern Yemen assailants killed 5 soldiers in an ambush in Shabwa province.
(AFP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 4, A federal judge in New York ruled that a 2011 $9.5 billion judgement against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador was the result of fraud, committed by lawyers who sued the company for allegedly poisoning part of the Amazon rain forest.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 4, In New Jersey a gas leak and subsequent explosion killed one woman and destroyed at least 10 homes in Ewing.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A8)
2014 Mar 4, Chinese millionaires pleaded for the Canadian government not to throw away the immigration applications of thousands of Chinese nationals as part of its plans to end a backlogged investor program.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, In China the Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science and Technology Co. declared that it lacked the cash to make the full interest payment on a corporate bond. This was China’s first domestic market bond default since the central bank started regulating the market in 1997.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.75)
2014 Mar 4, Cyprus's parliament approved plans for privatizations, averting a showdown with international lenders who insist on state selloffs as part of a 10 billion-euro ($13.77 billion) bailout.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, An Egyptian court ruled to ban activities of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in a move likely to fuel tension between Cairo's military-backed government and the Islamic group that rules the neighboring Gaza Strip.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Estonia's three-term PM Andrus Ansip submitted his resignation in a long-planned move to pave the way for his successor to lead a new government into a general election next year.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, The Government of India notified in the official gazette that the new state of Telangana will come into existence on 2 June 2014. India's 29th state, was carved out of Andhra Pradesh state after nearly six decades of street protests and strikes.
(AP, 4/30/14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telangana)
2014 Mar 4, India's highest court ordered that Subrata Roy (65), the head of the Sahara conglomerate, to remain in custody until a March 11 hearing over billions of dollars in an outlawed bond scheme.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 4, In Iraq militants stormed a government building in Samara, killing at least 6 people including 3 police and 3 civilians. 2 suicide bombers and 5 attackers were also killed.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, In Libya Col. Adam Faraj al-Abdali was discovered early today with shots to his head and chest inside his car near a cemetery in Benghazi. Col. Al-Abdali had pioneered the use of Russian jets in Libya.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Mexican police, soldiers and government inspectors raided 11 iron ore yards in Lazaro Cardenas following revelations that drug cartels were exporting ore to China.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 4, In Mexico one person was killed when illegal miners attacked the mine and offices in Guanajuato state of a silver mine run by Canada-based Great Panther Silver company.
(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 4, Moroccan forces turned back some 700 sub-Saharan African migrants who attempted to cross into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Nigeria said it has released fuel from its reserves to ease a crippling shortage that has caused long queues of vehicles at petrol stations across the country. Shell closed its Forcados export terminal following an under-sea pipeline leak. The major installation held capacity to handle 400,000 barrels of crude a day.
(AFP, 3/4/14)(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 4, In the Philippines Arsina Nanoh, the vice-mayor Hadji Muhtamad town, was abducted by unidentified men near a shopping mall in the port city of Zamboanga.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 4, The US Coast Guard said in a statement that agents with US Customs and Border Protection have arrested two suspects and seized 750 pounds (340 kg) of pot after spotting a go-fast vessel more than 50 miles (80 km) off Puerto Rico's southwest coast.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, A Bucharest court has handed prison sentences to eight Romanian football officials for tax evasion and money laundering in connection with the transfer of 12 players.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Vladimir Putin said that Moscow reserves the right to use its military to protect Russians in Ukraine but voiced hope it won't need to do so as he accusing the West of encouraging an "unconstitutional coup." Russia's state-controlled natural gas giant Gazprom said it will cancel a price discount for natural gas supplies to Ukraine as of April 1.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Sri Lanka's navy said it has detained 32 Indian fishermen who were fishing illegally in Sri Lankan territorial waters less than two months after the two countries agreed to work together to combat poaching.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Syria's military fought to take Yabroud, a town that would help Pres. al-Assad seal a link between his coastal bastions and Damascus.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul ordered state auditors to assess Turkey's ability to combat corruption, including in the construction sector, amid a graft investigation that has implicated senior elected officials.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Kiev to show US support for the fledgling Ukraine government, and the Obama administration announced with his arrival a $1 billion energy subsidy package.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, In Vietnam dissident blogger Truong Duy Nhat (50) was sentenced to two years in prison for posting online criticism of Vietnam's authoritarian government.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 5, California Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled an agreement with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to boost joint projects in high technology, the environment and cybersecurity.
(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 5, Alpha Natural Resources Inc. filed a proposed settlement in a West Virginia court to pay a $27.5 million fine and spend $200 million to reduce illegal toxic discharges across five Appalachian states.
(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 5, Washington state issued its first legal marijuana business license. 334 retail licenses were expected to be issued state-wide.
(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 5, The Algerian army shot dead a civilian and wounded two others when their car failed to stop at a checkpoint in the Kabylie region.
(AFP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, China’s PM Li Keqiang vowed to act against corruption and to declare war on pollution.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.70)(Econ, 3/15/14, p.13)
2014 Mar 5, EcoMotors, a startup backed by Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures, unveiled a joint venture with a division of China FAW Group to produce 100,000 new two-stroke engines a year.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.70)
2014 Mar 5, In northeastern China a fire on a public bus in Jilin province left 10 people dead and 17 injured.
(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 5, In the Czech Rep. a Prague court ruled that an Iranian national can be extradited to face trial in the US. Hossein Nayeri was one of four men that allegedly kidnapped a California marijuana dispensary owner in 2012, tortured him, drove him out to a desert spot where the men believed the victim had hidden his money and cut off his penis.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, The EU prepared a $15 billion aid package to Ukraine and froze the assets of 18 people blamed for looting the treasury of the nearly bankrupt country.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany is ready to help Ukraine in its difficult phase and added that this would include financial assistance.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In India street clashes marred an announcement that a general election will start on April 7 in a race that pits Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi against the unpopular Nehru-Gandhi family's ruling party.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In Indonesia an explosion at a navy ammunition warehouse killed one man and injured more than 80 other navy personnel.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said it had acquired missiles with multiple warheads, the latest armaments advance to be claimed by the Islamic Republic.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In Iraq a series of explosions killed at least 24 people.
(AP, 3/6/14)(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 5, The Israeli navy seized a ship in the Red Sea that was carrying dozens of advanced Iranian-supplied rockets made in Syria and intended for Palestinian guerrillas in the Gaza Strip.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Israel's army struck 2 members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as they tried to plant a bomb near the Israeli-Syrian border.
(AFP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Macedonia's lawmakers voted to dissolve parliament so elections can be held a year ahead of time after parties in the governing coalition failed to agree on a presidential candidate.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, The Pakistani government pushed forward with Taliban peace negotiations, despite recent militant attacks that include a roadside bomb in the country's northwest that killed six soldiers.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Philippine government forces searched for a town's vice mayor after her family reported that she has been abducted outside a shopping mall in the country's restive south.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar in an unprecedented public split between Gulf Arab allies who have fallen out over the role of Islamists in a region in turmoil.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In South Sudan at least 35 people were killed after heavy fighting broke out in the Giada military barracks in Juba, underscoring serious tensions within the national army as it battles a rebel uprising.
(AFP, 3/5/14)(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 5, A Sudanese court overturned an order by state security agents which has stopped the presses at Al-Tayar, a prominent daily newspaper, for almost two years. A journalists' rights group said the National Intelligence and Security Service have seized the press runs of three other newspapers.
(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 5, Turkey’s PM Erdogan confirmed the authenticity of a tape asking his then-justice minister Sadullah Ergin to pressure a court into convicting media mogul Aydin Dogan, a long-time foe. The tape included a slight to the country’s large Alevi community. The tape followed the publication last month in local daily Taraf of internal government documents that appeared to show anti-Alevi discrimination in the recruitment process for civil servants.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 5, Ukraine's new PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that embattled Crimea must remain part of Ukraine, but may be granted more local powers.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In Yemen an American drone attack killed local al-Qaida leader Ali Saleh Juraim and two others while they were traveling by car in the northwest province of al-Jawf.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 6, The Obama administration slapped new visa restrictions against pro-Russian opponents to the new Ukraine government in Kiev as lawmakers in Crimea declared their intention to split from Ukraine and join Russia instead. They scheduled a referendum in 10 days for voters to decide the fate of the disputed peninsula. Russia's parliament, clearly savoring the action, introduced a bill intended to make this happen.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, The US Climate Prediction Center (CPC) issued its first El Nino watch in almost 18 months, warning the phenomenon that can wreak havoc on weather and roil global crops could strike as early as the Northern Hemisphere summer.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Sheila MacRae (92), Broadway and TV star, died. She was best known for playing Alice Kramden to Jackie Gleason’s Ralph on the Jackie Gleason Show (1966-1970).
(SSFC, 3/9/14, p.C12)
2014 Mar 6, In Afghanistan 5 Afghan soldiers were killed in an accidental air strike by the NATO-led force in the eastern province of Logar.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Algerian security forces arrested about 40 people protesting in central Algiers against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika standing for a fourth term next month. Public demonstrations in Algeria remain banned, despite a state of emergency being lifted in 2011.
(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, The Czech Parliament banned the sale of alcoholic beverages during sessions of the lower house.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Cuba said it has accepted a proposal by the EU to open negotiations on a new political accord.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, European leaders said Russia will face sanctions over its military incursion in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula unless it withdraws its troops or engages in credible talks to defuse the situation. The EU froze the assets of ousted Ukraine leader Viktor Yanukovych, ex-premier Mykola Azarov and 16 former ministers, businessmen and security chiefs, all on grounds of fraud.
(AP, 3/6/14)(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, The Bank of Greece said the country’s banking sector needs to raise 6.4 billion euros ($8.9 billion) to be able to cushion potential future losses. This prompted some of the banks to outline their plans.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, In central Iraq a series of bombings and clashes near Fallujah left at least 42 people dead.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Lithuania says six US fighter jets and two tanker planes have arrived following a US decision to increase NATO's air policing mission of the three Baltic states.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Macedonia formally set April 27 as the date of the country's early parliamentary election, which was forced after government coalition partners failed to agree on a presidential candidate.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Niger extradited to Libya one of Moammar Gadhafi's sons, al-Saadi, who fled as his father's regime crumbled in 2011 and who was under house arrest in the desert West African nation ever since.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, In northern Nigeria four young men were convicted of gay sex and whipped publicly as punishment in an Islamic court in Bauchi city.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Poland's defense minister said a mission of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has been stopped from entering Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula by unidentified men in military fatigues.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, A new video showed two members of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot attacked by a group of men who poured rubbish and bright green paint over them and shouted obscenities at them at a McDonald's restaurant in Nizhny Novgorod.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, Saudi state news said a court has sentenced three men to death and jailed two others for up to 17 years for their part in a series of militant attacks including the deadly bombing of a foreign housing compound on Nov 8, 2003.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, South Africa imposed rolling power cuts for the first time since 2008 as it struggled to cope with coal shortages and technical problems caused by recent heavy rains.
(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, In Syria at least 15 people were killed and 12 others wounded in a car bomb blast in Homs. At least five people were killed and more than 20 wounded in a bomb blast near a security headquarters in Hama. At least 17 jihadists were killed in fighting near the rebel-held town of Yabrud.
(AFP, 3/6/14)(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, Tunisia's Pres. Moncef Marzouki lifted a state of emergency in force since the 2011 uprising that ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
(AP, 3/6/14)(SFC, 3/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 6, Uganda, under fire from Western nations, defended its toughened law on gays as being aimed at "protecting" youth from homosexuality and discouraging public displays of gay love.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Ukraine's new leadership was reported to have reached out to oligarchs for help, appointing them as governors in eastern regions where loyalties to Moscow are strong.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, In Ukraine two Femen protesters were arrested in Crimea's capital Simferopol after staging a topless demonstration against Russia's intervention in Ukraine in front of the regional parliament. Pavel Gubarev, the leader of the most persistent pro-Moscow protest movement in eastern Ukraine, was arrested at his home in the city of Donetsk
(AFP, 3/6/14)(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, A Venezuelan soldier and a motorcyclist died in a confused melee sparked by the opposition's barricading of a Caracas street, boosting the death toll from nearly a month of violence to 20.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, In Washington DC the Organization of American States voted to approve a declaration that rejected violence and called for just outcomes for the 21 people the Venezuelan government says have died in weeks of street protests. The OAS also supported the Venezuelan government's attempts to use political dialogue to end the protests. The United States, Panama and Canada voted against the resolution.
(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 7, US officials said Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael McClendon, accused of secretly photographing and videotaping a dozen women the US Military Academy at West Point, has agreed to a plea bargain that includes a 33-month sentence, loss of pay, reduction in rank to private and a bad-conduct discharge.
(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 7, The US Centers for Disease Control issued an alert after health authorities in the United States reported that at least 19 women in five states had developed serious mycobacterial wound infections over the previous 12 months following cosmetic procedures in the Dominican Republic such as liposuction, tummy tucks and breast implants.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 7, In Michigan a house covered with stuffed animals and dolls became the latest casualty in a string of suspicious fires at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit.
(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 7, In Fort Hood, Texas, Army Sgt. 1st Class Gregory McQueen, a coordinator of the post’s sexual assault and harassment program, was charged with 21 counts of pandering, conspiracy and maltreatment of a subordinate.
(SSFC, 3/9/14, p.A9)
2014 Mar 7, In Washington state some 750 detainees at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma went on a hunger strike to protest deportations and conditions at the center.
(SSFC, 3/9/14, p.A9)
2014 Mar 7, Two shipping companies agreed to civil settlements following accusations that they fixed prices of government cargo transportation contracts between the US and Puerto Rico. Sea Star Line LLC agreed to pay $1.9 million and Horizon Lines LLC $1.5 million to settle the cases.
(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 7, Online retailer Coupons.com, which took coupon clipping to the Web in 1998, raised $168 million in its IPO and rose 88% to close at $30 per share.
(SFC, 3/8/14, p.D1)
2014 Mar 7, Hundreds of British lawyers marched on Parliament to protest legal aid cuts. The government planned to reduce the legal aid budget by $360 million a year through 2019.
(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 7, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, the cyber arm of Britain's premier defense contractor, published its own research on suspected Russian spyware known as Turla, which it called "snake." The sophisticated piece of spyware has been quietly infecting hundreds of government computers across Europe and the United States in one of the most complex cyber espionage programs uncovered to date.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Chinese authorities allowed the country's first corporate bond default, inflicting losses on small investors in a painful step toward making its financial system more market-oriented.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Congolese warlord Germain Katanga was convicted of being an accessory to war crimes including murder and pillage - only the second conviction in the 12-year history of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Katanga was convicted as an accessory in the attack on Bogoro village in 2003 that left some 200 civilians dead and many women raped and turned into sex slaves.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 7, Greek Dr. Costas Kastaniotis (57) was convicted of breaking anti-racism laws for putting up a "Jews not welcome" sign outside his office and given a 16-month suspended sentence. The neurologist denied he was the one to have put up the sign, which was written in German, and said he took it down when it was brought to his attention.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Hundreds of people protested in the streets in Indian-controlled Kashmir over the expulsion of dozens of Kashmiri college students because they cheered for the Pakistani cricket team over India's.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Kenya's president and cabinet agreed to a pay cut as part of austerity measures meant to reduce the government wage bill and free up funds for use in economic development. They called on lawmakers to do the same.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, An Indian naval officer was killed and "some" dock workers were injured in a gas leak aboard a yet-to-be commissioned naval ship.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, In Iraq shelling in Fallujah, held by anti-government fighters for more than two months, and a shooting targeting a local official killed seven people.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Mark Karpeles, head of the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange, said 200,000 missing bitcoins, valued at $116 million, were found in old format wallets. Some $378 million of bitcoin currency remained missing.
(SFC, 3/22/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 7, Macedonian police said they have arrested 13 people, including the head of a customs office at the Macedonia-Bulgaria border crossing, on suspicion of participating in a ring smuggling designer clothing from Greece and Bulgaria.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, A Malaysian court sentenced opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to five years in jail on sodomy charges, overturning a 2012 acquittal and throwing his political career into jeopardy.
(AP, 3/7/14)(Econ, 3/15/14, p.40)
2014 Mar 7, Malaysia banned an Ultraman comic book because it uses the word "Allah" to describe the Japanese action hero. The Home Ministry said that the Malay-edition of "Ultraman, The Ultra Power" contained elements that can undermine public security and societal morals.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Mozambican PM Alberto Vaquina says attacks by the opposition party and former rebel movement Renamo have displaced more than 6,000 people in the central parts of the country.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Russia rallied support for a Crimean bid to secede from Ukraine, with Russia's top lawmaker assuring her Crimean counterpart that the region would be welcomed as "an absolutely equal subject of the Russian Federation." Russia said that Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) observers, who were barred from Crimea, had failed to obtain "official invitations" from the Crimean authorities.
(AP, 3/7/14)(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Saudi Arabia identified the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group along with al-Qaida and two Syrian jihadist groups, warning those who join them or support them they could face five to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 3/7/14)(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, A diplomatic source said South Africa has expelled three Rwandan diplomats it says were linked to an attack by gunmen this week on the Johannesburg home of an exiled dissident Rwandan general. Rwanda retaliated by ordering out six South African diplomats.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, South Africa's under-fire police faced a fresh scandal after footage emerged of uniformed officers punching and kicking a half-naked and unarmed man on a Cape Town street.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Syrian warplanes pounded an area near the rebel-held town of Yabrud near the Lebanese border.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, In Thailand 6 suspected drug dealers were shot dead during a firefight with Thai security forces who seized illegal amphetamines in the Mae Sai district of northernmost Chiang Rai province.
(AFP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 7, A Turkish court ordered the release of former army chief Ilker Basbug from a life sentence.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 8, In eastern Afghanistan bomb placed under the car seat of a district chief exploded, killing him and wounding six other people. 7 people, including 3 women and 2 children, were killed and eight others wounded when their car was hit by a roadside bomb while traveling in Helmand province. 2 other civilians were killed in a bombing in the Kajaki district. Security forces killed 13 Taliban insurgents in Helmand's Gereshk district.
(AP, 3/8/14)(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 8, Gerard Mortier (70), Belgian opera director, died. His nonconformist style often grated the tradition-bound elite and who became a fiercely avant-garde impresario. He became the director of Belgium's National Operation, known as La Monnaie, in 1981, steering it away from "bourgeois" entertainment and to international recognition and acclaim.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 8, In Burundi violent clashes in Bujumbura pitted opposition Movement for Solidarity and Development activists against police. 21 MSD activists were arrested.
(AFP, 3/16/14)(Econ, 3/29/14, p.50)
2014 Mar 8, China declared a "red line" on North Korea, saying that China will not permit chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, and that peace can only come through denuclearization.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, In southwest China a small plane belonging to a flight academy crashed into a farm field, killing both people on board.
(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton arrived in Tehran to discuss issues including Iran's disputed nuclear program, before another round of talks between Iran and world powers.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Attacks in Iraq killed 9 people, including a parliamentary candidate and four children. A suicide bomber used a stolen police Humvee to pass through a military checkpoint and set off his explosives, wounding 14 people in Ramadi.
(AFP, 3/8/14)(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, The Israeli pacifist group Yesh Gvul (There is a limit) published a letter by a group of 50 Israeli teenagers informing PM Benjamin Netanyahu they will refuse to serve in the military because of its role in the occupation of Palestinian land.
(AFP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 8, In Libya armed protesters controlling eastern ports said they had started independently exporting oil, bypassing the central government in a major escalation of their blockade to demand a share of the nation's petroleum wealth.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 fell off radar screens less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. Vietnamese air force planes spotted two large oil slicks close to where the Boeing 777 went missing early today. The aircraft carried 239 people. Foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna confirmed that names of two nationals listed on the manifest matched passports reported stolen in Thailand. The flight was carrying 154 people from China and Taiwan, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians and six Australians among the 227 passengers.
(AP, 3/8/14)(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Russia was reported to be reinforcing its military presence in Crimea as Moscow's foreign minister ruled out any dialogue with Ukraine's new authorities, whom he dismissed as puppets. Warning shots were fired when an unarmed OSCE military observer mission was turned back while trying to cross into Ukraine's Crimea region.
(AP, 3/8/14)(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Sri Lankan authorities said they have halted excavations after recovering 81 skeletal remains from an unmarked mass grave atop an old burial ground in the island's former war zone.
(AFP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Syrian government forces seized Zara from rebels near the Lebanese border, their latest attempt to cut off opposition fighters' fluid supply lines from the country. At least 20 people were killed after gunmen loyal to Pres. Assad entered the town, one of two last strongholds for rebels along the Lebanese border leading to the city of Homs, the other being the nearby village of al-Hosn. Syrian cameraman Omar Abdelqade was killed covering clashes between government forces and opposition fighters in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor.
(AP, 3/8/14)(Reuters, 3/9/14)(SSFC, 3/9/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 8, Ukraine's top security body said that it and the national news agency has been hit by cyber attacks, the latest suffered by state organizations since the start of the crisis over Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, In southern Yemen at least 2 soldiers and a militant were killed in a clash when militants tried to attack a military compound in Lawdar town.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 9, In NYC thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews filled the streets of lower Manhattan to protest Israel’s decision to draft strictly religious citizens into its army.
(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 9, Afghanistan's influential VP Mohammad Qasim Fahim (57) died. He was a leading commander in the alliance that fought the Taliban and was later accused with other warlords of targeting civilian areas during the country's civil war. A bomb exploded near a store, killing 2 civilians and wounding two others in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, The Arab League endorsed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rejection of Israel's demand for recognition as a Jewish state, as US-backed peace talks approach a deadline next month.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Brazilian officials inaugurated the Arena da Amazonia in the jungle city of Manaus, the ninth World Cup stadium to become available for football's showcase event. Three still have to be finished, including the one hosting the opener in Sao Paulo in about three months.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Colombia held congressional elections. Voters showed lukewarm support for peace talks with guerrillas by giving the country's president a majority in Congress, but also electing his conservative rival, ex-president Alvaro Uribe, to the senate.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 9, In Cuba Melba Hernandez (b.1921), a "heroine of the Cuban Revolution," died. She was one of two women who helped Fidel Castro launch his revolutionary battle with a failed 1953 attack on the Moncada military barracks.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 9, Egypt's powerful military chief launched a housing initiative to build a million homes in cooperation with a major Emirati construction firm, the first campaign-style move by Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who is widely expected to run for president.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, El Salvador held a 2nd round of presidential elections. Former Marxist guerrilla leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren (FMLN) was expected to win the presidency after promising to expand social programs for the poor and fending off his opponent's claims that he will impose radical policies. Mr. Sanchez won by just 6,634 votes. In 2017 a gangster named Nalo testified that politicians from the two main parties had paid gangsters for votes. The FMLN allegedly paid $250,000 and Arena $100,000, which the gangs spent on M-16s and AK-47s.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)(AP, 3/10/14)(Econ, 1/26/17, p.27)
2014 Mar 9, Two Indonesian naval personnel were killed during an inspection aboard a Thai fishing boat in Indonesian waters. Thailand police soon arrested three suspects. Four more were arrested in April.
(AP, 4/4/14)
2014 Mar 9, In southern Iraq a suicide bomber driving a minibus packed with explosives killed 21 civilians and 15 security personnel in Hillah. A gun attack on a checkpoint North of Hilla left 2 policemen dead and four others wounded. In Abu Ghraib gunmen shot dead at least 2 soldiers and wound one at an army checkpoint. Six attacks north of the capital killed 3 policemen and two soldiers and wound nearly 40.
(www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26505128)(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 9, Italian authorities in the northern city of Lecco arrested an Albanian mother who confessed to stabbing to death her three young daughters. The father had departed for Albania a day earlier, and the mother had no job.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, In Japan thousands of people rallied in Tokyo and marched to parliament to demand an end to nuclear power.
(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 9, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata (50) assumed command of the Int’l. Space Station (ISS).
(SSFC, 3/16/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 9, Libya's Defense Ministry said it has authorized the military to use force to stop a North Korean-flagged tanker from loading crude oil at a rebel-held port, bypassing the Tripoli government.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, In Mexico Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, a leader of the Knights Templar, was killed in a shootout with police near Apatzingan, Michoacan state. He had been reported slain in 2010, but his body was never found.
(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 9, Almost all North Koreans cast their ballots in a pre-determined election for a rubber-stamp parliament, an exercise that doubles as a national head count and may offer clues to power shifts in Pyongyang.
(AFP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, A court in Oman sentenced a former executive of an engineering firm to a total of 15 years in jail for five counts of bribery in exchange for contracts from a state-owned oil company. This was the second against former managing director of Galfar Engineering and Contracting, Mohammed Ali, who was sentenced to three years in jail in January over bribes made to Petroleum Development Oman (PDO).
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Russians took over a Ukrainian border post on the western edge of Crimea, trapping about 15 personnel inside. Germany's Angela Merkel delivered a rebuke to President Vladimir Putin, telling him that a planned Moscow-backed referendum on whether Crimea should join Russia was illegal and violated Ukraine's constitution.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, A Sierra Leone airport official said International airlines have cancelled flights to and from Sierra Leone after a UN aviation regulator discovered that the only functioning fire engine at its main airport had broken down.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Somali officials said African peacekeepers (AMISOM) operating with government forces have recaptured several strategic towns in the southwest from the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militia. Witnesses reported fierce fighting in Buudhubow.
(AFP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, In Syria Ali Moustafa, a Canadian freelance photographer, was killed alongside 7 other people after government aircraft dropped two explosive-laden containers in the rebel-held Hadariyeh area of Aleppo.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Yemeni sources said at least 40 people have been killed in three days of fighting between Shi'ite Muslim rebels and Sunni tribesmen.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 10, Colorado said marijuana sales brought in $3.5 million in tax revenues and fees in the first month retail pot outlets were allowed.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, A federal judge in Chicago ruled that Branko Bogdanov (58) and his wife Lela (52) are to remain in jail pending trial for stealing $7 million in a decade-long multistate shopping spree. They had emigrated from Yugoslavia and were in the US illegally.
(SFC, 3/11/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 10, Fruit supply companies Chiquita of the United States and Fyffes of Ireland said they had agreed to merge to create the world's biggest banana supplier. Fyffes is Europe's biggest banana importer and the oldest industry brand, dating to 1929.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Journalist Joe McGinniss (b.1942) died. His books included “The Selling of the President“ (1968) and “Fatal Vision" (1983).
(SFC, 3/11/14, p.A8)
2014 Mar 10, Two Bahraini suspects, one with a US passport, were arrested after they allegedly "demonstrated and attacked a police patrol using Molotov cocktails and iron bars" in the Shiite village of Maameer.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 10, A Burundian official said South Africa has expelled a diplomat from Burundi's embassy in connection with a raid on an exiled Rwandan general's Johannesburg home and Burundi is considering a response.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, State officials in the Central African Republic were paid their first wage for six months, a small sign of normality in a country that has been paralyzed by war for over a year. A group of UN-mandated investigators said they will launch a probe into human rights violations amid fears of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Cypriot Central Bank governor Panicos Demetriades, whose testy relations with island's government dogged a tumultuous tenure when Cyprus teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, resigned.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, In Germany Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness admitted to evading millions of euros (dollars) in taxes through an undeclared Swiss bank account at a trial that could send the German football great to prison.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian judge from Jordan in an altercation at a crossing point between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli military said Raed Alaa el-Deen Za'eiter (Raed Zeiter) had tried to seize a soldier's gun at the Allenby bridge.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Libyan officials said parliament has ordered a special force be sent within one week to "liberate" all rebel-held ports in the volatile east, raising the stakes over a blockage that has cut off vital oil revenues.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Flooding in parts of southern Mozambique prompted authorities to call on people to evacuate. More than 6,000 people living in the Incomati basin were at risk from flooding.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, The Philippines air dropped food and water to soldiers stationed on a grounded transport ship on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal. A day earlier China blocked two Filipino supply ships from reaching the troops.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 10, In the Philippines some 50 New People’s Army (NPA) rebels launched a series of attacks in southern Davao del Sur province's Matanao township, killing 10 government troops and wounding nine. At least two guerrillas were killed and nine captured. Security forces were on heightened alert for the NPA's founding anniversary on March 29, which rebels traditionally mark by attacking government troops and installations.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Russian troops opened fire with automatic rifles during a takeover of a Ukrainian naval post in Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, South Africa said it will ask Mozambican authorities to investigate reports of sexual abuse of its female nationals held in the neighbouring country's jails.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Switzerland froze the assets and bank accounts of nine more Ukrainians, including another son of ousted president Viktor Yanukovich and the son of a former prime minister, all of whom are suspected of human rights abuses and misuse of state funds.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, The office of Switzerland's attorney general said its criminal investigation into former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford's massive Ponzi scheme has concluded that some of the victims' money was laundered in Swiss accounts.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Activist group All Out said the global telecom company Orange has withdrawn advertising from Red Pepper, a Ugandan tabloid newspaper that printed the names of 200 suspected homosexuals after a severe anti-gay law was enacted last month.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 11, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the CIA improperly searched a stand-alone computer network established for Congress in its investigation of allegations of CIA abuse in a Bush-era detention and interrogation program. She said the CIA's own inspector general has referred the matter to the Justice Department.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Eric Toth, a former Washington private school teacher, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in a child pornography case. He was captured in Nicaragua in 2013 after a year on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" fugitives list.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Glenn Ford (1949-2015) was released from a Louisiana prison after spending 30 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to die in the electric chair, he was sent to a Louisiana penitentiary in 1985.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_and_exoneration_of_Glenn_Ford)
2014 Mar 11, Jos. A. Bank of Hampstead, Md., and Men’s Wearhouse of Fremont, Ca., announced that Men’s Wearhouse will acquire Jos. A. Bank for $65/share or about $1.8 billion.
(SFC, 3/12/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 11, In Afghanistan Swedish journalist Nils Horner (51) was shot to death while he was talking to a translator on a street in Kabul.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Albanian authorities arrested seven Muslims, including two imams, for allegedly recruiting men to enlist with rebel groups fighting in Syria. About two-thirds of Albania's 3.2 million inhabitants are Muslims.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 12, Austria arrested Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash at the request of the USA which has been investigating him since 2006. He was suspected of violating laws on bribery and forming a criminal organization in the course of foreign business deals. On March 21 Firtash was released on 125 million-euro ($172.5 million) bail.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 11, Bank of England governor Mark Carney said the alleged manipulation of foreign exchange markets is "as serious as" the Libor rate rigging scandal that rocked the financial sector. Global regulators were investigating a number of firms linked to the suspected rigging of foreign exchange trading.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Michelle Bachelet took over the presidency of Chile for the second time. She planned to spend $15 billion on ambitious reforms aimed at redressing steep income inequality.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, China’s banking regulators approved a pilot scheme to allow privately owned banks in various parts of the country. The China Banking Regulatory Commission said ten companies, including Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent, have been picked to invest in China's first five privately owned banks.
(AP, 3/11/14)(Econ, 3/15/14, p.70)
2014 Mar 11, In CongoDRC a ground assault by government forces in Makoyoya followed UN helicopter attacks and killed 22 rebels.
(Econ, 3/15/14, p.47)
2014 Mar 11, In Croatia a court convicted former PM Ivo Sanader (2004-2009) of siphoning millions in state money while in power, and sentenced him to nine years in prison as part of efforts to root out corruption. Sanader was sentenced separately to 10 years in prison for bribery in 2012.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Egyptian authorities decided to take control of independent mosques in a move aimed at curbing Islamist dissent. In January, the Religious Endowments Ministry decided to set a theme topic sent to preachers around the country for Friday sermons. In late 2013 the ministry dismissed 55,000 imams (prayer leaders) who did not graduate from Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In Egypt Freij (aka Abu Abdullah), one of the founders of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Champions of Jerusalem), was killed when a bomb he was carrying was set off by a car accident.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 11, The European Commission agreed to extend nearly 500 million euros worth of trade benefits to Ukraine, removing duties on a wide range of agricultural goods, textiles and other imports in an effort to support the Ukrainian economy. G7 leaders called on Russia to stop all efforts to "annex" Ukraine's Crimea region.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 11, France returned three paintings stolen by the Nazis during WWII to their rightful owners. This brought the number of looted paintings returned by France to their rightful owners to 10 in less than a year.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In eastern India Maoist rebels ambushed police and killed 16 involved in a mine clearing operation in a remote part of Chhattisgarh state, demonstrating their strength ahead of a general election next month.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out any deal with the Palestinians unless they recognize Israel as the Jewish state and give up their refugees' right of return.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Israel expressed its regret over the death of Jordanian judge Raed Zeiter (38) while he was making his way to the occupied West Bank. He was shot a day earlier by Israeli soldiers after an altercation at the Allenby Bridge crossing.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, An Israeli air strike killed 3 militants of the Al-Quds Brigades in the southern Gaza Strip. The air strike came just hours after an unmanned aircraft of the sort Israel uses for surveillance and missile strikes crashed in the same area, just east of Khan Yunis.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In northern Nigeria gunmen on motorbikes began attacking Marabar Kindo village in Katsina state. Fulani herders were blamed for the attacks on Hausa farmers that left over 100 dead.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 11, Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut landed back on Earth in Kazakhstan after a stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) of over half a year.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In Libya angry MPs ousted PM Ali Zeidan after the North Korean-flagged Morning Glory, a tanker laden with oil from a rebel-held terminal, broke through a naval blockade and escaped to sea. Zeidan flew to Malta on a Libyan state plane, but then switched to a private jet after a brief stopover before departing for Germany. Libyan commander Ibrahim Jedran, whose militia took over vital oil terminals in the country's east, said he is seeking help from the United States in a standoff with the government over the seizure.
(AP, 3/11/14)(AP, 3/12/14)(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Lithuanian authorities arrested Russian national Yuri Mel (b.1968), suspected of involvement in clashes in January 1991 after declaration of independence from the USSR, at a checkpoint on the Kaliningrad border. Two days later he was placed in detention.
(http://tinyurl.com/o6ufjc4)
2014 Mar 11, Romania's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly voted to block an investigation by state prosecutors of former Finance Minister Daniel Chitoiu who they suspect abused his power to further the interests of a private insurance company. Romania ranks only behind Greece and Bulgaria in terms of corruption in the 28-nation EU, according to Transparency International.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Russia signed a preliminary agreement to build at least two more nuclear power plants in the Iranian port city of Bushehr.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 11, In northeastern Syria 3 suicide bombers detonated their explosives belts in a local administration building in a Kurdish town, killing at least 5 people.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In Turkey police and protesters clashed in Ankara and Istanbul following the death of Berkin Elvan, a 15-year-old boy who suffered a head injury during anti-government demonstrations last summer. Elvan was the sixth person to die in violence surrounding nationwide protests in late May and June over Erdogan's plans to tear down a park in central Istanbul.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Ukraine's interim leaders established a new National Guard and appealed to the United States and Britain for assistance against what they called Russian aggression in Crimea under a post-Cold War treaty.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, The parliament of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula voted for full independence from Ukraine in preparation for a referendum to join Russia. France threatened sanctions against Moscow as early as this week. Gunmen took over air traffic control of the airport in the regional capital Simferopol and refused landing rights to a flight from the Ukrainian capital.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it is sending a new team to observe military developments in tense regions of Ukraine and that the new team's mandate has been extended beyond Crimea to eastern Ukraine. Pro-Russian forces rebuffed previous attempts to monitor Crimea.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 12, A NYC residential building in an East Harlem neighborhood exploded and collapsed, sparking a serious fire and engulfing the area in thick smoke. 8 people were killed and 60 injured in the incident at 116th Street and Park Avenue.
(AFP, 3/12/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A11)
2014 Mar 12, In Afghanistan three armed insurgents tried to storm a former intelligence headquarters in Kandahar. The ensuing gunbattle left the 3 attackers dead.
(SFC, 3/13/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 12, Burundi charged opposition leader Alexis Sinduhije, who is on the run from police, and 71 party supporters with rebellion following March 8 clashes.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 12, Canada ended military operations in Afghanistan, ending a 12-year mission ahead of an end-of-year deadline for foreign combat operations to end.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, European Union member states agreed on the wording of sanctions on Russia, including travel restrictions and asset freezes against those responsible for violating the sovereignty of Ukraine.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Egypt's military said it has destroyed 1,370 smuggling tunnels under its border with the Gaza Strip, as Cairo's ties remain sour with the Hamas movement that rules the Palestinian enclave.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Greece thousands of striking public sector workers marched through Athens to protest against planned job cuts demanded by foreign lenders as unemployment in the country holds near record highs.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Indonesia Rusli Zainal, a former governor of Riau, was found guilty of graft and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He had issued logging licenses that resulted in forest destruction.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.42)
2014 Mar 12, Israeli lawmakers passed a contentious law meant to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military, culminating a reform drive that generated mass protests by the religious community in Israel and beyond.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Kashmir unusually heavy snowfall unleashed avalanches overnight and collapsed homes, killing at least 14 people on both sides of the de-facto border between India and Pakistan.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Mexico 28 vigilantes were arrested in Michoacan state for breaking into a cartel leader’s ranch and trying to take two dozen purebred horses.
(SSFC, 3/16/14, p.A10)
2014 Mar 12, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan ordered a forensic audit by international firms into some $20 billion allegedly missing from petroleum sales, following weeks of public outrage and demands by a Senate committee and the finance minister.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Pakistan rival gangs opened fire and lobbed grenades in a notoriously violent district of Karachi, killing 14 people including 8 women and 3 children.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Palestinian militants fired at least 25 rockets at Israel, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Puerto Rico authorities said they have arrested 63 people accused of running a $10 million drug-trafficking operation in Ponce, the island's second largest city.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Sudanese police fired tear gas when mourners called for "revolution" following the funeral of a student allegedly gunned down by security forces at a protest against violence in Darfur.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Swiss authorities said they have opened a money laundering investigation into Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's Pres. Islam Karimov, related to the country's telecommunications market.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Thailand police rescued about 200 suspected Muslim Uighurs, believed to be from China's troubled far-western region of Xinjiang, from a human smuggling camp in southern Thailand.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Turkey tens of thousands of mourners chanting anti-government slogans marched through central Istanbul for the funeral of a teenager wounded in street protests last summer whose death has sparked renewed unrest across Turkey. Police clashed with protesters in at least 11 cities and at least two people were killed.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)(SFC, 3/12/14, p.A2)(AFP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 12, Ukraine's acting president said the country would not use its army to stop Crimea from seceding, the latest sign that a Russian annexation of the strategic peninsula may be imminent.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Stephen Power (29) from Cardiff in Wales was reported to be one of the first trauma patients in the world to have a procedure in which 3D printing was used at every stage.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 13, President Obama signed the first congressionally passed public lands bill in five years, and called on Congress to do more to protect the wilderness. The law officially expanded the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Glen Arbor, Mich., a move that will protect an additional 32,500 acres of Lake Michigan coastline.
(http://tinyurl.com/pkuv6nl)(SFC, 3/21/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 13, US authorities said Ahmed Bel Bacha (44), held for 12 years without charge at Guantanamo Bay, has been turned over to the Algerian government. This reduced the Gitmo prisoner population to 154.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, The Colorado Court of Appeals said people whose cases were under appeal when Amendment 64 took effect in Dec 1012, are eligible to have their convictions for possessing small amount of marijuana dismissed. The amendment allowed adults over 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 13, In Texas Rashad Charjuan Owens (21) drove drunk into a crowd at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin leaving 2 people dead and 23 injured. 9 remained hospitalized in critical condition. A 3rd person died of her injuries on March 17.
(AFP, 3/13/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A11)(SFC, 3/18/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 13, US border agent Esteban Manzanares (32) committed suicide. He was accused of kidnapping and assaulting an immigrant woman, her daughter and another girl a day earlier in Mission, Texas.
(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A10)(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 13, Bosnian police said the driver of a city bus was killed when a man threw a hand grenade into the vehicle as it stood at a bus stop in Banja Luka.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Edward Haughey (70), Northern Ireland's wealthiest man, died after his helicopter crashed in thick fog in eastern England. He had founded Norbrook Laboratories, a world-leading veterinary drugs company.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 13, The Toronto National Post reported that a new generation of mutant lice have become immune to poisons of decades past and constituted 97.1% of all Canadian head lice cases.
(SSFC, 3/16/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 13, Police in southwestern China took away veteran activist Huang Qi, who runs a rights monitoring website, and seized his computers and mobile phones in Chengdu.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Czech priest and intellectual Tomas Halik (65) won the 2014 Templeton Prize. Halik pushed for religious and cultural freedoms after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and became a leading advocate of dialogue among different faiths and non-believers.
(AFP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, East African heads of state met in Addis Ababa in the latest push for peace in war-torn South Sudan, where almost three months of raging conflict has left thousands dead.
(AFP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Egypt brokered a ceasefire aimed at ending a flare-up of rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli towns and Israeli air strikes in the Palestinian enclave.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Egypt an attack on an army bus killed one officer and wounded three others in Cairo. The army blamed the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, who in turn strongly condemned the attack.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, El Salvador’s electoral court said Sanchez Ceren (69), the leftist candidate of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), won the March 9 presidential election with got 50.1% of the votes.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, The Paris-based OECD said it has postponed all activities related to Russia's accession to the organization following a request from its 34 members.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Germany's Angela Merkel warned Moscow that it risked "massive" political and economic damage if it refused to change course on Ukraine.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Germany Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness was found guilty and sentenced to 3½ years in prison for evading millions of euros (dollars) in tax through an undeclared Swiss bank account.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Israeli warplanes pounded 29 Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip in response to heavy Palestinian rocket fire into the Jewish state as Gaza militants resumed rocket fire. Israel’s defense ministry shut down the Kerem Shalom goods crossing into southern Gaza following rocket fire over the border.
(AFP, 3/13/14)(AP, 3/13/14)(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Lebanon clashes broke out in Tripoli after gunmen fatally shot a Sunni man who had Alawite relatives and lived in a mostly Alawite area of the city.
(Reuters, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 13, Madagascar said it has restored ties with the International Monetary Fund for the first time since a coup in 2009.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Malaysian police arrested 62 people who had illegally crossed the porous border between Thailand and Malaysia.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Mexico a top leader of the self-defense movement in Michoacan state was charged in the murder of two members of a rival vigilante faction.
(SSFC, 3/16/14, p.A10)
2014 Mar 13, New Zealand's Reserve Bank raised its benchmark interest rate by quarter of a percentage point to 2.75 percent after holding it at a record low for three years.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, In northern Nigeria attackers returned to Marabar Kindo village in Katsina state and gunned down another 7 villagers.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 13, Russia said it will impose symmetrical sanctions if the United States and European Union impose their own.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Sri Lanka's police arrested Balendran Jeyakumari and referred her daughter Vithushaini (13) to child care officials. Jeyakumari had been vocal in calling for the release of her 15-year-old son, a child recruit of the Tamil Tiger rebels, whom she had handed to the military as fighting ended in 2009.
(AP, 3/14/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 13, A court in Sudan sentenced former governor of the southern Blue Nile State and leader of the opposition group Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North Malik Agar and 17 other members of the group to death by hanging. 47 others were given life sentences in a hearing. All but one were tried in absentia.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 13, Syria's parliament unanimously approved a new election law allowing multiple candidates to run for president, opening the door — at least in theory — to other potential contenders besides President Assad. However only candidates who have lived in Syria for 10 consecutive prior to nomination can run.
(AP, 3/13/14)(SFC, 3/14/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 13, Ukraine's parliament appealed to the UN to discuss the occupation by Russian forces of its Crimea peninsula and said it reserved the right to ask individual countries for help in resolving the issue. A man (22) was stabbed to death in Donetsk in clashes between pro-Russian protesters and a crowd favoring European integration and denouncing Russian forces' seizure of Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Yemen 6 Shiite rebels and 2 soldiers were killed in a firefight near Sanaa. Eight of the Huthi rebels, also known as Ansarullah (Partisans of God), were wounded in the clash in Qaratel.
(AFP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 14, It was reported that Kevin Gorman (22) has become the official Wikipedian-in-Residence at UC Berkeley, the first post of its kind at a university.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 14, Reubin Askew (85), former two-term governor of Florida (1971-1979), died in Tallahassee.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.D7)
2014 Mar 14, Boston Beer Co. said that it is withdrawing its sponsorship of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade because organizers exclude gay groups.
(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A11)
2014 Mar 14, Howard Buffett, son of investor Warren Buffett, pledged nearly $24 million for protecting rhinos in South Africa, earmarking the money for ranger teams, sniffer dogs and other security measures in what he hopes can be a robust model for fighting what he calls the "overwhelming" problem of poaching in parts of Africa.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, Sandwich shop Quiznos announced that it was filing for bankruptcy. In 2009, a class-action lawsuit settlement forced Quiznos to pay $95 million to its independently-owned franchises, that, according to the Post, originally sued because expensive ingredients made it nearly impossible to turn a profit.
(AOL.com, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, Tony Benn (88), the totem of the British left, died at his London home. The Labour cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s had spearheaded the movement against the Iraq war.
(AFP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, A Bulgarian policeman was killed and three officers wounded in a shootout with Petko Petkov (52), who had threatened the pupils and the headmaster of a school in the central town of Lyaskovets.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, In China a fellow dissident and lawyers said prominent Chinese human rights activist Cao Shunli, detained in September for staging sit-ins at the country's foreign ministry, has died after being denied medical treatment in detention.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, In southern China a fight between two food stall owners at a market left 5 people hacked to death and one person fatally shot by police in Changsha. A witness said the stand operators were Uighurs selling flatbread.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Estonia's President Toomas Hendrik Ilves nominated cabinet minister Taavi Roivas (34) to form a new government and seek approval from parliament to lead the small euro zone country. Roivas is set to take over from PM Andrus Ansip, who resigned on March 4.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, EU officials said they have drawn up a list of 120-130 names of Russians who could be hit with travel bans and asset freezes to punish Russia for its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, A French court ordered an ex-aide of Nicolas Sarkozy to pay 10,000 euros ($14,000) in damages and costs to the former French president over secret recordings that were published in an online journal, and instructed the publication to pull down the links.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, A French court sentenced Pascal Simbikangwa (54), a former member of the Rwandan presidential guard, to 25 years in prison. He was found guilty of perpetrating genocide and of complicity in crimes against humanity in 1994.
(AFP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, Most of France went under some sort of pollution alert with levels in the Parisian region surpassing those in cities such as Beijing and New Delhi.
(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 14, In India an old, seven-story residential building collapsed in a Mumbai suburb, killing at least 2 people and possibly trapping more under the debris.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Indonesia reported that Pres. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered relevant ministers and local authorities in peat-rich Riau province to handle forest fires that have been sending out heavy smoke threatening health and disrupting flight operations. Officers in the armed forces were said to be involved in illegal logging and burning.
(AP, 3/14/14)(Econ, 3/22/14, p.42)
2014 Mar 14, Indonesia’s Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former president and head of the opposition PDI-P, anointed Joko Widodo, Jakarta’s popular mayor, as her candidate for president.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.41)
2014 Mar 14, In Iraq bombings in and around Baghdad, including blasts near two markets, killed 7 people.
(AFP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, In Jordan protesters fought with riot police outside of the Israeli Embassy, as some 2,000 demonstrators called on the kingdom to end its peace treaty with the country over the killing of a Jordanian judge.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, The search for the missing Malaysian jetliner expanded east and west on Friday after American officials said it was emitting signals to satellites for hours after its last contact with air traffic control nearly a week ago over the South China Sea.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, A Mali military source said French air strikes in the mountains of northern Mali have killed Islamist militant Oumar Ould Hamaha, a jihadist with a $3 million US government bounty on his head. Paris said last week its forces had killed 10 suspected Islamist fighters in the northern Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, after the group was spotted by a US-made Reaper surveillance drone.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Moroccan and Spanish authorities arrested seven suspected members of an al-Qaida-linked extremist cell allegedly recruiting members to fight in Syria and other hotspots.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, The Nigerian Navy said it has destroyed 260 illegal oil refineries and burned 100,000 tons of contraband fuel, but critics say this targeting of small-time criminals fails to confront the biggest culprits in oil thefts — the politically-connected criminal cartels who sell on the international market.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 14, In northeastern Nigeria Boko Haram Islamists attacked the Giwa military base in Maiduguri and freed dozens of insurgents from custody. A military counter attack left some 500 people dead.
(AFP, 3/14/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A6)(Econ, 3/29/14, p.49)
2014 Mar 14, In Pakistan at least 10 people were killed when a motorcycle laden with explosives exploded near a college in the center of Quetta. In Peshawar a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a police vehicle, killing at least 7 bystanders including a woman and a child.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 14, In Pakistan a woman died after setting herself on fire a day earlier outside a police station after reporting men tried to rape her died. The woman's brother had filed a complaint with police in January, saying his sister had been abducted and the assailants tried to rape her.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Gaza militants fired a rocket at Israel after two days of intense exchanges. It exploded in southern Israel but caused no damage or injuries.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Russia called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to send its observers to monitor Crimea's controversial referendum on independence from Ukraine.
(AFP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Hackers knocked out the Russian presidency's website several times and brought down the central bank website.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Saudi Arabia said a man (19) has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 63 the deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Diplomatic and other sources said major European and Saudi banks have stopped dealing with Sudan. The US imposed a trade embargo on Sudan in 1997 over accusations that included human rights violations.
(AFP, 3/14/14)
(Reuters, 3/14/14)(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, In Syria al Qaeda splinter group ISIL pulled out of two provinces in the country's northwest and headed to its eastern strongholds after months of clashes with rival rebels. A senior commander in the Nusra Front was killed on the outskirts of Yabroud during shelling and clashes with the army and Hezbollah fighters.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, In southern Thailand a Buddhist teacher was fatally shot on her way to school and then set ablaze, becoming the 170th teacher killed by suspected Muslim insurgents in the country's decade-long insurgency.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, In Ukraine two people were killed and several wounded in a shootout that erupted after a clash in the city of Kharkiv between pro-Russian demonstrators and their opponents.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the United States its soldiers can leave at the end of the year because his military, which already protects 93% of the country, was ready to take over entirely.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Algeria about 100 activists from a new anti-government movement staged a rare protest against the ailing Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika (77) and his decision to run for a fourth term. 3 men from the Arab community died in clashes with Mozabite Berbers in Ghardaia. Clashes first erupted in December and 5 Mozabites were killed before violence was stopped by a heavy police deployment in late January.
(AP, 3/15/14)(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Egypt gunmen shot dead six army officers near Cairo, the 2nd attack on Egyptian security forces in three days that the military has blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed Pres. Mohamed Mursi.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Guyana businessman Lennox La Cruz (50) was arrested on suspicion of killing his wife and four of his five children by locking them inside their home and setting it on fire the previous evening.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Lebanon 10 people were reported killed in the last 48 hours of clashes in Tripoli linked to the conflict in neighboring Syria.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Malaysia’s PM Najib Razak said the missing Malaysian Flight 370 was deliberately diverted and continued flying for more than six hours after severing contact with the ground on March 8.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In central Nigeria some 40 assailants armed with guns and machetes stormed the villages of Angwan Gata, Chenshyi and Angwan Sankwai, attacking locals in their sleep and torching their homes on Kaduna state. The overnight attacks left at least 100 dead. Local residents, mostly Christians, blamed the bloodshed on Muslim Fulani herdsmen.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Nigeria at least 20 people were killed and dozens were injured in Abuja after thousands of panicked job-seekers stampeded during a government recruitment drive at the national stadium.
(AFP, 3/15/14)(AFP, 2/23/16)
2014 Mar 15, A Pakistani judicial official reduced the 33-year jail sentence of Dr. Shakil Afridi, alleged to have helped the US track down Osama bin Laden, to 23 years.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, The Gaza Strip's only power plant shut down due to a lack of fuel from Israel, which closed a goods crossing after militant rocket attacks.
(AFP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Russia tens of thousands have gathered in downtown Moscow in the largest anti-government demonstration since 2012, protesting against the March 16 Kremlin-backed referendum in Crimea on whether to break away from Ukraine and merge with Russia.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Russian forces seized a natural gas distribution station in Strelkova, about 10 km outside Crimea.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Russia vetoed a UN resolution declaring the March 15 referendum on the future of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula illegal, but close ally China abstained in a show of Moscow's isolation.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Slovaks voted in the first round of a presidential election, a largely ceremonial post. PM Robert Fico and businessman-turned philanthropist Andrej Kiska (51) beat 12 other candidates in the first round of voting. Turnout was low at 43.4 percent. Both men will compete in a March 29 election.
(AFP, 3/15/14)(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 15, In South Africa Takalani Tshivhase (59), the executive director of Pinnacle Holdings, was arrested by the police's elite anti-corruption unit and released on bail the same day. He was charged with offering a $460,000 bribe to a senior police official in an attempt to win an equipment deal for the technology company.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 15, In South Africa 3 people were killed when their small plane crashed near a landing strip in KwaZulu Natal province.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Syrian soldiers entered eastern districts of the town of Yabroud, the last rebel bastion near the Lebanese border north of Damascus, and advanced towards the main street.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Ukraine's military scrambled aircraft and paratroops to repel an attempt by Russian forces to enter a long spit of land belonging to a region adjacent to Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro urged Washington to join a "high-level commission" to promote peace after more than a month of deadly anti-government demonstrations.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, US special forces seized the commercial Morning Glory tanker that fled with a cargo of oil from a Libyan port controlled by anti-government rebels, halting their attempt to sell petroleum on the global market.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 16, In New Mexico police outside Albuquerque shot and killed James Boyd (38), a homeless camper who suffered from schizophrenia. A helmet camera showed Boyd gathering his belongings before officers opened fire. On June 28 Boyd’s family filed suit against the city police.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Boyd_shooting)(SSFC, 6/29/14, p.A10)
2014 Mar 16, China’s government released its “people-centered" plan on urbanization. Under this some 100 million migrants will be given urban hukou (certificates) and access to urban services by the end of the decade. This would still leave some 200m unregistered. It instructed cities of less than 1 million to offer a local hukou to anyone who applied. In 2019 it called on cities with populations of less than 3 million to do the same.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.17)(Econ, 4/19/14, p.12)(Econ., 8/22/20, p.35)
2014 Mar 16, In China a monk from the Shaderi Monastery in Huangnan Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Qinghai province, set himself on fire.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In central China 4 people died in a fire at a hospital's in-patient building in Huangshi city, Hubei province.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In China Bishop Fan Zhongliang (97) died at his home in Shanghai. He was ordained by Pope John Paul II but not recognized by Chinese authorities, and spent more than 30 years in prisons and labor camps over the course of his life, starting in 1955.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 16, In France the body of a cyclist hit by a high-speed TGV trains was embedded into the front of the driver's carriage and carried 40 km (25 miles) before anyone noticed.
(AFP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 16, Israel allowed the resumption of diesel deliveries into Gaza, a day after the territory's sole power plant stopped working due to a lack of fuel.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In Lebanon a soldier and a civilian were killed in fighting between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, bringing the death toll from four days of clashes to 12. A suicide car bomb attack in a Hezbollah-dominated area of eastern Lebanon, near the Syrian border, left two people dead.
(Reuters, 3/16/14)(AFP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 16, Malaysia's government asked for help from nearly a dozen Asian countries that the missing jetliner may have flown over, saying that finding the plane would be very difficult without additional data on its final movements.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In Myanmar Rakhine mobs, egged on by Wirathu, a Buddhist-chauvinist monk, protested against a census that would allow Rohingyas to be able to define their ethnicity.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.44)
2014 Mar 16, NATO said hackers have brought down several public NATO websites, in what appeared to be the latest escalation in cyberspace over growing tensions over Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In Saudi Arabia the local Okaz daily reported that organizers at the Riyadh International Book Fair had confiscated "more than 10,000 copies of 420 books" during the exhibition, which began March 4. Organizers had announced ahead of the event that any book deemed "against Islam" or "undermining security" in the kingdom would be confiscated.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, Serbs voted in parliamentary election. The Serbian Socialist Party under Alexander Vucic, a pro-European advocate, won 157 seats in the 250-seat parliament. The Serbian Socialist Party came in 2nd with 45.
(AP, 3/16/14)(SFC, 3/17/14, p.A2)(Econ, 3/22/14, p.54)
2014 Mar 16, Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters seized Yabroud, a key rebel supply town on the Lebanese border, driving them from the area and scoring a major blow against them in the three-year-old-conflict.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, Residents in Ukraine's strategic Crimean Peninsula voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia, overwhelmingly approving a referendum that sought to unite the Black Sea region with the country it was part of for some 250 years. In eastern Ukraine thousands of pro-Russian protesters in the city of Donetsk rallied in support of Crimea's right to join Russia and to press for their own referendum. Ukraine's defense minister said his forces in Crimea have reached a temporary truce with Russia aimed at easing tensions surrounding the Black Sea peninsula's high-stakes secession referendum.
(AP, 3/16/14)(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In Venezuela a National Guardsman was shot and killed during violence in the city of Maracay.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that the BICEP2 team of scientists has spotted signs of gravitational waves that formed when the universe was but a trillionth of a second old. In 2015 the scientists retracted their findings.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.78)(Econ, 2/7/15, p.77)
2014 Mar 17, In Afghanistan gunmen killed district judge Abdul Latif and his bodyguard in an attack in western Herat province.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, A British judge ruled that Domenico Rancadore (65), a convicted Mafia boss, will be allowed to return to his comfortable home in west London rather than sent back to Italy and put in prison. The judge cited concerns about conditions in Italian prisons.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, British telecommunications company Vodafone agreed to buy Spain's Ono for 7.2 billion euros ($10 billion) as it seeks to expand operations across Europe.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, In London fashion designer L'Wren Scott, the girlfriend of Mick Jagger, died of an apparent suicide. Her LS Fashion Ltd. company was heavily in debt at the time it filed its most recent accounts.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 17, It was reported that Egypt’s crackdown on Islamists has jailed some 16,000 people over the last eight months.
(SFC, 3/17/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 17, Ten Egyptians, including a journalist working for a Muslim Brotherhood newspaper, were each sentenced to a year in jail for protesting against a constitutional referendum.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Paris, France, imposed drastic measures to combat its worst air pollution in years.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, A senior Iranian official said that an alleged attempt to sabotage one of Tehran's nuclear facilities involved foreign intelligence agencies who tampered with imported pumps.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Toyota said it has shut down production at its two auto-assembly plants in India, locking out 6,400 workers amid testy wage negotiations and allegations of threats against management.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, In Libya A car bomb targeting a military academy in Benghazi killed at least 7 soldiers and wounded twelve.
(AFP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Lithuania's domestic intelligence department accused a Russian diplomat of spying, saying he had sought to gain access to classified information during the Baltic state's presidency of the European Union last year.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Russia's government acknowledged for the first time on that the economy was in crisis, undermining earlier attempts by officials to suggest albeit weakening growth could weather sanctions over Ukraine.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, In Somalia a suicide bomber rammed a car packed full of explosives into a hotel in Buulo Berde, days after it was recaptured from the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab. At least 8 people were killed. 4 attackers were also reported killed.
(AFP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 17, South Africa’s government said 32 people had died because of the rains over the past two weeks in the northern and eastern provinces of North West, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. The toll included 25 drownings and six people killed by lightning.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, South Africa's state-owned rail freight firm Transet said it was ordering 1,064 new locomotives, in what it hailed as the country's biggest single corporate infrastructure investment. It ordered 599 electric locomotives from China's Zhuzhou and the South African subsidiary of Canada's Bombardier, as well as 465 diesel trains from General Electric.
(AFP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, In Palm Springs, South Africa, Sizwe Kubheka (16) returned home complaining of a headache following a beating by a teacher at school. Kubheka died at a hospital a week later and his teacher faced a possible murder charge.
(AP, 4/2/14)
2014 Mar 17, Sri Lanka’s military said Ruki Fernando, a human rights adviser, and Praveen Mahesahn, a pastor and director of a rights group, have been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), anti-terrorism legislation that was used to crush Tamil Tiger rebels during the final phase of a 26-year war. Both were released on March 18.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 17, Tunisia police shot and killed three suspected Islamist militants and arrested six others in a raid near the Algerian border.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Ukraine's Crimean peninsula declared itself independent after its residents voted overwhelmingly to secede and join Russia, while the United States and the European Union slapped sanctions against some of those who promoted the divisive referendum. Ukraine recalled its ambassador to Russia for consultations on the international ramifications of the situation in its Crimea region. Armed men came to the Ukrainian Belbek military airfield in the Crimean peninsula, fired shots in the air and took away the base’s commanding officer.
(AP, 3/17/14)(Reuters, 3/17/14)(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 17, Mining magnate Andrew Forrest launched the Global Freedom Network, an organization to end modern slavery, with the support of the Pope and the senior Islamic authority. In 2013 Mr. Forrest, Pierre Omidyar and the Legatum Foundation had launched the Freedom Fund to finance research into ways to reduce bonded labor.
(http://tinyurl.com/qb6e6mp)(Econ., 3/14/15, p.61)
2014 Mar 18, US Vice President Joe Biden warned Russia that the US and Europe will impose further sanctions as Moscow seeks to annex the Ukrainian territory.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, The United States and European Union (EU) accused China of using arrests and harassment to silence human rights activists, also voicing consternation at the death in custody of a prominent dissident.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, In NYC Guatemala’s ex-president Alfonso Portillo pleaded guilty in federal court to a conspiracy charge saying he accepted $2.5 million in bribes to continue to recognize Taiwan diplomatically during his 2000-2004 presidency.
(SFC, 3/19/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 18, In Washington state a news helicopter crashed near Seattle’s Space Needle killing pilot Gary Pfitzner and KOMO-TV photographer Bill Strothman.
(SFC, 3/19/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 18, The Mega Millions jackpot of $414 million, the third largest in the game’s history, went to two winners of tickets sold in Florida and Maryland.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 18, In northern Afghanistan a suicide bomber killed 15 people in an attack on a busy marketplace in Maimana, Faryab province.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, Britain suspended export licenses for military items to Russia.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, A Chechen Islamic militant group, the Caucasus Emirate, reported that its leader, Doku Umarov (49), was dead.
(SFC, 3/19/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 18, China's education ministry ordered a nationwide investigation into whether schools are giving students medication without permission after a protest in Xi’an by parents of kindergarteners who were given an antiviral drug.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, A Cairo court sentenced a police officer to 10 years in prison with labor in connection with the deaths of 37 Islamists last August. A legal source said the men had died from asphyxiation in the back of a crammed police van while they were being moved to a jail on the outskirts of Cairo.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Egypt the al-Qaida-inspired Ansar al-Shariah Brigades claimed it was behind the slayings of 26 Egyptian troops in what it describes as "the first phase of a campaign to punish traitors."
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said that leaders of the Group of Eight world powers have suspended Russia's participation in the club amid tensions over Ukraine and Russia's incursion into Crimea.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, French police arrested 57 Greenpeace activists who used a truck to ram their way into a nuclear power plant operated by EDF in eastern France.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, Greek authorities said they have recovered the bodies of 7 immigrants, including 2 children, who drowned overnight when a boat sank in the eastern Aegean Sea after traveling illegally from nearby Turkey.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, Iranians jumped over bonfires, threw firecrackers and floated wishing lanterns to celebrate an ancient festival (Chaharshanbe Souri) marking the end of the Persian year, ignoring calls by many Islamic clerics to shun a ritual that has officially been denounced as pagan.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Iraq a series of bombings targeting commercial streets and security forces in and south of Baghdad killed 8 people.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, An explosion in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights wounded four Israeli soldiers near the Syrian frontier. Israeli forces responded with artillery fire into Syrian-held territory.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, Gunmen from Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group and local Shiite residents tightened their chokehold on Arsal, a Sunni town near the Syrian border, sparking concerns the standoff would cut off aid to thousands of Syrian refugees stranded in the area.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Libya Adison Karkha (54), a Christian Iraqi medical school professor, was found slain inside his car in a central city.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Morocco hundreds of migrants tried to force their way into Spain's North African enclave of Melilla in two attempted mass crossings, throwing stones at police who tried to stop them. 500 people made it over.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)(SFC, 4/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 18, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty to annex Crimea, describing the move as correcting past injustice and a necessary response to what he called Western encroachment upon Russia's vital interests.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Serbia alleged Balkan drug boss Darko Saric (43), one of the most wanted figures in the crime-riddled region, surrendered to police as a dragnet involving the CIA closed in on him in Latin America. He faced 13 indictments including the trafficking of 5.7 metric tons of cocaine from South America to Europe and laundering of 22 million euros in Serbia.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, The Syria cabinet proudly announced the creation of a national space agency.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.50)
2014 Mar 18, Taiwanese activists occupied the main chamber of the Legislative Yuan to try to stop the government ratifying a contentious trade agreement with China. The three-week protest became known as the “Sunflower Movement."
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.39)(Econ, 12/6/14, p.44)
2014 Mar 18, In Crimea a confrontation between Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russian militia left two dead, a Ukrainian serviceman and a member of a militia.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, United Nations human rights investigators said they have added to their list of suspected war criminals from both sides in the Syrian civil war after a new round of atrocities in recent weeks.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Venezuela Anthony Rojas (18), mechanical engineering student, was fatally shot in Tariba, on outskirts of San Cristobal. Rojas had participated in past opposition protests in San Cristobal, but was not doing so when he was shot.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Tuban, south Yemen, a suicide car bombing at a military intelligence headquarters killed one person and wounded a dozen others.
(AFP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 19, The US government announced a $1.2 billion settlement with Toyota Motor Corp. and filed a criminal charge alleging the company defrauded consumers by issuing misleading statements about safety issues in Toyota and Lexus vehicles. From 2010 through 2012, Toyota Motor Corp. paid fines totaling more than $66 million for delays in reporting unintended acceleration problems.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, US Vice President Joe Biden met with leaders of Lithuania and Latvia, part of a quick trip to reassure Baltic allies worried about what an emboldened, aggressive Russia might mean for their nations.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In California Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Del Fiorentino was shot and killed when he encountered Ricardo Anthony Chaney (32) on Highway 1 north of Fort Bragg. Chaney was later shot and killed by another Fort Bragg police officer. Authorities believed that Chaney had shot and killed George Bundy Wasson (79), a retired Univ. of Oregon instructor and Coquille Tribe elder, earlier the same day in Eugene, Or.
(SFC, 3/21/14, p.D2)(SFC, 3/24/14, p.C2)(SFC, 3/24/14, p.C2)
2014 Mar 19, Rev. Fred Phelps (84), an anti-gay minister and head of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, died.
(SFC, 3/21/14, p.D2)
2014 Mar 19, In NY state Tonawanda Coke Corp. was fined $12.5 million for illegally releasing carcinogen benzene into the air and improperly handling hazardous sludge.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 19, IBM said it is teaming up with the New York Genome Center to help fight brain cancer. IBM said its Watson cloud computing system will be used in partnership with the genetic research center to help sequence DNA for the treatment of glioblastoma, the most common type of brain cancer in US adults.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.C2)
2014 Mar 19, Tango, a mobile messaging app-maker, announced it has raised $280 million in a new funding round led by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
(Reuters, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 19, Australia’s Courier Mail reported that Canar Temel (22), a soldier who went AWOL from his Brisbane unit two years ago, has turned up dead after fighting alongside ISIL rebels in Syria.
(SSFC, 3/23/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 19, Bangladesh opposition leader Khaleda Zia was ordered to stand trial over charges that she and her associates embezzled more than $650,000 in a case that could see her jailed for life.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Belgium a shell or grenade from WWI exploded in an industrial site in Flanders killing two construction workers.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 19, A raid by Egyptian police, military and special forces on a suspected bomb factory outside of Cairo turned into an hours-long gun battle with insurgents who detonated car bombs in clashes that killed two high-ranking officers and at least 6 militants. A boy (13) was shot dead in clashes in the south of the country between police and protesters supporting deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
(AP, 3/19/14)(Reuters, 3/19/14)(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 19, The European Union said it has fined two EU and four Japanese companies a total of nearly 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) for rigging the market of key components in the car and truck industry at the expense of consumers.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, France’s highest court upheld the prison sentence for Jerome Kerviel (37), the rogue trader convicted of one of the biggest trading frauds in history. [In 2010 he was sentenced to 3 years in jail with two years suspended.] The court threw out the $7 billion in civil damages he’d been ordered to pay back.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 19, Greek civil servants, including hospital and teaching staff, started a two-day strike against austerity measures imposed under the debt-mired country's international bailout commitments.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Guinea health authorities said an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 23 people in the southeastern forest region since February when the first case was reported.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Hong Kong two senior figures from the Hong Kong Morning News Media Group were attacked weeks after Kevin Lau, a former editor of the liberal Ming Pao newspaper, was critically wounded in another assault.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 19, In India Maharashtra government spokesman Satish Lalit said authorities have confirmed 7 farmer suicides since Feb. 24. But Kishor Tiwari, president of pro-farmer group Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, put the toll much higher, at 32. The suicides followed freak hailstorms and heavy unseasonal rains destroyed crops across much of a western state.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Iraq violence across the county killed 30 people. This included 15 dead from shelling and clashes in Fallujah.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Israel launched air strikes against Syrian military sites in response to a roadside bombing that wounded four of its soldiers, but both sides signaled they were not seeking further escalation. The airstrikes in the Golan Heights killed one Syrian soldier and wounded seven.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Israel's Jerusalem municipality approved building plans for 184 new homes in two Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Israeli troops shot dead Palestinian teenager Yussef Sami Shawamreh (15) in the southern West Bank.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Kenya scientist Richard Leakey and Paula Kahumbu, the founding former chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service, urged Kenya's Pres. Uhuru Kenyatta to invoke emergency measures to protect the country's elephants and rhinos from a poaching crisis sweeping Africa.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Kyrgyzstan’s governing coalition collapsed after a party withdrew its support over unhappiness at the redevelopment of economically struggling cities in the south.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Nepal Maoist student activists led a partial strike in Kathmandu and stoned or set fire to a dozen vehicles, demanding that the newly elected government cancel a fuel price rise.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, South Africa's public ombudsman said that some of the $23 million taxpayer-funded refurbishments at Pres. Jacob Zuma's luxurious residence were unlawful and ordered him to repay part of the cost.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Sweden a court in Falun ordered the release of Sture Bergwall (63) from a secure psychiatric unit where he's been held since 1991. He had confessed to more than 30 killings over three decades and was convicted in eight cases. He later withdrew his confessions, saying they were made under heavy medication.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Syria rebels seized took control of the Gharaz Central Prison on the outskirts of Deraa where the uprising began three years ago this month and freed dozens of inmates.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Syria and its Russian ally criticized the decision by the United States to suspend the operations of Syria's embassy in Washington and consulates in other cities.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Pro-Russian forces overran Ukraine's naval headquarters in Crimea, ratcheting up tensions in Ukraine a day after Russian and Crimean leaders signed a treaty paving the way toward annexation.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Hundreds of Taiwanese activists were locked in a tense standoff with police after they stormed parliament to try to stop the government ratifying a contentious trade agreement with China.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Turkey Veysi Erim, a worker at a statistics office in the eastern province of Kars, shot dead six people before committing suicide.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Venezuela a municipal worker was fatally shot while removing a street barricade in a Caracas middle class neighborhood. The mayor of San Cristobal, where recent protests began, was detained.
(AP, 3/19/14)(Econ, 3/22/14, p.37)
2014 Mar 19, In Vietnam a court sentenced dissident Pham Viet Dao to 15 months in prison for posting online criticism of the government.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 20, President Barack Obama said the US is levying a new round of economic sanctions on individuals in Russia in retaliation for the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine. Obama says he has also signed a new executive order that would allow the US to sanction key sectors of the Russian economy. Rossiya, Russia’s 17th largest bank, was included on the sanctions list. Its owners had ties with Pres. Putin.
(AP, 3/20/14)(Econ, 2/14/15, p.59)
2014 Mar 20, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed his first bill into law as mayor, amending the Earned Sick Time Act ("ESTA"), which requires the City's private employers with five or more employees to provide paid sick time to their employees, effective April 1.
(https://tinyurl.com/ycvg4bh5) (Econ, 3/14/20, p.51)
2014 Mar 20, In NYC a 14-year-old boy opened fire in a gang dispute on a city bus in Brooklyn, fatally shooting a bystanding Dominican man in the head. Angel Rojas (39) of Brooklyn was pronounced dead at the hospital. The boy was arrested the next day and charged with 2nd degree murder.
(AP, 3/21/14)(SFC, 3/22/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 20, In North Carolina US Army Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, who carried on a three-year affair with a captain and had two other inappropriate relationships with subordinates, was reprimanded and docked $20,000 in pay, avoiding jail time in one of the military's most closely watched courts-martial.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 20, In Afghanistan four teenage gunmen walked into the Serena Hotel in Kabul, made their way to the restaurant, pulled out hidden pistols and started shooting diners. They killed 9 people, including shooting AFP journalist Sardar Ahmad, his wife and two of their children in the head. Police killed all four attackers after a three-hour standoff.
(AP, 3/21/14)(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 20, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle near a police station in Jalalabad while other Taliban insurgents stormed the building, killing 10 police officers and a civilian.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 20, British regulators fined Mark Stevenson, an ex-Credit Suisse trader, for attempting to rig the price of government bonds in order to profit from the Bank of England's quantitative easing program. He was fined £662,700 ($1.1 million, 794,000 euros) for "deliberately manipulating" a government bond, or gilt, on October 10, 2011.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, In Egypt a Cairo court sentenced 17 al-Azhar students to 14 years in jail for rioting, damaging public properties and attacking security personnel.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, In Iraq a suicide bomber struck a Baghdad café overnight killing at least 12 people.
(SFC, 3/21/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 20, Italian authorities said they have rescued more than 4,000 would-be migrants at sea over the past four days as the war in Syria and instability in Libya spawn new waves of refugees.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 20, Japan’s NTT Data Corp. agreed to digitize some 3,000 historical Vatican manuscripts and make them available online.
(SFC, 3/21/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 20, Kenya's parliament passed a bill allowing men to marry as many women as they want, prompting a furious backlash from female lawmakers who stormed out. Women are not allowed to marry more than one man in Kenya. The bill must now pass before the president to be signed before becoming law.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, In northeast Nigeria an explosion at Ngurosoye village market near hideouts of Islamic extremists killed 29 people. Three more died of their wounds over the next few days.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 20, A Sudanese worker for the International Committee of the Red Cross was killed in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, Syrian troops raised the national flag on the Crac des Chevaliers, a famous Crusades-era citadel near the border with Lebanon, after days of intense fighting against opposition fighters. 93 of the opposition fighters were reported killed as they fled to Lebanon.
(AP, 3/20/14)(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, Pro-Russian crowds seized two Ukrainian warships and Ukraine said its troops were being threatened in Crimea as the European Union considered new sanctions against Russia for its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 20, Turkey’s PM Tayyip Erdogan's defiantly vowed, on the campaign trail ahead of March 30 local polls, to "wipe out" Twitter, whatever the international community had to say about it.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, Several UN aid trucks crossed the Turkish border into Syria for the first time.
(Reuters, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 21, US first lady Michelle Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first day of her weeklong visit to China, in a sign that the leaders of the world's two largest economies are seeking to build stronger bonds.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In San Francisco Alejandro Nieto (28) was shot and killed by police after he pointed a Taser shock at them in Bernal Heights. Police said they mistook the Taser for a pistol and fired 59 shots at Nieto, who was struck 10-15 times. In 2015 four officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.
(SFC, 2/14/15, p.C1)(http://tinyurl.com/qjnxpzd)
2014 Mar 21, A US federal judge struck down Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage. The next day the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals froze the decision to overturn the ban. On March 25 a federal appeals court put an indefinite halt to gay marriage in Michigan.
(SFC, 3/22/14, p.A6)(SSFC, 3/23/14, p.A15)(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 21, In New Jersey a fire destroyed the Mariner’s Cover Motor Inn at Point Pleasant Beach killing 4 people. The hotel was housing people displaced in October, 2012, by Superstorm Sandy.
(SFC, 3/22/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 21, New Mexico withdrew a temporary permit allowing two new disposal vaults at a US government nuclear waste dump grappling with a release of radiation in February.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, Denis Flory, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said about 140 cases of missing or unauthorized use of nuclear and radioactive material were reported to the UN atomic agency in 2013.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Brazil top officials from Rio de Janeiro said they want elite federal police sent to the city to help quell a wave of violence in so-called "pacified" slums. The announcement came hours after suspected drug gang members attacked three police shantytown outposts, injuring three officers and burning one of the metal shipping containers they use as offices in slums.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, British state prosecutors said a London doctor and another man have become the first people to be charged in Britain over female genital mutilation.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Burundi sentenced 21 activists from a key opposition party to life in jail for "armed revolt" after a jogging protest earlier this month turned into violent clashes with police.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Peacekeepers in Central African Republic opened fire on a crowd in the capital to disrupt anti-Muslim violence, injuring six people including four who were under 16.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Four Chinese rights lawyers were tortured by police after they were rounded up following protests outside a detention center in Jiansanjiang, a farming community in the northeast. They had joined several people shouting to demand information about relatives believed locked up inside because they were members of Falun Gong — banned as a cult though they claim to be a peaceful spiritual movement.
(AP, 4/15/14)
2014 Mar 21, In eastern China a fire in Dujiatuan village, Shandong province, killed a farmer and injured three other farmers. Police later said a real estate developer and a village official directed arsonists who set the fire on the farmer’s tent pitched to guard his land against development.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 21, Cuba state media hundreds of thousands of medical workers will be getting a raise. At the high end, doctors with two specialties will see their salary go from the equivalent of $26 a month to $67. An entry-level nurse will make $25, up from $13.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Egypt's state news said Cairo University has expelled two dozen students for allegedly taking part in violent protests on campus earlier this week.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, The European Union and Ukraine signed a landmark political cooperation accord, committing to the same deal former president Viktor Yanukovich rejected last November, a decision that led to his overthrow.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, France said it is suspending military cooperation with Russia as Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Baltic states in a trip designed to reassure them as tensions mount with Russia over its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Guinea's ministry of health says that 49 people have been registered with viral hemorrhagic fever in the country's south since February, and 29 of those people have since died.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, An Indian court sentenced four men to life in prison for raping a call-center operator last August inside an abandoned textile mill in the financial hub of Mumbai.
(AP, 3/21/14)(SFC, 3/21/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 21, In western India 10 women drowned when a small boat loaded with farmworkers sank in a lake in Rajasthan's state Tonk district.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Iraq militants controlled the northern village of Sarha for several hours as attacks nationwide killed 27 people, including at least 10 policemen, amid a surge in bloodshed ahead of parliamentary elections. Scores of gunmen took over a federal police headquarters in Injana before driving a tanker laden with explosives into the building, killing many.
(AFP, 3/21/14)(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Israel's Mossad intelligence agency said 8 Iranian Jews who disappeared while trying to leave the Islamic Republic from 1994-1997 were captured and killed.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Israeli soldiers shot and wounded two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip near the border as two instigators attempted to climb over the security fence.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Lebanon people were killed in Tripoli in fighting between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Libya two rockets struck a runway at the international airport in Tripoli, forcing the suspension of flights. Since October, 2011, the airport has been under the control of former insurgents from Zintan, 170 km (105 miles) southwest of Tripoli.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Lithuania banned broadcasts of a Russian TV channel for three months for showing a film that authorities said lied about events in 1991, when the Soviet army tried unsuccessfully to remove its pro-independence government.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Mali an overnight blaze at the main market in Bamako destroyed around 2,000 shops, causing millions of dollars in damage as fire crews struggled to access the site and hydrants malfunctioned.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Nigerian police raided a home near Lagos where eight pregnant girls, most under age 20, were staying with plans to sell each of their newborns for nearly two thousand dollars.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, The Philippines said it will buy $524.7-million worth of aircraft from South Korea and Canada as part of a military upgrade amid territorial disputes with superpower neighbor China.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Russia’s Pres. Vladimir Putin completed his annexation of Crimea, signing a law making the Black Sea peninsula part of Russia just as Ukraine itself sealed a deal pulling it closer into Europe's orbit.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In South Korea the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, a curvy futuristic $450 million building meant to remake Seoul into a global design capital, opened to the public after years of debate about its impact on a historic city precinct. It was designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Syria 34 people were killed as Islamists sought to seize a border crossing into Turkey.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, Thailand’s Constitutional Court nullified the Feb 2 election because voting was not conducted nationwide on the same day.
(SFC, 3/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 21, Turkey blocked access to Twitter after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "rip out the roots" of the social network where links have proliferated to recordings that appear to incriminate him and other top officials in corruption.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Uganda news reported that authorities have ordered a police investigation into complaints by elite female runners that they suffered sexual harassment and abuse from a top athletics coach.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Uganda's health minister says the government has lost up to $6 million in annual US government support over the East African country's new anti-gay law.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Ukrainian police detained energy official Yevhen Bakulin, the chief executive of state energy company Naftogaz, as part of an investigation into corruption that it says may have cost the Ukrainian state about $4 billion.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, Venezuela's Pres. Maduro said that street protests for the past month have caused at least $10 billion in damage, accusing hardline foes of carrying out terrorist acts to sabotage public assets.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, Zambia scrapped restrictions on the use of dollars and other foreign currencies as it tried to halt the slide in its currency, which has lost nearly a fifth of its value in recent months.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 22, The US Navy handed over to Libyan authorities the M/T Morning Glory oil tanker it intercepted after the vessel took to sea with crude illegally loaded at a rebel-held port.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In southwestern Colorado a small plane crashed into the Ridgeway Reservoir. On March 24 the bodies of 5 people were found in the wreckage.
(SFC, 3/24/14, p.A6)(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 22, In Texas a barge began leaking oil into the Houston Ship Channel after colliding with a bulk carrier near Texas City at the mouth of Galveston Bay.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Washington state a rain-drenched landslide hit midday near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle. 27 people were believed killed with 30 left missing. At least six homes were destroyed when the slide blocked the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. On July 22 searchers pulled the last missing body from the landslide that killed 43.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)(AFP, 3/24/14)(Reuters, 3/27/14)(AFP, 3/30/14)(SFC, 7/23/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 22, In eastern Australia 5 people were killed after a light plane used for skydiving crashed at an airfield in Queensland.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Britain’s Scotland Yard arrested three boys after Shereka Fab-Ann Marsh (15) was shot dead in east London. On March 24 one boy (15) was charged with her murder. The two other boys (16) were released.
(AFP, 3/23/14)(AFP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 22, A satellite image released by China offered the latest sign that wreckage from a Malaysia Airlines plane lost on March 8 could be in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In France two masked robbers wielding a pump gun and an axe burst into the Colette boutique in the heart of Paris, making off with about 600,000 euros worth of goods from the trendy concept store.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Indian police arrested Zia Ur Rahman, a Pakistani bomb maker, along with three associates in Rajasthan. Police said Rehman helped the Indian Mujahideen, an Indian terror group blamed for a series of bombings in the nation's cities.
(AP, 3/23/14)(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, Indonesia police said they arrested three suspected Islamic extremists last week after intercepting a bomb shipment intended to attack brothels. The arrests included Ambo Intang, who was sought for his alleged involvement in the 2012 killings of two policemen in in the Central Sulawesi district of Poso.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Iraq a series of attacks killed 15 members of the security forces and civilians in areas north of Baghdad. A police officer was killed in a relatively rare attack in the port city of Basra, while security forces reopened a key highway after retaking a village from militants.
(AP, 3/22/14)(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Iraq a presidential guard, a captain in the Kurdish peshmerga forces, shot dead Mohammed Bidaiwi, a senior Iraqi journalist, during an argument in Baghdad and then fled, briefly sparking a standoff in which PM Nuri al-Maliki demanded he be handed over.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Israeli forces shot and killed Hamza Abu Alhija (24), a wanted Hamas Islamist militant, and two other militants dead in a raid on a home in the West Bank town of Jenin.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Libyan rebels occupying oil ports clashed with troops when they attacked an army base, wounding 16 people before tribal leaders brokered an end to the fighting.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, The Netherlands-based ICC said Charles Ble Goude, wanted by the International Criminal Court in connection with a wave of violence after Ivory Coast's 2010 elections, is in its court's custody and is on his way to its jail in The Hague.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Nigeria suspected Islamist militants detonated a bomb late today in a crowded northeastern marketplace killing at least 20 people in Bama, Borno state.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Pakistan a multi-vehicle collision involving two trucks and two passenger buses on a coastal highway in the southwest killed 35 people and injured 20.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Philippines security forces arrested the country's top communist leaders, a week ahead of the 45th anniversary of the group's armed struggle when it is expected to launch attacks on government targets.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Spanish police detained 24 people during street violence late today following a large anti-austerity demonstration in Madrid in which dozens were injured.
(AFP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Sudan some 300 gunmen attacked and burned a camp for displaced people in the Darfur region, adding to an upsurge of suspected militia violence which has wreaked havoc. At least one person was killed.
(AFP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Syria fighting raged between rebels and loyalist forces in northern Latakia province. Hilal al-Assad, a first cousin of the president and president of the Syrian Arabian Horse Association, was killed in the battle for a border crossing with Turkey in the north of Latakia.
(AFP, 3/22/14)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Assad_family)
2014 Mar 22, Turkish authorities sought to tighten a clampdown on Twitter after social media users easily evaded the government's attempt to block access to the service.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Uganda said at least 107 people were killed and dozens of others were missing after a boat carrying mostly Congolese refugees capsized on Lake Albert that runs along the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. An estimated 250 people were on the boat with 41 rescued.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)(AFP, 3/24/14)(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 22, Ukraine’s interior minister said police have seized 42 kg of gold and $4.8 million in cash during a search of the apartments of former Energy Minister Eduard Stavytsky. His career had blossomed under the presidency of ousted Viktor Yanukovich and was appointed energy minister in December 2012.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Ukraine Col. Yully Mamchur, the commander of Belbek Air Force base in Crimea, was seized by pro-Russian forces as they stormed the base near Sevastopol.
(SFC, 3/24/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 22, In eastern Ukraine more than 5,000 pro-Russia residents of Donetsk demonstrated in favor of holding a referendum on whether to seek to split off and become part of Russia.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, The UN Commission on the Status of Women approved a 45-page document to promote equality for women that reaffirms the sexual and reproductive rights of all women and endorses sex education for adolescents.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Pope Francis named the initial members of a commission to advise him on sex abuse policy, tapping lay and religious experts.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Venezuela Police fired tear gas and made several arrests as 20,000 people marched in Caracas against what they say is President Nicolas Maduro's heavy-handed repression of dissent. At least 3 people were killed pushing the death toll from almost two months of anti-government demonstrations to 34.
(AFP, 3/22/14)(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, Yemeni tribesmen bombed Yemen's main crude export pipeline, forcing oil flows to be stopped. In the north 12 people were reported killed in clashes between government forces and Shiite rebels on the outskirts of the northern city of Amran.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 23, China and the Netherlands signed a trade pact pledging Dutch dairy expertise to help Chinese producers boost the quality and quantity of their milk. It was part of a raft of deals and memoranda of understanding inked on the 2nd day of a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is in the Netherlands with a large trade delegation.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In the first round of French local elections the governing left took 38% of the vote, behind the mainstream right with 46%.
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.58)
2014 Mar 23, France provided new satellite data showing possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, missing since March 8, as searchers continued combing a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, Guinea government officials said samples from victims of a viral hemorrhagic fever that has killed more than 50 people have tested positive for the Ebola virus.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, Israeli diplomats launched an unprecedented strike, forcing the complete closure of embassies around the world as they escalated a dispute over pay.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Israel Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Russia's republic of Chechnya, inaugurated a new, $10 million mosque in the Arab village of Abu Ghosh.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Kenya attackers shot dead 4 worshippers when they burst into a church service near the port city of Mombasa, spraying the congregation with bullets.
(AFP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Lebanon hours-long clashes overnight in a Beirut neighborhood between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad killed one person, prompting Lebanese troops to deploy in the area to calm tensions.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Myanmar dozens of protesters began a 2,400-km (1,500-mile) march to northern Myanmar, calling for the cancellation of a Chinese-backed hydroelectric dam project over environmental concerns.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In northern Pakistan a tourist van plunged off the road in rugged terrain near a hill resort, killing 10 people near Salgaran village.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, Tens of thousands of Palestinians rallied in Gaza to show support for their Islamist Hamas government, which has long been at loggerheads with Israel but is now shunned by Egypt as well. The rally was intended to commemorate 3 top Hamas leaders, including founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel a decade ago.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In the Philippines a large stash of high-grade cocaine was uncovered when several hidden packets tumbled from the ceiling of a shipping container in a private wharf. The find totaled more than 50 kg (110 pounds) with an estimated worth about 300 million pesos ($6.7 million).
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Spain Adolfo Suarez (b.1932), prime minister from 1976-1981, died. He had steered Spain through one of the most turbulent periods in its political history and built bridges between the "two Spains" after fascist dictator General Francisco Franco died in 1975.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Su%C3%A1rez)
2014 Mar 23, Sudanese officials said the country’s rich but under-developed archaeological heritage has received an unprecedented $135 million (98 million euros) in funding from the Gulf state of Qatar.
(AFP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Syria fighters from an array of armed opposition groups seized the predominantly Armenian Christian town of Kassab.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 23, Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said that the island needed to pass a contentious trade pact with China for the sake of its economy. Hundreds of protesters opposed to the far-reaching trade pact invaded Cabinet offices, marking a sharp escalation in a student-led movement against the island's rapidly developing ties with the communist mainland.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, Turkish fighter jets shot down a Syrian warplane after it violated Turkey's airspace. The pilot safely ejected from the aircraft.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Venezuela Adriana Urquoila, a pregnant woman, was shot dead in the head after she left a bus stuck in traffic because of a barrier built by protesters.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 24, SF Bay Area prosecutors announced indictments of 16 people in a gang crackdown dubbed “Operation Sunny Day" that focused on East Palo Alto and at least 4 regional murders in 2012-2013.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 24, In NYC five former employees of Bernard Madoff were convicted after a 6-month trial on charges related to the massive fraud first revealed in Dec, 2008.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.D6)
2014 Mar 24, Major Texas shipping channels that deliver crude oil for more than one-tenth of the nation's refining capacity were shut for a third day, as the cleanup from a spill threatened to last through the week.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, In Virginia US Navy security forces at the Norfolk Naval Station killed civilian truck driver Jeffrey Tyrone Savage after he shot and killed Petty Officer 2nd class Mark Mayo aboard the USS Mahan.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 24, In southern Afghanistan Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint, sparking a gunbattle that killed 2 policemen and one of the militants in Helmand province. Five Taliban militants were arrested after reinforcements from a nearby checkpoint joined the fight.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Belgium and Italy said they had moved excess nuclear materials to the United States for disposal or downgrading under the terms of past agreements, at the start of a nuclear summit in the Netherlands.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, British Judge Jonathan Gosling Francis sentenced Paul Cullen (85), a former Catholic priest who spent decades on the run, to 15 years in jail for sexually abusing seven children between 1957 and 1991.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 24, An Egyptian court sentenced 529 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death for murder and other offences.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, The EU approved sanctions and said it will no longer import any fish caught by vessels from Cambodia, Belize and Guinea, accusing their governments of failing to cooperate in fighting illegal fishing.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, France-based Airbus Defence & Space captured images showing 122 potential objects, possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, in a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) area in the southern Indian Ocean.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 24, Guinea announced that samples taken from three suspected cases of Ebola, which led to two deaths in Conakry, had tested negative for the virus. Health workers said the outbreak from the Ebola virus, which has killed at least 59 people in Guinea, may have spread to Liberia.
(AFP, 3/24/14)(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 24, Italian financial police arrested a former executive of the state-controlled Finmeccanica defense contractor in a bribery investigation. Stefano Carlini, former head of external relations, was one of four people placed under house arrest.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Japanese and US leaders said Japan will turn over hundreds of kilograms of sensitive atomic material of potential use in bombs to the United States to be downgraded and disposed. This was shortly before leaders from 53 countries, including Obama and Abe, were due to hold a two-day summit at The Hague aimed at preventing al Qaeda-style militant groups from acquiring nuclear bombs.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Mexican authorities over the past week found more than 370 children in 14 states dumped by people smugglers while trying to make their way into the United States.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 24, In Mexico 3 women and a 7-year-old girl were shot to death in a village near the resort city of Acapulco.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 24, Russia's SMP Bank said around 9 billion rubles had been withdrawn by depositors since U.S. sanctions were announced last week.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Russian historian Andrei Zubov was fired from his teaching position at the Moscow State Institute of Int’l. Relations for drawing parallels between Russia’s occupation of Crimea and Germany’s annexation of Austria and Sudetenland territories in 1938-39.
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.53)
2014 Mar 24, A Saudi man convicted of shooting dead a compatriot in a dispute was beheaded by the sword. His execution in Hafr al-Batin brings to 12 the number of death sentences carried out this year in Saudi Arabia.
(AFP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, South Africa's platinum producers said a two-month strike was causing "irreparable" damage to the sector, which has to date lost nearly a billion dollars in revenue.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 24, Ukraine announced the evacuation of its troops and their families from Crimea, effectively acknowledging defeat in the face of Russian forces, who stormed one of the last remaining Ukrainian bases on the peninsula.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, In Venezuela Sgt. Miguel Antonio Parra was shot dead during a street demonstration in Merida. At least 32 people have died in protests over the last five weeks.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 24, In Yemen gunmen killed 20 soldiers in a dawn attack on a checkpoint in the eastern province of Hadramawt, most of them in their sleep, in the latest in a wave of deadly violence blamed on Al-Qaeda.
(AFP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 25, The US Coast Guard partially reopened the Houston Ship Channel following the March 22 collision between an oil barge and a bulk carrier near Texas City. 170,000 gallons of tar-like coal were spilled.
(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 25, Utah’s Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law that allows parents of children with severe epilepsy to obtain marijuana extract to help with seizures.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 25, Facebook said it has agreed to purchase Oculus VR, a startup specializing in virtual reality, for $2.3 billion in cash and stock.
(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 25, King Digital, ticker KING, raised $500 million from the sale of 22.2 million shares. Established in 2002, King's business has soared in the last two years thanks to the spectacular popularity of Candy Crush Saga, which boasts some 97 million players worldwide.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, In Afghanistan suicide bombers and gunmen attacked an election commission office beside the home of presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani, less than two weeks before a crucial election. 10 people were killed including 2 policemen, an election worker and a provincial council candidate. 3 suicide bombers entered a branch of Kabulbank in the eastern province of Kunar, killing at least 3 security guards and injuring two bank workers.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 25, The Arab League held a summit in Kuwait. UN peace mediator for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called for an end the flow of arms to the combatants in the war.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Royal Mail, Britain's main postal operator, said it plans to axe 1,600 jobs under a fresh cost-cutting program, six months after its controversial part-privatization by the government.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, China's eastern city of Hangzhou said will start restricting car sales on March 26, joining major cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, in the fight against snarling traffic and heavy smog in the world's largest automobile market.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Egypt's leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie (70), and 682 others went on trial on charges including murder. Defence lawyers boycotted the court session, attended by 60 of the defendants, after complaining of irregularities. Reporters were barred from the courtroom.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Indian police arrested Tehseen Akhtar (23), the alleged head of militant group the Indian Mujahideen. The group was blamed for a string of deadly attacks including one at a rally in October by election frontrunner Narendra Modi.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Ireland's police chief Martin Callinan resigned following months of criticism of his force's handling of allegations of illegal wire-tapping and corrupt enforcement of traffic laws.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Kenya’s wildlife authority said it needs help to curb the killings of elephants and rhinos for their tusks and horns. Poachers this year have killed 18 rhinos and 51 elephants.
(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 25, Myanmar said it will ban the export of logs starting April 1 to reduce deforestation and boost its wood-based industry by exporting only value-added products. Myanmar's forest cover shrank from 57.9 percent of its total land area in 1990 to 47.6 percent in 2005.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, NATO member Norway suspended all joint activities with the Russian military through May because of Moscow's annexation of Crimea.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, In the Netherlands 35 countries pledged to turn international guidelines on nuclear security into national laws, a move aimed at preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear material.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, In the Netherlands US President Barack Obama, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye met to discuss North Korea's security threat.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, Dutch police detained 28 anti-nuclear demonstrators at a reactor ahead of a visit by a delegation of energy sector bosses.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, In northeastern Nigeria two explosions in Maiduguri killed 11 people, including 5 policemen who were believed to have been targeted.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, In central Nigeria police recovered 7 bodies following an attack on Agena village, Benue state, in renewed violence between herdsmen and farmers.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, Singapore authorities intercepted about one ton of ivory worth $1.6 million in a shipping container from Africa marked as carrying coffee berries.
(AFP, 4/3/14)
2014 Mar 25, Sudan said a pro-government militia has killed 151 rebels in clashes this week in the country's restive Darfur region.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Syria's opposition fighters seized Samra a Mediterranean coastal village as they pushed to consolidate their presence in a key regime bastion near the Turkish border.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Thai police seized 147 kg (323 pounds) of heroin they believe was from Myanmar and destined for Australia. The single haul exceeded some of Thailand's recent yearly seizure totals.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, Turkish special forces raided buildings in Istanbul used by suspected members of an Islamist militant group active in neighboring Syria and Iraq, leaving three policemen and two suspects wounded.
(Reuters, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, Ukraine lawmakers accepted the resignation of the defense minister Igor Tenyukh as thousands of troops began withdrawing from the Crimean Peninsula, now controlled by Russia. Col. Gen. Mikhail Kovalyov was voted in as his replacement.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Oleksander Muzychko, a prominent Ukrainian far-right activist, was shot dead by police overnight as he tried to escape from a cafe in the western region of Rivne. Police said he was wanted for "hooliganism" and an attack on a local prosecutor.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, The United Nations human rights office said an Egyptian court's decision to sentence 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death contravened international law.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Venezuela’s Pres. Maduro said officials have arrested three air force generals on charges of plotting a coup.
(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 25, The World Health Organization published a report saying air pollution kills about 7 million people worldwide every year, with more than half of the fatalities due to fumes from indoor stoves.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 26, In California state Sen. Leland Yee was arrested in an FBI sting on charges that he conspired to traffic in firearms and traded favors in Sacramento for bribes. Yee represented half of San Francisco and most of San Mateo County. Yee was one of 26 people ensnared in a 5-year federal investigation that targeted Raymond “Shrimp Boy" Chow, a Chinatown gangster who had claimed to have gone straight.
(SFC, 3/27/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 26, Daly City dentist Wilson Sy Lim was among 26 people arrested in a SF Bay Area FBI sting. State Sen. Leland Yee had introduced Lim to an undercover FBI agent as a connection for securing guns from the Philippines.
(SFC, 3/31/14, p.A8)
2014 Mar 26, A New York jury found Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and former Al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith (48) guilty on three counts of conspiracy to kill Americans and supporting terrorists.
(AFP, 3/26/14)(SFC, 3/27/14, p.A9)
2014 Mar 26, Charlotte, NC, Mayor Patrick Cannon, in office for less than six months, resigned hours after he was arrested and accused of taking over $48,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 26, A British financial watchdog said it has fined Spanish banking giant Santander almost £12.4 million for mis-advising customers.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, In Brussels Pres. Barack Obama and EU leaders presented a unified front against Russia's annexation of Crimea, promoting trans-Atlantic trade as an antidote to Russia's influence in the region and a way to help Europe become less dependent on Moscow for energy.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, The head of African peacekeepers in the Central African Republic said that vigilante groups known as "anti-balaka" will be considered and treated as "enemies" from now on.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, In southern China a fire in a lingerie factory killed 11 people in Puning County, Guangdong province.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, In Egypt one person was killed near Cairo University when protesters supporting ousted President Mohamed Mursi clashed with security forces.
(Reuters, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Guinea health officials said the death toll from the rare Ebola virus has risen to 63. The outbreak is the first in West Africa in 20 years.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Israeli navy ships opened fire on two suspected Palestinian smuggling boats off the Gaza coast. Both vessels sank after an explosion following the shooting.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, In their “Kuwait Declaration" Arab leaders called for a political solution to the conflict in Syria, overlooking Saudi-backed demands for greater military support for rebel forces to tip the balance in the war. The Arab League also announced their "total rejection of the call to consider Israel a Jewish state," in the final statement.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Myanmar’s Energy Ministry said major oil companies including Total, Chevron, Woodside Energy and Shell have won bids for offshore oil and gas exploration blocks off its western and southern coasts.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, North Korea test-fired two medium-range Rodong ballistic missiles. The Rodong launch, the first since 2009, violated UN Security Council resolutions and marked a big escalation from a series of shorter-range rocket launches the North has staged in recent weeks to protest ongoing annual military drills by the US and South Korea that Pyongyang claims are invasion preparation.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters said Russian mathematician Yakov G. Sinai (78) has won this year's $1 million Abel Prize in mathematics.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, A Pakistani government team traveled to a secret location in the northwest where it held the first-ever direct talks with the Taliban.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Russian forces took over the Ukrainian minesweeper Cherkasy, the last military ship controlled by Ukraine in Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and NASA’s Steve Swanson blasted off from Kazakhstan. A software glitch delayed their docking with the International Space Station until March 27.
(SFC, 3/27/14, p.A2)(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 26, Somali government forces fighting alongside African Union troops said they had taken back control of the key town of El-Bur, driving Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels from a major central bastion.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Spanish police arrested more than 50 students during a protest at a Madrid university during the first day of a strike to protest a government education reform and cutbacks in grants and staffing.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, A Turkish court ordered the telecommunications authority to restore access to Twitter, issuing an injunction five days after the government blocked access to the social network.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Ukraine’s Naftogaz officials said the price of gas will rise for domestic consumers by more than 50 per cent from May 1. Further rises will be implemented under a fixed timetable until 2018. The step were in response to demands by the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Pope Francis permanently removed German bishop Franz-Peter Terbartz-van Elst from his Limburg diocese after his 31 million-euro ($43-million) new residence complex caused an uproar among the faithful. Francis had temporarily expelled him in October pending a church inquiry.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, The World Trade Organization ruled that China has violated international trade rules with its restrictions on the export of 17 "rare earths" and two other minerals that have key industrial and high-tech uses.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 27, A visibly energized President Barack Obama held a nearly hour-long audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, expressing his great admiration for the pontiff and inviting him to visit the White House.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report saying one in 68 US children has been diagnosed with autism. The CDC report was based on data from 2010.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D1)
2014 Mar 27, The US Mint put new collector gold and silver coins on sale to commemorate the Baseball Hall of Fame which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The design by Cassie McFarland's featured a curved baseball glove.
(AOL.com, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 27, The US Air Force fired nine midlevel nuclear commanders and said it will discipline dozens of junior officers at a nuclear base in Great Falls, Montana, in response to an exam cheating scandal.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 27, Police in southern California served over two dozen search warrants and made six arrested in an investigation targeting the theft of baggage at Los Angeles Int’l. Airport. Those arrested did not directly work for the airport.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 27, Dr. James Schlesinger (1929), former US defense secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford, died in NYC. He also served as the first secretary of the new Energy Dept. under Pres. Carter. In 1960 he authored “The Political Economy of National Security: A study of the economic aspects of the contemporary power struggle."
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D2)
2014 Mar 27, Mark Stock (62), a realist figure painter, died in Oakland, Ca. He was known for a series of butlers in tuxedos including “"The Butler’s in Love" (1989).
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D3)
2014 Mar 27, In his first visit to Afghanistan as Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani called for regional unity as regional leaders celebrated the Persian New Year in Kabul.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Cambodia's opposition party said it will defy a government ban on meeting in one of the capital's public parks, setting up a possible clash with authorities.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In the Central African Republic at least 9 people were killed when extremists threw hand grenades at a crowd of mourners during a funeral service in Bangui. A recent uptick in violence had seen around 20 people killed in Bangui since March 22.
(AFP, 3/28/14)(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 27, China’s Defense Ministry said it will beef up its internet security after recent reports that the US government spied on a major telecommunications firm.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, China’s Xinhua state news said a Wuhu city court has sentenced to death a rapist who posed as a female on social networks to lure 16 girls to meet him. Wang Yong (40) was sentenced earlier this month for raping the girls aged 12 to 16 starting in 2009.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In China a man (34) involved in a property dispute stabbed six people to death in a Beijing district and injured others.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Colombia’s Pres. Juan Manuel Santos said Venezuela’s government has accepted the political opposition’s conditions for dialogue.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 27, Egypt’s Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ditched his military fatigues and resigned as Egypt's defense minister, a day after announcing he would run for president.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, A French court ordered Closer magazine to pay 15,000 euros for publishing photos of what it said was a helmeted President Francois Hollande visiting an actress for a secret tryst. Julie Gayet had sued the magazine for violation of privacy.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Germany's main airports were hit by a strike as public sector workers raised pressure on the government in pay talks.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Iraqi army forces began shelling the region of Zoba, just south of Fallujah, sparking clashes with militants. At least 3 people were killed and 53 wounded in the shelling and firefights. A series of attacks targeting commercial areas killed 26 people. In Ramadi 4 soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in a booby-trapped building.
(AFP, 3/28/14)(AP, 3/28/14)(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 27, Israel said it will allow into the Gaza Strip construction materials and electric equipment to help build a Turkish-sponsored hospital, in a possible sign of improving ties with Ankara.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Japan’s Shizuoka District Court suspended the death sentence and ordered a retrial for Iwao Hakamada (78). The world's longest-serving death row inmate had been convicted in the 1966 murder of a family and was sentenced to death in 1968. The judge who freed him found that police and prosecutors had fabricated evidence in the original trial.
(AP, 3/27/14)(Econ, 12/5/15, p.39)
2014 Mar 27, Lebanon’s government ordered the army and security forces to control the security situation in Tripoli and to seize arms caches in the city. A soldier was killed by two masked men on motorbikes in Tripoli. A day earlier a municipal worker was murdered in the same fashion.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Libya slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi's son Saadi asked Libyans for forgiveness in a taped interview released by prison authorities three weeks after his extradition from neighboring Niger.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Macau "The Grandmaster" won best picture, best director for Wong Kar Wai and five other honors at the Asian Film Awards.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, Mexican soldiers and police killed 10 Zetas drug cartel suspects in a gunfight in the eastern state of Veracruz.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Myanmar Buddhist-led mobs tore through streets hurling stones at the offices and residences of international aid workers in western Rakhine state, prompting the evacuation of almost all non-essential staff. One girl (11) was killed when police fired into the air to disperse crowds.
(AP, 3/27/14)(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 27, In Qatar Matthew and Grace Huang, an American couple charged with starving their adopted daughter (8) to death, were sentenced to three years in prison. Their daughter was pronounced dead when the Huangs took her to the hospital in January 2013.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The Philippine government signed a peace accord with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country's largest Muslim rebel group. The deal grants largely Muslim areas of the southern Mindanao region greater political autonomy in exchange for an end to armed rebellion.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would develop its own credit card system to reduce reliance on Western-based companies and soften the potential blow from US and EU sanctions.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Saudi Arabia’s reigning King Abdullah (~89) appointed by royal decree his youngest surviving brother, Muqrin (b.1945), as 2nd in line to the throne after ailing crown prince Salman (78).
(Econ, 4/5/14, p.40)
2014 Mar 27, South Korea's military seized a North Korean fishing boat that it said had crossed a disputed maritime border after ignoring warnings to retreat amid growing tension between the two sides.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, South Korea formally approved a request from women rights activists, including one "comfort woman", to meet North Korean counterparts at a conference on Japan's wartime use of sex slaves.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Syrian forces bombarded rebel positions with artillery and warplanes in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Turkey KanalTurk television station, linked to opponents of PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said authorities have withdrawn its license to broadcast nationally just days before crucial local elections.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, A scandal in Uganda over alleged sex abuse of female runners deepened after it emerged that Moses Kipsiro, the athlete who exposed the issue, was dropped from the national half-marathon team.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Ukraine PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned that everyone is going to feel some pain from necessary financial reforms ahead as the International Monetary Fund pledged up to $18 billion in loans to prop up the teetering economy. Former PM Yulia Tymoshenko announced that she will run for president in the vote set for May 25.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The UN passed a non-binding resolution declaring invalid Crimea's Moscow-backed referendum on seceding from Ukraine with 100 votes in favor, 11 against and 58 abstentions in the 193-nation General Assembly. Russia threatened several Eastern European and Central Asian states with retaliation if they voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 27, The UN's top human rights body agreed to launch an international criminal investigation into alleged abuses from Sri Lanka's ended civil war, approving a US-led resolution over the strong protests of Sri Lanka's government.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 28, President Barack Obama opened a fence-mending visit to Saudi Arabia, arriving in the oil-rich Gulf nation for meetings to reassure its elderly monarch of the US commitment to the Arab world.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, California’s Democratic controlled state Senate voted to suspend three members. They included Leland Yee of SF and San Mateo Ct. and Ron Calderon and Roderick Wright of LA County. The suspended senators would continue to receive pay until their terms expire.
(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A1)(SSFC, 3/30/14, p.C5)
2014 Mar 28, US authorities said 11 people have been arrested for trafficking methamphetamine to the Bakken oil patch and will face drug conspiracy charges in Montana.
(SSFC, 3/30/14, p.A11)
2014 Mar 28, In Afghanistan six foreigners including three Americans were trapped inside a Kabul guesthouse after a group of Taliban gunmen laid siege to the building. A gun battle erupted after a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up outside the building and insurgents forced their way in. The aid workers survived. One small Afghan girl, a passer-by, was killed as well as a driver and all five attackers.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)(AFP, 3/29/14)(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 28, Australian officials moved the search area for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, that disappeared March 8, 1,100 km (680 miles) to the northeast following a new analysis of radar data, and planes quickly found multiple objects in the new zone.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Brazilian prosecutors sought the arrest of 13 executives from 3 int’l. companies allegedly involved in a cartel to raise prices for the construction and upkeep of subway and train systems in Sao Paulo.
(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 28, In Egypt Journalist Mayada Ashraf, from the privately owned Al-Dustour newspaper, was shot in the head as she covered clashes between police and supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in the northern neighborhood of Ein Shams. 4 other people were killed including a Christian woman named Mary Sameh (26). Prosecutors the next day blamed five masked gunmen from the Muslim Brotherhood. A protester who attended the Ein Shams rally said it was the police who opened fire on the crowd as the demonstrators were about to disperse.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, The Guinean health ministry confirmed eight cases of Ebola in Conakry, including one fatality. The total number of suspected cases recorded from January to March 28 was 111 cases of haemorrhagic fever, including 70 deaths.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, An Indian air force cargo plane inducted into service just last year crashed during a training mission, killing all five crew members.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, In Iraq a triple bombing struck a busy market area in northern Baghdad, killing 4 people.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Israeli police and antiquities inspectors arrested a gang accused of looting ancient Jewish burial caskets from a cave in the Jerusalem area.
(AFP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 28, In the Ivory Coast Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama was elected the new head of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at a summit of the 15-nation regional bloc.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, In Kashmir at least three gunmen disguised as Indian soldiers opened fire on a car, killing a passenger and triggering a firefight with army troops in the Dayalchak area.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, A Lebanese policeman was killed by unknown gunmen in the northern city of Tripoli.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, In Morocco some 800 African migrants tried to climb barbed-wire fences to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Most were turned back by security forces from both sides.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Netherlands’ public prosecutor said Milutin Graic (41), wanted in Croatia on suspicion of war crimes during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, has been arrested in Roosendaal.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, New Zealand’s government announced it would sell a minority stake in power company Genesis Energy for 736 million New Zealand dollars ($638 million). The company will list on the New Zealand stock market on April 17. More than two-thirds of people who voted in a referendum last year said they opposed the government asset sales.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Nigeria’s military said they have arrested two Britons and 10 local citizens on charges of trying to bribe a military officer to facilitate oil theft. Security sources have said the sheer scale of oil theft would not be possible without systematic collusion by various security agencies.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, In eastern Pakistan gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire late today on a car carrying senior journalist Raza Rumi, killing his driver before escaping in Lahore.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, A Palestinian official said Israel will not free the final batch of prisoners they had been expecting alongside US-brokered peace talks. Israeli cabinet members had warned they would block the final release, anticipated for the end of March, if the Palestinians refused to extend the talks beyond their April 29 deadline.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, The Philippines signed contracts worth $527 million to buy 12 fighter jets from South Korea and four combat utility helicopters from Canada to boost the capability of its air force.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin said Ukraine could regain some arms and equipment of military units in Crimea that did not switch their loyalty to Russia.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Russia said Switzerland has imposed restrictions on military exports to Russia over events in Ukraine which were counterproductive and not in line with the country's policy of neutrality.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Sweden sentenced a Malaysian couple to prison for beating their four children with sticks and clothes hangers. The abuse occurred from 2010 until December 2013, when Swedish police arrested the couple. The children, aged 7-14, were taken back to their home country following a massive social media campaign calling for their return.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, The UN's top human rights body voted overwhelmingly to renew its war crimes investigation in Syria for another year.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, The UN said over a million people in South Sudan have been forced from their homes during more than three months of ongoing fighting, with conditions continuing to worsen.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, Uruguay’s drug czar said every legal marijuana plant in the country will be registered and tracked using radio frequency tags.
(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 28, In southern Yemen 2 al-Qaeda militants and a soldier were killed in a raid by security forces on a residential building in Dalea.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 29, Hobie Alter (80), creator of the Hobie Cat sailboat, died at his home in Palm Desert, Ca. He was known as the Henry Ford of the surfboard industry. In 1959 he became the first person to mass produce surfboards made of polyurethane foam.
(SFC, 4/1/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 29, In Iowa a massive fire swept through the former Younkers department store in downtown Des Moines. The building, dating to 1899, was under renovation and would now have to be demolished.
(SSFC, 3/30/14, p.A11)
2014 Mar 29, In Afghanistan Taliban insurgents attacked the Independent Election Commission headquarters in Kabul with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. Police killed all 5 suicide bombers.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)(AP, 3/29/14)(SSFC, 3/30/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 29, Gay couples across England and Wales said "I do" as a law authorizing same-sex marriage came into effect at midnight, the final stage in a long fight for equality.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, British police said a male nurse has been charged with the murder of three patients who were poisoned with contaminated medical products at a hospital in Stockport. Victorino Chua (48), a father of two children, was charged with murdering 3 of 8 patients who died following the poisoning at Stepping Hill hospital, in June and July 2011. On May 18, 2015, Chua was convicted of using insulin to murder two patients and trying to poison twenty others.
(AFP, 3/29/14)(SFC, 5/19/15, p.A2)
2014 Mar 29, In Central African Republic Chadian soldiers, sent to repatriate their compatriots, killed at least 8 civilians when they opened fire on crowds in Bangui. Chadian troops were accused of killing 32 civilians when they opened fire on a crowd.
(AFP, 3/30/14)(AP, 4/3/14)
2014 Mar 29, Crimea's Tatars held a vote on whether to push for self-rule in their historic homeland following its annexation by Russia. The Crimean Tatars, who make up about 12 percent of Crimea's population, strongly opposed and largely boycotted the hastily-organized March 16 referendum.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Cuba’s parliament approved a new foreign investment law that for the first time allowed Cubans living abroad to invest in some enterprises.
(Econ, 4/5/14, p.30)
2014 Mar 29, An Egyptian court sentenced two supporters of former president Mohamed Mursi to death for murder during violence that broke out in Alexandria last year.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Egypt reopened the Gaza Strip's land border after a 50-day closure, but only for three days and then just for special cases.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the US National Security Agency kept more than 300 reports on Chancellor Angela Merkel in a special databank about scores of foreign heads of state. Other leaders listed in the databank include the heads of Peru, Somalia, Guatemala, Colombia and Belarus.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Guinea kept up its efforts to contain an Ebola epidemic which has killed dozens spreading from its southern forests to the capital Conakry, as neighboring Senegal closed its border.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, In southern Iraq commercial production on one of the biggest undeveloped oilfields in the world. Russian energy giant Lukoil was the principal firm developing the enormous West Qurna-2 field.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, In Lebanon 3 soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at a checkpoint at Aqabet al-Jurd in the Arsal region.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 29, Myanmar said that Muslims would not be allowed to register as "Rohingya" in its first census since 1983 despite UN assurances, on the eve of a survey that has fanned sectarian tensions.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, In southwest Pakistan a roadside bomb targeting a security force vehicle in Quetta killed a teenage girl and wounded 18 people.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, A Philippine government ship slipped past a Chinese coast guard blockade and brought food and fresh troops to a marooned navy ship used as a base by Filipino troops to bolster the country's territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Russia said it had "no intention" of invading eastern Ukraine, responding to Western warnings over a military buildup on the border following Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Slovak voters turned out in unexpectedly higher numbers for the runoff in the country's presidential election as underdog philanthropist Andrej Kiska challenged political heavyweight PM Robert Fico. Andrej Kiska trounced PM Robert Fico in the presidential election.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Sri Lanka held local elections. The ruling party won local elections, but with smaller than expected margins in a crucial mid-term test for President Mahinda Rajapakse.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 29, Syrian government forces captured two villages near the border with Lebanon, continuing a weeks-long advance that has cut a major supply route for weapons and fighters from eastern Lebanon.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, In Thailand tens of thousands of anti-government protesters rallied across Bangkok in their latest bid to topple PM Yingluck Shinawatra.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Ukraine boxer turned opposition leader Vitali Klitschko dropped out of the May 25 snap presidential polls to help the candidacy of Petro Poroshenko, a charismatic tycoon who made a fortune selling chocolates and backs closer Western ties.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Albuquerque, NM, a protest over recent police shootings turned to mayhem as demonstrators clashed with riot police. Violent confrontations between officers and residents have included 37 police shootings since 2010, 23 of them fatal.
(SFC, 3/31/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 30, Marc Platt (b.1913), Broadway dancer and the last surviving member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, died in Marin, Ca. His film work included roles in “Tonight and Every Night" (1945), “Tars and Spars" (1946) and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (1954).
(SFC, 4/1/14, p.C4)
2014 Mar 30, In southeastern Afghanistan a Romanian serviceman was killed and five troops wounded by a roadside bomb on the Kabul-Kandahar highway outside Qalat, Zabul province. Romania has 1,029 troops serving in the NATO mission in Afghanistan; 23 have been killed.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, A Bahrain court sentenced 13 people to life in prison for attempting to kill a policeman, attacking a police car and taking part in an illegal protest in March, 2012. One person was sentenced to 10 years in jail in the same case.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Belgium China’s Pres. Xi Jinping received a royal welcome and an honorary knighthood in Brussels at the start of a 3-day visit that will see him become the first Chinese leader to visit EU headquarters.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Brazil more than 1,400 police officers and Marines rolled into a massive complex of slums near Rio de Janeiro's international airport before dawn as part of the "pacification" program that began in 2008 and is meant to secure Rio ahead of not the World Cup and also the 2016 Summer Olympics.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, British actress Kate O'Mara (74), best known for her role in the 1980s soap opera "Dynasty," died in a nursing home in southern England after a short illness.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In southern China hundreds of protesters marched against a chemical plant and environmental degradation. The Maoming city government called the demonstration a "grave violation" by criminals causing chaos. Residents were protesting the production of paraxylene, a chemical used to make fabrics and plastic bottles at a plant run by the local government and state-owned Sinopec Corp, China's biggest refiner.
(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 30, In China Phuntso Wangye (b.1922), a veteran Tibetan Communist leader, died in Beijing. He had founded the Tibetan Communist Party and later become an outspoken critic of Beijing's hardline policies towards the Himalayan region. His book “A Long Way to Equality and Unity" was recently published in Hong Kong.
(Reuters, 3/30/14)(SFC, 3/31/14, p.C3)
2014 Mar 30, An Egyptian soldier was killed when militants attacked the bus he was driving in the town of Al-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula.
(Reuters, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, France held a second round of voting in local elections that are set to result in a breakthrough by the far right and trigger a reshuffle of the beleaguered Socialist government. 155 towns swung to the center-right UMP and the far-right National Front claim 11.
(AFP, 3/30/14)(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Iraq attackers sprayed with bullets a group of troops manning a checkpoint near Mosul killing 7 soldiers. A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives on a major bridge in Ramadi killing 7 people. Parts of the al-Houz bridge fell into the Euphrates river. Two police officers were killed by a roadside bomb that exploded near their car in Tikrit. A bomb explosion at the entrance of an out-door market killed 4 shoppers and wounded nine others in Baghdad's suburb of Youssifiyah.
(AFP, 3/30/14)(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, Japan and North Korea started high-level government talks for the first time in more than a year that were expected to focus on abductions of Japanese by North Korea decades ago.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Kenya a man died after an explosive device he was assembling blew up in a residential area of Nairobi. Police looked for three other men who were seen running out of the apartment after the blast.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, Myanmar began its first census since 1983. Those who identified themselves as Rohingya were not counted.
(AP, 4/2/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Nigeria 21 detainees, reportedly suspected Boko Haram insurgents, were killed during an attempted jailbreak after one inmate reportedly overpowered a guard and seized his weapon.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 30, The Philippines filed a case against China at an arbitration tribunal in The Hague, subjecting Beijing to international legal scrutiny over the territorial dispute in the South China Sea.
(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 30, The Seychelles transferred nine Somali pirates to serve the remainder of their jail sentences back home, taking the total transferred to more than 90.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Taiwan hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the streets around Parliament to voice their opposition to a trade pact with China.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, Thais voted for half of the country's 150-seat Senate in a key test for Yingluck Shinawatra's troubled government.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Turkey violent feuds broke out in local elections for village and neighborhood leaders, leaving 6 people dead in the village of Yuvacik, Sanliurfa province, and 2 dead in the southern city of Hatay. PM Erdogan’s AK Party led the polls with 46%, retaining control of the two biggest cities Istanbul and Ankara and increasing its share of the national vote.
(AP, 3/30/14)(Reuters, 3/31/14)(SSFC, 4/6/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 31, In Connecticut The Rev. Paul Gotta was arrested on seven sexual assault charges. Police say the assaults took place over the span of a year beginning in January 2012. He was arrested by federal authorities last year on charges including illegally transferring a gun, ammunition and explosive material to a juvenile.
(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 31, Charles Keating (b.1923), moral crusader and former Arizona land developer, died in Phoenix. He had bilked some 23,000 investors out of their savings in Lincoln Savings, a savings and loan association based in Irvine, Ca., that went bust in 1989.
(Econ, 4/12/14, p.94)
2014 Mar 31, In Afghanistan insurgent attacks across the country killed 18 people. In the north Taliban gunmen overnight abducted Hussain Nazari, a candidate running for a seat in a provincial council and seven members of his entourage.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Chinese prosecutors brought corruption charges against a top general. A military prosecutor charged Lt. Gen. Gu Junshan with embezzlement, bribery, misuse of state funds and abuse of power. Liu Han, a mining tycoon, his brother and 34 associates stood trial on allegations of running a vast criminal gang in Sichuan province that gunned down rivals, maintained fleets of Ferraris and bribed police to avoid prosecution.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, A Croatian court sentenced the country's former army chief retired general Mladen Kruljac to 18 months in prison, saying he and five others had manipulated real estate prices in deals that eventually cost Croatia 61.2 million kuna ($11 million).
(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, An Egyptian court in Alexandria sentenced 33 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to six years in prison each over clashes with opponents last December. Each defendant was also fined 50,000 Egyptian pounds (about $7,100).
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, German authorities arrested three people in raids against suspected supporters of a hardline Islamic group in Syria, a move meant to curb risks posed by extremists returning from Syria's civil war.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Germany's Lufthansa said it will cancel some 3,800 flights because of a three-day strike by the pilots' union later this week (April 2-4), hitting more than 425,000 passengers.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, In Germany workers at Amazon’s logistics center in Leipzig staged the short-term warning strike to try to get management to return to the negotiating table over wages.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Doctors Without Borders warned that health authorities in Guinea faced an "unprecedented epidemic" of Ebola, as the death toll from the disease that causes severe bleeding reached 78.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, An Israeli court convicted former PM Ehud Olmert (68) in a wide-ranging bribery case. Olmert was charged for acts committed while he was mayor of Jerusalem and minister of industry and trade.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, The International Court of Justice ordered a temporary halt to Japan's Antarctic whaling program, ruling that it is not for scientific purposes as the Japanese government had claimed.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, In Kenya three almost simultaneous blasts in Eastleigh, the main Somali district of Nairobi, left at least 6 people dead.
(AFP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 31, The Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund set up in 2006, said it is suing French bank Societe Generale in a British court for $1.5 billion (1.1 billion euros) for allegedly channeling bribes to allies of the son of slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
(AFP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, A Nigerian court ruled that lawmakers who defected to the main opposition coalition in December must vacate their seats. This was a victory for President Goodluck Jonathan ahead of what will be a closely fought election in February 2015.
(Reuters, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 31, North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire in disputed waters in an apparent new round of saber-rattling by Pyongyang during annual US-South Korean military exercises.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, A special Pakistani court indicted former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on five counts of high treason, a charge that potentially carries the death penalty. The development is the first time that an acting or former army chief has been indicted for treason in Pakistan.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Russia’s PM Medvedev said Crimea will be made a special economic zone offering tax breaks and reduced bureaucracy to attract investors.
(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Switzerland's competition regulator named eight global banks it is investigating for possible manipulation of foreign exchange rates. It cited the two largest Swiss banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, along with Zurich Cantonal Bank, Julius Baer and JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Syrian army troops recaptured a key position in coastal Latakia province. Observatory 45 is a strategic hilltop that overlooks several areas inhabited by residents from the Alawite community.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Two Tunisian police officers were convicted of raping a young woman in September 2012, and sentenced to seven years in prison in a case that drew widespread protests after the victim was initially accused of immoral behavior.
(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 31, Key Ugandan opposition leader and mayor of the capital Erias Lukwago resumed office five months after being ousted in a power struggle with the ruling party. A court ruling last week said his removal had been illegal.
(AFP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Ukraine reported a gradual withdrawal of Russian troops from its border that may be linked to Washington's latest push for a diplomatic solution to the worst East-West standoff since the Cold War.
(AFP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, In Ukraine a Right Sector member shot and wounded three people outside a restaurant adjacent to Kiev's main Independence Square, including a deputy city mayor, triggering a standoff that lasted overnight.
(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar, An Afghan officer brought the corpse of a high-ranking enemy commander into a town, telling villagers he'd killed him and putting a meat hook into the corpse's head, then stringing the body up with a rope. In 2019 German prosecutors charged Ahmad Zaheer D. (26) with war crimes for allegedly abusing prisoners and defiling the corpse.
(AP, 4/9/19)
2014 Mar, In Brazil former Petrobras executive Paulo Roberto Costa was arrested in a money laundering probe of the oil company. Costa ran the refining division of Petrobras from 2004-2012. He soon accused more than 40 politicians of involvement in a vast kickback scheme.
(Econ, 9/13/14, p.44)
2014 Mar, Britain’s Lord Tony Hall (63) took youth television channel BBC3 off the air.
(Econ, 3/15/14, p.56)
2014 Mar, In the Central African Rep. a dozen civilians went missing at Boali after a clash between local anti-Balaka militias drawn mainly from the Christian population and troops of an African Union mission known as MISCA. Two years after the trouble, a mass grave was found near a former MISCA base at Boali. The remains of 12 people were found in the grave in February 2016 and all were eventually identified as individuals detained by Congolese MISCA troops. In 2018 three Congolese soldiers were freed after serving most of their three years sentences for mass murder.
(AFP, 8/7/18)
2014 Mar, Chinese hackers broke into the computer networks of the US Office of Personnel Management with the intention of accessing the files of tens of thousands of federal employees who had applied for top-secret security clearances. Hackers gained access to some of the agency's databases before the threat was detected and blocked.
(AP, 7/10/14)
2014 Mar, In China rumors that the government owned Sheyang Rural Commercial Bank was low on cash sparked a bank run.
(Econ, 5/7/15, SR p.3)
2014 Mar, In Finland a man and a woman were arrested for plotting to kill about 50 people in an attack at the University of Helsinki. They were also charged with weapons possession. The suspects had met online and discussed the massacre using encrypted emails.
(AP, 5/26/14)
2014 Mar, Hungary signed a €10 billion loan agreement with Russia to expand and modernize Paks, a nuclear power station.
(Econ, 7/19/14, p.48)
2014 Mar, In Mali the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, the original instigator of the rebellion of 2012, broke in two.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.51)
2014 Mar, Lagos, Nigeria, (population 21 million) disgorged about 10,000 metric tons of waste per day. Municipal government were reckoned to collect 40% of this. Only 13% of recyclable material was being salvaged.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.42)
2014 Swaziland’s King Mswathi III cut the ribbon for a new airport named after himself.
(Econ, 10/3/15, p.49)
2014 Mar, In Swaziland Thulani Maseko, a lawyer who studied at American University's Washington College of Law, and Bheki Makhubu, editor of Swaziland's The Nation magazine, were jailed and charged with contempt of court for publishing articles in which they lamented alleged threats to judicial independence.
(AP, 6/20/14)
2014 Mar, Swiss authorities arrested three Iraqi citizens who were suspected of providing support to Islamic State and planning an attack in Europe. The arrests were first reported in September and confirmed by the government in October.
(Reuters, 10/31/14)
2014 Mar, In Syria Hezbollah commandos infiltrated Syrian rebel-held territory near the Lebanese border, watching rebel fighters come and go from a two-story villa before slipping inside to plant a powerful bomb. The next morning, they detonated it as three rebel explosive experts and four assistants met inside, turning the villa to rubble in seconds.
(AP, 4/12/14)
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Return to home
2014 Jan 1, In northern California Rev. Eric Freed was found dead at the St. Bernard Church rectory in Eureka. Surveillance video captured images of suspect Gary Lee Bullock (44) and he was arrested the next day.
(SFC, 1/2/14, p.A8)(SFC, 1/9/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 1, In San Francisco an arson attack destroyed the main entrance of the Chinese Consulate. On Jan 3 Yan Feng (39), who lives south of the city, surrendered to police after confessing to the attack.
(SSFC, 1/5/14, p.A5)(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Colorado the nation’s first recreational pot industry opened as business owners threw open their doors for shoppers at 8 am.
(SFC, 1/2/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 1, In New York city Bill de Blasio (b.1961) began serving as mayor. 63,000 homeless people lived in shelters as de Blasio office.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_de_Blasio)(Econ, 3/25/17, p.25)
2014 Jan 1, In Central African Republic clashes between Muslims and Christians in Bangui killed three as angry residents threw grenades and torched homes.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, China began requiring the disclosure of offshore holdings.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.35)
2014 Jan 1, Cuba enacted a law banning the resale of clothes imported from abroad.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.30)
2014 Jan 1, In Prague Jamel al-Jamal (56), the Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic, died in a blast that occurred when he opened an old safe that had been left untouched for more than 20 years.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Guinness World Records said Dubai shattered the world record for the largest ever pyrotechnic display on New Year's Eve with a show involving more than half a million fireworks.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities said 96 artifacts, mostly small figurines and beads, have disappeared from the Aswan Museum's storehouse. Authorities said evidence pointed to an insider theft.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Egypt 2 people were killed in violent clashes that erupted late today between pro-Islamist protesters and police in Alexandria.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, The European Commission said Romanians and Bulgarians now have the right to work in any of the European Union's 28 countries but "no major increase" in emigration is expected.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Greece assumed the presidency of the EU, starting 2014 with a promise by the government to pull the country out of a six-year recession, keep a balanced budget, and effectively end a financial crisis that rattled the euro.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Hong Kong thousands marched to demand a greater say in choosing their future leaders, expressing fears China will limit long-awaited political reforms, but turnout fell short of expectations.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Iraq militants freed more than 100 prisoners, clashed with security forces and burned police stations in Fallujah and Ramadi. In Mosul a car bomb exploded near an army checkpoint, killing a civilian and four soldiers, including three officers.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Jordan took over the UN Security Council presidency, the first day of its two-year stint on a 15-nation body struggling to cope with conflicts in Syria, South Sudan.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Latvia celebrated the new year as the 18th member of the eurozone, which for all its dents and bruises still represents stability and security to the Baltic country's leaders.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, Lebanon’s defense minister said Lebanese troops have arrested Saudi citizen Majid al-Majid, the "emir" of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, an al-Qaeda-linked group that claimed a double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut in November. DNA testing confirmed the identity of al-Majid.
(AFP, 1/1/14)(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Mexico Yeudi Estrada (28), a US citizen and martial arts instructor in Quintana Roo, was found dead on arrival at police headquarters in the resort of Playa del Carmen after his arrest. A finding revealed that he died of asphyxia by strangulation. Six Mexican police officers were arrested Jan 3 on suspicion of killing Estrada.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Pakistan a suicide bomber killed two Shia pilgrims on their way home from Iran.
(CSM, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 1, In South Korea a man, calling for the president’s resignation, died after setting himself on fire.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.32)
2014 Jan 1, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir declared a state of emergency in Unity and Jonglei states. Negotiators from the two warring sides arrived in Ethiopia for peace talks.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Somalia two car bombs exploded outside the Jazira Hotel in Mogadishu that often is used by foreigners and government officials. A third car bomb exploded as it was searched by security forces. At least 11 people were killed. Al-Shebab rebels claimed responsibility.
(AP, 1/1/14)(Reuters, 1/1/14)(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 1, South African police found Patrick Karegeya, Rwanda's former spy chief, dead, possibly strangled, in Johannesburg's plush Michelangelo Towers hotel. Rwanda opposition leaders immediately accused President Paul Kagame of ordering his assassination. Karegeya had died a day earlier. The Kigali government swiftly denied any involvement and said the former intelligence chief was himself to blame.
(AP, 1/2/14)(AP, 1/17/19)
2014 Jan 1, Syrian warplanes bombed a barren range of Lebanese hills used by Syrian rebels and refugees to cross between the two countries, wounding at least 10 Syrians who were rushed to hospital in a nearby Lebanese town.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, The Syrian Electronic Army, an amorphous hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for hacking into the social media accounts of Internet calling service Skype.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, An NGO said more than 73,000 people were killed in Syria in 2013.
(AFP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, In Ukraine about 15,000 people marched through the streets of Kiev to mark the 105th birthday of Stepan Bandera (d.1959), glorified by some as a leader of Ukraine's liberation movement and dismissed by others as a Nazi collaborator.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 1, The UN said that violence claimed the lives of 7,818 civilians in Iraq in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.
(AP, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 2, The influential New York Times and Britain’s Guardian newspapers hailed fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden as a "whistleblower" and threw its weight behind calls for him to be shown clemency.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, British author Elizabeth Jane Howard (b.1923) died. She was best known for "The Cazalet Chronicles," which followed the tangled lives and loves of several generations of an aristocratic household in the run-up to World War II.
(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 2, A Chinese helicopter rescued all 52 passengers from the MV Akademik Shokalskiy Russian research ship that has been trapped in Antarctic ice since Christmas Eve after weather conditions finally cleared enough for the operation. The passengers were all transported to an Australian icebreaker in the area.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, A Cameroon security official said 7 people, including two Cameroonian soldiers, have been killed in an attack in the east by an armed group from the Central African Republic.
(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, Canadian lawmaker Rathika Sitsabaiesan said she was intimidated and warned she could be deported during an ongoing visit to her birthplace of Jaffna, the war-battered Tamil heartland of Sri Lanka.
(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, In CongoDRC Colonel Mamadou Ndala (34), the commander of government troops fighting Ugandan Islamist rebels in the restive east of country, was killed along with two bodyguards in an ambush.
(AFP, 1/2/14)(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 2, Egyptian authorities produced what they said was a confession by the son of a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood. An Alexandria court sentenced seven activists to two years in prison on several charges including protesting without a permit and clashing with police last month.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, In western India a bus plunged into a 120m (400-feet) deep gorge, splitting open on the rocky ground below, killing at least 30 people.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, Iraqi security forces arrested a controversial Shiite cleric who leads an Iranian-backed militia, a move apparently aimed at bolstering Sunni support as the Shiite-led government and allied tribes battled Islamic militants who rose up in multiple Sunni-dominated cities. Fighting continued in Fallujah and Ramadi. A truck packed with explosives blew up in Balad Ruz, killing at least 19 people. At least 35 people were reported killed in Anbar province. Militants bombed a major oil pipeline in the north, causing a fire and forcing pumping to be suspended.
(AP, 1/2/14)(AFP, 1/2/14)(SFC, 1/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 2, Italy-based Fiat secured full ownership of Chrysler in a $4.35 billion agreement.
(SFC, 1/3/14, p.C4)
2014 Jan 2, In Kenya 10 people were wounded when attackers hurled a grenade into a restaurant in Diani, a popular coastal tourist resort town.
(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, In Lebanon a large car bomb killed 5 people and wounded at least 20 in a Hezbollah bastion in south Beirut. The al Qaeda-linked militant group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS aka ISIL)) soon claimed responsibility. On Jan 6 an employee of Hezbollah's Al-Manar television died from wounds sustained in a suicide bombing.
(AFP, 1/2/14)(Reuters, 1/4/14)(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 2, Libyan troops found the bodies of Mark De Salis, a British man, and a New Zealand woman shot dead southwest of Tripoli.
(AFP, 1/3/14)(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 2, Islamic authorities in Malaysia seized 321 Bibles from a Christian group because they used the word Allah to refer to God.
(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, Morocco launched an operation to give residency permits to tens of thousands of immigrants living in the country illegally, after the king expressed concern about their harsh treatment by the police.
(AFP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, Myanmar's Pres. Thein Sein gave his backing for amending a military drafted constitution and indicated support for changes that would make Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi eligible to lead the country.
(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, A Palestinian man (85) died after inhaling tear gas fired by the Israeli army to disperse local protesters landed in his home in the occupied West Bank.
(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, South Korea's military said it would fight a court ruling quashing its move to kick an officer candidate out of the elite Army Academy for having sex with his girlfriend while on leave.
(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, A South Sudanese military official says rebels are trying to march on Juba from Bor, a town under the control of rebel forces. South Sudan's army (SPLA) advanced towards Bor.
(AP, 1/2/14)(Reuters, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 2, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 8 people held by the Syrian government in Aleppo's central prison have died over the past two days from malnutrition. Five staffers of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) were taken from a house they were using in Syria.
(AFP, 1/2/14)(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 2, Tunisia says four Ansar al-Shariah militants have been arrested after late-night gunbattles between militants and security forces in the southern city that was the cradle for the Arab Spring revolutions.
(AP, 1/2/14)
2014 Jan 3, A major snowstorm producing blizzard-like conditions hammered the northeastern United States, causing 2,000 US flight delays and cancellations. At least 15 deaths were blamed on the storm.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)(SFC, 1/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 3, In San Jose, Ca., police Officer Dondi West shot Vietnamese immigrant Hung Lam in the back as Lam allegedly walked backward on his front lawn with a knife in her direction. Lam was left paralyzed and restricted to a wheel chair. In 2017 a federal appeals court said San Jose must pay Lam, a mentally disturbed man, $11.3 million.
(http://tinyurl.com/yd5nf2lx)(SFC, 9/6/17, p.D1)
2014 Jan 3, Rock & Roll singer Phil Everly (b.1939), the younger brother of Don Everly (b.1937), died. Phil helped make the Everly Brothers one of the biggest rock and country acts of the 1950s and early 1960s.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)(SFC, 1/4/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 3, Argentina’s government agreed to roll over the debt of 18 provinces to help ease their financial strains.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.29)
2014 Jan 3, In Cambodia At least 4 people were killed when police outside Cambodia's capital opened fire to break up a protest by striking garment workers demanding a doubling of the minimum wage.
(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, The health minister of Alberta, Canada, said an H1N1 flu outbreak in Alberta has sickened nearly 1,000 people and killed five over the past few weeks. He urged everyone to get vaccinated.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Egyptian riot police clashed with supporters of former Islamist Pres. Morsi across the country, leaving 17 dead and 62 injured as the Muslim Brotherhood renewed calls to protest ahead of a key referendum later this month.
(AP, 1/3/14)(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 3, An Egyptian security official said police have found a murdered Swiss couple buried in the garden of their house in the Red Sea resort town of Hurgada. They were reportedly killed by the house's guard and two of his friends who wanted to rob the couple.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, In Ethiopia South Sudan's warring parties began negotiations to end nearly three weeks of raging conflict which has left thousands feared dead and taken the world's youngest nation to the brink of all-out civil war. Fighting intensified as the army moved on rebel-held Bor.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, In western Germany a World War II bomb exploded during construction work in Euskirchen, near Bonn, killing one person and wounding at least eight others.
(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Indian PM Manmohan Singh ruled out serving another term after an election due by May and threw his support behind Nehru-Gandhi dynasty scion Rahul Gandhi to lead the country if their party wins the vote.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, In Iraq Sunni Muslim tribesmen backed by Iraqi troops fought al Qaeda-linked militants for control of Anbar province. More than 100 people were killed as police and tribesmen battled ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, aka ISIL) fighters, Al-Qaeda-linked militants who took over parts of Fallujah and Ramadi.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)(AFP, 1/3/14)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.39)
2014 Jan 3, Israeli war planes carried out a series of strikes in the Gaza Strip, shortly after a rocket from the enclave struck the Jewish state.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, The Italian navy over the last 24 hours rescued more than 1,000 migrants from boats trying to reach Europe.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Madagascar’s electoral commission said that former finance minister Hery Rajaonarimampianina, the candidate backed by outgoing President Andry Rajoelina who spearheaded the coup nearly five years ago, won 53.5 percent of the December 20 vote.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, In Mexico 9 people were killed during a gunfight at a prison in Guerrero state, after a gang dressed as police officers gained entry.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 3, In Pakistan Iram Ramazan, a 10-year-old maid, died in Lahore after being beaten by the wife of the household for stealing a few rupees.
(SSFC, 1/5/14, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/mhrtzx3)
2014 Jan 3, In Pakistan two senior Sunni leaders were killed in Islamabad.
(CSM, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 3, A Palestinian youth, identified as Adnan Abu Khater (16), died of his wounds after he was shot a day earlier by Israeli soldiers near the border fence in the northern Gaza Strip.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Spanish police said they have caught two women flying in from Brazil with more than a kilo (two pounds) of cocaine each hidden under their wigs. The two women, who were Portuguese and aged 18 and 28, arrived at Madrid's Barajas airport on different days from Sao Paulo.
(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, A Turkish court ordered the release from jail of two Kurdish lawmakers being tried for links to militants in a potential boost to a fragile peace process. Turkish prosecutors said they have charged 36 protesters with terrorism over mass anti-government demonstrations that swept the country last year.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)(AFP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 3, Zimbabwe's black empowerment agency said at least 90 percent of foreign shop owners don't have bank accounts and are hiding away money or smuggling it out of the country, worsening cash shortages in the troubled economy.
(AP, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 4, This issue of the Economist reported that most non-African humans carry around 2% of Neanderthal DNA.
(Econ, 1/4/14, p.28)
2014 Jan 4, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck outside joint NATO-Afghan in the Nangarhar province's Ghani Khail district. One US solider and 5 Taliban attackers were killed. Hours later an explosion hit one of the entrances to Camp Eggers in Kabul.
(AP, 1/4/14)(SSFC, 1/5/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 4, Bahrain named Ali Mafoudh al-Moussawi, a Bahraini citizen who lives in Iran, as a main suspect in planned "terrorist acts" and said he and his collaborators had received training and other help from Tehran.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In Bangladesh scores of polling booths were torched and a train set alight on the eve of elections as the opposition launched a strike against the vote "farce."
(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, Cambodia's government launched a broad crackdown on the political opposition, clearing its main protest site, banning its street demonstrations and having a court call in opposition party leaders for questioning on charges of inciting social unrest.
(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, An Egyptian soldier was killed and at least two were wounded when a roadside bomb targeted their armored vehicle in the restive Sinai peninsula.
(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In India a five-story building under construction in the southern state of Goa collapsed, killing at least 15 workers and leaving dozens more feared trapped under the rubble.
(AFP, 1/4/14)(AP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 4, The Lebanese army said Saudi citizen Majid al-Majid, the "emir" of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades fighting in Syria, died while undergoing treatment at the central military hospital.
(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In western Mexico a small plane crash-landed, killing one person and injuring four others, including the leader of a vigilante group fighting drug cartels.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin reversed a blanket ban on protests at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, bowing to pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, Senegal said its navy has boarded a Russian ship that was allegedly illegally fishing in its waters and is escorting it toward Dakar. The Russian trawler left the port of Dakar on Jan 22 following an agreement by Moscow to pay $1 million.
(AFP, 1/4/14)(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 4, South Sudan’s rebel and government sides met mediators from the regional IGAD grouping in Ethiopia for a second day but did not sit down together.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In Syria an alliance of Islamist and other rebel factions battled fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) across the north-west in apparently coordinated strikes against the powerful al Qaeda-linked group.
(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, Tunisian lawmakers rejected Islam as the main source of law for the country that spawned the Arab Spring as they voted for a second day on a new constitution.
(AFP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, The Tunisian coast guard fired on three Egyptian fishing boats intercepted in its territorial waters. One boat captain was killed.
(SFC, 1/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 4, A Turkish court ordered the release from jail of three Kurdish lawmakers, in addition to two freed a day earlier.
(Reuters, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 4, In Yemen renewed clashes in the north between rebels belonging to a Shiite-branch of Islam and ultraconservative Salafis backed by allying tribes killed 17 people.
(AP, 1/4/14)
2014 Jan 5, A US Coast Guard heavy icebreaker left Australia for Antarctica to rescue more than 120 crew members aboard Chinese and Russian icebreakers trapped in pack ice near the frozen continent's eastern edge.
(AP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Colorado a co-pilot was killed and two pilots injured when a private jet crashed and burst into flames at the airport that serves Aspen.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, Bangladesh held parliamentary elections. The ruling Awami League won 232 of the 300 elected seats as about half the seats were uncontested due to a boycott by the main opposition party. At least 21 people were killed in election-related violence. Alleged ballot stuffing by the ruling party pushed the turnout just over 40%.
(Reuters, 1/5/14)(AP, 1/6/14)(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 5, In Burkina Faso 75 officials announced their resignation from the ruling party, ratcheting up political tension before elections scheduled for next year. They said democracy had "disappeared" from President Blaise Compaore's Congress for Democracy and Progress party.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 5, In the CAR a hand grenade attack on a Bangui market left four people injured, including two women and a Burundian soldier from MISCA, the African force deployed in the Central African Republic.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In China worshippers at the Beida Mosque in Guyuan, Ningxia region, were handing out traditional cakes when a rush for food triggered a stampede that left 14 dead.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 5, An Egyptian court gave suspended one-year sentences to 12 activists including youth leaders of the 2011 uprising for an attack on a former presidential candidate's headquarters.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Iraq a new wave of bombings hit Baghdad, killing at least 20 people. Government forces battling an al Qaeda offensive near the Syrian border launched an air strike on Ramadi killing 25 Islamist militants. 22 soldiers and 12 civilians were killed in the fighting.
(AP, 1/5/14)(Reuters, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Israel over 30,000 African migrants, many holding banners demanding freedom for compatriots jailed as illegal job-seekers, protested in a main Tel Aviv square against a new open-ended detention law.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Lebanon one man was shot dead and six people were wounded in clashes in Tripoli between districts that support rival sides in neighboring Syria's civil war.
(Reuters, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, Libya's navy blocked an oil tanker from illegally loading crude at an eastern port that has been held for months by armed protesters demanding more autonomy from Tripoli.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 5, Portuguese football legend Eusebio (71), the top scorer in the 1966 World Cup, died. The Mozambique-born striker made his name at Benfica, winning 11 league titles and one European Cup during a 15-year spell there.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Saudi Arabia human body parts fell from the sky in the city of Jeddah, with police saying they could be the remains of a person trapped in an airplane's wheel bay.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, A Saudi court jailed five people for up to 30 years on charges including plotting to blow up an oil refinery on behalf of Al-Qaeda.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 5, Fighting continued across South Sudan, even as peace talks between the government and rebels were set to begin in Ethiopia.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, Spanish police arrested Abdeluahid Sadik Mohamed at Malaga airport after arriving on a flight bound from Istanbul. He was suspected of belonging to an al-Qaida linked terror organization and participating in the Syrian conflict.
(AP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In southern Switzerland 4 skiers were killed and another was in a critical condition after a series of avalanches hit the Alps.
(AFP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, Syrian opposition fighters seized a compound garrisoned by an al-Qaida-linked rebel faction, in some of the most serious infighting to date within the vast array of rebel groups trying to topple Pres. Assad.
(AP, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In Thailand thousands of anti-government protesters marched through Bangkok, a prelude to a broader action next week when they say they will shut down the city in their bid to scuttle a February election and topple PM Yingluck Shinawatra.
(Reuters, 1/5/14)
2014 Jan 5, In northern Yemen at least 10 people were killed in a 2nd day of clashes between Shiite rebels and Sunni tribesmen fighting alongside hardline Salafists. In Hadramawt province a tribesman was killed at an army checkpoint.
(AFP, 1/5/14)(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, The US Senate confirmed Janet Yellen as the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve.
(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 6, The US Supreme Court blocked further same-sex marriages in Utah while state officials appeal a decision allowing such unions.
(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 6, In Pennsylvania Colleen LaRose (50), aka “Jihad Jane," was sentenced to ten years in prison for plotting to kill a Swedish artist. She had pleaded guilty and helped in the indictment of two others.
(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 6, Airlines canceled more than 4,400 flights as extreme cold in the US Midwest and Northeast froze fuel lines to airplanes and posed exposure hazards for employees working on the tarmac.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Three Chicago-bound trains came to a halt after running into impassable snow and ice. More than 500 passengers spent the night on board Amtrak trains in northwestern Illinois, stranded due to the harsh winter weather.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, Dennis Rodman and former NBA players arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea. They planned a "birthday present" game for leader Kim Jong Un.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Bangladesh’s PM Sheikh Hasina held to her stance that fresh polls could be called only if her rivals halt violence. The opposition already called a 48-hour strike and 7 people were killed in clashes.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Extreme cold in Canada disrupted flights and school classes. Temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit) plunged the western Prairies region into a deep freeze, heightening risks of frostbite and hypothermia.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, China temporarily lifted a 14-year-old ban on selling video game consoles, paving the way for Sony Corp, Microsoft Corp and Nintendo Co Ltd to enter the world's third largest video game market in terms of revenue.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, China destroyed about 6 tons of illegal ivory from its stockpile in an unprecedented move wildlife groups say shows growing concern about the black market trade by authorities in the world's biggest market for elephant tusks.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, China, the biggest investor in South Sudan's oil industry, called for an immediate ceasefire in the world's newest state as rebel and government negotiators haggled over the scope of peace talks meant to end three weeks of fighting.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In the Czech Republic the left-wing Social Democrats, the first-place party in October's parliamentary election, signed a deal with two other parties to form a new coalition government.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, France's interior minister said that local officials have the right to ban shows on a national tour of comic Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala whose performances are considered anti-Semitic.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, In France two Goodyear managers were trapped in a conference room with angry workers demanding more money in exchange for the inevitable loss of their jobs in Amiens. The managers were released after police intervened on Jan 7.
(AP, 1/6/14)(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, Iraq's PM Nouri al-Maliki urged residents and tribes of Fallujah to "expel" al-Qaida militants from the Sunni-dominated city to avoid an all-out battle. An army officer and 4 soldiers were captured in Fallujah.
(AP, 1/6/14)(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Israel several thousand African migrants protested outside Western embassies in Tel Aviv, demanding freedom for compatriots jailed by Israel in a desert facility under a new open-ended detention law.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Israel gave final approval for building 272 new apartments in two isolated West Bank settlements as US Sec. of State John Kerry wrapped up his latest mediating mission in the region.
(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 6, Latvia Pres. Andris Berzins nominated Laimdota Straujuma as the next prime minister.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.45)
2014 Jan 6, In Libya an explosion at a guard post outside a courthouse in Benghazi killed one judiciary policeman and seriously wounded another.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Nigeria gunmen shot and killed at least 30 people, burned down 40 homes and made off with scores of cattle from a mainly Christian village in Plateau state. Muslim Fulani herdsmen were blamed.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Nigeria a dozen men were formally charged by the Bauchi State Sharia Commission with belonging to a gay club and having received funding from the United States for an apparent membership drive. Four were convicted on March 6. Seven were granted bail on March 11. A Christian suspect awaited his case heard before a secular court.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Pakistan an explosion from a suspected artillery shell stored in a house killed 10 members of a family in the Tirah Valley village of Dars in the Khyber tribal region.
(AP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Pakistan Aitzaz Hasan (17) was running late for school when he and friends were interrupted by a stranger in school uniform who was asking for directions. Suspicious of the query, Aitzaz tackled the man as he walked away in Hangu, a district in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The man then blew himself up, taking both lives. On Jan 10 PM Nawaz Sharif said Hasan should be honored with the nation's highest civil award of bravery.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 6, Hamas PM Ismail Haniya reached out to West Bank rivals Fatah saying its members would be allowed back into Gaza, in efforts to promote Palestinian reconciliation.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, Former Romanian prime minister Adrian Nastase was sentenced to four years in jail for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to appoint a businesswoman to a senior government post. He was released from prison in 2013 after serving a third of a previous corruption sentence.
(AFP, 1/6/14)(SFC, 1/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 6, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir arrived in Juba calling for an end to three weeks of fighting in South Sudan as mediators struggled to get peace negotiations under way in neighboring Ethiopia.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Syria rival Islamist rebel groups fought in Raqqa, as local fighters tried to drive out a foreign-led al Qaeda affiliate which has also seized towns across the border in Iraq. The al-Qaida-linked ISIL (aka ISIS) group killed 50 people before surrendering its Aleppo base.
(Reuters, 1/6/14)(AP, 1/7/14)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.40)
2014 Jan 6, Tunisia's national assembly voted to enshrine gender equality "without discrimination" in its draft constitution, a key step towards safeguarding the most liberal laws in the Arab world on women's rights. Unemployed Tunisian youths ransacked an empty police post in the impoverished central region of Gafsa overnight and torched its contents.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
2014 Jan 6, In Venezuela Monica Spear (29), a popular soap-opera actress and former Miss Venezuela (2004), was shot and killed along with her ex-husband Thomas Henry Berry, a 39-year-old British citizen, during a highway robbery between Puerto Cabello and the provincial capital of Valencia. Their daughter (5) was wounded. Police in Puerto Cabello soon arrested five suspects, some under the age of 18. In 2015 a court sentenced two boys aged 15 and 17 to four years in prison after it said they admitted taking part in the attack. Three other young men got terms of between 24 and 26 years. In 2016 a court sentenced three men to 30 years in prison for the murders.
(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 2/13/16)
2014 Jan 6, In Yemen tribesmen in Hadramawt province blew up a major oil pipeline in retaliation for the killing by the army of one of their men.
(AFP, 1/6/14)
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 6, Zambian police arrested and charged opposition leader Frank Bwalya with defamation, after he referred to Pres. Michael Sata as a “Chumbu Mushololwa." The Bemba term literally refers to a sweet potato that breaks when it is bent and is used to describe someone who does not heed advice.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, The IRS said it is seeing a big jump in thieves stealing Social Security numbers to fraudulently claim US tax returns.
(SFC, 1/8/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 7, JPMorgan reached an accord with the US Justice Dept. and will pay $2.6 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations that it failed to stop Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
(SFC, 1/8/14, p.C5)
2014 Jan 7, The United States put to death its first inmate of the year in Florida, after a drop in executions during 2013. Askari Abdullah Muhammad (62), previously known as Thomas Knight, was convicted of abducting and killing a Miami couple in 1974 and fatally stabbing a prison guard six years later using a sharpened spoon. He appealed his conviction numerous times.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Former NYC police officers and firefighters were among 106 people indicted over a massive disability fraud worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The scheme was estimated to date back to 1988 with some connected to the September 11, 2001, attacks.
(AFP, 1/8/14)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.26)
2014 Jan 7, A blast of bone-chilling cold snarled air travel, closed schools and prompted calls for people to stay inside in the United States and Canada, as temperatures plunged to lows not seen in two decades. At least 9 people were reported dead due to the weather.
(AFP, 1/7/14)(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In eastern England HH-60G Pave Hawk chopper, based at the US-run Lakenheath air base, crashed at a nearby nature reserve in Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, while flying low on night time training exercise. 4 airmen were killed. Investigators later reported that the chopper had flown into flock of geese likely startled by its noise.
(AFP, 1/8/14)(AP, 7/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Cambodia tens of thousands of garment workers returned to work, ending a two-week pay dispute after authorities used deadly force to quell a strike and thwart a protest by their political allies seeking a re-run of a July election. An estimated 65-70% returned to work.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Canada a freight train carrying crude oil and propane derailed in New Brunswick province. One locomotive and 17 cars derailed. 5 cars carried oil and 4 carried propane.
(AP, 1/8/14)(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 7, A Chinese icebreaker and a Russian research vessel -- broke free from thick Antarctic ice where they had been trapped for days.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Greek Government officials said a strict review would be made of how those convicted of terrorism and other severe crimes are granted leave from prison. A day earlier Christodoulos Xiros (55) failed to make an obligatory daily appearance at a police station. He was convicted in 2003, along with two of his brothers, of belonging to the November 17 group and had served 10 years of his term for involvement in a string of shootings and bombings.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Hong Kong movie and TV mogul Run Run Shaw (b.1907) died. He had built an empire that nurtured rising talents like actor Chow Yun-fat and director John Woo, inspired Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and produced the sci-fi classic "Blade Runner" (1982).
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Iraq efforts to retake Ramadi left 4 civilians dead and 14 wounded. Missile strikes outside Ramadi killed 25 militants. Troops delayed an assault on Fallujah as fierce clashes erupted between government special forces and al-Qaida-linked militants outside the city.
(AFP, 1/7/14)(SFC, 1/8/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 7, In Israel thousands of African asylum seekers demonstrated in Tel Aviv for a third straight day of protests against immigration policies.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Myanmar dozens of journalists staged a rare demonstration in Yangon to protest a jail term given to a reporter who was working on a story about corruption.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Nigeria gunmen shouting "God is great" fired into a mosque in Kwankwaso village, Kano state. 3 people were killed and 12 wounded.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 7, Russia launched the largest security operation in Olympic history with one month to go before Vladimir Putin kicks off the Winter Games in Sochi amid renewed fears of suicide bombings.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, South African authorities revealed that a phosphate mine spillage, into a tributary of the Olifants River in late December, has killed thousands of fish and caused "extensive pollution" to the river in the country's famed Kruger National Park.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, South Sudanese rebels and a government delegation started face-to-face peace talks in Ethiopia to try to end fighting that has left the world's newest state on the brink of civil war.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Princess Cristina (48), the younger daughter of Spain's King Juan Carlos, was charged with tax fraud and money-laundering.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Syria's Information Minister said the Syrian people have decided President Bashar al-Assad should be nominated for another term and would pressure him to stand in elections this year.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Syria moved the first batch of chemical weapon materials out of the country after transporting it from two sites to the port city of Latakia and onto a Danish vessel.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Syria Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, called for a ceasefire between opposition factions who have clashed for five days in the bloodiest episode of infighting since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began. A suicide car bombing by al-Qaida-linked ISIL fighters killed at least 20 rebels near the northern city of Darkoush. 3 staff members of Prague-based "People in Need" were killed in a mortar attack.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Thailand protesters trying to topple PM Shinawatra marched in Bangkok to drum up support for their plans to bring the capital to a halt next week by blockading major roads and preventing the government from functioning.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan's government purged hundreds of police officers overnight, as part of a crackdown on a rival he accuses of trying to usurp state power by tarring him with a specious corruption investigation. Despite the dismissals police and prosecutors continued arrests, targeting the state railway company and a western port. Police detained some 25 people in the city of Izmir for questioning over a new bribery and fraud investigation.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 7, Turkey’s Anadolu state news said military prosecutors have dropped a case against five officers who were being investigated for negligence in the military air strike on Dec 11, 2011, that killed 34 smugglers mistaken for Kurdish rebels, saying there was no ground for any legal action.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In eastern Yemen tribesmen Hadramawt province blew up an oil pipeline for the second time in two days, disrupting an important source of revenue for the impoverished state. Gunmen shot dead an army colonel and a car bomb injured a senior intelligence officer in Aden.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 8, The US White House pushed back against harsh criticism in a new book “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War," by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates that questions President Barack Obama's war leadership and rips into VP Joe Biden.
(AP, 1/9/14)(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 8, The Obama administration pressed the nation’s schools to abandon overly zealous discipline policies that send students to court instead of to the principal’s office.
(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 8, Seventeen people related to the San Diego street gang BMS were arrested in California and New Jersey by police and FBI agents for operating a prostitution ring that spanned 46 cities in 23 states.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 8, Former Georgia banker Aubrey Lee Price (47) pleaded non guilty to stealing millions from investors before vanishing for 18 months. Prosecutors said he misspent, embezzled and lost some $21 million.
(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A40)
2014 Jan 8, Omaha police said an African-American toddler, who was cursed at buy adults and encouraged to curse in return in a posted video, has been placed in protective custody. Three other children were also removed from the same home.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 8, New Jersey officials released e-mails that appeared to show Gov. Chris Christie's staff plotting the lane closures in September to retaliate against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, because he had not endorsed the governor's re-election campaign.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 8, The Utah governor’s office said that the state will not recognize more than 1,000 same-sex marriages performed over the past two weeks as it appeals a legal ruling that had overturned the state’s ban on such unions.
(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 8, A US navy helicopter went down in the Atlantic off of Virginia killing 2 crew members and wounding two others. A 5th remained missing.
(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 8, Dennis Rodman sang "Happy Birthday" to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before leading a squad of former NBA stars in a friendly game as part of his "basketball diplomacy" that has been criticized in the US as naive and laughable. Tourists said Rodman singing "Happy Birthday" to Kim Jong-Un was akin to Marilyn Monroe performing for JFK.
(AFP, 1/8/14)(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, In Afghanistan US forces accidentally shot dead a four year old boy.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 8, A Bahraini court sentenced 22 Shiites to 15 years in prison over the killing of a policeman and the wounding of another in an attack outside Manama.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, In Belgium Emiel Pauwels (95), a European masters athletics champion, committed euthanasia because he suffered from cancer. Pauwels held the over-90 60 meters European title he won last year.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Britain’s Electoral Commission said voters should have to prove their identity at polling stations, as it launched a study into fraud concerns around ethnic South Asian communities.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Canada announced the first H5N1 avian flu death in North America, of a patient who had just returned from China.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, China's foreign minister said Beijing was tackling illegal gold mining in Ghana, after hundreds of his compatriots were arrested and sent home for extracting the mineral without permission.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, A Croatian court ruled that Josip Perkovic, a communist-era intelligence chief, could be extradited to Germany where he is wanted over a killing of a Yugoslav dissident in 1983. On Jan 24 Perkovic was flown to Germany.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 8, German authorities said they have charged Werner C. (88), a former member of an SS armored division, with 25 counts of murder over allegations that he took part in the June 10, 1944, slaughter in Oradour-sur-Glane in southwestern France, the largest civilian massacre in Nazi-occupied France.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, A German court dropped the case against Siert Bruins (92), a former member of the Nazi SS, ruling that there are too many gaps in the evidence to deliver a verdict. Bruins was accused of killing resistance fighter Aldert Klaas Dijkema in September 1944 in Appingedam, near the German border in the northern Netherlands.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Greece formally assumed the European Union's rotating six-month presidency with a ceremony attended by EU commissioners.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Greek authorities charged 25 people and arrested three following an investigation into allegedly inadequately secured loans from the former Hellenic Postbank to local businessmen.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, India chipped away at America's diplomatic perks, ordering the envoys to obey local traffic laws and warning that a popular US Embassy club violates diplomatic law because it is open to outsiders.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, In India a fire on an overnight train killed at least nine people near Mumbai with sleeping victims overcome by flames and smoke as the blaze ripped through three carriages.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Iraq's PM al-Maliki urged al-Qaida-linked fighters who have overrun two cities west of Baghdad to give up the battle, vowing to press forward with a push to regain control of the mainly Sunni areas. NGOs said more than 13,000 families have fled Fallujah.
(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Iraq's self-ruled northern Kurdish region said it has unilaterally started sending its crude to Turkey and is going ahead with plans to export oil despite objections by the central government in Baghdad. The flow of oil to Turkey started in early January.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, In Israel thousands of African migrants demanding to be recognized as refugees protested outside of Israel's parliament, part of a series of mass demonstrations over their status in Israel.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Libya's PM Ali Zeidan warned oil tankers trying to reach ports seized by armed protesters must stay away or they could be sunk by the navy. Libya said it will sue any foreign firms trying to buy oil from eastern ports seized by armed protesters and stop doing business with them.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Nauru, the tiny Pacific island that hosts a controversial Australian immigration detention centre, was reported to be hiking visa costs for foreign journalists by 40 times, fuelling concerns over secrecy surrounding Australia's asylum seeker policy.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Dutch pension asset manager PGGM, one of the largest in the country, said it was divesting from five Israeli banks because they finance Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Gaza's Hamas government freed seven imprisoned Fatah members, as part of efforts to mend relations between the Islamist movement and its West Bank-based Palestinian rival.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, An Islamic Jihad militant was killed near Gaza City in what medics and family said was an Israeli drone strike.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, In southern Russia the bodies of 6 men were found shot to death in four cars abandoned on the outskirts of Pyatigorsk.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, Officials in the semi-autonomous Somalia region of Puntland confirmed Abdiweli Mohammed Ali Gaas, a former Somali prime minister, as the region's new leader.
(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, South Korean prosecutors arrested an IT contractor for stealing the personal information of around 20m credit card holders.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.62)
2014 Jan 8, South Sudan's government and rebels were locked in fierce battles across the country, as peace talks taking place in neighboring Ethiopia appeared to flounder.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Syrian rebels seized control of a hospital used as a headquarters by an al-Qaida affiliate in the northern city of Aleppo, part of a widening campaign against the extremist group in the country's opposition-held north. Rebels overran the Aleppo headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as claims emerged that the Al-Qaeda linked group had massacred prisoners there in cold blood.
(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 8, In central Tunisia clashes broke out between police and demonstrators protesting economic hardship in Kasserine, as discontent mounts over new taxes and government failure to improve living conditions, three years after the revolution.
(AFP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, Turkey's deputy police chief was sacked overnight, the most senior commander yet targeted in a purge of a force heavily influenced by cleric Fethullah Gulen PM Tayyip Erdogan accuses of plotting to seize the levers of state power. The police chief of Izmir was among 16 senior police officials reassigned to new posts.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 8, In Yemen 2 suspected al Qaeda militants were killed in a US drone strike in the southeastern province of Hadramout.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 9, President Barack Obama spoke about how he will target job creation, housing, law enforcement and education in the poorest US communities, part of his pledge to narrow the gap between rich and poor in America. He planned to create "promise zones" in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
(Reuters, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 9, The SEC charged Diamond Foods and two former top executives with accounting fraud. Diamond will pay $5 million to settle the charges. Former CEO Michael Mendes agreed to pay $125,000 to settle. He had previously given back $4 million in bonuses to the company. Litigation continued against former DFO Steven Neill.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.C1)
2014 Jan 9, New Jersey Gov. Chris dismissed deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly, who had sent e-mails calling for trouble at a key commuter choke point and repeatedly apologized in a two-hour news conference.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, Amiri Baraka (b.1934), poet, playwright and black nationalist, died in New Jersey. He was born as Everett LeRoi Jones and changed his name in 1965 following the assassination of Malcolm X. His play “Dutchman" won the 1964 Obie Award for best American play.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 9, In Oklahoma an African American man was put to death for murdering a store manager with a baseball bat. This was the second US execution of 2014. Michael Lee Wilson (38) was the third man put to death for the murder of Richard Yost, beaten with a baseball bat and found in the freezer of his supermarket in Tulsa in February 1995.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, In West Virginia a spill of 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM), a chemical used in the coal industry, occurred on the Elk River in Charleston, West Virginia's capital and largest city. It took Freedom Industries, a maker of specialty chemicals, 12 days to disclose the additional presence of polyglycol ethers (PPH). Over the next year six top company officials pleaded guilty to charges relating to the spill.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)(AP, 1/23/14)(SFC, 8/20/15, p.A5)
2014 Jan 9, IBM said DBS Group Holdings Ltd. of Singapore will begin to use the Watson supercomputer to aid financial planners in guiding its wealth management unit’s affluent customers.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.C2)
2014 Jan 9, Health experts launched Action on Sugar, a drive to cut sugar levels in food in an effort to tackle obesity and diabetes.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Dennis Rodman apologized for comments he made in North Korea about a detained American missionary, saying he had been drinking and was under pressure as he organized a game with former NBA players.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Afghanistan said it has enough evidence to try only 16 of 88 prisoners that the United States considers a threat to security and plans to free the remaining detainees. Pres. Karzai ordered the release of all but 16 of the 88 prisoners.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 9, In northwest Australia the temperature in the Pilbara region reached 122 degrees.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 9, In Chad African leaders began talks to tackle the sectarian violence wracking the Central African Republic, with the pressure piling on the country's embattled Pres. Michel Djotodia.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Chile's supreme court ruled in favor of local fishermen who say Endesa Chile's Bocamina coal-fired facility kills marine life and pollutes ocean water, but it said halting its operations was a decision for environmental authorities.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, Chinese officials said famed film director Zhang Yimou must pay more than $1.2 million in fines for having three children in violation of China's strict family planning rules.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Egyptian courts convicted 113 Muslim Brotherhood supporters on charges including attacking police, rioting and weapons possession in three separate cases brought after protests against the army-backed government.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, A European Parliament committee voted to invite Edward Snowden to testify via video link in its investigation of US surveillance practices.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, A French court suspended a ban the city of Nantes imposed to prevent a show tonight by comic Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala whose performances are considered anti-Semitic.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, A French court ruled that dissident Kazakh Mukhtar Ablyazov, accused of embezzling up to $6 billion from his former bank BTA, should be extradited from France to Ukraine or Russia.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, French engineering group Alstom said it has won a contract worth 120 million euros ($163 million) to build Israel's first hydroelectric storage facility.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Germany said it has accepted a UN request to destroy remnants of Syria's chemical weapons on its own soil as part of a bid to eliminate the arsenal by June 30.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, In Iraq a suicide bomber blew himself up at a military recruiting center in Baghdad killing at least 21 people. Human Rights Watch said that Iraqi forces appear to have used mortar fire indiscriminately in civilian areas in recent days in their effort to dislodge militants in Anbar province.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, The Kenyan military killed at least 30 Islamic militants in an airstrike on a militant camp in Somalia.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, In southern Libya a militia chief linked to Awled Sleiman was killed. The tribe accused Toubou tribesmen, traditionally black oasis farmers, of murdering him.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 9, Nigeria's military reportedly killed as many as 38 Boko Haram fighters early today during counter-insurgency operations in Borno state.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, In Pakistan Chaudhry Aslam, a senior police investigator known for arresting dozens of Pakistani Taliban, was killed along with two other officers in a car bombing in Karachi.
(AP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Palestinians threw rocks at a West Bank hotel, shattering windows and breaking up a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists. Residents of Palestinian refugee camps burnt tires and closed roads in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in protests stemming from a month-long strike by the UN agency that operates the camps.
(AP, 1/9/14)(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, South Sudanese government forces battled to retake the key rebel-held town of Bentiu, as thousands of civilians continued to flee fighting and peace talks appeared deadlocked.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, In Syria a powerful car bomb exploded near a school in al-Kaffat village, Hama province, killing at least 16 people and causing massive damage to a residential area. Jihadists battling rebels in the north fought to recover lost turf nearly a week after a new front opened in the conflict gripping the country. Syrian government forces killed dozens of rebel fighters overnight who tried to break an army siege of Homs.
(AP, 1/9/14)(AFP, 1/9/14)(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 9, Disparate Syrian opposition groups, including several Islamist rebel representatives, met for the first time in the Spanish city of Cordoba to seek common ground ahead of peace talks with President Bashar al-Assad's government later this month.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Thai protesters trying to topple PM Shinawatra marched in Bangkok again, testing support for a planned "shutdown" of the capital next week.
(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 9, Tunisia's Islamist PM Ali Larayedh, who was tortured under the ousted Ben Ali regime, resigned as part of a plan to end months of political deadlock. He is to be replaced within 15 days by premier designate Mehdi Jomaa at the head of a government of technocrats that will lead the country to fresh elections this year under a new constitution.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 10, President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration for the state of West Virginia, ordering federal aid in the aftermath of a chemical spill that has left up to 300,000 people without tap water, closed schools and businesses. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency for nine counties.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Arkansas Gov. Mark Darr said he will leave office Feb 1. He was under pressure to resign over ethics violations including making personal use of over $30,000 of his campaign funds.
(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A10)
2014 Jan 10, Larry Speakes (b.1929), press secretary to Ronald Reagan, died in Mississippi. He became press secretary to Pres. Reagan following the 1981 attempted assassination of Reagan and the wounding of press secretary James Brady.
(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A15)
2014 Jan 10, New Jersey legislators planned to release nearly 1,000 pages of documents that may shed new light on a probe of four days of traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge apparently orchestrated by Republican Governor Chris Christie's top aides to settle a political score.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, In eastern Afghanistan 2 US service members and a civilian were killed in an aircraft crash.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, A new analysis of British census figures said almost one in 10 babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, illustrating the growth of the minority community.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Central African Republic's interim President Michel Djotodia and his prime minister resigned, according to a statement issued after a two-day summit in neighboring Chad. Alexsandre-Ferdinand Nguendet took over as Acting President.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.50)
2014 Jan 10, China defended its new fishing restrictions in disputed waters in the South China Sea against criticism from the United States, saying the rules were in accordance with international law.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, In Egypt hundreds of Islamists rallied in Cairo and across the country, calling for a boycott of an upcoming constitutional referendum as clashes with security forces killed 3 people.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, French President Francois Hollande threatened legal action over a Closer magazine report saying he is having a secret affair with actress Julie Gayet.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, India ordered the United States to withdraw one of its diplomats from New Delhi, as Devyani Khobragade (39), the Indian consul at the center of the dispute between the two countries, flew home after being indicted in New York for visa fraud.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, India's overcrowded financial capital unveiled its long-awaited $2 billion new airport terminal. Mumbai’s renovated Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport was delayed for nearly two years and overran its construction budget by 25 percent.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Indonesia's anti-graft agency arrested a former senior member of President Yudhoyono's party, in a long-running case that has damaged the ruling party's popularity ahead of elections.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Iranian state television reported that talks with the European Union have ended with an agreement over outstanding issues about the practical details of implementing a nuclear agreement.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, In Iraq fierce clashes erupted between special forces and al-Qaida-linked militants in al-Bubali, a village between Fallujah and Ramadi in western Anbar province.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Israel announced plans to build 1,400 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Police said suspected Jewish extremists cut down fruit trees belonging to Israeli Arabs overnight in an apparent revenge attack for Palestinian villagers beating up Jewish settlers.
(AP, 1/10/14)(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Israel's cultural and financial capital unveiled a memorial honoring gays and lesbians persecuted by the Nazis, the first specific recognition in Israel for non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Namibia wildlife authorities defended the auction of permits to hunt black rhino, saying the kill was aimed at conserving the endangered species.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Nigeria's military confirmed that it was to release 167 people who were detained as part of counter-insurgency operations against Boko Haram militants in three northeast states.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Pakistani police found two workers shot to death at a small Sufi Muslim shrine in Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, The Philippines and Vietnam condemned a new Chinese law that requires foreign fishermen to seek Beijing's approval to operate in much of the South China Sea, but China's Foreign Ministry insisted it has the right do so.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Romanian education authorities fired a teacher Dana Blandu, who was filmed aggressively demanding money as gifts from students in a case that has made local headlines. It is customary in Romania to give presents to teachers.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Russia designated a park in the town of Khosta as a protest zone for the Winter Olympics. Khosta is 7 miles away from there the athletes will compete in Sochi.
(SFC, 1/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 10, Russia's powerful Orthodox Church proposed a referendum on banning gay relations in the face of Western pressure over human rights ahead of next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, In Singapore two men were charged with kidnapping after the elderly mother of supermarket tycoon Lim Hock Chee was abducted two days earlier and held for ransom.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, It was reported that al-Shabab, Somalia's al-Qaida-linked group, has ordered telecom companies to shut down mobile internet services over fears the US can use the data to target militants.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, South Sudan said that government troops retook Bentiu, the capital of Unity state, after a 2.5-hour battle. Rebels still controlled Bor, a state capital outside Juba, the country capital.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, A Spanish court ordered the extradition of Aurea Vazquez Rijos (33), a Puerto Rican woman, wanted by US federal authorities for allegedly hiring a hit man to kill her wealthy Canadian husband. Adam Anhang was beaten and stabbed to death in Puerto Rico on Sep 23, 2005, while he walked with Vazquez near a bar he had bought for her.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Tunisia's new premier Mehdi Jomaa took office to lead a caretaker government until elections this year.
(Reuters, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Turkey's top judicial body hit back at government's plans to curb its powers, adding fuel to a bitter row over a vast corruption probe engulfing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, The UN refugee agency warned that fighting in South Sudan could by April drive more than half a million people from their homes, doubling the number of those already affected.
(AFP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 10, Zimbabwe police said they are investigating the murder of four suspected illegal ivory buyers whose bodies were found in a wrecked car in western Zimbabwe.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 11, Luxury merchant Nieman Marcus confirmed that thieves stole some of its customers’ payment card information and made unauthorized charges over the holidays.
(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A11)
2014 Jan 11, Sean Penn’s 3rd annual Help Haiti Home benefit in Beverly Hills raised nearly $6 million.
(SFC, 1/13/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 11, In Argentina police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse some 3,000 rowdy youths participating in a “rolenzinho," a social network convened gathering, at the Shopping metro Itaquera in eastern Sao Paulo.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.30)
2014 Jan 11, In Australia US stage hypnotist Scott Lewis plunged to his death from the balcony of a Sydney apartment. Lewis was in Sydney performing his hypnosis act along with six other performers in the show "The illusionists 2.0," which opened at the Sydney Opera House last week.
(AP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Austria two men died after a hand grenade apparently exploded in their Bulgarian-registered car in Vienna.
(AP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In CAR deadly violence including reports of cannibalism and widespread looting erupted in Bangui after the resignation of its ex-rebel president, The International Organization for Migration began an airlift of thousands of foreigners out of the strife-torn country following appeals from neighboring countries. Former president Michel Djotodia traveled to Benin where he will go into exile.
(AFP, 1/11/14)(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In southwest China a fire raged for nearly 10 hours and razed an ancient Tibetan town popular with tourists, burning down hundreds of buildings as fire engines were unable to get onto the narrow streets of Dukezon, part of scenic Shangri-La county in Deqen prefecture.
(AP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In CongoDRC 4 people were killed and two seriously injured in a clash between Virunga national park rangers and suspected Rwandan FDLR rebels.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Greece two Golden Dawn lawmakers were placed in pre-trial detention late in Athens in an ongoing crackdown against the far right group.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Inflation in Iran was reportedly running at 36%.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.42)
2014 Jan 11, Ariel Sharon (b.1928), former Israeli prime minister (2001-2006), died in a hospital near Tel Aviv eight years after a debilitating stroke put him into a coma.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Thousands of Kurdish demonstrators from around Europe marched in Paris to call for a speedier investigation into the murder of three Kurdish activists a year ago.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Libya fighting broke out in the southern town of Sebha and nearby Murzuq and Al-Shati pitting gunmen from the Arab Awled Sleiman tribe against tribesmen from the Toubou minority.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, A permit to hunt a black rhino in Namibia sold for $350,000 at an auction in Dallas with proceeds going to protect the endangered animals despite protests from animal rights groups that saw the sale as immoral conservation.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Russian authorities detained five terror suspects in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkar Republic, 185 miles east of Sochi, site of the upcoming Winter Olympics.
(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 11, South Sudanese government troops battled to recapture Bor, the last remaining rebel-held town.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Three African envoys of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional grouping of east African nations that initiated the talks, met with South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar in an effort to agree the terms of truce, but he turned them down. His demand for the release of detainees remains a stumbling block to a ceasefire deal.
(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Spain tens of thousands of protesters marched in Bilbao in support of jailed members of the Basque separatist group ETA. A high court judge had vetoed the march, which was initially organized by prisoners' supporters to call for inmates to be moved to jails closer to their homes.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Syria the ISIL al-Qaeda affiliate battled rival rebels across the country's north and dozens of bodies piled up in a hospital in the insurgent-held city of Raqqa. Government shelling killed more than 20 people in the central city of Homs.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, Tanzania said its elephant population, beset by poaching for ivory, has plummeted by two-thirds in the past three-and-a-half decades.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Thailand seven people were wounded after gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on anti-government protesters in Bangkok.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Tonga declared a state of emergency in some parts as powerful Cyclone Ian slammed into the South Pacific island nation. At least one person was killed.
(AFP, 1/11/14)(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, Riots over Tunisia's economy flared overnight in towns around the country, leaving one dead and posing an immediate challenge to the new prime minister and the country's path to democracy.
(AP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Turkish politicians threw punches and water bottles during a debate about government control over the appointment of judges and prosecutors. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ankara in protest against PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Ukraine's ex-interior minister turned opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko (49) was in intensive care in hospital after being beaten in fresh clashes between pro-EU demonstrators and club-wielding police.
(AFP, 1/11/14)
2014 Jan 11, Fighting in north Yemen between Shi'ite Muslim Houthis and Sunni Salafis stopped as a ceasefire deal took effect, according to a presidential committee trying to help end the conflict. In the south armed tribesmen attacked troops assigned to guard oil wells near a facility operated by Norway’s DNO. 2 soldiers were killed.
(Reuters, 1/11/14)(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 11, In Zimbabwe the pilot of a US-built helicopter died when he crashed into a wooded mountainside in the country's remote southwest. State media later reported that the pilot, identified as a prominent Zimbabwean businessman based in South Africa, was flying alone to visit relatives in the American 4-seat Robinson R44 model.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 12, The Cygnus cargo ship from Orbital Sciences delivered Christmas presents along with needed supplies to the Int’l. Space Station.
(SFC, 1/13/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 12, In Afghanistan a Taliban suicide bomber riding a bicycle detonated himself next to a police bus in Kabul, killing a policeman and a civilian in the first major attack in the Afghan capital this year.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Afghanistan Daniel Menard, a former Canadian brigadier-general and head of Canadian forces in Afghanistan, was detained for alleged gun smuggling. He was currently working for security firm Garda World. Menard had resigned from the military after pleading guilty in 2011 to having an affair with a female corporal under his command.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina was sworn in for a third spell as prime minister after a deadly general election boycotted by the opposition amid an ongoing political crisis.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, Central African Republic’s local Red Cross said scattered violence in Bangui, including two consecutive nights of intense gunfire in some neighborhoods, has killed 13 people since Michel Djotodia announced his resignation from the presidency on Jan 10. Rival militiamen struck a truce and hugged each other in a neighborhood of Bangui on the eve of consultations aimed at replacing the president who resigned under international pressure.
(AP, 1/12/14)(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Egypt hundreds of students supporting ousted Pres. Morsi battled security forces at three Cairo universities, two days before a referendum that officials say will be protected by a massive deployment of soldiers and police.
(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In western Germany a small jet crashed near an airfield near Trier and four people on board were killed.
(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, A 2009 Indonesian law banning the export of unprocessed minerals took effect, with the government aiming to boost local operations and create more jobs and mining companies warning of losses.
(AP, 1/12/14)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.64)
2014 Jan 12, Iran's foreign ministry said that the “joint plan of action," the landmark agreement the Islamic republic clinched with world powers on its disputed nuclear program, will take effect from January 20. Under the JPA Iran would freeze its nuclear program for six months.
(AFP, 1/12/14)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.47)
2014 Jan 12, Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki threatened to cut central government funding for Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region if the Kurds pursued a drive to pipe oil exports to Turkey without Baghdad's approval.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Iraq two car bombs exploded in Baghdad killing at least 21 people. Government employees returned to work under tight security in Ramadi, but militants still held parts of the Anbar provincial capital and all of Fallujah.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)(AFP, 1/12/14)(SFC, 1/13/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 12, In the Israeli occupied West Bank at least 50 people were hurt in a clash between Palestinian police and residents of the Jalazoun refugee camp protesting against a strike in a UN aid agency that has paralyzed services.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Libya assailants in Sirte gunned down a deputy minister Hassan al-Droui overnight, in the first killing of a government member since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi. The toll from tribal clashes in the southern town of Sebha rose to 27 dead, with another 72 people wounded in the unrest.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, The leaders of Mali and Mauritania signed an accord to boost military cooperation and information sharing in the battle against "armed groups or terrorists" plaguing the west African neighbors.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In western Mexico vigilantes seized a drug cartel's bastion in the Michoacan state town of Nueva Italia, sparking a shootout as the civilian militia gained new ground in their struggle against the Knights Templar in the violence-plagued region.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Pakistan a bomb attack targeting an aide of the prime minister killed 5 people in the Swat Valley. The official escaped unharmed. Hours later gunmen fatally shot Mian Mohammad Mushtaq, an anti-Taliban politician, along with two aides on the outskirts of Peshawar. Private guards working for the lawmaker, Abdul Rehman Khetran, attacked police at a checkpoint, beat them up and stole their weapons. Police then raided the lawmaker's fortified home in Baluchistan province and found a private dungeon at his home in which five people were found chained up. Khetran is a legislator for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a conservative, religious party.
(AP, 1/12/14)(Reuters, 1/13/14)(SFC, 1/13/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 12, A Saudi court sentenced to death an Al-Qaeda militant and jailed 10 others over the May 1, 2004, attack that killed six Westerners and a policeman.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 12, Syrian state media and anti-government activists said a mortar attack has killed at least 19 people in the central city of Homs. Activists said the al Qaeda-linked Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has executed dozens of rival Islamists over the last two days as the group recaptured most territory it had lost in Raqqa province.
(AP, 1/12/14)(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Tanzania clashes broke out in the Embroi Murtangosi nature reserve in Manyara province, when armed Masai herdsmen launched an attack on farmers. At least 10 people were killed over the next few days.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 12, Thai protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban ruled out talks with the government in a published interview, but said he would stand down his movement if, as some fear, violence escalates and civil war looms.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, In Ukraine an estimated 50,000 pro-Western protesters massed in the heart of Kiev amid swelling anger over the bloody beating of prominent former minister turned opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, The UN’s refugee agency said around 10,000 people have fled north to Sudan from South Sudan where government troops and rebels have battled for the past month.
(AFP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, Pope Francis named his first batch of cardinals, choosing 19 men from Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, including the developing nations of Haiti and Burkina Faso.
(AP, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 12, Yemeni tribesmen tried to overrun an army camp on the outskirts of al-Shihr, Hadramout province, killing 4 soldiers.
(Reuters, 1/12/14)
2014 Jan 13, Negotiators from the US Senate and House of Representatives unveiled a $1 trillion spending bill late today, eliminating the threat of another government shutdown, at least until October.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 13, The US Supreme Court declined to review an appeals court ruling that said an Arizona law banning abortions starting at 20 weeks of gestation is unconstitutional, meaning the restrictive state law is struck down.
(Reuters, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, The US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Mohamed Ali Samantar, a former top official in Somalia, who has been ordered to pay Somali torture victims $21 million. Samantar, now living in Virginia, was a top official in dictator Siad Barre's regime in the 1980s and early 1990s.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In Florida an argument over texting in a movie theater led retired police captain Curtis Reeves (71) to fatally shoot Chad Oulsen (43).
(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 13, Gerald Rosen, the mediator in the Detroit bankruptcy, announced that local and national foundations have pledged $330 million in an effort to shore up the city’s ailing pensions and protect the artwork at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 13, New Mexico Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash ruled that the ability of competent, terminally ill patients to choose aid in dying is a fundamental right under the state constitution.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 13, An emotional Dennis Rodman appeared to break down as he apologized on his return from a controversial trip to North Korea, where he sang "Happy Birthday" to regime leader Kim Jong-Un. He added that he would visit the North again next month for "another game," but gave no further details.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Google said that it is buying Nest Labs, a startup that makes internet-connected thermostats, for $3.2 billion.
(http://tinyurl.com/lpo27do)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.7)
2014 Jan 13, Australian officials said one man died a day earlier and four other people were missing after a fast-moving wildfire destroyed at least 49 homes in Perth. Firefighters continued to fight the blaze.
(AFP, 1/13/14)(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 13, In Brazil 10 public buses were destroyed after 12 people were shot and killed overnight in Campinas, Sao Paulo state. Police said the surge of violence began with the murder of an off-duty policeman.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Britain vowed to honor all government debt up until the date of Scotland's possible independence, should Scottish people vote to break away from the United Kingdom later this year.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, A Cambodian court freed Russian real estate tycoon Sergei Polonsky and he will not be extradited to Russia to face embezzlement charges there.
(Reuters, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In southern China an explosion at an illegal gambling hall in Kaili, Guizhou province, killed 14 people and injured seven others.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, France's Total said it has agreed to explore for shale gas in Britain, making it the first major oil company to enter the country's market in the face of widely publicized environmental protests.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, German antitrust authorities fined a group of beer brewers a total of 106.5 million euros ($145 million) for illegal price-fixing between 2006 and 2008.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, An Indian official said police arrested napkin seller (38) over the weekend for allegedly torturing an 11-year-old maid who was forced to eat chilies, which were also rubbed on her body. He and his wife had bought the girl in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh for 15,000 rupees ($240) from her parents about a year ago on the pretext that she would be well looked after and given a better education.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Iraq’s PM Nuri al-Maliki publicly rebuked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's call for the country to halt executions while standing beside him at a joint news conference. Ban Ki-moon called for Iraqi leaders to address the "root causes" of a surge in bloodshed as security forces clashed with gunmen in violence-wracked Anbar province. A series of attacks in the Baghdad area, including four car bombs targeting civilians, killed at least 30 people
(AFP, 1/13/14)(AP, 1/13/14)(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 13, In Ireland Saverio Bellante (34) of Italy was charged with the murder of Tom O'Gorman. Bellante said he was guilty of cutting open his Dublin landlord's chest and tried to eat his heart following a fight over a chess match.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Japan said it has signed an agreement with Palau to allow Japanese companies to earn carbon credits by helping the small Pacific island cut greenhouse gas emissions.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 13, A spokesman said Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has approved the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill 2013 banning gay marriage and same-sex partnerships. The law also criminalizes homosexual associations, societies and meetings.
(AFP, 1/13/14)(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 13, Officials in the Philippines said two days of heavy rains set off floods and landslides in the southeast have left at least 20 people dead, 13 missing and thousands displaced.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In the Philippines the Sandiganbayan antigraft court said the former fist lady Imelda Marcos should forfeit all jewelry after ruling that it was ill-gotten.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 13, In South Africa Mike Tshele and Osia Rahube people were killed during a clash with police when residents of a village marched to the Madibeng municipality buildings in North West province to protest about water shortages. A 3rd person shot by police died on Jan 19.
(Reuters, 1/13/14)(http://tinyurl.com/ogeafwt)(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 13, South Sudanese government troops advanced on Bor, the last state capital still in rebel hands, as ceasefire talks in neighboring Ethiopia were called off for the day.
(AFP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, Swedish Dr. Mats Brannstrom said nine women have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives and will soon try to become pregnant.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In Syria the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the northern town of al-Bab. American and Russian negotiators in Paris said Syria's government and the opposition have agreed to consider opening humanitarian access in the run-up to a peace conference that would bring the sides together for the first time. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ISIL had executed 46 Islamists from the Ahrar al-Sham in an ambush in Kantari and killed 14 prisoners today in Homs province.
(AP, 1/13/14)(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 13, US and Russian envoys said Syria’s government and the main opposition group have agreed to allow humanitarian aid into some blocked-off parts of the country.
(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 13, In Thailand tens of thousands of anti-government protesters came out in an effort to "shut down Bangkok" and try to force caretaker PM Yingluck Shinawatra to resign in favor of an unelected "people's council" that would initiate political reforms.
(AP, 1/13/14)
2014 Jan 13, In Thailand an American woman went missing in Kaeng Krachan National Park. Her body was found five days later, apparently trampled by elephants.
(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 14, The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed the FCC’s online access rules arguing that Internet providers built their networks and therefore have the right to manage their costs and services.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p. A1)
2014 Jan 14, A Chicago federal court sentenced H. Ty Warner (69), the billionaire businessman behind Beanie Babies, to two years probation for not paying taxes on $25 million he had hidden.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 14, The NY Times reported that the National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world, but not in the United States, that allows the US to conduct surveillance on those machines.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, In New Mexico a boy (12) drew a shotgun from a band instrument case and shot two classmates at the Berrendo Middle School in Roswell. A boy (11) and a girl (13) were seriously wounded. The shooter was described as a smart and nice kid.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A4)(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A9)
2014 Jan 14, West Virginia officials lifted a ban on drinking tap water for 35,000 customers who had been affected by a Jan 9 chemical spill that left the state's water supply nearly unusable for hundreds of thousands.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Lawyers said Britain has granted asylum to an atheist from Afghanistan due to fears he would be prosecuted back home, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Chinese doctor Zhang Shuxia, who abducted and sold newborn babies, was given a suspended death sentence in a case that drew widespread outrage with child trafficking a chronic problem in the country.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In China a fire at the Dadong factory in Wenling, Zhejiang province, killed 16 people. Safety exits were blocked.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 14, Egyptians voted on a new constitution in a referendum that will pave the way for a likely presidential run by the nation's top general months after he ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. 11 people were killed on the 1st day of the vote.
(AP, 1/14/14)(AFP, 1/14/14)(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, The European Investment Bank (EIB) said it has raised a further 350 million euros ($477.9 million) on its Climate Awareness Bond (CAB), making it the largest ever "green bond" at 1.5 billion euros.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Germany's No.2 utility RWE said it is preparing to sue for millions of euros of damages after a federal court confirmed that a state's decision to shut down the company's Biblis nuclear plant for three months in 2011 was illegal.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In India a Danish tourist (51) was gang-raped, robbed and beaten in New Delhi after she got lost and approached a group of men for directions back to her hotel near Connaught Place. Nine attackers took her to a secluded spot, robbed her and raped her repeatedly at knifepoint. On June 10, 2016, five men were sentenced to life in prison for the attack. One of the accused men died during trial in February. Three who were younger than 18 at the time of the attack were handed to the Juvenile Justice Board to remain in custody until they are 18 and reformed.
(AP, 1/15/14)(AP, 6/10/16)
2014 Jan 14, In India the body of a woman, killed by a tiger prowling for food, was found Uttar Pradesh state. She was the animal’s 7th victim.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 14, It was reported that canine distemper virus has killed four tigers and several other animals across northern and eastern India.
(SFC, 1/14/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 14, In Iraq at least 12 people were killed in violence across the country, mostly in bombings and shootings in Baghdad. Al-Qaida militants blew up an explosives laden fuel tanker at an army checkpoint, killing 3 soldiers, on a small bridge near Saqlawiya.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 14, Rose Fostanes, a Filipina who has spent nearly half her life as a carer overseas, won Israel's first "X Factor" TV talent competition.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, Japanese engineering giant JGC Corp. said it has won a contract to help build a Canadian liquefied natural gas plant in a deal reportedly worth $9.4 billion.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Mexican federal forces launched an offensive to take over security in Michoacan state, seizing a drug cartel's bastion and clashing with vigilantes who refused to disarm.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In Mexico Juan Gelman, the celebrated Argentine poet and fierce critic of the South American nation's "dirty war" against leftists, died in Mexico City.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In Myanmar a Buddhist mob reportedly killed at least 48 Muslims, including many women and children, in Du Char Yar Tan, Rakhine state. Security forces had surrounded Du Char Yar Tan after Rohingya Muslim residents allegedly abducted and killed a police sergeant.
(AP, 1/16/14)(AP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 14, In New Zealand at least 13 pilot whales were beached on a remote coastline and conservation officials desperately battled to prevent another 50 from reaching the shore.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In northeaster Nigeria a car bomb exploded at a military post in a Maiduguri, causing pandemonium with blood-spattered bystanders running away and vehicles colliding as drivers rushed to flee. 19 people were killed.
(AP, 1/14/14)(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, Local and international groups fighting AIDS warned that a new Nigerian law criminalizing same-sex marriage and gay organizations will jeopardize the fight against the deadly disease. Human rights activists reported that dozens of gay men were being arrested in northern Nigeria in an apparent response to the law.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that journalist David Satter, author of three books on Russia and the Soviet Union, was prevented from returning to Russia last month after grossly violating visa regulations. Satter, who is critical of President Vladimir Putin, was barred from returning for five years.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, In Russia’s Dagestan region a shootout between security forces and militants killed 5 people.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 14, In South Africa protester Lerato Theodore Seema (27) was allegedly pushed from a moving police van during violent demonstrations near Pretoria. He was confirmed dead the next day from head wounds.
(AFP, 1/15/14)(http://tinyurl.com/ogeafwt)
2014 Jan 14, In South Sudan some 200 people fleeing warfare died after a boat crossing the Nile River sank, as fighting between rebels and government forces moved closer to Juba, the national capital.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, The Syrian said it has retaken territory around the northern city of Aleppo, after two weeks of rebel infighting that has weakened the insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Thailand's PM Shinawatra insisted she wouldn't quit as protesters seeking her ouster blocked key roads in the heart of Bangkok for a second day, leaving the country's political crisis firmly deadlocked.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was ready to withdraw a contentious bill aimed at curbing the powers of the judiciary as he battled to contain the worst crisis of his 11 years in office.
(AFP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, Turkish anti-terrorism police carried out raids in six cities, detaining at least five people with alleged links to al-Qaida.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, A Ugandan military spokesman said that Ugandan and South Sudanese army officials are drafting what he called a "status of forces agreement" that will soon be signed by both countries after Pres. Kiir requested the Ugandans to extend their deployment.
(AP, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 14, The UN human rights office said a UN human rights team has gathered testimony that Chadian citizens, including peacekeepers, carried out mass killings during chaotic violence in the Central African Republic. The team also received reports that French disarmament of ex-Seleka forces left Muslim communities vulnerable.
(Reuters, 1/14/14)
2014 Jan 15, US Air Force leaders said 34 officers in charge of launching nuclear missiles have been suspended for cheating on a proficiency test. The scandal at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana marked the latest in a series of damaging revelations dogging the country's nuclear force.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, Police in San Jose, Ca., arrested Patrick William Brennan (48) as the suspected arsonist responsible for over a dozen fires that began Jan 7. On Dec 22 Brennan pleaded guilty to nine counts of arson and four counts of attempted arson.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A9)(SFC, 1/17/14, p.D1)(SFC, 12/24/14, p.E2)
2014 Jan 15, The Archdiocese of Chicago released 6,000 pages of documents as part of a settlement with sex abuse victims.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 15, In Nebraska a Payton Benson (5) was killed in Omaha after being hit by a stray bullet while eating breakfast. 4 men later faced charges in the death of the girl.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 15, West Virginia officials said they have lifted a ban on drinking tap water for two-thirds of the customers affected by a chemical spill, but warned pregnant women to avoid it until the chemical is completely flushed from the pipes.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, In eastern Afghanistan a NATO service member was shot and killed by insurgents. A NATO bombing strike on the village of Wazghar, Parvan province, reportedly left 13 civilians dead. NATO later said the Afghan army called for the strike. One Afghan and one NATO soldier died in the action.
(AP, 1/15/14)(Econ, 2/1/14, p.31)
2014 Jan 15, Australian officials said lightning strikes ignited more than 250 fires across the southeast. Firefighters battled to put out the flames as the country sweltered under a heatwave.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Bosnia's president and a Qatar minister opened a new library in the heart of the Ottoman-era Old Town section of Sarajevo to house books and more than 100,000 manuscripts saved from the 1992-95 siege. The oldest is a handwritten Islamic encyclopedia that was written in Arabic in 1105. Qatar donated $9 million to the project.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, British actor Roger Lloyd-Pack (69), best known for playing dim-witted street-sweeper Trigger on the sitcom "Only Fools and Horses" (1981-1991), died at his home in London.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, China's commercial capital, Shanghai, introduced emergency measures to tackle air pollution, allowing it to shut schools and order cars off the road in the case of severe smog.
(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Chinese police detained economics Prof. Ilham Tohti, an outspoken scholar of the Turkic Uighur ethnic minority. They raided his home in Beijing, seizing computers, cellphones and even his students' thesis manuscripts. On Jan 25 Tohti was accused of leading a separatist group that advocates violence to overthrow Chinese rule in Xinjiang. In late July Tohti (44) was charged with separatism.
(AP, 1/16/14)(AP, 1/25/14)(SFC, 7/31/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 15, Chinese police in Urumqi arrested Akbar Imin, a Uighur AIDS activist, for endangering national security in the troubled far western region of Xinjiang, home to the largely Muslim Uighur people. His arrest was only made public in March.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Jan 15, Egyptians lined up to vote on the second and final day of a key referendum on the country's new constitution.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, French business leaders hailed promises by President Francois Hollande to cut taxes and spending, but the left accused him of lurching to the right.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Guinea's PM Mohamed Said Fofana stepped down and handed in the resignation of his cabinet as part of a transition to a new government after elections.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In Indonesia at least 13 people were killed after torrential rain triggered flash floods and landslides on northern Sulawesi island. Some 40,000 fled their homes as water surged through the city of Manado and surrounding areas.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In Iraq a wave of attacks, including car bombs in Baghdad, killed at least 73 people as militants took more territory from security forces in crisis-hit Anbar province. Overnight clashes erupted periodically in Ramadi and on the outskirts of Fallujah, leaving 2 children killed and 13 civilians wounded.
(AFP, 1/15/14)(Reuters, 1/15/14)(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Suspected Jewish extremists torched the entrance to a mosque in the West Bank, in an apparent revenge attack for Palestinians beating and detaining Israeli settlers last week.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Donors gathered in Kuwait as the UN sent out a distress signal, warning that nearly half Syria's population needs urgent humanitarian assistance and that some 245,000 Syrians faced severe food shortages. Western and Gulf Arab nations pledged $1.4 billion for UN aid efforts in Syria. This included $500 million from Kuwait and 380 million from the US.
(AFP, 1/15/14)(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Mozambican police say they have arrested four Rwandans, including Lt. Col. Francis Gakwerere, a senior official in the Rwandan armed forces, for the Jan 1 murder in South Africa of former Rwandan spymaster Col. Patrick Karegeya. The four were arrested last week.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Civilians from the Nigerian town of Banki fled across the border to Cameroon to escape heavy gunfire. Cameroonian forces responded to repel Boko Haram attackers who also tried to cross over. One woman in Cameroon was killed and five other shooting victims were taken to hospitals.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, Norway's Yara, the world's biggest mineral fertilizer producer, said it has been hit with a hefty fine by Norwegian authorities following an international corruption investigation. The affair centered on bribes to senior government officials in Libya and India, and to a supplier in Russia from 2004-2009.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In southern Pakistan a truck slammed into a bus bringing schoolchildren home from an outing, killing at least 17 pupils and three adults in Sindh province.
(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, The Philippines launched anti-corruption reforms including cashless and checkless government transactions.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 15, South Sudan's military battled rebels in the streets of the key northern oil town of Malakal, as violence in the world's newest nation entered its second month.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In Spain police clashed with demonstrators in Madrid as thousands of people marched across the country to protest against costly plans to redevelop a street in the northern city of Burgos, where protests continued for a 6th day.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Roughly 60 migrants entered Spain's north African territory of Melilla after charging a barbed-wire border fence bordering Morocco.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, In Syria a car bomb planted by rebels linked to al Qaeda killed at least 26 people in the northern city of Jarablus, most of them rival opposition fighters.
(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Turkey's embattled Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared open war on what he labelled an "empire of fear" created by an Islamic rival at the heart of a deepening political crisis.
(AFP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 15, Uganda confirmed its troops are fighting alongside South Sudan's government against rebels.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 15, Pope Francis named an oversight commission of cardinals for the Vatican Bank, replacing all but one of the appointees made by his predecessor Benedict XVI.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 15, Venezuela’s Pres. Nicolas Maduro delivered his annual state-of-the-nation address. He blamed soap operas for crime saying they are spreading “antiglares."
(AP, 1/22/14, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/m9v8dz7)
2014 Jan 15, A Yemeni farmer was killed in a US drone strike in what witnesses said was an attack apparently intended for suspected Islamist militants in southeastern Yemen.
(Reuters, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 16, The Catholic diocese of Stockton, Ca., filed for bankruptcy after paying millions of dollars to plaintiffs who made sexual abuse allegations during the past two decades.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 16, Albrecht Muth (49), an eccentric German who pretended to be an Iraqi general, was convicted in DC of killing his socialite and journalist wife, Viola Drath (91) in August, 2011. On April 30 Muth was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A7)(SFC, 5/1/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 16, Bud Spangler (b.1938), jazz drummer, DJ and producer, died in Oakland, Ca.
(SFC, 1/20/14, p.C4)
2014 Jan 16, In northern Indiana a man fatally shot two women in a grocery store and was waving a gun at a kneeling store manager when police arrived and killed the gunman in Elkhart.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 16, Judge Steven Rhodes overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy turned down a $169 compromise with major banks saying the amount was too high.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 16, In Ohio Dennis McGuire (53) was executed by a new combination of lethal drugs for the 1989 rape and murder of Joy Stewart (22), who was pregnant. The execution took nearly 25 minutes from injection to death and left him gasping for air in the final minutes.
(SFC, 1/8/14, p.A5)(http://tinyurl.com/kdp2x6z)(SFC, 1/17/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 16, In Utah 5 people were found dead after co-workers reported that police officer Joshua Boren (34) failed to show up for his shift at the Lindon Police Dept. Boren had shot and killed his wife, mother-in-law and two children before killing himself. Kelly Boren had just confronted her husband about raping her and told him their marriage was over.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A4)(AP, 7/8/14)
2014 Jan 16, American actor Russell Johnson (89), best known for his role as the Professor on “Gilligan’s Island" (1964-1967), died at his home on Bainbridge Island, Washington state.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 16, British police working alongside counterparts in the Philippines and Australia said they had dismantled a pedophile ring that streamed live sexual abuse of Filipino children as young as six over the Internet, with victims' parents involved in some cases.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, It was reported that a study by Canadian researchers identified seven nations as the top sources for global warming. The report said Brazil, Britain, China, Germany, India, Russia and the US accounted for over 60% of all heat-trapping gas emissions between 1750 and 2005.
(SFC, 1/16/14, p.C6)
2014 Jan 16, In the Central African Republic at least 7 people were killed in overnight clashes in Bangui.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Egypt's state media said the new constitution was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum. A senior official said an overwhelming majority of Egyptians who voted on the country's new constitution have backed the draft charter. An international monitoring group criticized the clampdown ahead of the vote and said authorities had imposed "severe limits" on freedom of expression.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Indian police said that they were closing in on six homeless men in the Jan 14 gang rape of a 51-year-old Danish tourist in New Delhi.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight wounded a woman and four children, with Israel saying it had struck in retaliation for rocket fire.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, In Kenya an explosive device blew up a trash can and part of the ceiling of the Java House restaurant near the entrance of an international departure terminal at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Four suspects, including a man identified as a Somali diplomat, were soon arrested.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Jan 16, In Lebanon a suicide car bomber killed 3 people in a Hezbollah stronghold on the northern border with Syria.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan replaced his entire military leadership without explanation as he struggles with an Islamist insurgency and political crisis within his ruling party.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, In northwestern Pakistan a bomb ripped through a crowded Sunni Islamic seminary, killing seven people and wounding 55 at the Tableeghi Jamaat religious school on the outskirts of Peshawar.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report detailing atrocities in South Sudan and warning that "appalling crimes have been committed against civilians for no other reason than their ethnicity."
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, In Spain Catalan lawmakers voted in favor of asking for the right to hold a referendum on independence.
(AP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, Supporters of Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yanukovich rammed a sweeping law through parliament in an attempt to curb anti-government protests, sparking an outcry from the opposition and raising tensions on the streets.
(Reuters, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 16, In central Yemen suspected al-Qaida militants attacked a military camp on the outskirts of Radda. Militants killed 10 soldiers in three simultaneous attacks on army positions in the central province of Bayda.
(AP, 1/16/14)(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 17, President Barack Obama curtailed the reach of massive US National Security Agency phone surveillance sweeps, but said bulk data collection must go on to protect America from terrorists.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The US Election Assistance Commission denied requests from Arizona, Georgia and Kansas to modify the federal registration form for their residents. It said heightened proof-of-citizenship requirements would likely hinder eligible citizens from voting in federal elections.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 17, California Gov. Jerry Brown formally declared a state-wide drought.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.D1)
2014 Jan 17, A Pennsylvania judge struck down a state requirement that voters show photo identification at the polls.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 17, In Pennsylvania a school shooting wounded two students at the Delaware Valley Charter High School. Raisheem Rochwell (17) was charged the next day as an adult.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 17, In West Virginia Freedom Industries, the company blamed for the Jan 9 chemical spill that left 300,000 people in the state without safe drinking water, field for bankruptcy.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 17, In Afghanistan a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near a Lebanese restaurant frequented by foreigners in Kabul and bursts of intense gunfire ensued. The assault against La Taverna du Liban included 18 foreigners and 8 Afghans, all civilians.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AP, 1/18/14)(Econ, 11/29/14, p.35)
2014 Jan 17, Austria's government agreed to raise the wages of its 200,000 civil servants by 1.9 percent this year after big protests against the new government.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Brazilian authorities said the death toll in last weekend's flash flooding in the southern town of Itaoca has risen to 17, with nine people still missing.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Central African Republic attackers ambushed Muslims fleeing sectarian violence outside the town of Bouar killing 22 people.
(SFC, 1/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 17, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov said rebel leader Doku Umarov, who vowed to disrupt the Sochi Winter Olympics, is dead. Russian security services did not confirm the claim.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China began to implement the loosening of its controversial one-child policy as Zhejiang province announced it has made it legal for couples to have two children if one parent is an only child.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China called on the Philippines to meet it halfway on new Chinese fishing rules in the disputed South China Sea, adding that Beijing was always willing to make efforts to resolve such issues via talks.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China announced 4 more cases of H7N9 bird flu.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 17, Czech President Milos Zeman appointed center-left leader Bohuslav Sobotka prime minister, opening the way for the former finance minister to pursue looser fiscal policies and closer links with the core of Europe.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, CongoDRC forces attacked Ugandan Islamist rebels in the lawless east, launching a UN-backed offensive to clear insurgents from the mineral-rich zone.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Egypt at least 4 people was killed in clashes between police and Islamists, as the country awaited results of a constitutional referendum billed as an endorsement of president Mohamed Morsi's overthrow.
(AFP, 1/17/14)(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Haiti a judge concluded the investigation into one of the country’s most notorious political assassinations, accusing nine people of having a hand in the 2000 killing of radio journalist Jean Dominique, including several close associates of former Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In India Sunanda Pushka, the wife of government minister Shashi Tharoor, was found dead in a New Delhi hotel room having earlier accused her husband of adultery. Her death was described as "sudden" and "unnatural" following an autopsy. In 2015 a medical board concluded that she had been poisoned.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)(AP, 1/7/15)
2014 Jan 17, In India Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (102), the head of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, died in Mumbai.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, Indonesia said that it would increase naval patrols after territorial violations by Australia as it tried to turn back asylum seekers. The Australian government apologized unreservedly to Jakarta after its navy "inadvertently" violated Indonesian waters during border security operations.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The Israeli army fired live rounds and tear gas at protesters near the border fence in the Gaza Strip, wounding two Palestinians. Troops fired at some 300 demonstrators who were protesting against Israel's destruction of farmland for its 300-meter buffer zone.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Lebanon rocket fire into the border town of Arsal killed at 8 people, including 5 children. At least 20 rockets launched from Syria struck Lebanese frontier areas.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Madagascar declared Hery Rajaonarimampianina (55), a Canadian-educated former finance minister backed by strongman Andry Rajoelina, as the country's new president.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Mali's army arrested Houka Houka Ag Alfousseyni, a hardline Islamist judge. He had ordered floggings, amputations and the stoning of women for adultery during a 10-month occupation by rebels linked to al Qaeda.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Pakistan a bomb exploded on a train as it was en route from Peshawar to Karachi. 3 passengers were killed and 15 wounded. Taliban gunmen killed 3 men working for a private TV station in Karachi.
(AP, 1/17/14)(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In the Philippines thousands of people fled rising floods and an approaching storm in a fresh round of evacuations as the death toll from a week of foul weather rose to 37.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Romania a British diplomat (46) plummeted from the highest floor of a hotel in the northern city of Baia Mare after leaving a farewell note.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, It was reported that Sochi residents are blaming the Olympic Games for ecological damage. Environmental experts said that Russia’s Olympic construction, which has consisted of pouring soil into lowland swamps, helped cause the flooding that created a state of emergency in the area in September and could increase the risk for more flooding.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Sources said that Russia in recent weeks has stepped up supplies of military gear to Syria, including armored vehicles, drones and guided bombs, boosting President Bashar al-Assad just as rebel infighting has weakened the insurgency against him.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Scotland the body of a missing Edinburgh youngster was found in Fife shortly before midnight. The mother of Mikaeel Kular (3) was detained following the discovery. The boy was last seen on Jan 15.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In northern Sri Lanka the discovery of a mass grave containing more than 30 skulls fuelled speculation that there may be many more like it containing the remains of thousands who went missing during the island nation's nearly three-decade war. Residents of Mannar said that the area was controlled mainly by the army from 1990.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The Sudan People's Liberation Army-North reportedly "managed to destroy" a government convoy at Malkan, Blue Nile state. They claimed to have killed dozens of soldiers and disabled a tank during battle, but the military said it was the victor.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 17, Syria's foreign minister said his country is prepared to implement a cease-fire in the war-torn city of Aleppo and exchange detainees with the country's opposition forces as a confidence building measure ahead of a peace conference opening next week in Switzerland.
(AP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Syrian rebels ousted al Qaeda-linked faction ISIL, from Saraqeb, one of its northwestern bastions.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Taiwan lifted a ban on imports of Canadian beef-on-the-bone as part of its efforts to promote investment talks with the country and its participation in regional trade blocs. The new measure will take effect in mid-February.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Tanzania one person was killed in clashes between police and thousands of villagers who stormed a gold mine operated by a subsidiary of Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Thailand 35 people were wounded in Bangkok when a grenade blast ripped through a crowd of marching anti-government demonstrators. One person was killed.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, Turkish authorities seized the assets of the main opposition candidate for the post of Istanbul mayor in the run-up to local polls in March. Turkey's Savings Deposit Insurance Fund announced the decision after Mustafa Sarigul and nine other people failed to repay a loan worth $3.5 million (2.6 million euros) dating back to 1998.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Uganda a spokesman for Pres. Yoweri Museveni said the president has refused to approve a controversial bill that would have seen homosexuals jailed for life despite viewing gays as "sick" and "abnormal." In a letter to parliament, the president had suggested homosexuality was caused by a genetic flaw, or a need to make money.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych signed legislation curbing anti-government protests, civic activism and free speech.
(AFP, 1/17/14)(SFC, 1/20/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 17, It was reported that Pope Benedict XVI defrocked 384 priests from 2011-2012 for sexually molesting children. This was a dramatic increase over the 171 priests removed in 2008 and 2009, when the Vatican first provided details on the number of priests defrocked.
(AP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Yemen clashes between armed militants and the army killed three militants in the southern city of al-Dalea (Daleh). 2 soldiers were killed in the fighting.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 18, The film “American Hustle," directed by David O. Russell, won the Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding cast.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A9)
2014 Jan 18, The 75,000 deadweight ton Liberian-flagged fuel tanker MT Kerala lost contact with its Greece-based owner Dynacom off the coast of Angola. A pirate attack was suspected making it the most southerly attack to date by pirates off West Africa. On Jan 26 Angola's navy said the crew of the oil tanker had turned off communications to fake an attack.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Brazil an estimated 150 black and leftist militants staged a boisterous rally outside the JK Iguatemi shopping mall in Sao Paulo to protest attempts to bar underprivileged youths from shopping malls in middle-class areas.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Brazilian police said that they had broken up a bank robbery scheme that had diverted 73 million reais ($31 million) from a lottery run by state-owned lender Caixa Economica Federal.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, BBC presenter Komla Dumor (41), one of Ghana's best known journalists, died suddenly. Dumor, a presenter on the BBC’s World News channel and its "Focus on Africa" program, suffered a heart attack at his London home.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 18, Burkina Faso's opposition staged the country's biggest demonstration in decades to protest against an attempt by President Blaise Compaore's party to abolish constitutional term limits.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, A Canadian pilot was among two people feared dead when the small plane he was flying went down in Guyana's thick Amazon jungle two minutes after takeoff.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Central African Republic fresh fighting broke out as the deadline closed for candidates to register for a vote by the transitional parliament for a new interim president.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Egypt’s elections chief said voters have approved a new constitution by 98.1 percent.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Police in central Greece said they had arrested seven people including five Bulgarians for attempted baby trafficking.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Guinea's President Alpha Conde said he had reinstated PM Mohamed Said Fofana just three days after accepting his resignation to make way for a new administration following parliamentary elections.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 18, India and Pakistan agreed to allow round-the-clock movement of trucks and containers through their main Wagah-Attari border crossing in Punjab.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In India a pre-dawn stampede killed 18 people as tens of thousands of people gathered in Mumbai to mourn the death of Muslim spiritual leader Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, the head of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Iraq clashes between militants and government troops as well as two bombings at marketplaces killed 6 people. At least a half-dozen car bombs killed 25 people and left more than 70 wounded.
(AP, 1/18/14)(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Libya's General National Congress declared a state of emergency, after fresh clashes erupted in the south when gunmen group seized a military base. Libya sent troops to the restive south after gunmen stormed an air force base in Sabha. In the east two Italian construction workers were reported abducted in the Islamist stronghold of Derna.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Morocco the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee of Muslim nations ended talks and urged the international community to put pressure on Israel to stop building Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 18, Russian news said 7 suspected militants were killed today by security forces in a shootout near Makhachkala, Dagestan.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, South Korea confirmed the outbreak of highly pathogenic bird flu and said it would expand the culling of birds to a radius of 3-km (1.9 mile) around a duck farm.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, South Sudanese government forces said they seized the flashpoint town of Bor back from rebels. Uganda's army claimed credit for the operation.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Officials say Spanish police have arrested Juegers Veloz (37), a Dominican fugitive wanted by US authorities for a multimillion dollar cellphone fraud in 2009-2011.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces voted to send a delegation to an int’l. peace conference set to begin next week in Geneva.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 18, In Syria food aid entered the besieged Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp for the first time in four months. The delivery of food followed reports that dozens of people in the camp in southern Damascus have died of hunger and lack of medical care.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Thailand anti-government protesters marched defiantly through Bangkok, with one group entering a police compound, undeterred by a grenade explosion the day before. The military urged both sides to settle their differences.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Turkey riot police in Istanbul used water canons against hundreds of people protesting a government plan to expand controls over the public’s use of the Internet.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 18, State media said Turkey has extended a purge of official bodies to the banking and telecoms regulators and state TV, firing dozens of executives in moves that appear to broaden PM Tayyip Erdogan's backlash against a corruption investigation.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, Turkmenistan's Pres. Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedo said his government will begin installing gas meters in households, ending the unlimited supply of free gas to citizens. The nation is estimated to have the world's fourth-largest natural gas reserves, and gas, electricity and water have been supplied free to households since 1993.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Yemen Ali Asghar Asadi, Iran's economic attaché in Sanaa, was killed in a drive-by shooting. A military intelligence officer was killed in a drive-by shooting by gunmen who fled on a motorbike in Huta. In Al-Milah armed men ambushed an army vehicle and shot dead 2 soldiers.
(AP, 1/18/14)(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 19, In NYC Deisy Garcia (21) and her two daughters, ages 1 and 2, were found stabbed to death in their Queens apartment. Police searched for Miguel Mejia Ramos (28), the father of the girls, as a suspect.
(SFC, 1/21/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 19, Afghanistan's Pres. Karzai said the US can no longer carry out military operations or airstrikes and must jump-start peace talks with the Taliban before his country signs a security deal to keep American troops in Afghanistan after 2014.
(AP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, British athletics great Chris Chataway (82), best known for being one of the pacemakers for Roger Bannister's landmark four-minute mile run in 1954, died after a long battle with cancer. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1995 for his services to the aviation industry.
(www.bbc.com/sport/0/athletics/25801188)
2014 Jan 19, Canadian PM Stephen Harper began his first official visit to Israel, with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu hailing him as a "great friend" of the Jewish state.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Colombia’s army said at least 9 Marxist FARC rebels have been killed in a clash in Tame even as peace talks were being held between the two sides in Cuba.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi (Morsi) was ordered to stand trial for insulting the judiciary, alongside 24 others including liberal activists who opposed his Islamist rule but have also been critical of the new army-backed order.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, In southeastern France "historic" floods left two people dead and more than 150 were airlifted to safety.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Hong Kong thousands of people rallied to demand justice for a young Indonesian maid who was badly beaten by her employer in a case that has sparked widespread outrage and a police investigation into accusations of torture.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Indonesia monsoon rains inundated parts of Jakarta, forcing more than 30,000 people to evacuate.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Iraqi tribesmen backed by police special forces and helicopter gunships assaulted al Qaeda-linked militants in the eastern and southern outskirts of the city of Ramadi. Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Ramadi to try to avert civilian casualties. Iraq hanged 26 people convicted of "terrorism" offences.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 19, Israel decided to end a decades-old policy of issuing gas masks to the public in an apparent sign of confidence in Syria's chemical weapons disarmament.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Libya unknown gunmen kidnapped Han Seok-woo, a South Korean trade official, in Tripoli.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 19, Mexican security forces said they have arrested 38 people in the region of Michoacan, including Jesus Vasquez Macias (37), a leading figure of the notorious Knights Templar drug cartel.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, The Nauru government deported Peter Law, its Australian resident magistrate, and barred its Australian chief justice, Geoffrey Eames, from re-entering the country.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.34)
2014 Jan 19, In Pakistan a bombing claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, killed 26 soldiers and wounded 30 when it ripped through a military convoy in Bannu, North Waziristan. Army helicopters fired missiles killing 3 militants, in apparent retaliation for the Taliban bomb attack.
(AFP, 1/19/14)(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 19, Two Palestinians were hurt, one critically, in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City. The Israel military said it had targeted a senior Islamic Jihad militant.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Pres. Putin in broadcast comments defended Russia's anti-gay law by equating gays with pedophiles and said Russia needs to "cleanse" itself of homosexuality if it wants to increase its birth rate. At the same time he offered new assurances to gay athletes and fans attending the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics next month.
(AP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, South African press reported that at least two police officers who took part in the deadly crackdown on Marikana miners in 2012 were implicated in the killing of three protesters this week.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, South Korean regulator Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) revealed the full scale of personal information theft on more than 100 million South Korean credit cards. Some 20 million people were victims of data theft a three credit card companies.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)(SFC, 10/15/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 19, South Sudanese troops fought to win back the key oil town of Malakal from rebels loyal to sacked vice president Riek Machar.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Thailand 28 people were wounded, seven seriously, in explosions at a camp of anti-government protesters in Bangkok.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, Ukraine protesters attacked riot police with sticks in Kiev and tried to overturn a bus blocking their path to parliament, as up to 100,000 massed in defiance of sweeping new laws aimed at stamping out anti-government demonstrations.
(Reuters, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, The UAE cabinet approved a draft law making it compulsory for Emirati men to serve in the military for up to two years.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 19, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Iran has been invited to attend a Jan 22 meeting of foreign ministers in the Swiss city of Montreux ahead of internationally brokered peace talks between Syria's warring factions. The UN invite sparked a boycott call from the opposition and President Bashar al-Assad ruled out a power-sharing deal.
(AP, 1/19/14)(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 19, Pope Francis' newly chosen Spanish cardinal, Fernando Sebastian Aguilar (84), described homosexuality as a "defect" that can be corrected with treatment, sparking condemnation from gay rights groups.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 19, In Yemen unidentified gunman shot and killed Police Director Abd el-Wali el-Turkmi in the southwest city of Taiz.
(AP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Nebraska there was an explosion at the Int’l. Nutrition building in Omaha. At least two people were killed and 10 others injured at the animal feed processing plant.
(SFC, 1/21/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 20, In southern Afghanistan 9 Taliban militants launched a suicide assault against a US base killing one NATO soldier.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, Canada’s PM Stephen Harper said the staunch Israeli ally would provide additional financial support for the West Bank, as he met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Central African Republic Catherine Samba-Panza, the mayor of Bangui, was elected interim president and tasked with restoring peace to the country torn by sectarian bloodshed.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, The EU foreign ministers decided to send up to 1,000 soldiers to help stabilize Central African Republic, deploying its first major army operation in six years.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, A small fishing boat crammed with 28 people entered Greece illegally from Turkey. The Greek Coast Guard said it was towing the boat to a nearby Greek island when it capsized. The mishap killed at least two and left 10 missing. Survivors later recounting in tears how they watched their children drown while coast guard officials looked on. Three Afghans who survived the sinking of a migrant boat later described how Greek authorities had tried to forcibly tow them back to Turkey.
(AP, 1/24/14)(Reuters, 1/24/14)(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 20, Law Wan-tung (44) of Hong Kong was arrested on suspicion of abusing her Indonesian maids as she tried to leave for Thailand. The case sparked widespread outrage and drawn fresh attention to the risks faced by the migrant community. Erwiana Sulistyaningsih (23), a maid who said she had been badly beaten by her employer, was recovering at a hospital in Sragen, central Java, after flying out from Hong Kong in early January.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)(SFC, 1/23/14, p.A2)(AP, 4/4/14)
2014 Jan 20, In India Arvind Kejriwal, New Delhi's chief minister, and his supporters launched a sit-in against the city police, creating traffic chaos and a standoff with hundreds of officers in the latest radical step by the anti-graft crusader who has shaken up a national election. Kejriwal called on the public to join him in a ten-day protest to demand the police be transferred from the Home Ministry to his control.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In India a woman (20) was assaulted by 13 men in Birbhum district in West Bengal. Police later said was gang-raped on the orders of a village court as punishment for having a relationship with a man from a different community. The village chief and all 13 men were soon arrested.
(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 20, Iran halted production of 20 percent enriched uranium, marking the entry into force of an interim deal with world powers on its disputed nuclear program. The United States eased some sanctions on Iran, pausing efforts to reduce Iranian crude oil exports, as part of a nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers that went into effect. The EU also agreed to suspend some economic sanctions against Iran as part of the ground-breaking nuclear deal.
(AFP, 1/20/14)(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, Iran rebuffed a precondition for taking part in Syria peace talks in Geneva this week, saying it could not accept a plan for a Syrian political transition agreed at talks in the Swiss city in 2012. In response UN leader Ban Ki-moon withdrew his surprise invitation to Iran, less than 24 hours after he announced it.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 20, In central Iraq a series of bombs killed 28 people, mostly in Baghdad, as security forces battled Sunni Muslim militants around the western cities of Falluja and Ramadi.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)(SFC, 1/21/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 20, Claudio Abbado (80), conductor, died in Bologna. He was a star in the great generation of Italian conductors who was revered by musicians in the world's leading orchestras for developing a strong rapport with them while still allowing them their independence.
(AP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, Lebanese medical and security sources said sectarian sniper fire in Tripoli has killed 5 people since Jan 18.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Nigeria Boko Haram suspects tracked a man to his house in Wulgo, killed him and injured another man who was hospitalized.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Pakistan a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near the country's main military headquarters in Rawalpindi, killing 13 people.
(AP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Romania a small British plane crashed on a mountain. All seven aboard initially survived but two people died while waiting for medical assistance. Hypothermia was among the causes of death.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 20, In South Korea the heads of three big credit card firms apologized and resigned over the largest-ever thefts of customer data.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.62)
2014 Jan 20, South Sudan's army said it has seized back full control of the strategic town of Malakal, the last major settlement under rebel control.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In Thailand anti-government protesters besieged government offices in a dozen southern provinces as part of their campaign to force PM Yingluck Shinawatra from power.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, Vietnam sentenced 30 drug smugglers to death in the communist country's largest ever narcotics case, involving scores of male and female defendants and nearly two tons of heroin.
(AFP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 20, In northern Yemen at least 12 people were killed overnight after Sunni Muslim tribesmen fought with a Shi'ite group which was trying to capture a mountain.
(Reuters, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Dublin, Ca., BART police officer Michael Maes accidentally shot and killed Sgt. Tom Smith (42), another BART officer, during a routine mission to gather evidence at an apartment. On May 30 Alameda County prosecutors said no charges would be filed against Maes. In 2016 BART settled a federal lawsuit with the Smith family for $3.1 million.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A1)(SFC, 5/31/14, p.A1)(SFC, 11/19/16, p.C1)
2014 Jan 21, In Indiana Cody Cousins (24) shot and stabbed to death Andrew Boldt (21). On Sep 19 Cousins was sentenced on to 65 years in prison for killing his fellow Purdue engineering senior whom he envied, in front of about a dozen students in a lab class.
(AP, 9/19/14)
2014 Jan 21, A snowstorm hit the mid-Atlantic and Northeast US. It stretched a thousand miles between Kentucky and Massachusetts. Manalapan, NJ, got 16 inches of snow.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 21, Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife were indicted on 14 counts of federal corruption charges. They were charged with accepting over $165,000 in gifts and loans from the CEO of a dietary supplements company.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A5)(SFC, 7/29/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 21, In Abu Dhabi a court jailed a group of 10 Emiratis and 20 Egyptians to terms ranging from three months to five years for forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Australia’s federal government granted an exemption from environmental laws to approve a Western Australian shark mitigation plan, which is aimed at reducing the risks to water users after six fatal attacks in the past two years.
(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Britain told Iran to stop supporting the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad militarily, urging it to back efforts to broker peace in Syria instead.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Central African Republic French intelligence services reported the discovery some 15 bodies in a new mass grave near Bangui.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, An official Chinese newspaper said China will base a 5,000-ton civilian patrol ship on Woody Island, which China calls Sansha city, on the Paracel Islands in the disputed South China Sea and begin regular patrols, a move likely to add fuel to territorial disputes with neighbors.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, China executed a man who held six women as sex slaves in an underground prison and killed two of them, in a crime which shocked the nation. Li Hao (36) was convicted of murder and rape in Luoyang Intermediate People's Court in the central province of Henan in 2012.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, France said it will create new outposts and broaden its military presence in Africa's turbulent Sahel region to better fight the terror threat from extremist groups like al-Qaida. Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France is moving toward a regional counterterrorism approach in former colonies like Chad, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security said an analysis of hijacked computer networks has turned up about 16 million compromised online accounts.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 21, In India police clashed with protesters led by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, the first violence during a two-day rally in the capital that has put a focus on the radical politics of the man shaking up a national election.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, An Indonesian court sentenced an Islamist militant to 7½ years in prison for masterminding a plot to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta.
(SFC, 1/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 21, Iraq's Shiite-led government said it has decided in principle to create three new provinces from contested parts of the country in an apparent attempt to address Sunni grievances and counter the expansion of the Kurdish self-rule region.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Iraqi forces pressed their attack on anti-government fighters holding parts of the restive city of Ramadi. Violence elsewhere killed 10 people. The UN warned of "an exponential increase in the number of displaced and stranded families", with more than 22,000 families having registered as internally displaced.
(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, It was reported that Israel's government has approved plans to build 381 new homes in a settlement near annexed east Jerusalem.
(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Fishermen in Japan began slaughtering dozens of bottlenose dolphins in Taiji, ignoring protesters’ calls to spare the animals and a rare public show of concern by the US government.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Kurds in northeast Syria, on the eve of peace talks in Switzerland, declared a provincial government in the area.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Lebanon a suicide bomber killed 4 people in a residential district of southern Beirut known for its support of the powerful Shi'ite Muslim military and political movement Hezbollah.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, The political arm of Libya's Muslim Brotherhood withdrew its ministers from the Cabinet of embattled PM Ali Zidan, after failing to secure enough support in the divided parliament for a no-confidence vote.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Nigeria suspected Islamist extremists attacked a farming settlement in northeast Borno state, killing 10 people and razing homes.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 21, Pakistani fighter jets and helicopters attacked suspected Taliban hideouts in a tribal area in North Waziristan killing up to 40 people. At least 28 people were killed when a bomb exploded near a bus carrying Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims to the city of Quetta.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 21, Gunmen in Karachi, Pakistan, attacked two teams of polio workers, killing 3 members of the teams and wounding a 4th before fleeing.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Emergency workers evacuated thousands of people across the southern Philippines, including many already made homeless by a typhoon in November, after three days of rain flooded towns and farmland.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Russia’s National Anti-Terror Committee said police have killed Eldar Magatov, a senior Islamist militant, in a shootout in the Dagestan region ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
(Reuters, 1/21/14)
2012 Jan 21, In Somalia gunmen kidnapped an American man in the northern town of Galkayo. Michael Scott Moore, freed on Sep 23, 2014, was kidnapped while researching a book on piracy. Bilal-Berjawi, a British-Lebanese commander of the al-Shabab militant group, was killed along with two others when a US drone missile struck the car they were traveling in outside Mogadishu. Another airstrike killed six people near the insurgent stronghold of Kismayo.
(AP, 1/21/12)(AP, 1/22/12)(AP, 9/24/14)
2014 Jan 21, In South Africa Petra Diamonds said a 29.6-carat blue diamond has been found at the Cullinan mine, source of some of the world's most famous diamonds.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 21, A report on Syria, commissioned by the government of Qatar, detailed photographic and documentary evidence of systematic torture and killing of some 11,000 detainees between march 2011 and August 2013.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.38)(http://tinyurl.com/qhbyqde)
2014 Jan 21, Thailand's government declared a 60-day state of emergency in Bangkok and surrounding areas to cope with protests that have stirred up violent attacks, adding to the country's monthslong sense of crisis.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Uganda said 9 of its soldiers have been killed and 12 others wounded during a month fighting in South Sudan, dismissing rebel claims to have killed scores.
(AFP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Ukraine top opposition leader Vitali Klitschko headed for talks with the Pres. Yanukovych after yet another night of violent street clashes between anti-government protesters and police.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, Vatican Monsignor Nunzio Scaran, already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy, was arrested in Salerno in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 21, In Yemen unidentified gunmen assassinated Ahmed Sharaf el-Din, a lawyer and the top envoy of a northern rebel movement in Sanaa. The son of powerful Islamist Al-Islah (Reform) party's secretary general was badly injured when his father's car exploded in Sanaa. In the north a day of clashes between Shiite rebels and gunmen from the powerful Hashid tribe left 20 people dead.
(AP, 1/21/14)(AFP, 1/21/14)(AFP, 1/22/14)(Econ, 1/25/14, p.39)
2014 Jan 22, The New York Yankees signed Japanese pitching ace Masahiro Tanaka to a $155 million contract.
(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 22, The Washington-based Int’l. Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) said it has obtained documents showing the identities of nearly 22,000 owners of companies and trusts in the British Virgin Islands, Samoa and other offshore centers. It said they include the brother-in-law of China’s Pres. Xi, former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son and son-in-law and relatives of other ruling party figures.
(SFC, 1/23/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 22, The northeastern United States dug out from a storm that dumped more than 15 inches of snow in some places with frigid, windy weather closing some schools and offices and delaying or canceling thousands of flights.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, California Governor Jerry Brown (75) took credit for his state's fiscal rebound in a state of the state address.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, Texas executed Edgar Tamayo Arias (46), a Mexican convicted of killing a policeman, despite a diplomatic outcry and pressure from the US federal government to further review his case.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 22, US hotel giant Marriott announced it had finalized a deal to buy the South Africa-based Protea group, Africa's largest hotel chain, for $186 million.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, TransCanada began delivering oil from Cushing, Oklahoma, to customers in Nederland, Texas, through the southern portion of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
(SFC, 1/23/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 22, Azerbaijan said it had repelled a cross-border raid by Armenian forces in the latest outbreak of violence over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In the Central African Republic the Red Cross said it has found 11 corpses, most burnt beyond recognition, dumped in Bangui. At least 10 people were killed in clashes between former Seleka fighters and civilians in Bangui. Hundreds of Christians went on a rampage in Bangui, looting and setting fire to Muslim-owned homes and businesses and threatening to go on a killing spree as the country prepared to inaugurate a new interim president.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)(AFP, 1/22/14)(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 22, The Chinese government condemned a report on the wealth of the country's elite being hidden in overseas tax havens as illogical and having ulterior motives, as the government blocked websites and censored mention of the story online.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In southern India forest officials in Tamil Nadu state shot dead a tiger suspected of killing three people, ending its three-week reign of terror which forced dozens of schools to close.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Indonesia Andrea Waldeck, British woman, was jailed for 14 years but escaped the death penalty after admitting that she smuggled crystal methamphetamine into Indonesia from China. she had confessed to taking the drugs through the airport in Surabaya.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Iraq several neighborhoods in south Fallujah were hit by shelling late today, with four people killed and 18 others wounded.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, An Israeli air strike killed 2 Palestinians including one militant in northern Gaza. Israel blamed one of them for firing rockets across the border during former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's funeral last week.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, Israel said it has arrested an Al-Qaeda-run militant cell in annexed east Jerusalem which was planning to bomb the US embassy.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, Israel moved forward with plans for 261 new homes in two settlements located deep in the occupied West Bank. The plans included 256 housing units in Nofei Prat settlement, between east Jerusalem and Jericho, and another five in the sprawling Ariel settlement in the north.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, Italian police seized 27 pizzerias, cafes and other eateries in the heart of Rome and elsewhere in a probe highlighting the seemingly legitimate business fronting for organized crime in places far from the mobsters' Naples base.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, The Latvian parliament approved the country's first woman prime minister, Laimdota Straujuma, who pledged to stick to the fiscal discipline of the previous cabinet and to push ahead with liberalizing the country's gas market.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Mali Issaka Sidibe, a high-ranking ruling party lawmaker and relative of the president, became the country’s second most powerful politician as he was elected to lead the nation's new parliament.
(AFP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In northern Nigeria thousands of protesters threw stones into the Shariah court in Bauchi city, urging the speedy convictions and executions of 11 men arrested for belonging to gay organizations. Suspected Islamist extremists attacked another farming settlement in northeast Borno state, killing another 8 people and razing homes.
(AP, 1/22/14)(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Pakistan gunmen opened fire on police escorting Spanish cyclist Javier Colorado through Baluchistan province, killing six officers and wounding the Spaniard. He was reported to be cycling around the world.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In northwest Pakistan a bomb rigged to a bicycle exploded next to a police patrol on its way to guard a polio vaccination team outside Peshawar. 6 officers were killed as well as a boy who was nearby.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Switzerland peace talks intended to carve a path out of Syria's civil war got off to a rocky start in Montreux as a bitter clash over President Bashar Assad's future threatened to collapse the negotiations even before they really begin. On Jan 24 the talks moved to Geneva.
(AP, 1/22/14)(Econ, 1/25/14, p.37)
2014 Jan 22, Syria hailed the reopening of Aleppo international airport after a year's closure as a military victory over rebels. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported clashes between government forces and opposition fighters in the suburbs of Damascus, Daraa in the south, Idlib and Aleppo in the north and the central province of Homs.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In northeast Thailand a leading pro-government activist was shot and wounded. A 60-day state of emergency began in Bangkok where protesters were trying to force PM Yingluck Shinawatra from power.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, A Ugandan court ordered the deportation of Bernard Randall (65), a British man, facing criminal charges related to images of him having sex with another man.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 22, In Ukraine Unity Day protests left 5 people dead. The bodies of 2 protesters were found near the site of clashes with police in Kiev. Prosecutors said they were shot with live ammunition, the first deaths after two months of largely peaceful protest. Some 25 people went missing. Yanukovich met opposition leaders in an attempt to defuse street violence in which 3 people were killed overnight.
(AP, 1/22/14)(Reuters, 1/22/14)(Econ, 1/25/14, p.41)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.20)
2014 Jan 23, In Oakland, Ca., Justice Toliver was shot and killed by her brother (14) with a hand gun following a quarrel over laundry. The boy fled the scene but surrendered after a few days. On Jan 30 he was charged in juvenile court with murder.
(SFC, 1/31/14, p.D3)
2014 Jan 23, A group of dead pilot whales, 16 females and 9 males, were spotted by boaters near Kice Island, Florida. Earlier this week, eight other whales were found dead after they swam into shallow waters near Fort Myers. Necropsies began the next day.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)(SFC, 1/25/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 23, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced a plan to ask Pres. Obama for 50,000 visas for immigrants willing to move to Detroit.
(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 23, NYC police arrested Vincent Asaro (78) and charged him with helping direct the Dec 11, 1978, Kennedy Airport robbery that netted almost $6 million in cash and jewelry. Asaro was named along with his son, both captains in the Bonanno crime family, and three other defendants in a wide-ranging indictment.
(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A22)
2014 Jan 23, Virginia's attorney general has concluded that the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. His office said he will no longer defend it in federal lawsuits challenging it.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Afghanistan a gunman on a motorcycle opened fire at a group of local cricket players, killing 5 of them during a game in eastern Laghman province. Police found the body of slain journalist Noor Ahmad Noori in southern Helmand province.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, The Algerian army killed 4 armed Islamists overnight in an ambush south of the capital.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Australian police revealed they had cracked a major global money-laundering ring with operatives in more than 20 countries and funds syphoned off to groups reported to include Hezbollah.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Australian police said an American man (58) has been charged with dealing with suspected proceeds of a crime after finding $5 million in cash in suitcases in a Sydney apartment.
(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 23, In Canada an early morning fire at a Quebec residence for elderly people killed at least 32 people. Eight of the 32 remained missing.
(AFP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/25/14)(Reuters, 1/26/14)(SSFC, 2/2/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 23, In China the parents of activist Xue Mingkai were detained in Qufu city, Shandong province. After being held for six days, Xue and his wife, Wang Shuqing, fled and sought protection at a local prosecutor's office but were caught and separated. Days later, Wang was informed by authorities that her husband was dead. Authorities said he had killed himself by jumping from the fourth floor of a prosecutor's building. Many people suspected murder.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Jan 23, Ecuadorean airline Tame suspended its once-daily flights to and from Venezuela until that country's cash-strapped government pays it $43 million owed for ticket sales.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Egypt clashes between rival students at a university in Alexandria killed at least one student. Masked gunmen riding on motorcycles opened fire at a police checkpoint in central Egypt, killing five policemen and wounding two.
(AFP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Ghana said it deported 4,700 illegal miners last year, most of them Chinese nationals.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani told the World Economic Forum in Davos that Tehran was ready to help create a new multilateral body tasked with stabilizing global energy supplies. Rouhani also called for free and fair elections in Syria, saying it would respect any outcome.
(AFP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Iraq hanged 11 people convicted of terrorist offences.
(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, A Kenyan court sentenced 24 Somalis to seven years each in prison for attempting to hijack an Iranian merchant vessel, FV Ariya, in the Gulf of Oman in October 2010.
(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Japanese fishermen in Taiji killed more than two dozen striped dolphins, as global outrage over the slaughter grew.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Kyrgyzstan 11 people, believed to be members of a militant group of ethnic Uighurs, were killed after illegally crossing the border from China.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Mexico Karen Rodríguez (20) was kidnapped in San Fernando. Her mother Miriam Rodríguez began tracking the people responsible for the kidnapping and murder of her daughter. In three years she captured nearly every living member of the crew that had abducted her daughter for ransom. On Mother’s Day, 2017, weeks after she had chased down one of her last targets, she was shot in front of her San Fernando home and killed.
(NY Times, 12/13/20)
2014 Jan 23, Dutch authorities said they have detained Jean Baptiste M. (54), a former Rwandan politician suspected of compiling death lists during the country's 1994 genocide, and would send him home for court hearings.
(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In northwest Pakistan a car bomb hauled into a car repair shop in Peshawar killing 6 people.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Pakistan Muhammad Asghar (69), a Briton with a history of mental illness from Edinburgh, was sentenced to death for blasphemy. His lawyers were barred from the courtroom partway through the trial. Asghar was arrested in 2010 after writing letters to a lawyer and politician claiming to be a prophet.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 23, Hamas accused Twitter of censorship as an account of its armed wing has been suspended by Twitter administrators.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Russia's Supreme Court ordered the release of Platon Lebedev (57), Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky's business partner, after a decade in jail, but refused to drop a tax claim that is keeping the former oil tycoon abroad.
(AP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In South Africa tens of thousands of platinum miners went on strike, demanding higher wages. Striking workers at the top three platinum producers agreed to take part in government-brokered talks aimed at ending the dispute and limiting economic damage.
(AP, 1/23/14)(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, South Sudan's government and rebels signed a peace deal in Ethiopia aimed at ending the month-old conflict as fighting continued in oil-rich Unity state and in Jonglei state.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 23, In central Turkey at least 21 people were killed when a bus tipped over on an icy road.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Tensions in Ukraine spread far from Kiev as hundreds of people in the city of Lviv stormed into the regional governor's office and forced him to write a letter of resignation. President Yanukovich called for an emergency session of parliament to end the crisis which has brought thousands of anti-government protesters on to the streets and caused violent clashes with police. PM Mykola Azarov accused opposition protesters of trying to stage a coup d'etat.
(AP, 1/23/14)(Reuters, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, Human Rights Watch hit out at the United Arab Emirates for preventing it from holding a news conference to release a report criticizing rights violations in the Gulf state.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 23, In Yemen 3 suspected al Qaeda militants were killed in Maarib province in what local officials and tribal sources said was a strike by a US drone.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In South Carolina Justin Singleton (19) was arrested soon after he killed student Brandon Robinson (20), a member of the school’s football team.
(CSM, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 24, Argentina said it is relaxing restrictions on the purchase of US dollars following a sharp, sudden slide in the value of the local peso.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Air Canada suspended ticket sales in Venezuela, adding to a rising number of airlines protesting a government devaluation of the local currency just for travelers.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In Central African Republic Dr. Joseph Kalite, a former government health minister who had supported last year's rebellion by Muslim fighters, was assassinated at the Central Mosque in Bangui.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Chinese police shot dead six people during a "terrorist" attack in the restive western region of Xinjiang and six more died when explosives they were carrying detonated.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 24, In CongoDRC an explosion at an arms depot killed over 20 people near the diamond-mining hub of Mbuji-Mayi.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 24, Leading Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer was arrested after meeting with European diplomats in Havana.
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 24, In Egypt a bomb planted on a road hit a convoy of security forces on a busy street in Cairo, killing one person in the fourth bombing in one day. A suicide car bomber blew himself up in the parking lot of a top security compound in central Cairo, killing at least four people.
(AP, 1/24/14)(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, President Francois Hollande spoke of "convergence" on international issues after talks with Pope Francis amid a swirling scandal over the French leader's love life and divisions in France over issues like abortion and euthanasia.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba named a new prime minister, Daniel Ona Ondo, following municipal and regional elections.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Iran's foreign minister, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, called for all "foreign elements" to leave Syria so its people can decide their future themselves.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In Iraq violence in parts of Anbar province held by anti-government fighters killed 3 people. A UN report said more than 140,000 Iraqis have fled parts of Anbar province over clashes between security forces and al-Qaida militants since its brutal 2006-08 sectarian conflict.
(AFP, 1/24/14)(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Israeli forces shot dead Bilal Samir Oweida (20) and wounded another man in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army said a group of Palestinians had entered "a prohibited area" in northern Gaza where they damaged the security fence, hurled rocks and rolled burning tires at IDF (Israel Defense Forces).
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In northern Mali a French counter-terrorism offensive ended with 11 Islamist militants killed and a French soldier wounded.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, North Korea proposed reunions of families separated since the Korean War six decades ago, continuing its latest campaign of reconciliation that included a call for South Korea and the United States to cancel joint military drills.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, In South Africa four police officers were arrested after the fatal shooting of a protester during a demonstration that turned violent on the outskirts of Johannesburg. A 28-year-old man was shot and killed earlier this week after protesters blocked roads with stones and burning tires in the Roodepoort area.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, The World Food Program said looters in South Sudan have stolen UN food aid that would have fed over 220,000 people for a month.
(AFP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, A Syrian activist group said 63 people have died since last June in the besieged Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp from a lack of food and medicine.
(AP, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, Direct talks in Geneva were scrapped between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the Western-backed opposition that wants to overthrow him. Barrel bomb attacks on Aleppo's outlying industrial city and the Sheikh Najjar districts killed 10 people,
(AP, 1/24/14)(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 24, Thailand's Constitutional Court opened the way to put off a general election the government has set for February 2, piling pressure on Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra who looks increasingly cornered by legal challenges to her grip on power.
(Reuters, 1/24/14)
2014 Jan 24, UAE President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (65) suffered a stroke. His condition after surgery was reported as stable.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Arizona’s Republican Party censured Sen. John McCain (77) citing his voting record as too liberal.
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.A7)
2014 Jan 25, In Maryland a shooter at the Mall in Columbia killed 2 young employees of the Zumiez skateboard shop and then took his own life. On Jan 26 police identified the shooter as Darion Marcus Aguilar (19) of College Park.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Utah some 4,000 protesters gathered in Salt lake City to protests against poor air quality.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.24)
2014 Jan 25, Michaels Stores said that it is investigating a potential security breach involving customers’ credit card information.
(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.A13)
2014 Jan 25, In Brazil at least 1,000 demonstrators protested in Sao Paulo against the World Cup, due to open on June 12, in a demonstration that devolved into violence late in the night.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, Central African Republic Pres. Catherine Samba-Panza’s office announced the appointment of Andre Nzapayeke, a former regional banking official, as the new prime minister.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, Chilean port workers negotiated a settlement with management and ended a more than three-week-old strike that had slowed copper, fruit and other shipments from the world's top copper producer.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Ecuador stressed it wanted the number of US military staff on its territory reduced, and warned it also would not allow US "espionage equipment."
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Egypt at least 49 people were killed during anti-government marches as thousands rallied in support of the army-led authorities on the third anniversary of the country's 2011. A helicopter crash in the Sinai Peninsula killed 5 Egyptian soldiers.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)(AFP, 1/25/14)(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Egypt Mahmoud Mohammed Ahmed (18), a high school student, was arrested at a checkpoint north of Cairo for wearing a T-shirt with a slogan against torture. He was released on March 25, 2016.
(AP, 3/24/16)
2014 Jan 25, French Pres. Francois Hollande announced his separation from first lady Valerie Trierweiler following a media storm over allegations he is having an affair with an actress nearly 20 years his junior.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, An Iranian embassy official who was kidnapped in Sanaa in July was found beheaded in Naarib province, central Yemen.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Iraq at least 17 people were killed in violence that included car bombs and a mortar attack on a Shi'ite Muslim village near Baquba.
(Reuters, 1/25/14)(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Ivory Coast an angry mob "ransacked" the headquarters of the country’s most prominent gay rights organization, following days of anti-gay protests in a country generally seen as moderate on the issue.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Libya kidnappers seized Egypt's cultural attache and three other embassy staff in Tripoli, a day after another of its diplomats was abducted.
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Madagascar a grenade blast left a toddler dead and over 50 wounded just hours after the inauguration of the island's new president.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 25, The Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country's largest Muslim rebel group, completed talks on a deal to end four decades of fighting.
(AP, 1/25/14)(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 25, Somalia's Shebab insurgents called for renewed attacks against foreign forces, after arch-enemy Ethiopia joined the African Union force battling the extremists.
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Residents in parts of Somalia under militant control said at least one cellular telephone company has shut down data services in response to a threat from al-Qaida-linked extremists.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, South Sudan's government said that rebel fighters had attacked government troops after the cease-fire had come into force. New satellite images showed that fighting has resulted in the intentional burning of some 750 homes near the town of Bentiu.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Syria's air force struck rebel-held areas near Damascus and Aleppo.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, In Switzerland the first face-to-face meeting between Syria's government and the opposition hoping to overthrow President Bashar Assad ended after barely a half-hour, with the two sides facing each other silently as a UN mediator laid groundwork for talks.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Ukraine anti-government protesters seized a regional administration building. Officials warned that police could storm the Kiev city hall to free two policemen allegedly captured by demonstrators.
(AP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 25, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych offered the prime minister's post to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, one of the opposition's most prominent leaders. Police clashed with protesters who blockaded a building in central Kiev and the fate of the government was uncertain after embattled Pres. Viktor Yanukovich offered opposition leaders key posts.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 25, Yemen's feuding factions wrapped up months of national dialogue aimed at drafting a new constitution and establishing a federal state in a country where southerners were clamoring for independence.
(AFP, 1/25/14)
2014 Jan 26, Daft Punk's infectiously catchy song "Get Lucky" won the Grammy Awards' record of the year.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, The cost of a US first-class stamp rose 3 cents to 49 cents.
(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 26, Charlie Shrem (b.1989), American entrepreneur and founding member of BitInstant, was arrested in NYC. He was accused of helping to supply bitcoins to users of online drug markets. In 2015 Shrem pleaded guilty to lesser charges and served a year in jail.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Shrem)(SSFC, 12/24/17, p.D5)
2014 Jan 26, Randolph L. Braham (91), a Romanian-born American professor and prominent Holocaust survivor and scholar, said he was handing back a 2011 Hungarian state award in protest at the government's "falsification of history."
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Ohio an apartment building fire killed two firefighters in Toledo. On Feb 3 building owner Ray Abou-Arab (61) was arraigned on charges of aggravated murder and arson.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 26, The Royal Caribbean cruise line ended a 10-day trip in the Caribbean early after hundreds of passengers and crew members on the Explorer of the Seas were sickened with a gastrointestinal illness consistent with norovirus. Health officials boarded the ship at St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.
(AP, 1/27/14)(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 26, In Afghanistan a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near an Afghan military bus in Kabul, killing 2 officers and 2 civilians.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In northern Australia a crocodile was suspected to have taken a boy (12) after attacking his friend as they swam in a water hole in at Mudginberri Billabong in World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, A shark was shot and killed in Western Australian under a new strategy to protect swimmers.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.35)
2014 Jan 26, Bahraini police firing teargas and birdshot clashed with stone-throwing protesters in a village west of the capital after the funeral of Fadhel Abbas (20) who died in custody. Abbas was detained on Jan 8 on suspicion of smuggling weapons and explosives and died late on Jan 25.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Central African Republic new PM Andre Nzapayeke said he will meet with all fighting factions to bring an end to atrocities throughout the country, as gunfire rang out in Bangui.
(AP, 1/26/14)(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, A Chinese court sentenced Xu Zhiyong, one of the country’s most prominent rights advocates, to four years in prison. He had campaigned for the rights of children from rural areas to be educated in cities and for officials to disclose their assets.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Cuban activists said dozens of dissidents have been detained in a "wave of political repression" ahead of a major international summit in Havana.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Egypt gunmen killed 3 soldiers in an attack on a bus in the Sinai Peninsula.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In France some 17,000 people marched through central Paris to criticize President Francois Hollande.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Germany’s ARD TV quoted Edward Snowden saying the US NSA does not limit its espionage to issues of national security and he cited German engineering firm, Siemens as one target.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, At least 21 people died after a boat carrying Indian tourists capsized off India's Andaman Islands. The boat carried no life jackets.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Iraq militants appeared to have captured 5-22 Iraqi soldiers near Fallujah. At least 13 people were killed elsewhere amid a nationwide surge in unrest.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, An Israeli court extended by two days the detention of two Palestinian men it suspects of planning to bomb the US Embassy in Tel Aviv under instructions from al-Qaida.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Israel said it will allow the entry of about 1,000 tons of cement and building materials to the Gaza Strip for storm damage restoration and other projects of UN agencies.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Italian police and campaigners said 13 Moroccan migrants held in a reception center in Rome for more than two months have sewed their mouths shut in protest at the length of their detention. They sewed their mouths shut the previous evening, repeating a protest they staged at the end of last year.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Kenya officials said poachers have slaughtered a rhino in the capital's Nairobi National Park, a brazen attack flouting tough new laws designed to stem a surge of such killings.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Nigeria suspected Islamic extremists used explosives to attack Kawuri village in the northeast, killing 52 people and razing more than 300 homes. Boko Haram gunmen fired on worshippers during a service at a Roman Catholic church in neighboring Adamawa state. At least 26 people were killed.
(AP, 1/27/14)(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 26, In northwest Pakistan a hand grenade killed six children who found it while playing in a field in Hangu.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In southern Somalia a US missile strike killed Ahmed Mohamed Amey, a chemicals expert also known as Isku Dhuuq. He was a senior al Shabaab commander who had masterminded suicide attacks by the al Qaeda-linked militant group.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 26, South Sudan's government and rebels traded accusations that each had breached a ceasefire deal by attacking the other, but insisted they were committed to ending weeks of brutal conflict.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Syrians on opposite sides of their country's civil war tried again to find common ground in Geneva. The UN mediator said the two sides have reached a deal to allow women and children to leave Homs, a city under government siege for more than a year.
(AP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In Thailand anti-government demonstrators swarmed dozens of polling stations to stop advance voting for next week's general elections. One protest leader was shot dead.
(AP, 1/26/14)(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, Thailand police detained 531 men, women and children in a raid at a camp near the town of Sadao in the southern province of Songkhla, on a well-established route for human smugglers near the border with Malaysia. It was the first raid on illegal Rohingya smuggling camps since January 9, 2013.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 26, Tunisian lawmakers voted on a new constitution, three years after its revolution, with the premier-designate to unveil his cabinet on a landmark day for the Arab Spring's birthplace.
(AFP, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 26, In eastern Yemen Lt. Colonel Ahmed Amir al-Mahthouthi, a senior officer in the investigative branch of state security, was shot outside his home in Hadramout.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Colorado a boy (16) at a suburban Denver high school set himself on fire in an apparent suicide attempt.
(SFC, 1/28/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 27, In western Colorado a helicopter, believed to be inspecting power lines, crashed near Silt killing 3 people on board.
(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 27, Pete Seeger (b.1919), legendary American banjo player and folksinger, died in NYC. His song “Turn! Turn! Turn!" was made famous by the Byrds in 1965. He also wrote “Where Have All the Flowers Gone."
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.A10)
2014 Jan 27, In Las Vegas the Prince and Princess pet store was torched. Firefighters rescued 27 puppies alive. Videos showed Gloria Eun Hye Lee, a US citizen originally from South Korea, and a man torching the store. Lee was arrested on Feb 7 and accomplice Kirk Bills was arrested in Indiana.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Jan 27, Google said that it had agreed to buy British artificial intelligence start-up company DeepMind. The company, co-founded Demis Hassabis, was purchased for $400 million.
(AFP, 1/27/14)(Econ, 6/25/16, SR p.4)
2014 Jan 27, In Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado succeeded Porfirio Lobo Sosa as president. During Mr. Lobo’s presidency the social security system was defrauded of $300 million. A small amount of money from firms linked to the scandal helped finance Mr. Hernandez’s campaign.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Orlando_Hern%C3%A1ndez)(Econ, 4/15/17, p.30)
2014 Jan 27, Afghan authorities said a border police officer has opened fire on fellow officers, killing 5 and wounding two at a checkpoint in Herat province. The US military said the Afghan government has ordered the release of 37 "dangerous" prisoners who it believes pose threats to the country and the region.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, A bus heading from Athens, Greece, to the Albanian capital of Tirana with 21 passengers on board, was attacked on a highway near the city of Tepelene. A passenger (25) died in the hospital from gunshot wounds. Police soon arrested 4 suspects, aged between 20 and 32, and said they were under the influence of marijuana.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 27, Cambodian riot police used smoke grenades and electric batons to disperse demonstrators in the capital demanding a government license for an independent television station.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Colombia a fire at a prison in Barranquilla killed at least 10 inmates.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Egypt the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces "unanimously delegated" army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (el Sissi) to run in presidential elections during an hours-long meeting. The announcement was made shortly after interim Pres. Adely Mansour promoted him to field marshal.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, In a coordinated swap, Egypt released a Libyan militia commander detained over suspected links to the Muslim Brotherhood while six abducted Egyptians, including two diplomats, were released in Libya.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, The EU announced the release of 140 million euros in aid to Guinea, its first development package to the West African nation after a five-year suspension.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, European news channel Euronews said it will launch Africa's first multi-language news channel in the middle of next year in partnership with the state television of the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville).
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, Hungary’s Pres. Janos Ader, on Holocaust Memorial Day, clearly stated that Hungarian officials had collaborated with the Nazis during WWII.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.44)
2014 Jan 27, In Iraq a suicide bomber killed 4 troops near Fallujah while attacks elsewhere in the country killed 4 people.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, An Israeli data protection expert said hackers earlier this month attacked 15 Israeli computers including one used by the defense ministry department dealing with civilians in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, Israeli troops shot and seriously wounded a Palestinian man (34) close to the Gaza side of the border. Soldiers opened fire after a blast which occurred as a military vehicle passed on the Israeli side of the border fence. Israeli authorities demolished four Palestinian homes in annexed east Jerusalem that had been built without construction permits.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, The World Bank warned Myanmar against corruption as it unveiled a $2-billion aid package designed to provide better health care and improve supplies of electricity.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Peru a long-contested expansion of the Camisea natural gas filed won regulatory approval, despite UN concerns that it could endanger Amazon tribes living in voluntary isolation in the area.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/pqw2xl2)
2014 Jan 27, Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny launched an interactive website painting a vivid picture of the suspected cost overruns and conflicts of interest at the Sochi Winter Olympics.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, South Africa’s Pres. Zuma signed a “DNA Act" to match more sexual offenders, including many who break the law more than once, with their crimes, exonerate the wrongly accused and crack cold cases.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Jan 27, UN aid chief Valerie Amos arrived in war-torn South Sudan amid a growing humanitarian crisis, with rebels and government accusing each other of breaking a ceasefire aimed at ending the conflict.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, In Geneva the first meeting meant to discuss the issue of a Syrian transitional government broke up less than an hour after it began following a tense session that one delegate described as "a dialogue of the deaf." UN envoy Brahimi broke up the meeting and was scheduled to meet with both sides separately later in the day.
(AP, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki and the head of the National Assembly signed a new constitution, enshrining one of its last steps toward full democracy after a 2011 uprising that inspired the Arab Spring.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, The Ukrainian government said in a statement it was issuing $2 billion in Eurobonds to Russia on the same terms as in December, bringing the total amount borrowed - over two years at an interest rate of 5 percent - to $5 billion.
(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 27, Ukraine's justice minister threatened to call for a state of emergency unless protesters leave her ministry building, which they occupied during the night. The body of a man (55) was found dead hanging from the framework of a huge artificial 'New Year tree' in central Kiev.
(AP, 1/27/14)(Reuters, 1/27/14)
2014 Jan 28, Pres. Obama made his State of the Union address saying would be a “year of action" and that if Congress wasn’t willing to work with him, he was prepared to act on his own.
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.A1)
2014 Jan 28, A report by the US Office of the Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said an estimated half of Afghan security forces remained illiterate despite a 3-year-old $200 million US program to bolster their literacy rates.
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 28, Officials said the cheating scandal inside the Air Force's nuclear missile corps is expanding, with the number of service members implicated by investigators now roughly double the 34 reported just a week ago.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, A rare blast of snow, sleet and ice hit the US South, prompting schools to close, airlines to cancel flights and emergency officials to warn of icy roads. Forecasters predicted 1 to 2 inches of snow in parts of middle and north Georgia including the Atlanta area, prompting dozens of school closings. In Mississippi 4 people were killed in a fire in a mobile home blamed on a faulty space heater.
(Reuters, 1/28/14)(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 28, Bolivia's government declared a national emergency to deal with flooding that has claimed at least 30 lives and forced some 21,000 families from their homes over the past two months.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Brazil a dump truck smashed into a pedestrian bridge on a busy highway in northern Rio de Janeiro, causing the walkway to collapse onto three cars and a motorcycle below. At least 4 people were killed.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Britain announced it would take in hundreds of vulnerable Syrian refugees, targeting those most traumatized by the 3-year civil war.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Debut author Nathan Filer won Britain's Costa Book Award for his novel "The Shock of the Fall", which draws on his experience as a mental health nurse.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Burundi's top lawyer, Isidore Rufyikiri, was sacked after criticizing the government and being accused of urging the people to rebel.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 28, Canada's BMO Financial Group said it will acquire UK-based financial manager F&C for 1.3 billion Canadian dollars (860 million euros).
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In China an Indian oil tanker being repaired at a shipyard at Haizhou Shipyard in the port city of Zhousha exploded and caught fire, killing 7 Chinese workers.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Cuba Latin American and Caribbean leaders (CELAC) opened a regional summit in Havana.
(AP, 1/28/14)(Econ, 2/1/14, p.28)
2014 Jan 28, A Cyprus Forestry Department official said illegal logging in the bailed-out island nation has picked up sharply as people turn to firewood to save on heating bills.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Egypt gunmen on a motorbike killed General Mohamed Saeed, head of the technical office of the minister of interior, outside his home in Cairo.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, European Union officials demanded Croatia slash its budget shortfall and reduce spending to bring the country's deficit back under the bloc's allowed ceiling.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Europe's top human rights court in Strasbourg, France, ruled that Ireland's government failed in its duty to protect children in the case of a woman sexually abused by a lay teacher at a state-backed Roman Catholic school in 1973. Louise O'Keeffe (48) said she was abused by her teacher during lessons in his classroom when she was 9 years old. She argued that the Irish state failed to put in place appropriate measures to stop "systematic abuse" at the Dunderrow National School.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, A French court barred the return to France of a Roma family including Leonarda Dibrani, the teenage girl whose arrest in front of her schoolmates and expulsion to Kosovo became a cause celebre.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, France's crackdown on Dieudonne M'bala M'bala intensified with police raiding premises linked to the controversial comic as part of a probe into suspected fraud.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Hong Kong culled around 20,000 chickens after finding the deadly H7N9 bird flu virus in poultry imported from mainland China. Fears over avian flu have grown following the deaths of two men from the H7N9 strain in Hong Kong since December.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Indonesia two landslides triggered by torrential rain killed at least 19 people and left 10 others missing on the main island of Java.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Iraq gun attacks north of Baghdad killed 7 members of the security forces.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, A Kenyan court ordered a Chinese man to pay $230,000 in fines or be jailed seven years for ivory smuggling in the first of what will likely be many cases as authorities implement a stringent new law to deter illegal trading in wildlife products.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Mexican officials said that they are launching a nationwide effort to fight kidnapping, a crime that has risen to epidemic levels across the country.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Nicaraguan lawmakers approved constitutional changes that would allow Pres. Daniel Ortega to be re-elected indefinitely, a move that his critics say is designed to keep the Sandinista leader in power for life.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Pakistan a senior official in Bannu said 23,000 refugees in North Waziristan had fled to the town fearing a major military operation by armed forces.
(Reuters, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, A Polish court convicted seven Poles for attacking Mexican cadets last year in a massive beach fight on the Baltic coast, and sent them to jail. Some 300 Poles had attacked 57 Mexican naval cadets who were on a training voyage aboard a sailing vessel docked in Gdynia.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, South Africa's main opposition Democratic Alliance party under Helen Zille merged with the smaller Agang group to jointly challenge the ruling ANC party. Mamphela Ramphele will stand as the presidential candidate of the new coalition.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, South African police shot dead two protestors in a northern village during a siege a day earlier of their station by an angry mob throwing stones and petrol bombs. The violence near Tzaneen was sparked by community anger over a recent killing in the area.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Sri Lanka thousands of protesters from opposition parties, human rights groups, trade unions and media groups marched in Colombo in a rare show of dissent against the government.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, In Sudan a Russian diplomat and his wife were stabbed in Khartoum by a man anguished by the death of his brother in violence-plagued Central African Republic.
(AFP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Togo police said they have arrested 3 men after discovering nearly two tons of ivory in a container marked for shipping to Vietnam.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Turkey's central bank hiked all of its key interest rates in dramatic fashion at an emergency midnight policy meeting, ignoring opposition from PM Tayyip Erdogan as it battles to defend the country's crumbling lira currency. The key rate rose from 4.5% to 10%.
(Reuters, 1/28/14)(Econ, 2/1/14, p.59)
2014 Jan 28, Ukraine PM Mykola Azarov resigned. Pres. Yanukovych accepted Azarov’s resignation but asked him to stay on in an acting role until a new government is formed. Parliament repealed anti-protest laws that had set off violent clashes between protesters and police.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, The Vatican library and four Japanese historical institutes agreed to inventory, catalogue and digitize 10,000 documents from a lost Japanese archive detailing the persecution of Christians in Japan in the 17th-19th centuries.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 28, Venezuelan journalists and journalism students protested on one of Caracas' avenues to demand that the government auction off dollars to allow newspapers to buy newsprint after nine regional dailies shut down and some of the main media chains are experiencing difficulties.
(AP, 1/28/14)
2014 Jan 29, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that North Korea has expanded the size of its uranium enrichment facility at its Nyongbyon nuclear complex and restarted a plutonium reactor that was shut down in 2007.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, A rare winter storm gripped the US South, killing five people in Alabama, stranding children overnight at their schools, gnarling traffic across many states and canceling flights at the world's busiest airport.
(Reuters, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, A California school teacher was arrested as investigators found as many as 350 living and dead pythons stacked inside the Santa Ana home of William Buchman.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 29, California state and federal authorities arrested 11 people in the Modesto area in a large drug trafficking operation.
(SFC, 1/31/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 29, In San Francisco Michael Kwong (42) was cited for being in violation of a 2011 state ban on shark fins. Authorities seized 2,138 pounds of shark for sale at his Kwong Yip Inc. business.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.C2)
2014 Jan 29, Google said it is ridding itself of a financial headache by selling Motorola Mobility's smartphone business to Lenovo for $2.9 billion. The deal came less than two years after Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.4 billion in the biggest acquisition of Google's 15-year history.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 29, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber killed two Afghan soldiers in a market in Ghazni. 15 Taliban fighters were killed in an operation conducted by the Afghan Security Forces in Ghazni's Andar district.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In Brazil an anti-corruption law went into effect. It made companies liable for bribes paid by their employees and for acts of corruption against domestic and foreign public officials.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, A cold spell and snowstorms was sweeping across parts of central and eastern Europe, disrupting power supplies, travel and schools. Bulgaria reported 4 deaths in recent days due to the weather.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, Czech President Milos Zeman swore in a new government, ending seven months of political instability.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, Egypt's chief prosecutor referred 20 journalists from the Al-Jazeera TV network, including four foreigners, to trial on charges of allegedly joining or assisting a terrorist group and spreading false news that endangers national security.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In France Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery and Real Madrid forward Karim Benzema were acquitted on charges of soliciting an underage prostitute, ending a case that has lasted more than three years and tarnished both players' reputation.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 29, Israeli soldiers north of Ramalla shot dead Mohammad Mubara (19), a Palestinian from the Jalazun refugee camp. Eye-witnesses said Mubarak was not armed, and had been harassed by soldiers who made him remove his clothes.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In Pakistan three bomb blasts including a suicide attack targeting security forces killed at least 4 people in Karachi. PM Nawaz Sharif dismissed speculation he would launch an offensive against the Taliban and called on militants to observe a ceasefire.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In the Philippines a 2-day operation left as least 37 Islamic fighters dead. The Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement opposed peace talks and had staged attacks in Maguindanao province.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 29, Saudi health authorities announced a new MERS death, bringing to 59 the number of people who have died from the coronavirus in the country with the most fatalities.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, In Somalia African Union forces heralded a push into the heartland of militants in south-center Somalia.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.46)
2014 Jan 29, South Africa's Reserve Bank announced a shock rise of half a percentage point in its main interest rate, amid sustained pressure on the rand and rising inflation.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, South Sudan released to Kenya seven of the 11 key leaders held after an alleged coup bid last month, as Nairobi accepted to host the group.
(AFP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, Int’l. charity Save the Children said a third of the children in Spain are at the risk of poverty or social exclusion due to ongoing austerity measures.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 29, Syrian negotiators in Geneva discussed the establishment of a transitional government body for the first time.
(AP, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 29, Tunisia's new technocratic government under PM Mehdi Jomaa (51) was sworn in.
(AFP, 1/29/14)(Econ, 1/18/14, p.49)
2014 Jan 29, Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Iran to bolster trade and energy relations.
(Reuters, 1/29/14)
2014 Jan 30, Royal Dutch Shell said it will suspend drilling in offshore Alaska after a US court decision and as the oil major streamlines operations following a slump in annual profits.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Napa, Ca., Kayleigh Slusher (3) died. Her body was found in her bed on Feb 1. On Feb 4 her mother Sara Kreuger (23) and boyfriend Ryan Scott Warner (26) were charged with the child’s murder. In May 2017, separate juries found Ryan Warner and Sara Krueger guilty of first-degree murder. In 2019 the city of Napa and Napa County settled a suit in the case agreeing to pay $2.5 million to Kayleigh's father and his parents.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.E1)(http://tinyurl.com/y8ssbr4n)(SFC, 1/3/19, p.C1)
2014 Jan 30, In western Kentucky 8 children and their mother, LaRae Watson (35), were killed in a house fire.
(SFC, 1/31/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 30, In Utah Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui (27) shot and killed Sheriff’s Sgt. Cory Wride following a 50-mile chase near Eagle Mountain. A 2nd deputy was wounded. Garcia was also wounded and died the next day. Garcia’s girlfriend Meagan Grunwald (17) survived the shootout and faced nearly a dozen charges in the crime rampage. In April she pleaded innocent to all charges. On May 9, 2015, Grunwald was convicted and faced up to life in prison.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A6)(SFC, 5/13/14, p.A5)(AP, 5/9/15)
2014 Jan 30, A Bangladesh court sentenced Motiur Rahman Nizami (70), leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, and 13 others to death over a huge 2004 arms smuggling racket, sparking fears of new political unrest.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Leaders of the 54-member African Union met in Ethiopia for a two-day summit with the conflict in the Central African Republic and South Sudan dominating the agenda.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, England-based Oxfam confirmed accepting US actress Scarlett Johansson's decision to step down, saying her promotion of Israeli drinks firm SodaStream, which has a factory in a settlement east of Jerusalem, was "incompatible" with her role at the international aid agency.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, A small socialist party quit Denmark's coalition government amid discord over plans to sell a stake in state-controlled Dong Energy to Goldman Sachs and other investors.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Egyptian security forces arrested 11 Muslim Brotherhood members accused of running Facebook pages inciting violence against the police. A government air raid in the Sinai Peninsula hit militants linked to the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. 7 militants were reported killed.
(AP, 1/30/14)(AFP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, In France about 20 percent of flights in and out of Paris' airports were canceled because air traffic controllers are on strike over plans to combine European air space. Controllers in several other European countries also plan work stoppages.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Greek police detained dozens of people during a protest at the merchant marine minister's office over the deaths of immigrants whose boat sank as it was being towed by the Coast Guard.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Iraq at least 6 gunmen burst into the state-run Company for Transportation ministry building in Baghdad and killed at least 2 people. Police shot and killed 4 of the militants while two others blew themselves up. Officials blamed the Sunni Muslim ISIL (ISIS) rebels. Attacks across the city left 11 dead.
(Reuters, 1/30/14)(SFC, 1/31/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 30, In Italy Amanda Knox (26) and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted a 2nd time for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher (21) in 2007 while the two were students together in the Italian university town of Perugia. Neither her 28½-year sentence nor the 25-year prison term handed to Sollecito will have to be served pending further appeals.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Japan about 1,400 people filed a joint lawsuit against three companies that manufactured reactors at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, saying they should be financially liable for damage caused by their 2011 meltdowns.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Nature published two papers by a team led by Haruko Obokata of the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Japan. The team claimed to have found a simple way to reprogram ordinary mouse cells, persuading them to transform themselves into pluripotent cells.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.79)
2014 Jan 30, In Libya gunmen kidnapped the son of the army's special forces commander, the latest high-profile abduction in the eastern city of Benghazi where the military has been battling Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Panama’s judicial authorities ordered the release of 32 of 35 crew members of a North Korean ship detained last July for carrying hidden arms from Cuba. The Chon Chon Gang was carrying Cuban fighter jects and missiles. Owners this month agreed to pay a $670,000 fine.
(SFC, 1/31/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 30, In the Philippines nearly 200 inmates complaining of hunger and squalid conditions escaped from a provincial jail in an eastern province that was devastated by a monster storm in November. Authorities recaptured 148 of the 182 escapees hours after they stormed out of the Leyte provincial jail in Palo town.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Romania’s National Center of Cinematography viewed Danish director Lars von Trier's movie "Nymphomaniac II" for a second time and decided to lift the ban it had imposed the day before.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee identified the Dec 29 Volgograd bombers as Asker Samedov and Suleiman Magomedov and called them members of the "Buinaksk Terrorist Group." It also said two suspected accomplices have been arrested in Dagestan province.
(Reuters, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Syria at least 11 people, including three children, were killed by explosive-packed barrels dropped from government army helicopters over the town of Daraya.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Tunisia's central bank expressed "optimism" after the IMF released a delayed $506 million loan to support the fragile economy following major steps this week to end months of political turmoil.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Turkey hundreds of police were transferred from their posts in Ankara and Izmir, and dozens more were affected in Istanbul and the southeastern city of Gaziantep. Altogether, more than 5,000 police officers have been dismissed or transferred since the graft inquiry became public on December 17 with the arrest of businessmen close to PM Tayyip Erdogan and three cabinet ministers' sons.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, Uganda's government said it is planning to double expenditure on anti-retroviral drugs in an effort to reverse a worsening trend in HIV infections.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, Ukraine's embattled President Viktor Yanukovych took sick leave, leaving it unclear how involved he may be in efforts to resolve the country's political crisis in which protesters are calling for his resignation.
(AP, 1/30/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Ukraine Dmytro Bulatov (35) a member of Automaidan, a group of car owners that has taken part in the protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, was discovered outside Kiev. His face and clothes were covered in clotted blood, his hands were swollen and bore the marks of nails. He had gone missing on Jan 22.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 30, A Yemeni cargo ship ran aground and sank off the coast of Yemen killing all 12 crew.
(Reuters, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, Former basketball star Dennis Rodman said he was willing to trade places with Kenneth Bae, an American missionary imprisoned in North Korea, the next time he visits his friend, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, A US federal judge gave Hosam Amara, a former Agriprocessors Inc. manager, a 41-month prison term for exploiting immigrant workers at a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. 389 workers were arrested in a May, 2008, raid at the plant.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 31, A man shot two students at Michigan State Univ. in East Lansing. Dominique Nolff was pronounced dead the next morning.
(SFC, 2/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 31, The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena, Montana, filed for bankruptcy protection in advance of proposed settlements for two lawsuits that claim clergy members sexually abused 362 people over decades and the church covered it up.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, Christopher Jones, former actor and film star, died in Orange Ct., Ca. His films included Three in the Attic" (1968), “Wild in the Streets" (1968), “The Looking Glass War" (1969) and “Ryan’s Daughter" (1970).
(SFC, 2/10/14, p.C6)
2014 Jan 31, In Afghanistan the Taliban attacked three police checkpoints overnight in the southern province of Helmand, killing one officer before police repelled the attackers. 4 policemen were killed when a roadside bomb explosion hit a police vehicle in Kandahar province.
(AP, 1/31/14)(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, In Australia a government agency approved a plan to dump sediment within the area of the Great Barrier Marine Park in an expansion project of the Abbot Point coal port in northern Queensland.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 31, Red Cross officials warned that Central African Republic's capital of Bangui is experiencing "unprecedented levels of violence" with at least 30 people killed in the last three days.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, China celebrated Lunar New Year, the year of the horse, a celebration also known as the Spring Festival.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.36)
2014 Jan 31, Activists from around China began arriving at the eastern town of Qufu during the Chinese New Year holiday to demand an investigation into the death of a fellow activist's father at a government building on Jan 29.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Jan 31, Egyptian military aircraft struck suspected positions of al-Qaida-inspired fighters overnight in villages of the Sinai Peninsula, killing 13 people.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancso (b.1921), winner of the best director award at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, died. Jancso won his Cannes award for "Red Psalm," about a 19th-century peasant revolt.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, In India Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal named a string of high-ranking Indian politicians he described as corrupt and said his anti-graft Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) would target them in an upcoming general election.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, In Iraq a suicide car bomb killed 5 soldiers and destroyed a bridge in Hit, Anbar province.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 31, In Libya Abdel Fatah Al Barasi, a retired police colonel, died after being shot in the head while in his car in the eastern city of Benghazi. Salah Abd Al Razak and Zakaria Abdullah Al Darsi, both sons of colonels, were also shot and killed in the street by assailants.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, Humanitarian groups warned that more than 800,000 Malians are desperate for food while another three million risk going without meals as the country struggles to emerge from months of armed conflict.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, In Nigeria gunmen ransacked the mainly Christian village of Sabon Garin Yamdula in Adamawa state, killing a pastor before vigilante youths firing guns set them to flight and soldiers later deployed. A bus set off an improved explosive device on the highway through nearby Kuthra village, Borno state, killing 7 passengers.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, Philippine officials said 3 child soldiers recruited by hardline Muslim rebels were among 53 people killed in a five-day military offensive in the restive south.
(AFP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, In Senegal a judge sentenced two men to six months' jail in a rare conviction of a gay couple on criminal charges.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, In northern Serbia strong winds created meters-high snow drifts, trapping up to 60 people in cars and buses.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, The Syrian Observatory for Human Right said fighting in Syria has killed nearly 1,900 people, including at least 430 civilians, during the week of UN-hosted peace talks in Switzerland. Negotiations in Geneva wrapped up and were likely to resume from February 10.
(AP, 1/31/14)(AFP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, The UN distributed food in the Syrian capital's besieged Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp for a second day in a bid to help tens of thousands of trapped civilians. Government shelling killed at least 16 people in a rebel-held area of the northern city of Aleppo.
(AFP, 1/31/14)(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, A Thai court ordered more than $1.4 million in assets seized from a former top civil servant whose wealth was revealed when burglars robbed his house. The Civil Court said former Transport Ministry Permanent Secretary Supoj Saplom could not prove his wealth was honestly earned.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan 31, Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych signed a measure offering amnesty to those arrested in two months of protests, but only if demonstrators vacate most of the buildings they occupied, and repealed anti-protest legislation.
(AP, 1/31/14)(Reuters, 2/1/14)
2014 Jan 31, In southern Yemen suspected al-Qaida militants launched a surprise attack on an army checkpoint in Shibam, Hadramawt province, killing 15 soldiers and wounding five others.
(AP, 1/31/14)
2014 Jan, Chicago endured a cold snap. Temperatures fell to -27°C, the lowest since 1884.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.68)
2014 Jan, Jaime Garcia Covarrubias, a former member of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s secret police, was ordered to remain in Chile while an inquiry continued into his alleged role in the deaths of 7 people in Temuco weeks after the US-backed Pinochet coup on Sept. 11, 1973. He had taught at the US National Defense Univ. in Washington, DC, for 13 years.
(http://tinyurl.com/ka5az7g)(SFC, 3/13/15, p.A2)
2014 Jan, Colombia’s government began exploratory talks with the rebel National Liberation Army.
(SFC, 6/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan, Colombia halted coal exports from a port operated by Drummond, an American miner. Environmentalists in 2013 had photographed an incident in 2013 in which 500 tons of coal were dumped into the Bay of Santa Maria to stop a barge from sinking. Drummond operations generated $66 million a month in royalties and taxes to the government. Exports were resumed in March, 2014.
(Econ, 3/15/14, p.61)
2014 Jan, German officials seized a box packed with 14 condoms filled with cocaine from South America. The 340 grams of cocaine, valued at 40,000 euros ($55,200), was seized at the international airport in Leipzig and was addressed to the main postal center at the Vatican.
(AFP, 3/23/14)
2014 Jan, In Indonesia construction began on the Pertamina Energy Tower, a 99-story, 530 metres (1,740 ft) skyscraper in Jakarta. Designed and planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) it will be the tallest building in Indonesia upon completion in 2020.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pertamina_Energy_Tower)
2014 Jan, Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe visited the Ivory Coast, Mozambique and Ethiopia to counter China’s success in building diplomatic support and winning access to raw materials.
(Econ, 1/25/14, p.34)
2014 Feb 1, In Afghanistan an insurgent ambush killed 4 soldiers and wounded another four in an attack on an Afghan National Army foot patrol along the main highway in Farah province. Gunmen shot dead two members of former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah's team in Herat, dealing an early blow to hopes of a peaceful presidential campaign.
(AP, 2/1/14)(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, Austrian-born actor Maximilian Schell (b.1930), a fugitive from Adolf Hitler who became a Hollywood favorite and won an Oscar for his role as a defense attorney in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961), died overnight in Innsbruck.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung volcano, that has been rumbling for months, unleased a major eruption killing at least 15 people just a day after authorities allowed thousands of villagers who had been evacuated to return to its slopes.
(AP, 2/1/14)(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Lebanon a car bomb blew up near a gas station in the Shiite town of Hermel in the northeast, killing at least 3 people.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Libya over 54 detainees escaped from a prison in Tripoli. Officials said the prison was short five guards at the time of the breakout.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, In the southern Philippines a homemade bomb, likely set off by Muslim rebels, wounded 12 people, including six soldiers and two television journalists.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, In South Africa Duduzane Zuma (29), the son of President Jacob Zuma, crashed his Porsche into a minibus taxi just before midnight. Zimbabwean national Phumzile Dube (30) was killed. Police later confirmed an investigation of manslaughter against Duduzane.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 1, South Sudan government forces and allied militias reportedly attacked northern Leer town and surrounding villages in Unity state, killing an unknown number of people and destroying property. Rebels' defensive positions in Upper Nile state also came under attack.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Spain thousands of people marched in Madrid to protest against a government plan to limit abortions that has caused unusually open divisions in the ruling conservative People's Party.
(Reuters, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, Sudan’s Secretary of the National Council for Press and Publications Obeid Murawah told the Sudanese state news agency that all restrictions on the opposition "The People's Opinion" daily had been lifted and that the paper could resume printing after completing the appropriate procedures. Three other newspapers remained banned.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, Sudan suspended activities of the international Red Cross because it violated guidelines for working in the war-torn country.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Syria at least 9 people were killed when Syrian regime helicopters dropped explosive-filled barrels on two neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo. At least 7 people killed in a double car bombing carried out by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targeting a rebel headquarters in Aleppo.
(AFP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Thailand gunfire rang out across an intersection in Bangkok for more than an hour as government supporters clashed with protesters trying to derail tense nationwide elections before the vote begins.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov said in a resolution published in the official government newspaper that each person would still be allowed up to 50 cubic meters of gas for free, but anything over that amount would cost $7 per thousand cubic meters.
(AP, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 1, In Yemen a battle, that began a day earlier, between Shiite and Sunni tribesman over land in the northwest left more than 65 dead. Armed tribesmen bombed Yemen's main oil pipeline, halting crude flow to the country's main export terminal less than a month after it was repaired.
(AP, 2/1/14)(Reuters, 2/1/14)
2014 Feb 2, The Seattle Seahawks defeated the Denver Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII played in New Jersey.
(SFC, 2/3/14, p.B1)
2014 Feb 2, In Florida Doreen Landstra (79) backed her SUV into a group of people in Bradenton killing 3 with 5 others hospitalized.
(SFC, 2/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 2, In Illinois Michael Worsham (43) was found dead in his house after he killed his wife (42), son (17) and daughter (15) in Robbins, a suburb of Chicago.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 2, Philip Seymour Hoffman (46), who won the Oscar for best actor in 2006 as writer Truman Capote, was found dead in his apartment in NYC with what law enforcement officials said was a needle in his arm. His films included “Scent of a Woman" (1992), “Boogie Nights" (1997), "The Big Lebowski" (1997), “Along Came Polly" (2004), “Doubt" (2008) and “Synecdoche, New York" (2008).
(AP, 2/2/14)(Econ, 2/8/14, p.86)
2014 Feb 2, In North Carolina a leaking pipe dumped 82,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River in Eden. A permanent plug was installed and tested on Feb 8.
(SFC, 2/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 2, Tens of thousands of people are without electricity in Austria, Croatia and Slovenia after icy rain and sleet caused major disruptions. Hundreds of motorists were evacuated overnight from their vehicles in Serbia, where massive snow drifts have caused widespread travel chaos.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In the Central African Republic witnesses said international forces have retaken Sibut, a strategic town occupied for days by Muslim Seleka fighters.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Costa Rican held presidential elections. None of four candidates had a clear lead in the polls.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, El Salvador held presidential elections. With 58% of the votes counted VP Salvador Sanchez had a 49% lead over San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano of ARENA with nearly 39%. A 2nd round was scheduled for March 9.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9bfgfxl)(Reuters, 2/2/14)(SFC, 2/3/14, p.A3)
2014 Feb 2, Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Paris and Lyon in a renewed protest against France's legalization of gay marriage.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In France a video, posted on Facebook, was filmed in the southeastern town of Fontaine showing two boys pushing an 18-year-old mentally-disabled man in a park, making him fall and shouting at him before shoving him into a stream, from which the bewildered-looking victim emerges and walks away. Over the next two days four boys were detained over the assault and one (12) was released.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 2, In Germany Frankfurt’s 116-meter (380-foot) University Tower, built in 1972, was brought down with explosives in one of the biggest such operations in Europe.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, German conductor Gerd Albrecht (78) died in Berlin. He had led orchestras in the Czech Republic, Japan and Denmark and worked to bring music to children.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 2, Iraqi government forces pressed their assault on militant strongholds in Anbar province as attacks elsewhere killed 13 people.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In Kenya gunfire erupted in and around a mosque in the port city of Mombasa following a raid by armed police who had received a tip-off that Muslim youths were being radicalized and trained for militant attacks. At least one officer and a young man were killed.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Mauritania's PM Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf and his cabinet resigned, a move that had been expected after the ruling party scored a sweeping victory in legislative and local elections last year.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, The Pakistani Taliban said in a statement that it wants five well-known political and religious figures including ex-cricketer Imran Khan to represent them in peace talks with the government.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In the Philippines 5 people were injured when motorcycle-riding men hurled a grenade into a church in Zamboanga, a city known for Muslim rebel activity.
(AFP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In Russia several thousand protesters marched through central Moscow to call for the release of 20 people who were arrested after clashes between police and demonstrators in May 2012.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Saudi Arabia put into effect jail terms of up to 20 years for belonging to "terrorist groups" and fighting abroad, as it struggles to deter Islamist Saudis from becoming jihadists.
(AFP, 2/3/14)(SFC, 2/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 2, In Spain several thousand people marched from a Coca-Cola bottling plant in a southwestern suburb to downtown Madrid to protest the company's plan to close four plants in Spain and lay off 1,253 workers.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Syrian military helicopters dropped more improvised "barrel bombs" on the northern city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said, bringing the death toll to at least 83 people in the latest episode of a campaign many consider a war crime. A twin car bombing killed a senior leader in an Islamic brigade opposed to al-Qaida near Aleppo.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, In northern Syria ISIL fighters freed more than 400 people from a prison, who had been held by the rival Islamist Liwa al-Tawhid unit. In the eastern province of Deir al-Zor ISIL seized the Koniko gas field from the Nusra Front and other Islamist rebels who had controlled it for several weeks after wresting it from tribal gunmen.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 2, Thailand held nationwide elections without bloodshed despite widespread fears of violence. Although balloting was largely peaceful, protesters forced thousands of polling booths to close in Bangkok and the south, disenfranchising millions of registered voters.
(AP, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Yemen tribal sources said Shi'ite rebels have overrun strongholds of a rival Sunni tribal group in fighting that has killed at least 40 people in the north in the last two days.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 2, Yemeni tribesmen said they had kidnapped a German man to press their government to free jailed relatives.
(Reuters, 2/2/14)
2014 Feb 3, Idaho police arrested dozens of gay rights activists as they pressed for antidiscrimination protections and blocked entrances to the state Senate chambers in Boise.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 3, St. Louis-based Post Holdings Inc. said it is buying the PowerBar and Musashi brands from Nestle SA, further diversifying its business by expanding into the active nutrition category. Musashi is a leading sports nutrition brand in Australia.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, CAR priest Cassien Kamatari that 75 Christians have been killed during fighting over the last five days in the town of Boda.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Costa Rica with 76% of the ballots counted, Centrist Luis Guillermos -- a historian by training and candidate for the Citizen Acton Party (PAC) -- won 30.8% of the vote, narrowly ahead of Johnny Araya from the ruling right-wing National Liberation Party (PLN), who had 29.6%. Solis will now face a ruling party candidate in a run-off vote in April.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Egyptian troops backed by helicopters raided suspected militants' hideouts in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, killing at least 20 and wounding 25.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, An official EU report said corruption affects all member countries of the European Union and costs the bloc's economies around 120 billion euros ($162.19 billion) a year.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala was banned from entering Britain after he reportedly planned to visit to support Nicolas Anelka over the footballer's use of the "quenelle" gesture. The "quenelle" is Dieudonne's trademark stiff-armed gesture that critics say is a disguised Nazi salute but that he defends as a generic "up yours" to the French establishment.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Germany a group of computer hackers and human rights campaigners announced that they are suing their government for allegedly breaking the law by aiding foreign spies.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung shot hot ash and rocks high into the air again, halting a search for any more victims from its Feb 1 eruption.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Iran’s state news said a first tranche of $550 million in sanctions relief agreed to under an interim nuclear deal has been paid into an Iranian Central Bank account in Switzerland.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Iraqi army troops and allied tribesmen killed 57 ISIL fighters in Anbar province. A series of attacks in and around Baghdad, including a spate of car bombings, killed 17 people.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Haaretz newspaper said Israel has offered Turkey $20 million in compensation to the families of those killed and wounded in its botched 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Kenyan police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse Muslim youths rioting for a second day in protest against a raid on a mosque used by firebrand preachers in the port city of Mombasa.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Lebanon a suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt inside a public minibus in Choueifa, home to a mixed Christian and Druze population, killing at least one person.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Libyan PM Ali Zeidan said he has ordered the army to lift the blockade imposed by protesters on the main oil terminals in the east of the country.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Macedonia's parliament adopted a bill imposing chemical castration on repeat offenders convicted of sexually abusing children. On Feb 5 the country's leading child protection group said that the law is still too lenient.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 3, A Palestinian official accused Jewish settlers in the West Bank of attacking olive groves belonging to Palestinians and uprooting some 1,700 seedlings.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Peruvian officials said more than 400 dead dolphins were found last month on its northern Pacific coast.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 3, In Russia a Moscow high-school student shot a teacher and a police officer dead and held more than 20 other students hostage in a classroom in a possible revenge attack. The student was disarmed and detained less than two hours after the shooting following negotiations aided by his father.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, A pest control company which has been killing stray dogs in Sochi for years said that it has a contract to exterminate more of the animals throughout the Olympics.
(AP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah issued a royal decree that punishes citizens who fight in conflicts outside the kingdom with prison sentences ranging from 3 to 20 years.
(SFC, 2/4/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 3, Al Qaeda's general command said it had no links with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in an apparent attempt to reassert its authority over fragmented Islamist fighters in Syria's civil war.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Tunisia a gun battle began after police raided a house in Tunis where weapons, explosives and suicide bomb belts were found. By the next day 7 Islamist militants and a policeman were killed. The dead included Kamel Ghadghadi, a senior member of the banned Islamist militant group Ansar al-Shariah.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A3)
2014 Feb 3, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich returned to his desk after four days of sick leave, while the political opposition pressed for further concessions to end more than two months of street protests.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, The UN launched a bid to raise $2.0 billion (1.48 billion euros) from international donors in 2014 to help more than 20 million people threatened by famine in Africa's Sahel region.
(AFP, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 3, In Yemen gunmen abducted a Westerner identified by a police source as a British oil worker in Sanaa.
(Reuters, 2/3/14)
2014 Feb 4, In NYC four people were arrested in lower Manhattan with more than 350 bags of heroin as part of an investigation into the overdose death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 4, Microsoft announced that Satya Nadella will replace Steve Ballmer as CEO. John Thompson (64) will replace Bill Gates as chairman.
(AP, 2/4/14)(SFC, 2/5/14, p.C3)
2014 Feb 4, The head of Bangladesh's largest opposition party, the BNP, accused the government of being involved in the killing or disappearance of more than 300 activists around the time of the country's election.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, In Bosnia workers from five privatized companies began protesting in Tuzla after their companies were stripped of assets.
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.48)
2014 Feb 4, In Brazil at least 6 people were killed during shootouts between officers and suspected drug gang members in Rio de Janeiro.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, A Cuban doctor working in Brazil has sought political asylum in the office of a conservative party complaining that Cuba's government takes too big a slice of her pay. Under an agreement signed last year with Cuba through the Pan-American Health Organization, or PAHO, the Cubans get only one fifth of the 10,000 reais ($4,100) a month that Brazil pays each physician in the program. The rest goes to the Cuban state.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 4, Egypt's Health Ministry said swine flu has killed 24 people across the country over the past two months.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, In Iraq attacks in and around Baghdad killed 18 people as government forces made steady progress against militants in Anbar province.
(AFP, 2/4/14)(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 4, Kuwait said its coastguard has arrested six suspected Iranian drug smugglers and seized their boat when it entered the Gulf state's territorial waters.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Libya's armed forces said they have not received orders from PM Ali Zeidan to move against eastern oil ports and use force to end a six-month blockade there by protesters.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Libyan officials said they have destroyed the last stockpile of chemical weapons from the end of the Khadafy era.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A3)
2014 Feb 4, Saudi authorities beheaded two citizens after convicting them of two separate murders.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Saudi officials signed an agreement with SunEdison Inc. of Belmont, Ca., to explore building a $6.4 billion solar panel factory in Saudi Arabia. SunEdison moved from Maryland to Belmont in 2011.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.C4)
2014 Feb 4, In South Africa a fire broke out about 1.7 km beneath the surface at the Doornkop mine, triggered by 2.4 earthquake. Emergency workers raced to rescue nine miners missing deep underground in the burning gold mine west of Johannesburg. Eight of the miners were found dead the next day.
(AFP, 2/5/14)(AFP, 2/6/14)(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 4, Spanish police said drug traffickers used a sophisticated system of floating backpacks with a tracking system to try to smuggle 900 kg (2,000 pounds) of cocaine into the country.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Syrian forces dropped a barrel bomb on the Uthman Bin Affan mosque that was being used as a school in a rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo, killing at least 5 people, including children. Barrel bombs were also dropped over other rebel-held neighborhoods in Aleppo.
(AP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, Pressure on Thailand's embattled government mounted, when a flagship rice-buying scheme vital to its support stumbled closer to collapse. The commerce minister said China had canceled an order for 1.2 million tons of rice due to a corruption probe, while state-run Krung Thai Bank (KTB) joined other lenders in saying it would not provide loans urgently needed to rescue it. The opposition filed legal challenges that could void a disrupted weekend election.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, In Ukraine 12 people were killed and five others injured when a train and minibus collided at a railway crossing point in the north-eastern Sumy region.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, The UN issued an urgent appeal for $1.27 billion for aid for South Sudan, hit by a seven-week-old conflict that has forced close to a million people from their homes.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 4, In northern Yemen Shi'ite Muslim rebels and Sunni tribesmen agreed a local ceasefire after clashes between the rivals killed about 60 people there last week.
(Reuters, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 5, Texas executed Suzanne Basso (59) for the 1998 slaying of Louis Musso (59), a mentally disabled man, to rob him of his cash and collect insurance.
(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 5, In Argentina 9 first-responders were killed and seven others injured battling a fire of unknown origin that destroyed an archive of bank documents at the iron Mountain warehouse in Buenos Aires.
(AP, 2/5/14)(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 5, Brazil police said the bodies of 3 men whose disappearance led to a clash between an Amazon tribe and settlers have been found in Amazonas state. Last week police arrested five Tenharim men on suspicion of kidnapping and killing the outsiders in December.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In the Central African Republic soldiers and recruits killed a suspected rebel with knives and concrete blocks just moments after the president and other VIPs left the area.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, It was reported that a new strain of avian influenza, H10N8, has been confirmed in two people in China. Cases of H7N9 were reported to be surging with some 300 cases and more appearing every day.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 5, In southwest England more than 8,000 homes were without power after fresh storms battered the region, sending huge waves crashing onto the coastline and damaging sea defenses.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Millions of commuters in London faced delays and disruption after Tube staff went on strike over plans to close London Underground ticket offices.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, The European Union's antitrust watchdog accepted "far-reaching" concessions offered by Google to settle allegations it is abusing its dominant position in Internet searches, bringing the three-year-old case close to an end.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, The Luno, mostly empty Spanish cargo ship, broke in two after hitting a sea wall off the southwestern coast of France in high winds and was leaking some fuel into the water.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, A German newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) bugged the phone of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder from at least 2002, compounding the most serious row between the allies in a decade.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Germany's government approved increasing the number of soldiers sent to Mali from 180 to 250 as part of an EU-led mission to train the national army for its fight against Islamic extremists.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Germany a fire at an asylum home in Hamburg killed a woman from Pakistan and her two children. On Feb 7 a boy (13), a member of the city's youth fire department, admitted to setting the fire.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Iraq multiple bombings rocked central Baghdad, striking mainly near the heavily fortified Green Zone where key government offices are located, killed at least 34 people.
(AFP, 2/5/14)(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 5, Israel's finance minister said he will stop funding for ultra-Orthodox seminaries whose students do not enlist into the military. Yair Lapid's announcement was in response to an order from the Israeli Supreme Court.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Israel's Jerusalem municipality approved building plans for 558 new homes in the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians want for a future state.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Japanese composer Mamoru Samurogochi (50) confessed that he had employed a ghostwriter since the 1990s to compose most of his music. The ghostwriter then came forward and accused Samurogochi of faking his deafness.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A7)
2014 Feb 5, Uke Rugova, a Kosovo lawmaker who is also a son of late President Ibrahim Rugova, was arrested by European Union police and justice workers for alleged involvement in organized crime and fraud.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Libya a bomb rocked the playground of a primary school in Benghazi during recess, wounding 12 children, hours after gunmen had rampaged through the streets.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Pakistani anti-drone activist Kareem Khan was taken from his home by around a dozen men in police uniforms who bundled him into a police vehicle in front of his wife, children and neighbors. He was tortured and interrogated before being dumped blindfolded on the outskirts of the capital early on Feb 14.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 5, A planned extension of the Panama Canal, one of the world's most important shipping routes, was thrown into doubt after a group of companies, led by Spanish builder Sacyr, said its talks with Panama's government over how to expand the canal had fallen apart. Panama Canal Authority head Jorge Quijano said the expansion project will be completed in 2015 with or without a Spanish-led consortium.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Puerto Rico's governor said he is renegotiating the payment of short-term debt and has ordered all government agencies to reduce their current budgets by 2 percent after the island's credit rating was downgraded to junk status.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, A Romanian court charged and arrested Rudel Obreja, a former chairman of Romania's Boxing Federation (2004-2012), with influence peddling for allegedly offering to try to influence a sentencing hearing in return for money.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Russian security forces surrounded a group of militants who had holed up in the Dagestani town of Izberbash. Dzhamaldin Mirzayev (30), who was suspected of having been involved in training the bombers and sending them to Volgograd, was killed in an exchange of gunfire.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In South Africa demonstrators set several buildings, including a clinic, on fire in the Bronkhorstspruit district, east of Pretoria, to protest what they say are high utility bills.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In South Sudan government forces and allied militia attacked rebel defensive positions in the northern part of Jonglei state, close to the border with Upper Nile. Government soldiers mutinied in Lakes state while they were being sent to fight the rebels in Panyijar county in neighboring Unity state.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 5, Syria missed a deadline to hand over all the toxic materials it declared to the world's chemical weapons watchdog, putting the program several weeks behind schedule and jeopardizing a final June 30 deadline.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Turkey's parliament approved internet controls enabling web pages to be blocked within hours in what the opposition decried as part of a government bid to stifle a corruption scandal.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 5, A UN human rights committee urged the Holy See to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed their crimes saying the Vatican "systematically" adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 6, In Florida a motorboat was found capsized about 75 miles northeast of West Palm Beach. It had carried at least 12 people and 4 were confirmed dead.
(SSFC, 2/9/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 6, In Pennsylvania a winter storm left some 849,000 people without power for a 2nd day. The 2nd winter storm this week in the mid-Atlantic had dumped more than a foot of snow in some places.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 6, Human Rights Watch said Bangladeshi garment factory owners use beatings, the threat of murder and sexual intimidation to stop workers from forming trade unions.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Bolivia’s government said rains and floods have left 38 people dead as forecasters predicted more rain.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 6, Bosnian police used tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters who threw stones at the building of the local government in Tuzla, demanding action against owners of four former state-owned companies who filed for bankruptcy after they were privatized.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Millions of commuters faced a second day of travel chaos due to a 48-hour strike by London Underground workers angry over ticket office closures and job cuts.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, In France more than 3 tons of illegal ivory seized by customs agents was pulverized into dust in Europe's first destruction of a stockpile of the banned elephant tusks.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Hungary's parliament authorized a deal with Russia to build two reactors at the country's only nuclear power plant in Paks.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, In eastern Indonesia a police officer and a suspected Islamic militant were killed in gunfire near a mountainous village believed to be a terrorist hideout. Preliminary investigation indicated that the men were part of a terrorist group led by Abu Wardah Santoso, Indonesia's most wanted terror suspect.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Five Iranian border guards were kidnapped by militants in the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan by militants who allegedly took them across the border to Pakistan. On Feb 17 Iran said it would send forces into Pakistan to free them if Islamabad did not take measures to secure their release. The kidnapping was later claimed by Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), a Sunni Muslim rebel group. One of the guards was killed in March. On April 4 Iran’s Fars News reported that the other four were have been released.
(Reuters, 2/17/14)(Reuters, 4/4/14)
2014 Feb 6, In Iraq seven car bombs exploded across Baghdad, killing at least 13 people in apparently coordinated attacks that targeted mainly Shi'ite Muslim districts.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Human Rights Watch said Iraqi authorities are illegally detaining thousands of women, many of whom are subjected to torture and ill-treatment including the threat of sexual abuse. Many were rounded up for alleged terrorist activities by male family members.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, In Israel thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews blocked highways across the country to protest plans to enlist them into the military.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Fifteen migrants drowned while trying to swim to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from a beach in neighboring Morocco. Authorities said "around 400 sub-Saharans" had taken part in the desperate bid to reach EU territory. On Feb 13 Spain said border police had fired rubber bullets in an attempt to turn back around 200 migrants who tried to cross the frontier. Videos later showed police firing rubber bullets. Police denied the action contributed to the drowning. On Feb 11, 2015, the Ceuta court said 16 Civil Guard officers will appear for questioning in March.
(AFP, 2/6/14)(Reuters, 2/13/14)(AP, 2/11/15)
2014 Feb 6, Myanmar media reported that the government has arrested 4 journalists of a private weekly following the publication of a story about the construction of a defense factory in Pauk. The Unity journal quoted villagers as saying the factory was for the production of chemical weapons.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 6, Nigeria's secret police said that it was holding Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, leader of the outlawed Niger Delta Volunteer Force, in the latest crackdown on potential trouble before elections next year.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, North Korea threatened to cancel reunions of Korean War-divided families because of upcoming US-South Korean military drills and accused the United States of raising tensions by flying nuclear-capable B-52 bombers near the Korean Peninsula.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, Peace talks between the Pakistani government and representatives of the Taliban began in Islamabad after a short delay.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, In Puerto Rico Pablo Casellas, the son of a US district court judge, was sentenced to 109 years in prison for killing his wife in July, 2012.
(AP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, South African police fired stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse thousands of rioters demanding basic government services in communities near Pretoria and Johannesburg.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, South Sudan rebels fighting government troops said that 700 men from the government side have defected with all their equipment and were heading to join the rebels.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 6, The Syrian government reached an agreement with the UN to secure the evacuation of hundreds of trapped civilians from besieged parts of Homs. A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of a prison in Aleppo and opposition fighters stormed in freeing hundreds of prisoners. State-run Syrian television said the army foiled an attempt by "terrorist groups" to attack the prison.
(AP, 2/6/14)(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 6, In Yemen government mediator Abdulqader Hilal announced his resignation via Facebook. Hilal, tasked by President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi with ending the fighting between Huthi rebels and tribesmen, has accused Ansarullah (Sunni Islamists) of failing to respect the terms of a truce agreed last weekend.
(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Pres. Obama signed into law an agriculture spending bill that will spread benefits to farmers while trimming the food stamp program.
(SFC, 2/8/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 7, In Argentina a truck driving on the wrong side of a highway crashed head on with passenger bus killing at least 18 people on National Hwy 7 in Mendoza province.
(SSFC, 2/9/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 7, Protesters in Bosnia set fire to government buildings and fought with police as anger over unemployment and political inertia fuelled a 3rd day of the worst civil unrest in the country since its 1992-95 war.
(Reuters, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In Cambodia a boy (8) died of H5N1 bird flu, the country’s first case this year. His sister (2) also died the same day.
(AP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 7, In Central African Republic thousands of Muslims fled for their lives from Bangui, with Christian crowds cheering as truckloads of Muslim families made their way out of town. One man who fell off a truck was subsequently killed and his body mutilated, highlighting the savagery faced by those Muslims who stayed behind. A convoy of some 500 cars, trucks and motorcycles was guarded by armed soldiers from Chad. The UN's refugee agency said nearly 9,000 people, mainly Muslims, have fled to Cameroon in just over a week to escape communal bloodshed in the CAR.
(AP, 2/7/14)(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In China villagers of Baha in Yunnan province smashed the offices and equipment of a local metalwork factory and clashed with police after the boss refused to meet with them over smoke and pollution concerns. Xinhua News later said police were arresting people involved and had identified 16 suspects.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 7, In Egypt six policemen were wounded in double bombing attack in Cairo, hours before clashes between police and Islamist protesters in several cities killed 3 people. Ajnad Misr, Arabic for Egypt's Soldiers, claimed responsibility for the bomb attack. Late day airstrikes targeted hideouts of "terrorist, extremely dangerous takfiri" militants in the eastern border town of Sheikh Zuweyid. 16 militants were reported killed.
(AFP, 2/7/14)(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 7, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed outrage over a leaked phone conversation in which Victoria Nuland, a top US diplomat, used the f-word regarding the European Union's handling of the crisis in Ukraine. An angry US State Department pointed the finger at Russia for allegedly bugging the diplomats' phones.
(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, India acceded to Italy's request and said it won't invoke an anti-piracy law carrying the death penalty when it tries two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Aid agencies working in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem expressed alarm at a spike in Israeli demolitions of Palestinian property coinciding with renewed US-backed peace negotiations.
(Reuters, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Mali’s Ministry of Defense said around 30 ethnic Tuaregs have been killed in the northern Gao region in local fighting with ethnic Peuls.
(Reuters, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Pakistan's fledgling peace talks with the Taliban suffered a fresh blow as a negotiator for the militants said he would take no further part until the agenda included the imposition of Islamic sharia law.
(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In the northern Philippines a bus veered off a mountain road and fell into a ravine, killing at least 14 people.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In Puerto Rico Pedro Rodriguez Colondres was indicted on accusations that he ran a fraud scheme obtaining at least half a million dollars in veteran's benefits under a false name from 1984 to 2011.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 7, Russia opened the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Police arrested four gay rights activists protesting in St. Petersburg.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In South Africa striking miners clashed with police after using rocks and burning tires to block a road leading to Anglo American Platinum's Union mine near Northam town. One protester was killed.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 7, Spain’s Cabinet approved a bill amending previous legislation that granted nationality by naturalization to Sephardic Jews who chose to apply for it. The reform will allow dual nationality, enabling people who can prove Sephardic ancestry to also retain their previous citizenships.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Famished and traumatized Syrians were able to leave besieged parts of Homs for the first time in more than a year as part of a potentially ground breaking agreement between the Syrian government and the United Nations.
(Time.com, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman said one of its journalists, Mahir Zeynalov (27) from Azerbaijan, has been ordered to leave the country for criticizing PM Tayyip Erdogan on Twitter.
(Reuters, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 7, In central and southern Uruguay flooding caused by torrential rains forced the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 7, In Yemen Fresh clashes between Shiite rebels and tribesmen backed by Sunni Islamists erupted near Sanaa.
(AFP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Albania a speeding minivan carrying eleven people lost control and hurtled 100 meters down a cliff, killing 6 people and seriously injuring the five others.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, A huge falling rock derailed a train in the French Alps, killing two people and partly pushing one of its carriages over the edge of a mountain slope.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Guatemala 20 men stormed a house in a village in Peten killing 9 people including a girl (5) and baby (3 months). The area was know to be contested by drug traffickers.
(SFC, 2/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 8, In India an angry crowd gathered outside a Delhi police station to protest poor policing and racist treatment of people in the northeast after a 14-year-old girl from that part of India filed charges of rape in the capital.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, Moroccan authorities banned a sit-in by hundreds of judges who want greater independence for the judiciary, deploying dozens of riot police to central Rabat and closing off streets around the Justice Ministry.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Russia some 40 people gathered in downtown Moscow to protest the decision of leading Russian cable and satellite companies to drop the channel, Dozhd (TV Rain). Except for women with children, most were immediately detained.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Saudi Arabia a hotel fire in Medina killed 13 people including 9 Egyptian pilgrims.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 8, A Russian animal rights activist was detained in Moscow after he and two others protested the country's policy of killing stray dogs in Sochi.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Spain thousands of women marched in the streets of Madrid to protest against the Spanish government's plan to restrict access to abortion.
(AFP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Syria new aerial bombardment from explosives-packed barrel bombs in Aleppo killed at least 20 people. Renewed fighting broke a cease-fire in Homs and halted a plan to evacuate civilians and bring supplies into rebel-held areas under siege.
(AFP, 2/8/14)(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Ukraine Thousands of people angered by months of anti-government protests in Kiev converged on one of the protesters' barricades, but retreated after meeting sizeable resistance.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 9, Michael Sam, a defensive end form the Univ. of Missouri, publicly came out as gay. He was expected to be a 3rd A10of 4th round pick at the NFL draft.
(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 9, Bahamas’ military said it has taken 40 Dominican fishermen into custody on suspicion of poaching in Bahamian waters.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Bosnia hundreds marched in Sarajevo to protest alleged police abuse of people arrested during anti-government protests and to call for their release. Police said all but 10 of 44 people have been let go.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Severe flooding and landslips cut off rail links to large parts of southwest England for more than 24 hours as the government came under pressure for its handling of storms battering Britain.
(Reuters, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Violence in Central African Republic's capital, including mob attacks and an apparent assassination attempt targeting the country's former justice minister, killed at least 10 people over the last 24 hours. Gunmen murdered politician Jean-Emmanuel Djarawa, a Christian representative for eastern Haute-Kotto province, outside his house in Bangui.
(AFP, 2/9/14)(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 9, Denmark’s Copenhagen Zoo killed a 2-year-old giraffe and fed its remains to lions as visitors watched, ignoring a petition signed by thousands and offers from other zoos and a private individual to save the animal.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Gabriel Axel (b.1918), the first Dane to win an Oscar for best foreign film with "Babette's Feast" (1987) which he directed, died.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 9, Egypt's interior ministry said it has broken up a "military wing" of the Muslim Brotherhood, allegedly formed to attack policemen, in the most detailed accusation yet implicating the group in militant attacks.
(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Egypt's Health Ministry said the number of people killed by swine flu in the country since December has reached 38.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Danish director Lars von Trier brought an extra-long version of his "Nymphomaniac Volume I" to the Berlin International Film Festival, a cut that increases to nearly 2½ hours the first installment of the two-part drama about a woman's sexual life from girlhood to age 50.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In northern India a tiger prowling near villages killed its 10th person in six weeks, a day after eluding a trap set by hunters with a live calf as bait.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 9, Iran agreed to start addressing UN nuclear agency suspicions that it may have worked on designing an atomic weapon, a potential breakthrough in unblocking a long-stalled investigation into Tehran's disputed atomic activities.
(Reuters, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Iraq 9 people were found dead in two brutal incidents, one where militants forced Shiite policemen to pray before killing them, and another where decapitated heads were left in a market.
(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Israel denied entry permits to some 50 Palestinian medical patients from the Gaza Strip because the words "State of Palestine" was on the letterhead of their application.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 9, A Palestinian militant was in critical condition after an Israeli air strike on central Gaza that the army said targeted a "key" figure responsible for cross-border rocket fire.
(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Russia a man employed as a private security guard (24) opened fire in a cathedral on Russia's Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, killing a nun and a parishioner and wounding six others.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, Swiss voters narrowly backed proposals to reintroduce immigration quotas with the European Union. 50.3% backed the so-called "Stop mass immigration" initiative.
(Reuters, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Syria the governor Homs said that over 600 people have been evacuated from rebel-held parts of the city, in a rare 3-day cease-fire with rebels. Government aircraft dropped barrel bombs on Aleppo, killing at least 11 people. Extremist Islamic rebels overran Maan village in Hama province, populated by the Alawite minority, and killed at least 40 people
(AP, 2/9/14)(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 9, Ukraine's security agency warned of a heightened risk of terrorism, including from nearly three months of anti-government protests. An estimated 70,000 pro-Western Ukrainians thronged the heart of Kiev vowing never to give up their drive to oust President Viktor Yanukovych for his alliance with old master Russia.
(AP, 2/9/14)(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 9, In Yemen Shiite rebels and Yemeni tribesmen agreed a ceasefire after deadly clashes between the two sides in the Arhab district near Sanaa. A bomb planted in the car of a Yemeni intelligence colonel exploded near the oil ministry, killing the officer and wounding 3 people.
(AFP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 10, Shirley Temple Black (b.1928), child film star and US diplomat, died at her home in Woodside, Ca.
(SFC, 1/26/06, p.E3)(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A1)
2014 Feb 10, In Afghanistan a car bomb in Kabul killed two US contractors for the international security force ISAF. A coalition soldier was killed in a separate attack in the east.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 10, Brazil’s Band TV said that 49-year-old journalist Santiago Andrade remains in a coma on life support, but that doctors have declared him brain dead. He was hit in the head on Feb 6 by a powerful flare fired during a protest against a 10-cent hike in bus fares in Rio.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Thousands of Bosnian protesters called for the resignation of their regional government, ratcheting up demands on the sixth straight day of demonstrations over unemployment, corruption and political paralysis.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, The River Thames burst its banks after reaching its highest level in years, flooding riverside towns upstream of London.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, In Burundi at least 60 people perished in flooding and landslides following a night of torrential rain in Bujumbura that swept away hundreds of homes and cut off roads and power.
(AFP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, The EU agreed to launch negotiations with Cuba to increase trade, investment and dialogue on human rights in its most significant diplomatic shift since Brussels lifted sanctions on the island in 2008.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Greek police arrested four foreigners and seized weapons and explosives in a raid by the country's anti-terrorist unit on residences in the greater Athens area. Media said they appeared to be Turkish nationals suspected of belonging to the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP/C.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Penguin Books India agreed to withdraw from sale all copies of "The Hindus: An Alternative History" (2011) by Wendy Doniger, a book that takes an unorthodox view of Hinduism, and will pulp them as part of a settlement after a case was filed against the publisher.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 10, In Iraq militants accidentally set off their own car bomb at a training camp in an orchard in the village of al-Jalam, leaving 21 dead and resulting in two dozen arrests.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, In Kenya gays and lesbians joined a global effort to protest against an anti-homosexuality bill passed by Uganda's parliament that is now in the hands of the country's president.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, In the Netherlands former health minister Els Borst (81), a woman who drafted the nation's landmark 2002 law permitting euthanasia, was found dead in her garage. Police ruled out natural causes.
(AP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 10, Saudi state media said a court has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison for protesting and disseminating photos of demonstrations online.
(AP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 10, In Somalia two car bombs exploded in Mogadishu, wounding at least five people including a government official.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Spanish High Court Judge Ismael Moreno sought international arrest orders for former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, ex-PM Li Peng and others on allegations of genocide in Tibet.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Syria shipped out a third consignment of chemical weapons materials and has also destroyed some materials on its territory.
(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition resumed in Geneva.
(AP, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 10, Thai police made their first arrest of a senior leader of the antigovernment protests. Sonthiyarn Cheunruethainaitham was arrested for violating the country’s emergency law.
(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 10, Yemen's president and main parties agreed to transform the unrest-riven country into a six-region federation as part of a political transition. The move was immediately rejected by some southerners who insist on a separate state.
(AFP, 2/10/14)(Reuters, 2/10/14)
2014 Feb 11, Voters in Fremont, Nebraska, decided to keep an ordnance that requires renters to get a $5 permit and swear they have legal permission to live in the US.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A14)
2014 Feb 11, The websites of casinos owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp. were hacked. These included sites for a Sands casino in Bethlehem, Pa., as well as casinos in Nevada and Macao.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 11, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said he was suspending the use of the death penalty for as long as he’s in office.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 11, The Afghan public health ministry said it has launched an emergency polio vaccination campaign in Kabul after a girl contracted the disease, the city's first case since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, An Algerian military transport plane crashed in the country's mountainous east with but one survivor. 76 people were killed, including women and children.
(AP, 2/11/14)(AP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 11, Brazil’s Environment Ministry said it will begin a program to save the endangered three-banded armadillo, the mascot for this year’s World Cup.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 11, Barclays PLC faced widespread criticism after the scandal-plagued bank announced plans to slash up to 12,000 jobs this year while also setting aside more money to pay bonuses.
(AP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, The Burundi Red Cross said torrential rains and landslides have left at least 77 people dead and about 12,000 displaced.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, China and Taiwan held talks in Nanjing, their highest level talks since splitting amid a civil war in 1949.
(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 11, Cyprus Pres. Nicos Anastasiades met with Dervis Eroglu on the UN’s “green line" and put forward a “road-map" where their two communities would unite under a federation but run their affairs as “constituent states."
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.48)
2014 Feb 11, Czech Rep. media reported that former PM Petr Necas has been charged with bribery for his alleged role in offering state posts to three former members of parliament who had been rebelling against the previous government’s austerity program, in return for them leaving office.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/nyjfczk)
2014 Feb 11, French Pres. Francois Hollande arrived in the US for a formal state visit.
(SFC, 2/11/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 11, German and Dutch authorities arrested five men in a sting operation against a website allegedly used to sell illegal drugs and weapons.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 11, In India Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi's new chief minister, took his anti-graft campaign to new heights, ordering an investigation into India's richest man, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, and policymakers over gas pricing.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Iraq militants in pick-up trucks ambushed army outposts protecting a major oil export pipeline in Nineveh province overnight, killing at least 16 soldiers by shooting them and slitting their throats.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, Police in Italy and New York broke up a major trans-Atlantic mafia ring, arresting 24 people accused of plotting to move hundreds of millions of dollars in drugs between South America, Italy and the USA.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, The value of Kazakhstan currency, the tenge, fell by 19%.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.35)
2014 Feb 11, Libyan media said six journalists have been kidnapped in recent days in Tripoli, and though one has been released the whereabouts of the other five remained unknown.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 11, In northeast Nigeria gunmen from Islamist sect Boko Haram killed 51 people in an attack on Konduga, Borno state.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Pakistan unknown assailants lobbed grenades into a cinema in Peshawar, killing 10 people and wounding 16.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, Serbia's war crimes court jailed nine former members of the "Jackals," a Serbian paramilitary group, for killing more than 120 ethnic Albanian civilians during the Kosovo conflict in 1999.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, South Africa issued a black-and-white commemorative stamp to celebrate the life and legacy of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela who died last year.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Syria the evacuation of civilians from besieged rebel-held areas of Homs was suspended, as a mediator said peace talks in Switzerland were making little progress.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Tanzania the UN-backed court for Rwanda acquitted on appeal former paramilitary police chief Augustin Ndindiliyimana and ex-elite battalion commander Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye of charges related to the 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In central Ukraine Oleksandr Lobodenko (34), a judge who placed several anti-government protesters under house arrest, was murdered overnight in Kremenchuk.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 11, In western Venezuela armed pro-government groups attacked and shot at people protesting against President Nicolas Maduro's government, injuring five.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Yemen northern Shiite rebels and a faction demanding southern autonomy rejected a six-region federation plan for Yemen, agreed by parties during the "national dialogue" aimed at securing the country's political transition.
(AFP, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 11, In Yemen a British teacher was abducted on his way from an educational institute in Sanaa and reportedly taken to Marib.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, Pres. Obama signed an executive order raising the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal contractors.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A9)
2014 Feb 12, A US federal judge ordered that Kentucky recognize same-sex marriages that had been legally performed in other states, opening the door for activists to strike down the state’s ban entirely.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A9)
2014 Feb 12, In Kentucky a sinkhole collapsed part of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green damaging eight cars. The sinkhole and damaged cars were later turned into part of the museum exhibit.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A7)(SFC, 8/15/15, p.A4)
2014 Feb 12, It was reported that Comcast has agreed to buy Time Warner Cable Inc. for $45.2 billion in stock or $158.82 per TWC share, which closed at $135.31.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A13)
2014 Feb 12, Sid Caesar (b.1922), former TV comedian, died at his home in Beverly Hills. His “Your Show of Shows" dominated the Saturday viewing habits of millions of Americans from 1950-1954.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 12, In Bangladesh a mortar shell exploded accidentally during firing practice at a military training base, killing five military and border guard personnel and injuring 14 others.
(AP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, In Brazil some 15,000 landless peasants demanding land reform engaged police in Brasilia. At least 32 people were injured.
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 12, British police searched a home in the southeastern town of Crawley as part of an investigation into reports that a man named as Abdul Waheed Majid (41) was responsible for a suicide attack in Syria.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) arrested Sudhir Choudhri, an Indian-born donor to one of Britain's ruling political parties, and his son as part of an investigation into Rolls-Royce's dealings in Asia.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 12, Flooded communities in Britain faced a fresh battering from storms and high winds as emergency efforts in stricken areas picked up following criticism of a sluggish response.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, China's Cabinet announced that 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) has been set aside this year to reward cities and regions that make significant progress in controlling air pollution, highlighting how the issue has become a priority for the leadership.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, Amnesty International said the exodus of tens of thousands of Muslims from Central African Republic amounts to "ethnic cleansing." French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian pledged on a visit to CAR to continue disarming both Muslim and Christian fighters. African Union peacekeepers uncovered a mass grave at a military camp in Bangui occupied by the Muslim Seleka rebels.
(AP, 2/12/14)(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, In China a strong and shallow 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the far western region of Xinjiang, but in a sparsely populated area.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, CongoDRC Pres. Joseph Kabila, announced an amnesty for former members of the defeated M23 rebel army.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, A municipal planning committee advanced a plan to build a Jewish seminary in the heart of an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem, triggering angry Palestinian accusations that Israel was undermining already troubled Mideast peace efforts.
(AP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, Italy's constitutional court struck down a drug law that tripled sentences for selling, cultivating or possessing cannabis and which has been blamed for causing prison overcrowding.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, In Kenya 70 men arrested during a raid on a mosque in the port city of Mombasa were formally charged with being members of Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, Lebanon's army arrested Naim Abbas, a senior al Qaeda-linked militant, described by security sources as a "mastermind of car bombs" that targeted Shi'ite areas of the country.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, Niger police detained three journalists from the Anfani private radio station as well as a union leader who criticized President Mahamadou Issfouou on air.
(Reuters, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, Nigeria said it would open a probe into claims of state-sponsored killings dating back to the era of military rule, raising hopes that perpetrators will finally be brought to book.
(AFP, 2/12/14)0
2014 Feb 12, Russian geologist Yevgeny Vitishko, a leading activist who campaigned against environmental damage caused by preparations for the Winter Olympics, was sentenced to three years in a penal colony. A court in Krasnodar converted a 2012 suspended sentence to a prison term.
(AFP, 2/12/14)(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 12, South African police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at supporters of the ruling ANC party who attacked an opposition rally in Johannesburg, amid escalating tensions ahead of a crunch general election.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, Syrian government forces and fighters from Lebanese ally Hezbollah pounded Syria's strategic border town of Yabroud in apparent preparation for a new offensive to flush out rebels. At least 51 people were reportedly killed in Aleppo, mainly by barrel bombs dropped on eight rebel-held districts from helicopters.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 12, UN leader Ban Ki-moon condemned what he said was the use of cluster bombs in the war in South Sudan.
(AFP, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 12, In Venezuela 3 people were killed in Caracas as protests against Pres. Maduro turned violent. Armed members of a pro-government vigilante arrived on motorcycles and began shooting at more than 100 anti-Maduro student protesters clashing with security forces.
(SFC, 2/13/14, p.A2)(Econ, 2/15/14, p.30)
2014 Feb 13, US federal authorities said they have detained 57 migrants from Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Brazil in separate incidents near Puerto Rico's west coast. Authorities planned to prosecute 19 of those migrants, five of them on human smuggling charges.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, A US federal judge found Virginia’s ban on same sex marriage unconstitutional.
(SFC, 2/14/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 13, The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies said that North Korea has accelerated excavation at a remote mountain site used for underground nuclear test explosions. However, it did not see signs of an imminent test.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Nevada Wayne Burgarello shot and killed Cody Devine (34) and wounded Janai Wilson (29) after confronting them sleeping at his vacant duplex in Sparks. On May 29, 2015, Burgarello (74) was found not guilty after insisting he was acting in self-defense.
(http://tinyurl.com/pks2m5o)(SSFC, 5/31/15, p.A6)
2014 Feb 13, Ralph Waite (85), actor, died. He played the patriarch in the TV series “The Waltons" (1972-1981).
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.C14)
2014 Feb 13, Afghanistan released 65 accused militants from a former US prison despite protests from the American military, which says the men are Taliban fighters who will likely return to the battlefield to kill coalition and Afghan forces.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Afghan women marched in Kabul to protest violence against women and decry a new draft law that activists say will severely limit justice for victims of domestic abuse.
(SFC, 2/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 13, Albanian authorities said they have seized 2 metric tons of marijuana hidden in a rocky part of a bay and destined for Greece or Italy.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Argentina a new consumer price index, developed with help from the IMF, registered inflation at 3.7% for January, the highest official rate since 2002 and much higher than the 1.4% posted in December.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.32)
2014 Feb 13, In Belgium lawmakers voted to extend a decade-old law allowing euthanasia for adults after months of often heated public debate. Belgium's House of Representatives lifted all age restrictions on the right of the incurably sick to end their lives.
(AFP, 2/13/14)(SFC, 2/14/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 13, Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp., the world's largest gold miner, announced massive losses while forecasting rising costs and less gold to dig for profitably.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In the Central African Republic Richard Bejouane, the self-proclaimed leader of the CAR’s Christian-dominated vigilantes (anti-balaka), warned Pres. Catherine Samba Panza against any crackdown against his group.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, The UN mission in CongoDRC (MONUSCO) said more than 70 men and women have been summarily executed in the restive eastern part of the country late last month and early this month.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In India a lawmaker sprayed pepper spray inside Parliament, creating chaos that left his colleagues coughing and crying as they were ushered from the hall. Lawmakers had been set to vote on a long-contentious proposal to create the new southern state of Telangana from mostly poor, inland districts of Andhra Pradesh state.
(AP, 2/13/14)(SFC, 2/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 13, In northern Iraq gunmen seized part of Sulaiman Bek and nearby villages. Bombs killed at least two people at a historic Baghdad market and set it ablaze.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian and wounded another in the Gaza Strip. Relatives said Ibrahim Mansour (26) was collecting gravel to sell from his donkey cart when he was shot dead. The Israeli military said soldiers fired at Palestinians tampering with Israel's border security fence.
(Reuters, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Italian leftist leader Matteo Renzi called for a new government in his first direct challenge to PM Enrico Letta.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Jamaica authorities arrested a police officer and two others accused of transporting 23 pounds (10 kg) of marijuana.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 13, A top Kenyan official, Francis Kimemia, accused the United States of trying to overthrow Kenya's government by supporting activists even as baton-wielding police used tear gas to break up an anti-government protest in downtown Nairobi. Kimemia served as the chairman of the National Security Advisory Committee and the secretary of the president's Cabinet.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Nigeria's Senate said it is ordering a forensic audit to track down billions of missing petrodollars after the Senate Committee heard that the amount of unaccounted petrodollars has grown to $20 billion. The World Bank has estimated that at least $400 billion has gone missing from government coffers since independence.
(AP, 2/14/14)(Econ, 2/15/14, p.43)
2014 Feb 13, In Nigeria a mob armed with wooden clubs and iron bars, screaming that they were going to "cleanse" their neighborhood of gay people, dragged 14 young men from their beds and assaulted them in Gishiri, a shantytown with mud roads near central Abuja.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Pakistan an explosion targeting a bus of policemen killed 12 of them and wounded 58 near Karachi.
(Reuters, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Saudi Arabia said Yemen has handed over 29 Saudis wanted for suspected links to Al-Qaeda.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Somalia at least 6 people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack targeting a UN convoy close to Mogadishu's heavily-fortified international airport.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, Syrian activists said government shelling and airstrikes using makeshift barrel bombs have killed about 400 people in Aleppo so far this month. The governor of the central province of Homs says a cease-fire has been extended for three days as of today.
(AP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 13, In Yemen 29 people convicted "of various terrorist and criminal charges" escaped a Sanaa prison when a blast breached the facility's outer wall.
(AFP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, President Obama visited the San Joaquin Valley to focus on California’s severe drought, and announce new measures in the ongoing federal effort to address it. Obama toured parts of California's drought zone and pledged to speed help to the No. 1 farm state.
(AP, 2/14/14)(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In New Mexico unusually high levels of radioactive particles were found at an underground nuclear waste site in what a spokesman said looked like the first real alarm since the plant opened in 1999. Investigators in June said they have found five other potentially explosive barrels in West Texas that came from the same Los Alamos waste stream.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)(SFC, 6/11/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 14, The snow-weary eastern US was digging out from yet another mammoth storm, as the deadly weather crept through New England and eastern Canada and another storm approached.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, About $2.5 million of Bitcoin was apparently stolen from Silk Road 2.0, a website used to trade mainly illegal drugs. A flaw in Bitcoin’s code was discovered earlier this month.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.65)
2014 Feb 14, In Bahrain a blast struck a bus carrying police as anti-government activists clashed with police on the third anniversary of the uprising in the small Gulf island nation. One policeman died of wounds sustained in the bomb blast. 26 people were arrested. Another 29 were arrested a day earlier.
(AP, 2/14/14)(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Cambodia Dave Walker (58), a Canadian filmmaker, went missing. His body was found April 30 in the woods near the famous Angkor temple complex.
(AP, 5/1/14)
2014 Feb 14, In the Central African Republic thousands of Muslims who tried to flee the violence in Bangui were turned back by peacekeepers, as crowds of angry Christians shouted "we're going to kill you all." France announced that it is increasing the number of its troops on the ground in CAR by 400 for a total of 2,000.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In China 11 "terrorists" were reported killed during an attack in Wushi County in the Aksu Prefecture of Xinjiang.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, The Chinese government sacked the police chief of the southern "sin city" of Dongguan following a candid report by the state broadcaster on the underground sex industry there.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In eastern China a wedding hall collapsed killing 10 people in Yazhuang village, Zhejiang province.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, The CongoDRC government said 22 Congolese soldiers and 230 Ugandan rebels have been killed in a nearly month-long offensive in restive eastern DRC.
(AFP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Egypt police and residents clashed with supporters of ousted Pres. Morsi leaving a man shot dead in Damietta and a child killed in Minya.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, In Germany Agriculture Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich announced his resignation over claims he leaked confidential information about an international child porn probe.
(AFP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In India anti-graft activist Arvind Kejriwal quit as the top elected official in the New Delhi state government after lawmakers blocked the introduction of a bill to create a strong ombudsman in the capital. He said he would recommend that new elections be held in New Delhi.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Indonesia a volcanic eruption on Java sent a 17 km (10 mile) ash cloud into the air. More than 56,000 people were forced to flee their homes and four 4 were killed when Mount Kelud erupted.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Indonesia seven Japanese divers went missing off the resort island of Bali as strong winds and heavy rains hit Crystal Bay. Five of the divers were found alive on Feb 17.
(AP, 2/15/14)(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 14, Googoosh, an Iranian pop star living in Amsterdam, released a music video promoting gay rights. It was clicked on half a million times in the first 24 hours. Navid Akhavan, an Iranian-born Germany, wrote and directed the video for the song “Behesht" (Heaven).
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 14, Iraqi troops backed by helicopter gunships regained ground in the northern town of Sulaiman Pek, a day after parts of it were overrun by Sunni Islamist insurgents. At least 12 militants were killed by the army.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, Italy’s Premier Enrico Letta drove himself to the president's palace and resigned after he was sacked by his own party in a back-room mutiny designed to catapult Florence's young Mayor Matteo Renzi into the helm of Italy's government.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Ivory Coast Michel Gbagbo, son of former president Laurent Gbagbo, was arrested at the airport while attempting to leave the country on a flight to Paris.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Jamaica Leroy Russell, a dancehall deejay, was charged in a multimillion-dollar lottery scam.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, Libya's government and armed forces moved to quash rumors of an impending coup after retired Gen. Khalifa Hifter called for parliament and the government to be suspended.
(AFP, 2/14/14)(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, North and South Korea agreed in a rare high-level meeting to stop insulting each other and to go ahead with planned reunions of Korean War-divided families next week despite a dispute over upcoming US-South Korean military drills.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Syria a car bomb killed at least 32 people the town of al-Yaduda (Yadouda) near the border with Jordan. At least 5 soldiers were killed when Islamist rebels detonated mines under the Carlton hotel in Aleppo. In Geneva Syrian government and opposition delegates said talks to end their country's civil war have reached an impasse, with the US and Russia backing the rival camps and trading accusations over the deadlock. International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi told delegates that he plans to take the talks into a third round.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)(AP, 2/14/14)(AFP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an al Qaeda splinter group (ISIL) has executed at least 13 people including relatives of fighters from rival rebel groups before withdrawing from a town near Aleppo. It did not say when the incident took place in Haritan.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, Thailand riot police cleared anti-government protesters from a major boulevard in Bangkok.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, Ukraine authorities provisionally freed the last of 234 detained protesters under an amnesty offer aimed a diffusing protracted street protests.
(SFC, 2/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 14, It was reported that a UN Commission of Inquiry has found that crimes against humanity have been committed in North Korea and recommends that its findings be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, Louis Willis, the former director of the US Virgin Islands' Internal Revenue Bureau, turned himself in under charges of tax evasion.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, In Venezuela soldiers fired tear gas and deployed water cannons to break up hundreds of student demonstrators blocking a highway in protest against President Nicolas Maduro. Authorities freed 25 student protesters pending trial and said that 74 others arrested after this week's deadly political turmoil would be processed within hours.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 14, Yemeni military and security officials says that the death toll from a prison break in Sanaa has reached 10, and that al-Qaida received help from inside the prison to facilitate the escape of 29 inmates.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 14, Zambian ex-diplomat and son of former president Rupiah Banda was sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of corruption. Andrew Banda (53) was arrested in 2012 on charges of soliciting a kickback from Italian company Fratelli Locci, which was awarded a contract to build roads.
(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In California a woman and her 4 children were killed in their SUV near Riverdale after a driver in a minivan failed to yield at a stop sign.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 15, In Colorado an avalanche killed two skiers and injured three others on Star Mountain near Leadville.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A13)
2014 Feb 15, In New Jersey Julio Lopez-Cruz (18) was attacked as he headed to his New Jersey home with some groceries. He died a short time later. On Feb 27 authorities said that they have arrested Michael Holman (18) and Dante Martin (18) and charged them with murder.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 15, In NYC Jerome Murdough (56, a mentally ill former veteran, was found dead in his jail cell on Rikers Island. The temperature in the cell was recorded at 101 degrees due to equipment malfunction. He had been arrested on Feb 7 on a misdemeanor tresspassing charge for sleeping in an enclosed stairwell. In May his mother planned to file a $25 million lawsuit against NYC. On Oct 31 NYC reached a $2.5 million settlement with the mother of Murdough.
(SFC, 5/17/14, p.A7)(SFC, 11/1/14, p.A7)
2014 Feb 15, In southern Afghanistan an improvised explosive device killed a NATO service member.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Bahrain supporters of the main Shiite opposition bloc joined the anniversary rally called by the opposition Al-Wefaq movement to press its campaign for a constitutional monarchy. Thousands clashed with security forces and brought the streets of Manama to a standstill.
(AP, 2/15/14)(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A7)
2014 Feb 15, Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that water is being rationed to nearly six million people living in eleven states.
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 15, Apple opened a retail store in Rio de Janeiro, its first retail store in South America. Its 16GB iPhone 5s was priced at $1,076.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.39)
2014 Feb 15, Two people died in weather-related incidents as storms continue to batter Britain. Officials said that 22 severe flood warnings are in place. More heavy rain and winds were expected.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In the Central African Republic French and African peacekeepers seized weapons from militia in Bangui, but failed to detain a wanted leader of the rogue groups.
(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In CongoDRC journalist Germain Kennedy Muliwavyo (30) died after being shot in the head and stomach during an ambush 60 km outside of Beni.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, Iraqi troops fought to retake full control of Sulaiman Pek from militants who overran parts of it earlier this week. South of Baghdad ISIL militants killed at least 8 soldiers in overnight clashes in Jurf al-Sakha. 12 militants were also killed. Fighting erupted in Ramadi between militants and security forces backed by tribesmen. PM Nuri al-Maliki announced over $83 million in construction funds and training for allied tribal militia during a visit Saturday to Ramadi.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)(AFP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Iraq Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who led revolts against US forces in Iraq before their pullout and became a major influence in the government, said he is leaving political life and has dissolved his movement.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Israel two gunmen on a motorcycle killed a man as he drove near Tel Aviv’s beachfront. Police believed it was a gangland attack.
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 15, Jordanian forces wounded 7 and arrested 3 after 10 gunmen from Syria opened fire on troops patrolling a northern border area.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, Lebanon announced a new government, breaking a 10-month political deadlock during which spillover violence from neighboring Syria worsened internal instability.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, Montenegro police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing protesters who were blaming the government for high unemployment, economic mismanagement and alleged corruption, and demanding its resignation.
(AP, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Nigeria gunmen suspected of being Boko Haram Islamists reportedly killed as many as 63 people, mostly Christians, in Izghe village, Borno state.
(AFP, 2/16/14)(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 15, In Pakistan a cleric ordered that a woman be stoned to death after her husband found her with another man. She was stoned to death and an autopsy revealed that her skull had been shattered with a brick, and that she had multiple ax wounds. Six people were arrested on Feb 17 in connection with the stoning.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 15, A Philippine Christian sect, Iglesia ni Cristo, broke two records for organizing the largest charity walk in an effort to raise funds for survivors of last year's Typhoon Haiyan.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, Turkey's parliament approved a law boosting government control over the appointment of judges and prosecutors, after a heated debate and a brawl that left one opposition lawmaker hospitalized.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Turkey thousands of Kurds demonstrated in towns across the south east, some clashing violently with riot police as they called for the release of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan on the 15th anniversary of his capture.
(Reuters, 2/15/14)
2014 Feb 15, Venezuelan security forces searched for Leopoldo Lopez (42), looking to arrest the hard-line opposition leader who President Nicolas Maduro blames for 3 deaths at recent anti-government protests.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 15, In Venezuela a priest (79) and lay worker (84) were killed during a robbery in the city of Valencia. A 17-year-old was arrested the next day and a 14-year-old was being sought.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Colorado 3 people were killed in a single-engine plan crash near Telluride.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 16, A winter storm hit New England overnight with more than a foot of snow in parts of Massachusetts. Thousands on Cape cod were left without power.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 16, In Pennsylvania the FBI said it was in contact with Sunbury police regarding Miranda Barbour (19) who says she wants to plead guilty to the killing Troy LaFerrara last November. She said she has also killed at least 22 people across the country over the last six years as part of her involvement in a satanic cult.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 16, In the Central African Republic troops of the MISCA African Union force clashed with anti-balaka militias at Cantonnier, near the border with Cameroon. 8 people, including 6 civilians, were killed in the firefight.
(AFP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Egypt a suicide bomber on a tourist bus in the Sinai peninsula killed the Egyptian driver and 3 South Koreans. At least a dozen other tourists on the bus were wounded.
(AP, 2/16/14)(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, Japanese media said the second heavy snowfall in a week has killed up to a dozen people and injured hundreds over the weekend, while paralyzing traffic and causing power outages. A record 45 inches of snow fell on Yamanashi.
(AP, 2/16/14)(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 16, In Almaty, Kazakhstan, protesters waived their knickers in a protest ostensibly over a rule regulating synthetic underwear. The “pantie protesters" were rounded up and led away. The real anger was over the recent devaluation of the country’s currency.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.35)
2014 Feb 16, In Libya the wreckage of a helicopter was found near es-Sider port. Authorities began searching for the bodies of the five people who were on board.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Macedonia an explosion wounded five Roma children in western town of Tetovo. Three people were soon detained in the case.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, In west Nepal a small plane owned by state-run Nepal Airlines Corporation crashed with 18 people aboard in bad weather. Rescuers found the wreckage of the 43-year-old de Havilland Twin Otter the next day near Machinelek.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, In North Korea John Short (75), an Australian missionary, was questioned and then arrested in his Pyongyang hotel, a day after he arrived there. He has lived in Hong Kong for 50 years and has been arrested previously in China for evangelizing.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 16, In southwest Pakistan a bomb placed by an ethnic separatist group derailed a train, killing 8 people in Kashmor district, Sindh province. A roadside bomb killed a police officer guarding a polio vaccination drive in the outskirts of Peshawar.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, A faction of the Pakistani Taliban announced that they had killed 23 soldiers, who they said had been kidnapped in 2010.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, A spokesman for Gaza's Hamas rulers said that the Islamic militant group will oppose any international force in a future Palestine, adding a new complication to US-brokered peace efforts.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, In the southern Philippines Suspected Abu Sayyaf extremists kidnapped a Filipino couple, adding to a group of hostages they are holding that includes two European tourists.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Saudi Arabia another man died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 60 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, South African rescuers worked to reach more than 200 illegal miners reported trapped underground in an abandoned gold shaft in Benoni, a suburb just east of Johannesburg. 22 miners were arrested as they emerged over the next 24 hrs. An unknown number of other miners refused to come up.
(AP, 2/16/14)(Reuters, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, Switzerland told the newest EU member, Croatia, that it will not be able to sign a labor market pact as planned on July 1, following a shock referendum vote in favor of immigration curbs.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, The Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) appointed a new military chief. Brig. Gen. Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir replaces Gen. Salim Idris, who was criticized by many in the opposition for being ineffective.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Tunisia armed militants operating a fake checkpoint in the northwest killed 4 people and wounded four others.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, In Ukraine anti-government demonstrators in Kiev ended their nearly three-month occupation of City Hall as promised in exchange for the release of all jailed protesters.
(AP, 2/16/14)
2014 Feb 16, Venezuela’s Pres. Nicolas Maduro ordered the expulsion of three US consular officials that he accused of infiltrating universities.
(SFC, 2/17/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 17, In California 2 CHP officers were killed as they responded to a multi-vehicle crash on Hwy. 99 near Kingsburg.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 17, In Miami, Florida, local artist Maximo Caminero (51) smashed a colored vase, valued at $1 million, by Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. Caminero was charged with criminal mischief. Caminero said he was protesting against favoritism for int’l. rather than local art.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 17, In Idaho an avalanche buried four people killing one man 36 miles north of Ketchum.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 17, Cambodian police arrested two Vietnamese men who were trying to smuggle almost 80 kg (176 pounds) of illegal ivory from Angola.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Colombia 5 policemen were killed by FARC guerrillas.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.32)
2014 Feb 17, Ethiopian Airlines co-pilot Hailemedehin Abera Tagegn (31) locked his colleague out of the cockpit, hijacked a Rome-bound plane and landed in Geneva, all in an attempt to seek asylum in Switzerland. On March 16, 2015, Tagegn was convicted in absentia by Ethiopia’s high court.
(AP, 2/17/14)(AFP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Georgia Vano Merabishvili, a top ally of former President Mikhail Saakashvili, was convicted of embezzlement and abuse of office and sentenced to five years in prison.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, Greek authorities said they have charged the head of a demining charity, his wife and seven other people with fraud and money laundering involving 9 million euros ($12 million) in public funding.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, Iran's ambassador to Moscow said Russia could build the Islamic republic a second nuclear power reactor under a proposed oil-for-goods swap that has raised grave concern in Washington.
(AFP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Israel an explosion atop 5-story building in Acre collapsed three floors leaving 5 people dead. It was reported as an act of sabotage meant to take out a cellular antenna placed on the roof by the owner.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 17, Niger security officials said they have arrested about 20 Boko Haram Islamist militants from neighboring Nigeria who were suspected of planning attacks in Niger's south east border town of Diffa.
(Reuters, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In the southern Philippines a bombing suspect was killed in a gunbattle when he clashed with police commandos. Police were trying to serve a warrant to Muslim militant Yusop Kusain for his alleged involvement in a deadly 2007 bombing.
(AP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, In South Korea at least 10 people were killed and 50 more feared trapped after the Manua Ocean Resort auditorium collapsed under heavy snow in the city of Gyeongju. Some 560 students from Busan Univ. Foreign Studies had gathered there for a 2-day freshman orientation.
(AFP, 2/17/14)(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 17, A wave of around 250 African migrants managed to breach the high defenses of the Spanish enclave of Melilla in Morocco, with more than half making it into the EU territory.
(AFP, 2/17/14)
2014 Feb 17, A UN panel warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he may be held accountable for orchestrating widespread crimes against civilians. The UN Human Rights Council delivered a 400-page report on human rights violations in North Korea.
(AP, 2/17/14)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.33)
2014 Feb 17, Syrian government troops took control of the village of Maan after destroying the last "hideouts of terrorists, who came into the village and committed a massacre." Anti-Assad Islamic fighters overran the village on Feb 9.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Venezuela a student protester (17) died after being hit by a vehicle in Carupano. This was the 4th fatality from political unrest over the past week.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 17, In Zimbabwe former US Rep. Melvin Jay Reynolds (62) was arrested on suspicion of possessing pornography and an immigration offence. Reynolds, an Illinois Democrat, resigned from his congressional seat in 1995 after he was convicted of 12 counts of statutory rape, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. On Feb 21 a judge dismissed the pornography charges but ordered Reynolds to pay a fine or face jail time after pleading guilty to charges of violating the country's immigration laws.
(AP, 2/18/14)(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 18, Pres. Obama announced his intention to nominate Jane Chu (56), a pianist and arts administrator from Kansas City, Mo., to lead the National Endowment for the Arts.
(SFC, 2/19/14, p.F5)
2014 Feb 18, In Chicago an elderly nun who broke into what was supposed to be one of the most carefully guarded nuclear facilities in the US was sentenced to 35 months in prison. Sister Megan Rice (84) cut through fences and several layers of security at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee along with two other members of Transform Now Plowshares -- a pacifist group -- in July 2012. Fellow anti-nuclear activists Michael Walli (64) and Greg Boertje-Obed (58) were sentenced to five years and two months in prison because of their criminal histories.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 18, Egyptian authorities charged two Israelis and two Egyptians with forming an espionage ring for Israel, the second such trial to be called for in a month.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, French police arrested a 48-year-old man in connection with the Sep 2012 killings of a British-Iraqi family and a cyclist in the Alps, in their first breakthrough in the case.
(AFP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh called homosexuals "vermin."
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, A German court sentenced Onesphore Rwabukombe, a Rwandan Hutu, to 14 years in jail for his role in the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, ending Germany's first trial related to the mass killings in central Africa.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, In Guinea at least one person was killed and six others injured in Conakry when protests against frequent power cuts turned violent. The offices of a Brazilian construction firm were attacked.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, In Iraq bombs exploded in predominantly Shi'ite Muslim districts of Baghdad killing 14 people. Another 35 people were killed in seven car explosions in the southern city of Hilla and nearby towns.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, Irish drugmaker Actavis PLC said it plans to buy Forest Laboratories Inc. in an approximately $25 billion deal that will boost the company's presence in US primary-care doctor offices and bulk up its portfolio of branded drugs.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, In Libya security guards forced Benghazi airport to close for six hours to demand back wages as well as an investigation into the crash of a helicopter which took off from the airport last week.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, Pakistani Taliban fighters opened fire at an army car and killed a senior officer.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, In Papua New Guinea police opened fire after hundreds of men broke out of an Australia-run detention camp for asylum seekers. One inmate was killed.
(SFC, 2/19/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 18, Polish prosecutors said they have charged a Catholic priest (Wojciech G.) with four counts of sex abuse against children in Poland and in the Dominican Republic, where he was working in a rural parish.
(Reuters, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 18, Saudi crown prince Alwaleed bin Talal and deputy prime minister Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud concluded a three-day-visit to Pakistan. Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced the creation of the new fund, the Pakistan Development Fund, to channel money from "friendly countries" like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Feb 18, South Sudan rebel forces launched a major assault against the key oil-hub of Malakal, as a ceasefire agreement with the government appeared to be in tatters. The government admitted that the rebels controlled some parts of the town. A top government general was seriously wounded in the attack said to involve tens of thousands of rebel fighters. 10 people were killed in "inter-communal clashes" within a peacekeeping base in Malakal.
(AFP, 2/18/14)(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 18, Human Rights Watch said Saudi Arabian authorities have deported more than 12,000 migrants held under "appalling conditions" back to their native Somalia. The International Organization for Migration said the Somali government expects Saudi Arabia to deport another 30,000 people in the coming weeks.
(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 18, Two American security officers, Mark Daniel Kennedy (43) and Jeffrey Reynolds (44) were found dead Port Victoria, Seychelles, in a cabin on the Norfolk-based Maersk Alabama. The ship had grabbed headlines in a 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates, an incident dramatized in the movie "Captain Phillips" starring Tom Hanks. Police later said that a syringe and traces of heroin were found in their cabin. On April 29 Seychelles police said a mixture of heroin and alcohol caused the deaths of the two former US Navy SEALs.
(AP, 2/20/14)(AP, 2/24/14)(AP, 4/29/14)
2014 Feb 18, A Syrian government barrel bomb landed next to a school in the village of Mzairib. 18 people were killed, including 15 Palestinian refugees.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.40)
2014 Feb 18, In Thailand gunbattles broke out as hundreds of riot police made their strongest attempt to clear anti-government protest sites around Bangkok. At least 4 people and one policeman were killed and 64 others injured.
(AP, 2/18/14)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.34)
2014 Feb 18, Uganda’s Pres. Museveni said in a statement that he would not sign a proposed antigay law until after a hearing from scientists.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 18, In Ukraine riot police stormed Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev. The deadly clashes between police and anti-government protesters left at least 25 people dead and hundreds injured, raising fears of a civil war.
(AP, 2/18/14)(AFP, 2/18/14)(AP, 2/19/14)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.19)
2014 Feb 18, Venezuelan protest leader Leopoldo Lopez (42) surrendered to troops after speaking to over 10,000 people gathered in Caracas. This followed his spearheading three weeks of often rowdy demonstrations.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)(SFC, 2/19/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 18, In Yemen secessionist rebels attacked an army truck carrying food to a unit in the southern Dali province, killing 7 soldiers and wounding nine. 14 soldiers were captured. An opposition leader said the clashes were prompted by the army's 33rd brigade random shelling of three districts in Dali that destroyed five houses and killed six people including a child.
(AP, 2/18/14)
2014 Feb 19, A $425 million Powerball drawing went to Ray Buxton of the SF Bay Area. He had purchased the ticket at a Chevron station in Milpitas.
(SFC, 4/2/14, p.E5)
2014 Feb 19, In Missouri the body of a girl, believed to be Hailey Owens (10), was found in the home of Craig Michael Wood (45), a middle-school football coach. She had been kidnapped a day earlier. Wood was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A6)(SFC, 2/24/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 19, A Nebraska judge struck down a 2011 law that allowed the Keystone XL pipeline to proceed through the state.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 19, In Pennsylvania Herbert and Catherine Schaible were sentenced to 3½ to seven years in prison in the death of a 2nd child who never saw a doctor despite being stricken with pneumonia.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 19, Facebook said it will pay $19 billion in cash and stock to buy WhatsApp, a mobile messaging company founded in 2009. This was the most ever paid for a venture-capital-backed company.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.C6)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.54)
2014 Feb 19, In Austria ambitious nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers entered a second day in Vienna with Tehran's foreign minister saying a deal was achievable.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Europe's largest defense contractor BAE Systems says the governments of the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia have agreed on new pricing for a massive sale of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets.
(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, In the Central African Republic heavy fighting erupted near the airport in Bangui, as Christian militia tried to block the evacuation of Muslims and disrupted a visit by a top United Nations aid official.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Egypt’s interim Pres. Adly Mansour ordered a pay raise for police after some of them joined factory workers, doctors and pharmacists increasingly on strike over the last month.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 19, French industrialist and senator Serge Dassault (88), the billionaire manufacturer of fighter jets, was taken into custody for alleged vote buying in his former fiefdom east of Paris from 2008-2010.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Kuwait’s loss-making state-owned Kuwait Airways Co signed contracts with Airbus to buy 25 planes, its first order for new aircraft in more than 20 years.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, In Lebanon 2 suicide bombers targeted the Iranian cultural center in Beirut, killing 8 people and themselves in an attack claimed by Sunni militants who said it was a response to the intervention of Iran and Hezbollah in the Syrian war. On March 8 the al-Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades issued a statement on militant websites apologizing for the civilian deaths.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)(AFP, 2/20/14)(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Feb 19, In Libya a threat by powerful militias to dissolve parliament ramped up pressure on the weak central government on the eve of a vote to elect a constitution-drafting panel.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Libya said it will offer compensation to women raped during the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled Moammar Khadafy.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 19, In northeast Nigeria an attack on Bama town by suspected Islamic extremists left 115 people dead.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 19, Poland's deputy foreign minister said consensus has been reached among EU states about imposing sanctions on Ukrainian officials over the violence in Kiev that has killed dozens of people.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, South Africa's top three platinum companies issued a take-it-or-leave-it wage ultimatum to striking miners, hoping to break a month-long stoppage that has crippled production. Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin said they would not raise an already rejected wage offer and warned of impending job losses.
(AFP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, South Sudan's army said that it has lost contact with its troops in the key oil hub of Malakal following a major offensive by rebels.
(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, Sri Lanka's government said that it was considering a process similar to South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal the wounds of the island nation's decades-long civil war.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 19, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich accused pro-European opposition leaders of trying to seize power by force after at least 26 people died in the worst violence since the former Soviet republic gained independence. Defiant protesters seized control of Kiev’s central post office, hurling fire bombs and rocks and standing their ground against officers in riot gear. Opponents of the president declared political autonomy in the major western city of Lviv.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)(AP, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 19, In Venezuela Imprisoned protest leader Leopoldo Lopez (42) urged supporters to keep fighting for the departure of the socialist government, even as he was due in court accused of fomenting unrest that has killed at least 4 people.
(Reuters, 2/19/14)
2014 Feb 20, In northern California Cherie Lash Rhoades (44), a member of the Cedarville Rancheria tribe, killed 4 people at the tribe’s headquarters, including 3 members of her own family. She was recently ousted as chairwoman of the tribe and was under investigation over at least $50,000 in missing federal grants. The tribe had just 35 members and owned 26 acres in the area.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.C3)
2014 Feb 20, A court in Cape Coral, Florida, ruled that living off the grid is illegal. Robin Speronis has been fighting the city of Cape Coral since November when a code enforcement officer tried to evict her from her home for living without utilities.
(http://tinyurl.com/lcgxy9h)
2014 Feb 20, In Georgia Sarah Jones (27), a camera assistant, was killed by a freight train on the set of the film “Midnight Rider." On July 3 prosecutors announced indictments against three filmmakers on charges of involuntary manslaughter. On March 9, 2015, director Randall Miller was sentenced to two years in jail as part of a plea deal.
(SFC, 7/4/14, p.A6)(SFC, 3/10/15, p.A6)
2014 Feb 20, Guantanamo Bay prisoner Ahmed al-Darbi (39) of Saudi Arabia pleaded guilty to war crimes charges for helping plan the suicide bombing of an oil tanker off Yemen in 2002 that killed a crewman and wounded a dozen others.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was convicted on 20 counts accepting bribes.
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.28)
2014 Feb 20, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber on foot killed a security guard and wounded four civilians outside a hospital in northern Kabul.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Albania more than 5,000 opposition supporters marched peacefully through the capital Tirana, accusing the government of failing to fight poverty and unemployment.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks (45) was acquitted of one charge at Britain's phone hacking trial as she began her defense against four more.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone won a multimillion-dollar case at London's High Court relating to the sale of F1 in 2005.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the world's largest bloc of Islamic countries, agreed to send a high-level fact-finding mission to the Central African Republic. The Saudi Arabia-based OIC also agreed to appoint a special representative to coordinate efforts with the African Union and the United Nations.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, China's capital Beijing issued an emergency pollution alert for the first time, warning residents to reduce outdoor activities and construction sites to control dust given a forecast of heavy smog over the next three days.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Egypt two Al-Jazeera journalists who went on trial with other colleagues shouted from the defendants' cage that they faced "psychologically unbearable" conditions in prison.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, German police raided the homes of nine elderly men suspected of serving as SS guards at the Auschwitz death camp and arrested three of them on allegations of accessory to murder.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, India's Parliament approved a plan to create a 29th state following days of political mayhem over the division of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In India police found the body of Erin Willinger, an American woman, in a deserted part of Agra near the Taj Mahal. Police said she was stabbed to death by her husband, Bunty Sharma, who then committed suicide by igniting cooking gas. They had been married for four months.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 20, Rights groups criticized an agreement between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia aimed at giving Indonesian maids more protection in the kingdom, with one saying "justice is still far away" for them.
(AFP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Iran and world powers agreed a timetable and framework for the ambitious and arduous process of hammering out a lasting nuclear accord by July 20 that satisfies all sides.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Italy's parliament passed a law that will phase out state financing of political parties, in response to public anger over its high cost and the tendency for it to breed waste and corruption.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Lebanon Abdelrahman Diab (Abdel Rahman Youssef), an Alawite official in the Arab Democratic Party, was gunned down in Tripoli. A 2nd man, a Sunni, was also killed.
(AFP, 2/20/14)(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Libyans voted on who should draft a new constitution they hope will help defuse a potentially deadly conflict between powerful militias and parliament members backed by armed factions.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In North Korea dozens of elderly North and South Koreans separated for six decades reunited at North Korea’s Diamond Mountain resort, weeping and embracing in a rush of words and emotion.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Pakistani air force jets bombed militant hideouts in the country's volatile northwest after government efforts to negotiate a peace deal with the Pakistani Taliban broke down earlier this week. 15 people were reported killed.
(AP, 2/20/14)(AFP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Two Saudi security officers and two people they were trying to detain were killed in a gunfight in the eastern town of al-Awamiya, an area where minority Shi'ite Muslims have staged regular anti-government protests.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In northern Syria a powerful explosion rocked the Bab al-Salama border crossing with Turkey, killing at least 5 people and wounding many others.
(AP, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Thailand protesters campaigning to oust PM Yingluck Shinawatra turned to Facebook and other social media to attack businesses linked to her family and rallied outside the offices of a property developer whose share price tumbled.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Ukraine protesters, fearing that a call for a truce was a ruse, tossed firebombs and advanced upon police lines in Kiev. Government snipers shot back and the almost-medieval melee that ensued left at least 70 people dead. Ukraine's Interior ministry says 67 police were captured by protesters. The head of Kiev's city administration quit the party of President Viktor Yanukovich in protest at the bloodshed on the streets.
(AP, 2/20/14)(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, In Venezuela security forces faced off with demonstrators in streets blocked by burning barricades in several cities in an escalation of protests against President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 20, Yemen police opened fire on a protest march on Khor Maksar late today, killing one demonstrator and wounding 12 others.
(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, US officials announced that California’s Central Valley farmers would get no irrigation water from the federal government due to the current drought.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A1)
2014 Feb 21, California state Sen. Ron Calderon (56) and his brother, former Assemblyman Tom Calderon (59), were indicted on a broad range of federal public corruption charges.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.C2)
2014 Feb 21, US District Judge Sharon Johnson ruled that same-sex marriages can begin immediately in Cook County, Ill.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 21, The head of Croatia's Bishops Conference, Archbishop Zelimir Puljic, said the Rev. Nedeljko Ivanov has been found guilty of sexually abusing minors in 1980s and 1990s. Ivanov was ordered to apologize to the victims and donate part of his pension to charity.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 21, The EU bloc's executive Commission added Bavarian pretzels to its "protected origins" list.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, In Germany a strike by security staff at Frankfurt airport caused nearly 50 flight cancellations and delayed thousands of passengers, bringing chaos to Europe's third largest hub.
(Reuters, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, India came under pressure over the deaths of over 450 nationals in almost two years in Qatar, the host of the 2022 World Cup. Amnesty International called on the Indian government to release more information about the deaths amid mounting criticism over safety and working conditions in Qatar.
(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, A Myanmar state minister said a jade boulder weighing up to 50 tons was discovered by miners just over a week ago in the northern region of Hpakant.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 21, In Pakistan Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said there was still hope peace negotiations might resume.
(Reuters, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 21, Philippine authorities killed at least 7 alleged drug traffickers and arrested 36 others in raids in in Davao city's coastal Tibungco district.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, In Russia 200 people were arrested near a Moscow court as it convicted eight defendants of mass riots and attacking police at a 2012 protest against Pres. Putin, a case widely seen as a crackdown on dissent.
(AFP, 2/21/14)(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 21, In Somalia 9 al-Shabab militants wearing military fatigues and carrying guns and grenades died after attacking the presidential palace with two car bombs, in an assault the president called a "media spectacular" by a "dying animal." 2 government officials were killed.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, In Spain international mediators said the armed Basque separatist group ETA has placed a small quantity of guns and explosives out of use in what is seen as a first step toward an unconditional total disarmament.
(AP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, A Spanish court ruled that Arthur Budovsky (40), accused of being behind Liberty Reserves, one of the world's biggest money laundering businesses, can be extradited to the US to face charges there.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 21, The Syrian army intensified its aerial bombardment of southern Syria as opposition fighters were preparing to launch a wide offensive in a province bordering Jordan. In Geneva the UN’s refugee agency called on countries to make commitments to provide resettlement for an additional 100,000 Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016. A group of 38 male evacuees from besieged parts of Homs were released after investigation, leaving almost 200 others still being held.
(AP, 2/21/14)(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, In Tunisia an Islamist official in Libya's government and 10 other passengers and crew were killed when a Libyan military plane carrying medical patients crashed near Tunis.
(Reuters, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, Ukraine's opposition leaders signed a deal with the president and European and Russian mediators for early elections and a new government in hopes of ending a deadly political crisis. Ukraine's parliament voted to return the ex-Soviet country to its 2004 constitution, which limits the president's powers and gives lawmakers the right to appoint key ministers.
(AP, 2/21/14)(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, The UN refugee agency said around 28,000 people have fled from conflict-torn Central African Republic to neighbouring Cameroon since the start of this month.
(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 21, Yemeni forces shot dead one protester and wounded 16 others as secessionists in the southern city of Aden defied a ban on protests.
(AFP, 2/21/14)
2014 Feb 22, A barge ran into a towboat on the Mississippi River near Vancherie, La. A 65-mile stretch of the river was closed to traffic for a day as crews cleaned up some 31,500 gallons of spilled oil.
(SFC, 2/24/14, p.A5)(SFC, 2/25/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 22, Afghan President Karzai's High Peace Council said it has held meetings with a breakaway faction of senior Taliban leaders in Dubai. The Taliban has denied links to the faction, organized by former Taliban finance minister Aga Jan Mohtism.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Brazil 9 members of a gang that specialized in blowing up teller machines were killed in a shootout with police after some 80 officers confronted 15 armed men after they used dynamite to blow up a cash machine in Itamonte, Minas Gerais state.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 22, In Central African Republic 3 Muslim civilians were shot dead when the taxi carrying them was stopped by an angry mob in Bangui.
(AFP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, An Egyptian court acquitted six police officers on charges of killing 83 protesters during the country's 2011 revolution, the latest in a string of trials that rights group say failed to hold the country's security forces accountable for demonstrators' deaths.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, Iran some 100 French corporate bigwigs held business talks in Tehran. American business representatives were also in town.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.39)
2014 Feb 22, Iraq's defense ministry announced a 72-hour halt to military operations in Fallujah, which has been held by anti-government fighters for weeks. The announcement raised the possibility of negotiations to end the crisis, during which gunmen have also seized parts of Ramadi. 4 military officers and five soldiers were killed as bombs targeted an army patrol in al-Saadiyah. In Tikrit blasts near the homes of local security and civilian officials killed five people and wounded 18. A military helicopter crashed in a remote area west of Baghdad, killing its four-member crew.
(AFP, 2/22/14)(AP, 2/22/14)(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, Italy swore in a new coalition government under Matteo Renzi (39). His Democratic Party was propped up by supporters of former premier Mario Monti and former loyalists of Silvio Berlusconi.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 22, In Lebanon a suicide bombing against soldiers killed at least 3 people in Hermel. The Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-linked group, soon claimed responsibility.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, Libyan police arrested six Qataris at Benghazi airport as they tried to board a plane to Turkey using forged Libyan passports and carrying almost $146,000.
(Reuters, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, Mexican marines in Mazatlan arrested Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin Guzman (56). His dominance of the drugs trade and ability to elude the law since escaping from prison in 2001 had lent him almost mythical status.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A3)
2014 Feb 22, In Pakistan 9 militants were killed in helicopter gunship attacks targeting insurgent hideouts in the Hangu region.
(Reuters, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, The World Health Organization began a campaign to prevent outbreaks of cholera in temporary camps in South Sudan housing thousands of people who have fled the country's two-month-old conflict.
(AFP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, Syrian state TV said government forces have captured two rebel-held areas on the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In the northeast Kurdish members of the “People's Protection Units" captured Tel Brak in a battle left some 19 people dead.
(AP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Syria Akram al-Bunni, a prominent leftist writer and former political prisoner, was abducted by government intelligence agents as he left a wedding reception at a Damascus hotel.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Thailand a 5-year-old girl was killed and about three dozen people wounded in an attack on an anti-government rally in the eastern province of Trat.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, Turkey's interior ministry said 1,000 police officers have been removed in the wake of a major corruption probe against key government allies but said these were only "routine" re-assignments.
(AFP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Ukraine protesters took control of Kiev, seizing the president's office as parliament voted to oust him and form a new government. President Viktor Yanukovych described the events as a coup and insisted he would not step down. Parliament voted to call early presidential elections for May 25. Leaders of mainly Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine that are loyal to the president challenged the legitimacy of the national parliament and said they were taking control of their territories.
(AP, 2/22/14)(Reuters, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, The heads of four Ukrainian security bodies, including the police's Berkut anti-riot units, appeared in parliament and declared they would not take part in any conflict with the people. Yulia Tymoshenko left imprisonment and spoke to a massive, adoring crowd, while President Viktor Yanukovych decamped to eastern Ukraine and vowed he would remain in power.
(Reuters, 2/22/14)(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 22, Vatican Pope Francis appointed his first batch of cardinals, as his predecessor Benedict made a surprise rare appearance at the ceremony.
(AFP, 2/22/14)
2014 Feb 22, In Venezuela tens of thousands of opponents of Pres. Maduro filled the streets of Caracas in their biggest rally to date.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.A9)
2014 Feb 23, In Wisconsin three men broke into a Madison home looking for money, found a couple lying in bed and assaulted the woman, who was six months pregnant. Efemia A. Neumaier told the assailants they'd find at least $1,500 in cash in the home of the man she was seeing, but that the men broke into the wrong home. Michon A. Thomas, Eric D. Bass and Kristopher J. Hughes all faced robbery and sexual assault charges.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Feb 23, The Afghan Taliban killed 21 soldiers in an assault on in a remote mountainous region in Kunar province. Six soldiers were missing after the militants' most deadly assault on the security forces in months.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Sidney, Australia, finance chiefs from the 20 largest economies (G-20) agreed to implement policies that will boost world GDP by more than $2 trillion over the coming five years.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Bangladesh gunmen opened fire and tossed bombs at a prison van carrying militants of a banned Islamist movement to a court house, freeing three of their colleagues and killing a policeman.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Brazil a 34-year-old football fan was beaten to death by supporters from a rival team following a high-profile match in the Sao Paulo state championship.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks in Baghdad on issues ranging from trade to arming Iraq's hard-pressed security forces, on the first such visit in over a decade.
(AFP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Hong Kong thousands rallied outside government headquarters demanding the city's leader uphold media freedoms amid growing anger towards perceived behind-the-scenes intrusions on local media outlets.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Israel Samuel Sheinbein (34), an American-Israeli prisoner, reportedly stole a gun from one of his guards before special forces shot him dead. An initial investigation revealed that the weapon was actually brought in from the outside. Sheinbein, was tried in Israel in 1999, and sentenced to 24 years for his slaying and dismemberment in Maryland of 19-year-old Alfredo Enrique Tello Jr.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, In the Ivory Coast at least 4 soldiers and several attackers were killed when suspected gunmen from Liberia raided a border town in the west of the country.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In southern Lebanon 2 UN peacekeepers died and three were injured in a car accident.
(AFP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In northern Mali a miner said that 8 armed men closed the large Taoudenie salt mine by forcing more than 800 workers to leave.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Mali 5 bodies were discovered in two graves near the Kati military barracks outside Bamako. The victims were wearing military clothing but their identities had not been confirmed.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, Nigeria’s military said it has sealed its northern border with Cameroon in an effort to shut out Islamist militants using its neighbor as a launch pad for attacks.
(Reuters, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, Shell Nigeria closed a 6,000-km (3,700-mile) oil pipeline to repair leaks from oil theft.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 23, In northwest Pakistan a bomb planted at a busy bus terminal near a police station exploded, killing 14 people and wounding 15 in Kohat near the country's lawless tribal region. Pakistani fighter jets attacked suspected militant hideouts in Tirah valley, killing at least 18 insurgents.
(AP, 2/23/14)(Reuters, 2/23/14)(SFC, 2/24/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 23, Vladimir Putin ordered officials to start work on taking control of Crimea. This was weeks before a referendum which, the Kremlin later asserted, prompted the region's annexation from Ukraine. This information was not made public until March 8. , 2015.
(Reuters, 3/9/15)
2014 Feb 23, The Winter Olympics In Sochi, Russia, ended after 17 days with a handoff to the next Winter Games host city, Pyeongchang in South Korea. Russian athletes claimed 33 medals, their largest haul ever.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Saudi Arabia a woman (81) died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 61 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Syria 2 suicide bombers killed a senior al-Qaida operative, blowing themselves up inside the militant leader's compound in Aleppo. Rebels said Abu Khaled al-Suri was the representative of al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri in Syria. A car bomb exploded near a charity field hospital close to the Turkish border. At least one person was killed. Another 60 boys and men, who were being held by Syrian authorities after their evacuation from besieged Homs, were released.
(AP, 2/23/14)(AFP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 23, In Thailand an apparent grenade attack against anti-government protesters occupying an upscale shopping area of Bangkok killed 3 people, including 2 children. On Sep 4, 2015, a court sentenced four men to life imprisonment over the deaths. The verdict was commuted from the death sentence because they had confessed to the charges.
(AP, 2/23/14)(AFP, 9/4/15)
2014 Feb 23, In Togo 18 people were killed and 40 others injured, 25 of them seriously, in a collision between a bus and a lorry.
(AFP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 23, Ukraine’s Parliament voted to hand the president’s power to speaker Oleksandr Turchinov, a top opposition figure, plunging Ukraine into new uncertainty after a deadly political standoff.
(AP, 2/23/14)
2014 Feb 24, Harold Ramis (b.1944), American writer, director and actor, died at his Chicago-area home. His film work included Meatballs" (1979), “Caddyshack" (1980), “Ghostbusters" (1984), “Groundhog Day" (1993), and “Analyze This" (1999).
(SFC, 2/25/14, p.C2)
2014 Feb 24, In Central African Republic Chadian peacekeepers shot dead 3 civilians in a Christian neighborhood of Bangui. Witnesses said anti-Balaka Christian militiamen killed at least 70 Muslims in the remote southwest village of Guen earlier this month.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, The military-installed government of Egyptian PM Hazem al-Beblawi said it has resigned, ahead of a presidential poll which will likely bring army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power. Beblawi said his government would remain in a caretaker role until the interim president signs off on the resignations.
(AFP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, France passed the Florange law in response to ArcelorMittal’s 2013 closure of the Florange blast furnace in northeast France. It was set to go fully into force in March 2016 at which point shareholders in listed French companies will see their voting rights double.
(http://tinyurl.com/loqnsvl)(Econ., 5/2/15, p.12)
2014 Feb 24, Indian attorney general Ghoolam Vahanvati told the Supreme Court the prosecution did not intend to proceed against Italian marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, accused of killing two fisherman, under the anti-piracy section of the Suppression of Unlawful Acts. The sailors said they mistook two fishermen for pirates during the incident in February 2012, off the coast of Kerala state.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Indian soldiers killed 7 rebels in a gunbattle in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Indonesian officials said floods and landslides triggered by torrential rains killed at least 11 people in Papua province.
(SFC, 2/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 24, In Iraq Atheel al-Nujaifi, governor of Nineveh province and the parliament speaker's brother, survived the third attempt on his life this month, as violence across the country killed 35 people.
(AFP, 2/24/14)(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 24, Two Israeli raids hit a Hezbollah target on the border of Lebanon and Syria. Lebanon's National News Agency soon confirmed the report, adding that the raids struck the countryside of the Lebanese border town of Nabi Sheet.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Lebanon actress and UN special envoy Angelina Jolie completed a surprise 3-day visit to Lebanon to draw attention to the challenges facing thousands of Syrian refugee children and to highlight the massive displacement Syria's three-year conflict has created.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Libyan police found 7 Egyptian Christians shot dead on a beach outside Benghazi. This was the second such execution-style killing in Libya since the start of the year.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Morocco hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants armed with sticks and stones stormed the six-meter (20-foot) high double barbed wire border fence in a bid to enter Spain's northwest African enclave of Melilla, with about 100 of them making it across.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, In northwest Pakistan unknown gunmen near Miranshah killed Asmatullah Shaheen Bitani, a senior commander of the Pakistani Taliban, along with 3 of his aides. 2 security guards were killed and more than a dozen people wounded in a suicide bombing outside the Iranian consulate in Peshawar.
(AFP, 2/24/14)(Reuters, 2/24/14)(SFC, 2/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 24, Hamas authorities said Gaza police have arrested family members over the deaths of two Palestinian teenage girls, one of them the victim of a suspected "honor" killing."
(AF P, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, A Russian court sentenced seven activists to prison terms of up to four years over a protest against President Vladimir Putin as police detained hundreds of supporters outside.
(AFP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was jailed for a week by a court for resisting arrest at a protest over the convictions of activists for attacking police at a 2012 rally against President Putin. On Feb 28 a Moscow court put Navalny under house arrest, forbidding him from using the Internet or communicating with anyone outside his family.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Saudi Arabia three security officers were wounded, one critically, by gunfire outside a police station in a flashpoint village in the mostly Shi'ite Muslim area of Qatif.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 24, In central Syria air raids on rebel-held towns killed 18 people. Airstrikes killed some 10 people in the northern city of Sheikh Khader.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra, the target of anti-government protests in Bangkok, has been staying outside the city and ruled out resigning despite a series of deadly attacks heaping pressure on her administration.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, A taped conversation of Turkey’s PM Erdogan speaking with his younger son Bilal was posted on You Tube. It dated to Dec 17 when police raided the homes of several members of Erdogan’s cabinet and business allies as part of a corruption probe.
(Econ, 3/1/14, p.53)
2014 Feb 24, Uganda's Pres. Museveni signed a law imposing harsh penalties for homosexuality, defying protests from rights groups, criticism from Western donors and a US warning that it will complicate relations.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Ukraine's acting government issued an arrest warrant for President Viktor Yanukovych, accusing him of mass crimes against the protesters who stood up for months against his rule. The head of the city administration in Sevastopol quit amid the turmoil, and protesters replaced a Ukrainian flag near the city hall building with a Russian flag. Andriy Klyuyev, President Viktor Yanukovych's chief of staff until Sunday, was wounded by gunfire and hospitalized.
(AP, 2/24/14)(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Uruguay Carlos Paez Vilaro (90), a self-trained painter, sculptor, screenwriter, musician and architect, died. He championed Afro-Uruguayan Candombe music and dance, created colorful murals in dozens of cities around the world, and built a huge "living sculpture" that became an iconic 50-room hotel.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, Pope Francis announced the first major overhaul of the Vatican's outdated and inefficient bureaucracy in a quarter-century, creating an economics secretariat to control all economic, administrative, personnel and procurement functions of the Holy See.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 24, In Venezuela anti-government demonstrators set up barricades in Caracas, snarling traffic, despite calls from within the opposition to rein in protests in which at least 11 people have died in the OPEC nation.
(AP, 2/24/14)
2014 Feb 25, California authorities said police officers in King City had taken part in a scheme in which over 200 cars belonging to poor Hispanic people were impounded and later sold when owners could not pay fees. Four officers were arrested in the case. The arrests, which also included a former police chief, came after a six-month probe of the police department launched in September when a visiting investigator — there to check out a homicide — heard from numerous sources that the community didn't trust its police department.
(SFC, 2/26/14, p.A6)(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 25, Jim Lange (1932), former TV game host, died in Mill Valley, Ca. His shows included “The Dating Game" (1965-1978), “Hollywood Connection," “$100,000 Name That Tune" and “The Newlywed Game."
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.D2)
2014 Feb 25, British police arrested former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg and three other people in the latest in a string of detentions linked to suspected terror offences relating to Syria.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Canada-based BlackBerry said it will release a low-cost phone in Indonesia in April and plans a broader release of a phone that restores a beloved row of control keys with a track pad.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, A Chinese state-run newspaper, the Yanzhao Metropolis Daily, reported that man in a smog-ridden northern city has become the first person in China to sue the government for failing to curb air pollution.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Croatia's trade unions, representing both public and private sector employees, staged a nationwide two-hour strike, firing a warning shot against the government's plan to make labor rules more flexible.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Egypt's interim Pres. Adly Mansour named construction magnate Ibrahim Mehlib to replace Hazem el-Beblaw. Mehlib had led Arab Contractors, Egypt's biggest construction company.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Members of the European Parliament voted through the world's toughest carbon dioxide standards for new cars, prompting a cautious welcome from environmental campaigners.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Ghana's Pres. John Dramani Mahama was heckled by opposition lawmakers while he outlined plans to boost the country's economy, as a free-falling currency sparks frustration over living costs.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Guinea secondary school student Moussa Mara was hospitalized after being kicked in the stomach during a football match in his neighborhood. Conakry doctors reportedly demanded 300 euros ($410) from his family to treat the boy, but they were unable to pay. Classmates stumped up the cash but Mara died on the operating table.
(AFP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Iraq attacks, including a suicide bombing near the Anbar provincial council headquarters in Ramadi, killed 12 people.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Japan’s government published a draft energy plan which put nuclear power at the core.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.43)
2014 Feb 25, The website of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox was returning a blank page today. The disappearance of the site follows the Feb 23 resignation of Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, a group seeking legitimacy for the currency, and a withdrawal ban imposed at the exchange earlier this month.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Malawi President Joyce Banda (63) faced calls to resign, after an audit revealed $32 million dollars of state funds had been stolen by corrupt officials between April and September of 2013.
(AFP, 2/25/14)(Econ, 5/24/14, p.44)
2014 Feb 25, An independent human rights group presented evidence directly implicating the Myanmar government in abusive and discriminatory policies targeting members of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In northeastern Nigeria gunmen from the Islamist group Boko Haram stormed a boarding school early today, killing 59 people, many of whom died in flames as the school was burned to the ground in Buni Yadi, Yobe state.
(AFP, 2/25/14)(Reuters, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 25, The Norwegian defense group Kongsberg says it has been charged with corruption relating to its activities in Romania. The charges were linked to deliveries of communication equipment to Romania from 1999 to 2008.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Pakistan said that work on a pipeline to import gas from Iran cannot proceed because of sanctions imposed by the United Sates and the European Union on Tehran.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Pakistani military jets and helicopter gunships killed nearly 25 insurgents in the latest tribal area strikes.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In the Republic of Congo a former minister under ousted president Francois Bozize, Patrice Edouard Ngaissona -- who calls himself the coordinator of the mostly Christian "anti-balaka" (anti-machete) militia, was arrested along with two aides and transferred to Brazzaville.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 25, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was jailed for a week by a court for resisting arrest at a protest over the convictions of activists for attacking police at a 2012 rally against President Putin.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In South Africa 5 illegal miners were found dead in an abandoned shaft near Johannesburg.
(Reuters, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Syria Abu Mohammed al-Golani, leader of the Nusra Front, called on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group to agree to arbitration by religious scholars to end more than a year of feuding which has turned violent in some areas.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Thailand announced a slump in trade figures with the biggest drop in imports in more than four years in January, as months of anti-government protests extended their economic toll.
(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Thailand an accident at a hospital construction site near Bangkok killed at least 11 people and injured 18 others.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned leaked recordings of him and his son allegedly discussing how to hide large sums of money as a "vile attack" by rivals, as calls mounted for his beleaguered government to resign. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse several hundred people protesting against the government at an Ankara university.
(AFP, 2/25/14)(Reuters, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, A Ugandan newspaper published a list of what it called the country's "200 top" homosexuals, outing some Ugandans who previously had not identified themselves as gay one day after the president enacted a harsh anti-gay law.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 25, In Zimbabwe a petrol bomb hit the home of top opposition official and former finance minister Tendai Biti, the second such attack in three years.
(AFP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 26, A US appeals court ordered YouTube to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent riots in parts of the Middle East and death threats to the actors. The 2012 video that led to rioting and deaths because of its negative portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. The company argued that the filmmakers and not the actors of "Innocence of Muslims" owned the copyright and only they could remove it from YouTube.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill designed to give added protection from lawsuits to people who assert their religious beliefs in refusing service to gays.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 26, In Colorado the body of Nancy Pfister (57) was found in a closet at her home in Aspen. Her parents had co-founded the Buttermilk ski area. William Styler III (65) and his wife Nancy (62) were arrested on March 3 on suspicion of murder. Katherine Carpenter (56) was arrested on March 14 also on suspicion of murder.
(SFC, 3/17/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 26, In New Jersey Trenton Mayor Tony Mack (48) was removed from office by a judge 19 days after a jury found him guilty of corruption.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.A8)
2014 Feb 26, In Texas a federal judge declared the state’s same-sex marriage unconstitutional, but allowed enforcement of the ban pending an appeal.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.A10)
2014 Feb 26, In Bahrain Jaffar Mohammed Jaffar (23), suffering from sickle-cell anemia, died a week after being taken to the hospital. Jaffar was one of several suspects detained in connection with an operation in December that resulted in the seizure of stocks of weapons and explosives, including some being smuggled in by sea.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, The Cambodian Anti-Drug Authority said it has banned the import, sale and promotion of e-cigarettes and shisha tobacco, a favorite of hookah-using smokers.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Canadian anesthesiologist Dr. George Doodnaught (65) was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting 21 sedated women.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 26, An Egyptian court convicted 26 people of forming a terrorist group to launch an attack on the country's vital Suez Canal waterway, with almost all receiving death sentences in absentia.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in a phone call that the Ukrainian opposition to president Viktor Yanukovych may have been involved in sniper attacks (Feb 18-20). News of the call was leaked in early March and prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to call for an OSCE investigation.
(AFP, 3/8/14)(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 26, EU lawmakers voted for the larger warning labels with the inclusion of gruesome pictorials plus a ban on most flavored tobacco products and tighter regulation of e-cigarettes.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Germany's top court struck down the country's 3% electoral threshold for political parties to win seats in the European Parliament.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Greek dock workers across the country walked off the job in a 24-hour strike to protest plans to sell a stake in the Piraeus Port Authority, the country's largest port.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, In Guinea hundreds of youths "armed with sticks, clubs and even knives looted, ransacked and set fire to the police station" and two local government buildings in Fria. They were protesting against the killing by police of a teenager accused of possessing drugs. Conakry school pupils took to the streets after the death of one of their classmates in a hospital, accusing doctors of "negligence."
(AFP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, Hong Kong newspaper editor Kevin Lau (49), who became the center of controversy last month after being sacked from his post, struggled for his life after being stabbed multiple times by an unknown attacker in Hong Kong. On August 13, 2015, Yip Kim-wah and Wong Chi-wah were convicted of causing "grievous bodily harm with intent" in the stabbing. On August 21 both men were jailed for 19 years. The two men told police they had each been paid HK$100,000 ($12,900) to attack Lau but refused to say who paid them.
(http://tinyurl.com/q9yfu92)(AP, 2/26/14)(Reuters, 8/13/15)(Reuters, 8/20/15)
2014 Feb 26, India's navy chief resigned after a submarine accident off the coast of Mumbai saw two sailors missing and another seven injured on the Russian-built INS Sindhuratna. Rescuers a day later found the bodies of two Indian navy officers inside the submarine.
(AFP, 2/26/14)(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, The International Criminal Court led calls for the government of Democratic Republic of Congo to arrest visiting Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who is wanted on charges of genocide in Darfur.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, A Kenyan court dropped charges against 41 men and released on bail 29 others arrested on Feb 2 during a raid on a mosque accused of supporting Islamist extremists.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, In Mexico hundreds of people marched on the streets of Culiacan demanding that authorities free Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the boss of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. Many said he provides needed jobs in poor mountain areas.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, Nigerian soldiers abandoned checkpoints and fled into the bush, leaving five northeastern villages and a town at the mercy of Islamic extremists who killed at least 33 people and firebombed a theological college in overnight attacks that lasted hours.
(AP, 2/27/14)(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 26, Pakistan vowed to press on with deadly air attacks on Taliban militants as it unveiled its first ever counter-terrorism policy after battling a homegrown Islamist insurgency for a decade.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Ministers from Romania's Liberals resigned from the government, a day after the party quit the ruling coalition in a break-up that will trigger a confidence vote and has changed the dynamics of a presidential election in November.
(Reuters, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Moscow granted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych protection "on the territory of Russia," shortly after the fugitive leader sought help from the Kremlin.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 26, Saudi Arabia beheaded one its citizens in Eastern Province after he was convicted of murdering a compatriot.
(AFP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, In South Sudan Doctors Without Border said that the extreme violence and lack of respect for health care workers shown by warring sides has made the group's work almost impossible. Sick patients have been shot to death in their beds and medical facilities have been looted and burned to the ground.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Syrian state media said army troops killed 175 rebels in an ambush south of Damascus, a major attack targeting mostly al-Qaida-linked fighters as part of a government effort to secure the capital.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, Turkey's president approved a controversial bill limiting the independence of the judiciary — a law that is widely interpreted as a government response to corruption allegations brought by prosecutors that have recently implicated PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Parliament approved a watered-down version of a new Internet law that would give Turkey's telecommunications authority the power to shut down websites for privacy violations, although it would have to obtain court approval within 24 hours.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, In Ukraine fistfights broke out between pro- and anti-Russian demonstrators in the strategic Crimea region as Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered massive military exercises just across the border.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 26, The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution authorizing sanctions against individuals and organizations threatening peace, security or stability in Yemen.
(AP, 2/26/14)
2014 Feb 27, Yahoo Inc. strongly condemned a reported multiyear effort by American (NSA) and British (GCHQ) spy agencies to snatch webcam images from the Internet’s giant’s user accounts in a program code-named Optical nerve starting in 2008.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.C1)
2014 Feb 27, In San Francisco five police officers and a former officer faced federal corruption charges following a 3-year investigation. Surveillance video showed officers abusing and stealing from residential hotel dwellers.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A1)
2014 Feb 27, Google gave the SF Municipal Transportation Authority (MUNI) $6.8 million to fund two years of free transit for kids.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A1)
2014 Feb 27, In Hawaii a small plane crashed after takeoff from Lanai Island killing 3 people and leaving three others injured.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 27, In southwestern China a bus in Guiyang caught fire near an elementary school with about 50 people inside. 6 people were killed. A man suspicious of his wife's infidelity later admitted to setting the fire.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 27, Huber Matos Benitez (95), Cuban revolutionary-turned-political prisoner, died in Miami.
(Econ, 3/15/14, p.86)
2014 Feb 27, French Pres. Francois Hollande arrived in Abuja and said France stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nigeria in its battle against Boko Haram. He arrived as a guest of honor for celebrations to mark 100 years since Nigeria's unification.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, In Germany former Pres. Christian Wulff (54) was acquitted of corruption charges from his time as a regional governor.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 27, In Iraq at least 21 people were killed in bombings around the capital, Baghdad.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Israeli forces opened fire and killed Muataz Washaha (24), a Palestinian they were seeking to arrest in the occupied West Bank, after the man had barricaded himself inside his house.
(Reuters, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Malawians marched on the streets of Blantyre in anger at their government after a damning audit revealed that corrupt officials had stolen over $30 million from state coffers.
(AFP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, In North Korea Kim Jung Wook, a South Korean Baptist missionary, told reporters he is sorry for his “anti-state" crimes and appealed to North Korean authorities to show him mercy by releasing him from their custody. He was arrested over four months ago for allegedly trying to establish underground Christian churches.
(AP, 2/27/14)(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 27, The Philippines called on Malaysia, Vietnam and other claimants to join its legal challenge to China's massive territorial claim in the South China Sea.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, In Qatar 12 people including two children were killed when a gas tank exploded at a Turkish restaurant in Doha.
(Reuters, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, In Somalia a car bomb blast in a normally quiet Mogadishu neighborhood blew the facade off a tea shop where intelligence officers are known to congregate, killing at least 11 people.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Syrian TV said a mortar shell landed near a hospital in a government-controlled neighborhood of Homs, killing at least 5 people.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Uganda shrugged off foreign aid cuts and int’l criticism of its tough new anti-gay law, saying it could do without Western aid. Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands cut aid over Uganda’s anti-gay law.
(AFP, 2/27/14)(SFC, 2/28/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 27, Ukraine's new prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk accused the government of ousted President Viktor Yanukovich of stripping state coffers bare and said 37 billion dollars of credit it had received had disappeared. Armed men seized the parliament in the Crimea region and raised the Russian flag, alarming Kiev's new rulers, who urged Moscow not to abuse its navy base rights on the peninsula by moving troops around.
(Reuters, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, The United Arab Emirates' state news agency said two crew members have been killed in the crash of a military training aircraft.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Michigan a Macomb County court convicted James Brown (25) in the killing of 4 women at his Sterling heights home in December, 2011. Their bodies were stuffed in car trunks and left miles away in a Detroit neighborhood.
(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 28, In Rhode Island former Central Falls mayor Charles Moreau, convicted in 2012 of corruption, was freed from prison after pleading guilty to accepting a bribe. An appeals court had thrown his earlier conviction into question.
(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A5)
2014 Feb 28, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed a NATO service member.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, British authorities said anti-fraud police have arrested 110 people in Europe and the United States in an international crackdown on gangs selling bogus shares that cost some investors their life savings.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, China’s Public Security Ministry said police have rescued 382 abducted babies and arrested 1,094 suspects in a national operation that busted four major Internet-based baby trafficking rings.
(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 28, In Egypt gunmen killed a policeman who was on a security team guarding the home of a judge in the jailbreak trial of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. Sergeant Abdallah Metwally was shot dead as he rode his motorbike across a bridge over the Nile in the city of Mansoura.
(AFP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Germany two lawyers were attacked at an office in Duesseldorf. One was killed and the other soon died of his wounds A third person was killed at another lawyers' office in nearby Erkrath before the suspected assailant, a Chinese-born resident, was arrested.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Feb 28, A Germany rescue helicopter crashed during a training flight off the Baltic Sea coast, killing 3 people. One person on board survived.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, An Israeli aircraft hit a suspected rocket launch site in the north of the Gaza Strip late today.
(AFP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, Japan-based Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange in Tokyo filed for bankruptcy protection and chief executive Mark Karpeles said 850,000 bitcoins, worth several hundred million dollars, are unaccounted for. On March 11 Mt Gox filed for bankruptcy in the US.
(AP, 2/28/14)(Econ, 3/15/14, p.71)
2014 Feb 28, Latvia's Olympic Committee secretary general said a second player on its national men's ice hockey team is suspected to have tested positive for a banned substance at the Sochi Winter Games.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Libya gunmen shot dead Colonel Wanis Massoud al-Barghathi, an officer in the air defense branch in Benghazi.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Malaysia Abdul Taib Mahmud, the chief minister of Sarawak, retired after ruling the state for 33 years. Environmentalists said Sarawak under his rule has lost 90% of its virgin rainforest, mostly due to conversions to lucrative palm oil concessions.
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.35)
2014 Feb 28, Doctors Without Borders said it has been expelled from Myanmar and that tens of thousands of lives are at risk. The decision came after the humanitarian group reported it treated nearly two dozen Rohingya Muslim victims of communal violence in Rakhine state, which the government has denied.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Pakistan a band of families, led by a 72-year-old marching in protest over missing relatives, reached the edge of Islamabad. They began Oct. 27 in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.
(AFP, 2/28/14)(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In Singapore Autumn Radtke (28), the American CEO of First Meta, was found dead at her home. Her company was a virtual currency exchange for Bitcoin.
(SFC, 3/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 28, Jihadi social media said Islamist militants trying to enforce their religious strict code in rebel-held areas of Syria have cut off the hand of an alleged thief in Aleppo province. Members of an al-Qaida-breakaway group (ISIL) withdrew from parts of Aleppo, ahead of a March 1 deadline issued by another rebel group. Residents found at least two mass graves in their wake, one with 17 and the other with 5 bodies.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)(AP, 2/28/14)(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Feb 28, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein moved to freeze assets and bank accounts of up to 20 Ukrainians including ousted president Viktor Yanukovich and his son, after Ukraine's new rulers said billions had gone missing.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In eastern Thailand at least 15 people, including 13 children, were killed when a bus carrying students on a trip to the seaside collided with a lorry.
(AFP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, Turkey's state-run news agency said five remaining suspects jailed in a vast corruption investigation have been released on parole pending trial. Turkey's main opposition party asked the top court to overturn a law tightening government control of the judiciary, which it sees as a bid by PM Tayyip Erdogan to snuff out a corruption scandal.
(AP, 2/28/14)(Reuters, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, Turkey's parliament passed legislation to shut down private preparatory schools many of which are an important source of income and influence for an Islamic cleric PM Tayyip Erdogan accuses of running a covert campaign to topple him. Lawmakers set a deadline of September 1, 2015, to close the schools.
(Reuters, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb 28, In southeastern Turkey suspected PKK gunmen abducted Abdurrahman Ecer (50), the top elected official of Cigli village.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Feb 28, Ukraine accused Russia of a "military invasion and occupation," saying Russian troops have taken up positions around a coast guard base and two airports on its strategic Crimea peninsula. Russia kept silent on the accusations, as the crisis deepened between two of Europe's largest countries.
(AP, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb 28, In northern Yemen at least 13 people died when Shi'ite Muslim fighters clashed with security forces. The violence erupted after members of the Houthi group staged a protest in al Hazm.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)
2014 Feb, The US Navy announced that it had discovered cheating on qualification exams by an estimated 20-30 sailors seeking to be certified as instructors at the nuclear training unit at Charleston, SC. In August at least 34 sailors were kicked out of the Navy for their roles in a cheating ring that operated undetected for at least seven years.
(SFC, 8/21/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb, Citibank said it had lost $400 million at its Mexican subsidiary, Banamex. On May 29 Mexican authorities arrested Mr Yanez, the boss of Oceanografija, an oil services firm, on fraud charges after Banamex found fake invoices for contract work with Pemex.
(Econ, 6/7/14, p.78)
2014 Feb, In southern California Xu Ting became a legal permanent US resident by virtue of being married to someone with an advanced degree or "extraordinary ability". She had already been sued for counterfeiting by eight luxury brands, including Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and owes Chanel Inc. $6.9 million in damages.
(AP, 7/12/15)
2014 Feb, The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System began operating in the Mohave Desert on the California-Nevada border. Birds began to immediately catch fire and burn in flight from the intense radiation of the heliostat mirrors. Trials in September, 2013, counted 34 bird deaths.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility)(SSFC, 8/24/14, p.C10)
2014 Feb, In San Francisco construction workers discovered human remains at the site of the new Transbay Transit Center. They were later dated back about 7,500 years.
(SFC, 10/21/14, p.D1)
2014 Feb, In New Mexico Wilson Joe Chiquito (75) was beaten to death at his home in the Navajo community of Counselor. In 2020 the FBI issued its first poster in a Native American language seeking information on the death of Chiquito.
(https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/wilson-joe-chiquito)(SFC, 4/14/20, p.A3)
2014 Feb, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police laid fraud and breach-of-trust charges against suspended Sen. Patrick Brazeau and former Sen. Mac Harb that stemmed from claims they made for housing and living expenses.
(Reuters, 4/10/14)
2014 Feb, A declaration against the trade in illegal wildlife products was signed by 41 countries including, China, the EU and Japan.
(Econ, 7/19/14, p.54)
2014 Feb, An Indian team visited Moscow to firm up a deal under which it will pay Russia to supply arms and equipment to the Afghan military as foreign combat troops prepare to leave the country. An agreement was signed in April in a move that risked infuriating Pakistan.
(Reuters, 4/30/14)
2014 Feb, In Moldova Mihail Formuzal, governor of Gagauzia, organized a referendum in the province in which an overwhelming majority called for Moldova to join a Russian-led customs union rather than a political and trade pact with the EU. After the referendum Russia offered an exemption for the winemakers of Gagauzia to its general ban on wine from Moldova.
(Reuters, 3/30/14)
2014 Feb, In Tunisia Imed Dghij, a senior figure with the League for the Protection of the Revolution (LPR), was arrested after threatening authorities in a video posted online. He was sentenced in March to eight months in jail for inciting violence and six months for attacking others on social networks. In April an appeals court sharply reduced the first sentence to three months and quashed the second one after reclassifying the offence.
(AFP, 5/10/14)
2014 Mar 1, In Nevada a US fighter jet crashed during a training exercise because of a snow storm in mountainous terrain. The pilot was later identified as Marine Capt. Reid Nannen (32).
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A6)(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 1, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it has agreed to provide a 331 million euros ($457 million) loan over three years to support Albania's economic reforms.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Algerian police used clubs to break up a small demonstration by some opposed to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's decision to run for a fourth term in elections next month. The Algerian army shot dead an Islamist in a mountainous region east of Algiers in an area between Tizi-Ouzou and Boumerdes.
(AP, 3/1/14)(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 1, In southwestern China a group of knife-wielding men attacked the Kunming Railway Station in Yunnan province. The rampage killed 31 people and wounded 141. Police fatally shot four of the assailants, putting the overall death toll at 33. Xinjiang separatist forces were blamed. The Ministry of Public Security later said a "terrorist gang" of six men and two women led by a person identified as Abdurehim Kurban was responsible for the attack. 4 attackers were killed and 4 faced death sentences.
(AP, 3/1/14)(AP, 3/2/14)(AP, 3/3/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 1, In China a crash in the Yanhou Tunnel in Shaanxi province involved more than 40 vehicles, including those carrying hazardous materials. At least 31 people were killed and a resulting fire burned for three days.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 1, In Egypt the youngest son of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was detained by police on suspicion of drug possession.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, French filmmaker Alain Resnais (91) died. His cryptic "Last Year at Marianbad" (1961) extended its influence across generations. His films included the acclaimed "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959) and most recently "Life of Riley," honored at the Berlin Film Festival just weeks ago.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 1, Israeli troops close to the border shot dead Amena Atiyyeh Qdeih (57), a mentally ill Gazan woman, near to the southern city of Khan Yunis.
(AFP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Hundreds rallied in Tokyo to protest Japanese prosecutors' decision to drop charges over the Fukushima nuclear crisis, with no one yet punished nearly three years after the "man-made" disaster.
(AFP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Japan pledged more than $200 million in aid to help the Palestinian Authority, as representatives in Indonesia from 22 nations reiterated their support of the Palestinians' quest for their own state.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Feb, In the Netherlands the Allard Pierson museum opened the "Crimea — Gold and secrets of the Black Sea" exhibition. In April curators said they are not sure where to return the objects on display when it ends in August due to Russia’s takeover of Crimea.
(AP, 4/4/14)
2014 Mar 1, In Nigeria twin car bombs at a bustling city marketplace in Maiduguri blasted buildings to rubble and tore apart bodies. An attack on the Mainok farming village razed every thatched-roof hut and left at least 51 dead. Over 100 people were reported altogether.
(AP, 3/2/14)(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 1, In northwest Pakistan militants killed 12 members of the security escort for a polio vaccination team, detonating a roadside bomb before opening fire on their convoy. In western Baluchistan province a roadside bomb killed 3 members of a government paramilitary force in Sorab. Shortly afterwards, the paramilitary Frontier Corps announced it had killed 10 men in Sui, 300 km southeast of Quetta.
(Reuters, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, The Pakistani Taliban announced that the group will observe a one-month cease-fire as part of efforts to negotiate a peace deal with the government, throwing new life into a foundering peace process.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Russia's parliament granted Pres. Vladimir Putin permission to use the country's military in Ukraine and also recommended that Moscow's ambassador be recalled from Washington over comments made by Pres. Obama. Ukrainian PM Arseny Yatsenyuk opened a Cabinet meeting in Kiev by calling on Russia not to provoke discord in Crimea.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, Sergei Aksyonov, the pro-Russian prime minister of Ukraine's Crimea region, claimed control of the military and police there and appealed to Russia's President Vladimir Putin for help in keeping peace.
(AP, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, In Spain armed Basque separatist group ETA pledged to give up all its weapons but warned the government that any attack or obstacle could impact negatively on the disarmament process.
(Reuters, 3/1/14)
2014 Mar 1, In northwest Syria government airstrikes killed at least 13 people in Kfar Takharim, Idlib province.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 1, Ukraine's Pres. Viktor Yanukovich sent a letter to Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, asking him to use Russian army and police forces to restore order in Ukraine.
(Reuters, 1/24/19)
2014 Mar 2, At the Hollywood Academy Awards “12 Years a Slave," directed by Steve McQueen of Britain, won the Best Picture Oscar. Matthew McConaughtey won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in “Dallas Buyers Club." Cate Blanchett won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in “Blue Jasmine." Actress Lupita Nyong'o (31) of Kenya won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the movie "12 Years A Slave." Jared Leto won the Best Supporting Oscar for his role in “Dallas Buyers Club." Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron won the Best Director Oscar for “Gravity," which won a total of seven Oscars.
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.C4)(Econ, 3/8/14, p.58)(SFC, 11/24/18, p.E1)
2014 Mar 2, British director Malcolm Clarke won the documentary short prize for "The Lady in Number 6," a profile of musician and Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer (d.2014 at 110).
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 2, The Italian film "The Great Beauty" won the Oscar for best foreign-language film.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 2, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez signed legislation to ban texting. 41 other states have already banned texting by all drivers.
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 2, A massive winter storm system packing cold air, snow and freezing rain pummeled the central US and headed for the East Coast.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, In eastern Afghanistan a militant car bomb prematurely exploded overnight, killing 9 insurgents and 4 civilians. A lone suicide bomber entered a police station in Kandahar province, though officers' fire forced him to detonate his explosive vest early, only wounding one civilian. 12 Taliban escaped from the 1,200-inmate Kandahar Prison after a prison employee falsely put their names on a list of detainees who were scheduled for release. Two were soon recaptured.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, In Bolivia 4 people were killed and over 60 injured when a metal footbridge collapsed onto a group of musicians marching in the opening parade of Carnival in Oruro.
(SSFC, 3/2/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 2, In Hong Kong thousands marched to support press freedom and denounce violence following the Feb 26 attack on Kevin Lau Chun-to, former editor of the Ming Pao newspaper.
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 2, In Iraq attacks in predominantly Sunni Arab areas north and west of Baghdad killed 6 people, all members of the security forces.
(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews held a mass prayer in Jerusalem in protest at a bill that would cut their community's military exemptions and end a tradition upheld since Israel's foundation.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Jamaican police said they have seized over 2,100 pounds (952 kg) of marijuana and arrested a suspect in a 2-day operation at a container terminal in Kingston.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, In Libya gunmen shot dead French engineer Patrice Real in Benghazi. A member of the security forces was also killed by a bomb placed under his car and a former policeman was seriously wounded. Five unidentified bodies were found in and around the city.
(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Pakistani warplanes bombed the hideout of militant leader Mullah Tamanchey, killing 5 insurgents, only a day after the Pakistani Taliban declared a one-month ceasefire to pursue stalled peace talks with the government. Tamanchey had directed the deadly assault a day earlier against a convoy carrying a polio vaccination team.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, South Africa's biggest trade union, the 340,000-strong National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), said it was laying the ground for a new "working class" political party. The United Front Movement for Socialism would group together left-leaning organizations to fight for better education, healthcare and municipal services for South Africa's poor.
(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, In Syria gun battles and shelling hit the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk in southern Damascus, breaking a truce in place since mid-February.
(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Ukraine mobilized for war and Washington threatened to isolate Russia economically, after President Vladimir Putin declared he had the right to invade his neighbor.
(Reuters, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Ukraine's new PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk and world leaders urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull back his military as hundreds of armed men surrounded a Ukrainian military base in Crimea. Ukraine's navy chief announced he had switched allegiance to the pro-Russian authorities of the flashpoint peninsula of Crimea, a day after he was appointed to the post by interim leader Oleksandr Turchynov.
(AP, 3/2/14)(AFP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 2, Venezuela released dozens of anti-government protesters and an Italian photographer, but that did nothing to appease demonstrators set for more rallies against President Nicolas Maduro. Thousands marched peacefully in Caracas. Afterwards some 1,500 erected barricades and clashed with National Guard troops.
(AFP, 3/2/14)(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 2, In central Yemen gunmen ambushed a colonel in the security forces, killing him and wounding his guard. Armed tribesmen clashed with security forces on the southern edge of Sanaa, leaving two gunmen dead and three soldiers wounded.
(AP, 3/2/14)
2014 Mar 3, In Michigan Raulie Casteel was sentenced to 18-40 years in prison for shooting at two dozen vehicles on a busy southeastern highway.
(SFC, 3/4/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 3, The US Supreme Court refused to hear a final appeal against the expulsion of Uwe Romeike, his wife and their seven children, from Morristown, Tenn. They had lived their since fleeing Baden-Wurttemberg in 2008, where it was against the law to home-school their children.
(Econ, 4/5/14, p.29)
2014 Mar 3, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb destroyed a police vehicle in Uruzgan province, killing 5 policemen and wounding one.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In Bahrain an explosion that went off while policemen were dispersing demonstrators killed three police personnel. 25 people were arrested over the next 24 hours on suspicion of involvement.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 3, In Indian-controlled Kashmir suspected rebels ambushed a police vehicle and killed two officers outside a court in Pulwama town.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In Iraq violence killed at least 10 people. Sabah Noori, spokesman for Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service, said its forces had killed 52 jihadist militants in fighting over the last 24 hours in Ramadi.
(AFP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, Libya's parliament moved into a five-star Tripoli hotel, a day after rioters armed with knives and guns stormed the legislature building, torching furniture, killing a guard and wounding six lawmakers in the latest episode of turmoil in the country.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In northern Nigeria suspected Islamic militants killed 3 policemen in Katsina. The police were killed while pursuing four gunmen on motorcycles who had attacked a checkpoint.
(SFC, 3/4/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 3, In Pakistan gunmen burst into a court in a busy shopping area in the heart of Islamabad, killing at least 11 people in a suicide-bomb and gun attack likely to shatter any prospect of meaningful peace talks with Taliban insurgents.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In the southern Philippines gunmen abducted two children, their nanny and a driver while on the way to school in a region notorious for ransom kidnappings by Islamic militants.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, Romania's ethnic Hungarian opposition party UDMR voted to join the leftist government of PM Victor Ponta, and will be given the environment and culture ministry portfolios.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, Syrian troops seized control of a village near the strategic rebel bastion of Yabroud as they pushed closer to the town. Food deliveries to thousands of people living in a blockaded area in southern Damascus ground to a halt after a truce collapsed and clashes broke out between rebels and forces loyal to the government. Fighting in and around Yabroud killed dozens of people, including about 17 rebels, 15 government and allied militia fighters and at least 4 Hezbollah fighters.
(AFP, 3/3/14)(AP, 3/3/14)(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 3, Uganda said it will send about 400 extra troops to Somalia to protect UN personnel in Mogadishu.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In Ukraine pro-Russian demonstrators occupied the first floor of the regional government building in Donetsk, the latest in days of rallies that Kiev says are organized by Moscow as a pretext to invade. Interfax news agency quoted a source in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry as saying Russia's Black Sea Fleet has told Ukrainian forces in Crimea to surrender by 5 a.m. on March 4 or face a military assault. The OSCE said it will start deploying in Ukraine late today, but Russian objections mean the body has yet to agree on a full-scale mission. The UN said 16,000 Russians have been deployed in Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/3/14)(AFP, 3/3/14)(SFC, 3/4/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 3, In Ukraine Reshat Ametov, a Tatar construction worker and father of three, was seized by unidentified men after taking part in a pro-Ukraine rally in Crimea. His body, bearing signs of torture was found on March 16.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.23)
2014 Mar 3, The United Arab Emirates' top court in Abu Dhabi convicted Qatari Dr. Mahmoud al-Jaidah and sentenced him to seven years behind bars on charges linked to cooperating with an illegal clandestine organization that aimed to overthrow the government.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, The UN Environmental Program marked its first ever World Wildlife Day to raise awareness about an illicit global trade in illegal timber, elephant ivory and rhino horns worth an estimated $19 billion.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, The United Nations' highest court banned Australia from making any use of documents it seized from a lawyer working for East Timor in an arbitration case over a multibillion-dollar oil and gas deal between the two nations.
(AP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, The African Union-UN Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) said arson and looting by militia has displaced about 20,000 people in Darfur.
(AFP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 3, In southern Yemen assailants killed 5 soldiers in an ambush in Shabwa province.
(AFP, 3/3/14)
2014 Mar 4, A federal judge in New York ruled that a 2011 $9.5 billion judgement against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador was the result of fraud, committed by lawyers who sued the company for allegedly poisoning part of the Amazon rain forest.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 4, In New Jersey a gas leak and subsequent explosion killed one woman and destroyed at least 10 homes in Ewing.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A8)
2014 Mar 4, Chinese millionaires pleaded for the Canadian government not to throw away the immigration applications of thousands of Chinese nationals as part of its plans to end a backlogged investor program.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, In China the Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science and Technology Co. declared that it lacked the cash to make the full interest payment on a corporate bond. This was China’s first domestic market bond default since the central bank started regulating the market in 1997.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.75)
2014 Mar 4, Cyprus's parliament approved plans for privatizations, averting a showdown with international lenders who insist on state selloffs as part of a 10 billion-euro ($13.77 billion) bailout.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, An Egyptian court ruled to ban activities of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in a move likely to fuel tension between Cairo's military-backed government and the Islamic group that rules the neighboring Gaza Strip.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Estonia's three-term PM Andrus Ansip submitted his resignation in a long-planned move to pave the way for his successor to lead a new government into a general election next year.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, The Government of India notified in the official gazette that the new state of Telangana will come into existence on 2 June 2014. India's 29th state, was carved out of Andhra Pradesh state after nearly six decades of street protests and strikes.
(AP, 4/30/14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telangana)
2014 Mar 4, India's highest court ordered that Subrata Roy (65), the head of the Sahara conglomerate, to remain in custody until a March 11 hearing over billions of dollars in an outlawed bond scheme.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 4, In Iraq militants stormed a government building in Samara, killing at least 6 people including 3 police and 3 civilians. 2 suicide bombers and 5 attackers were also killed.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, In Libya Col. Adam Faraj al-Abdali was discovered early today with shots to his head and chest inside his car near a cemetery in Benghazi. Col. Al-Abdali had pioneered the use of Russian jets in Libya.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Mexican police, soldiers and government inspectors raided 11 iron ore yards in Lazaro Cardenas following revelations that drug cartels were exporting ore to China.
(SFC, 3/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 4, In Mexico one person was killed when illegal miners attacked the mine and offices in Guanajuato state of a silver mine run by Canada-based Great Panther Silver company.
(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 4, Moroccan forces turned back some 700 sub-Saharan African migrants who attempted to cross into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Nigeria said it has released fuel from its reserves to ease a crippling shortage that has caused long queues of vehicles at petrol stations across the country. Shell closed its Forcados export terminal following an under-sea pipeline leak. The major installation held capacity to handle 400,000 barrels of crude a day.
(AFP, 3/4/14)(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 4, In the Philippines Arsina Nanoh, the vice-mayor Hadji Muhtamad town, was abducted by unidentified men near a shopping mall in the port city of Zamboanga.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 4, The US Coast Guard said in a statement that agents with US Customs and Border Protection have arrested two suspects and seized 750 pounds (340 kg) of pot after spotting a go-fast vessel more than 50 miles (80 km) off Puerto Rico's southwest coast.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, A Bucharest court has handed prison sentences to eight Romanian football officials for tax evasion and money laundering in connection with the transfer of 12 players.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Vladimir Putin said that Moscow reserves the right to use its military to protect Russians in Ukraine but voiced hope it won't need to do so as he accusing the West of encouraging an "unconstitutional coup." Russia's state-controlled natural gas giant Gazprom said it will cancel a price discount for natural gas supplies to Ukraine as of April 1.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Sri Lanka's navy said it has detained 32 Indian fishermen who were fishing illegally in Sri Lankan territorial waters less than two months after the two countries agreed to work together to combat poaching.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Syria's military fought to take Yabroud, a town that would help Pres. al-Assad seal a link between his coastal bastions and Damascus.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul ordered state auditors to assess Turkey's ability to combat corruption, including in the construction sector, amid a graft investigation that has implicated senior elected officials.
(Reuters, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Kiev to show US support for the fledgling Ukraine government, and the Obama administration announced with his arrival a $1 billion energy subsidy package.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 4, In Vietnam dissident blogger Truong Duy Nhat (50) was sentenced to two years in prison for posting online criticism of Vietnam's authoritarian government.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 5, California Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled an agreement with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to boost joint projects in high technology, the environment and cybersecurity.
(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 5, Alpha Natural Resources Inc. filed a proposed settlement in a West Virginia court to pay a $27.5 million fine and spend $200 million to reduce illegal toxic discharges across five Appalachian states.
(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 5, Washington state issued its first legal marijuana business license. 334 retail licenses were expected to be issued state-wide.
(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 5, The Algerian army shot dead a civilian and wounded two others when their car failed to stop at a checkpoint in the Kabylie region.
(AFP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, China’s PM Li Keqiang vowed to act against corruption and to declare war on pollution.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.70)(Econ, 3/15/14, p.13)
2014 Mar 5, EcoMotors, a startup backed by Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures, unveiled a joint venture with a division of China FAW Group to produce 100,000 new two-stroke engines a year.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.70)
2014 Mar 5, In northeastern China a fire on a public bus in Jilin province left 10 people dead and 17 injured.
(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 5, In the Czech Rep. a Prague court ruled that an Iranian national can be extradited to face trial in the US. Hossein Nayeri was one of four men that allegedly kidnapped a California marijuana dispensary owner in 2012, tortured him, drove him out to a desert spot where the men believed the victim had hidden his money and cut off his penis.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, The EU prepared a $15 billion aid package to Ukraine and froze the assets of 18 people blamed for looting the treasury of the nearly bankrupt country.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany is ready to help Ukraine in its difficult phase and added that this would include financial assistance.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In India street clashes marred an announcement that a general election will start on April 7 in a race that pits Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi against the unpopular Nehru-Gandhi family's ruling party.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In Indonesia an explosion at a navy ammunition warehouse killed one man and injured more than 80 other navy personnel.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said it had acquired missiles with multiple warheads, the latest armaments advance to be claimed by the Islamic Republic.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In Iraq a series of explosions killed at least 24 people.
(AP, 3/6/14)(SFC, 3/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 5, The Israeli navy seized a ship in the Red Sea that was carrying dozens of advanced Iranian-supplied rockets made in Syria and intended for Palestinian guerrillas in the Gaza Strip.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Israel's army struck 2 members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as they tried to plant a bomb near the Israeli-Syrian border.
(AFP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Macedonia's lawmakers voted to dissolve parliament so elections can be held a year ahead of time after parties in the governing coalition failed to agree on a presidential candidate.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, The Pakistani government pushed forward with Taliban peace negotiations, despite recent militant attacks that include a roadside bomb in the country's northwest that killed six soldiers.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Philippine government forces searched for a town's vice mayor after her family reported that she has been abducted outside a shopping mall in the country's restive south.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar in an unprecedented public split between Gulf Arab allies who have fallen out over the role of Islamists in a region in turmoil.
(Reuters, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In South Sudan at least 35 people were killed after heavy fighting broke out in the Giada military barracks in Juba, underscoring serious tensions within the national army as it battles a rebel uprising.
(AFP, 3/5/14)(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 5, A Sudanese court overturned an order by state security agents which has stopped the presses at Al-Tayar, a prominent daily newspaper, for almost two years. A journalists' rights group said the National Intelligence and Security Service have seized the press runs of three other newspapers.
(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 5, Turkey’s PM Erdogan confirmed the authenticity of a tape asking his then-justice minister Sadullah Ergin to pressure a court into convicting media mogul Aydin Dogan, a long-time foe. The tape included a slight to the country’s large Alevi community. The tape followed the publication last month in local daily Taraf of internal government documents that appeared to show anti-Alevi discrimination in the recruitment process for civil servants.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 5, Ukraine's new PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that embattled Crimea must remain part of Ukraine, but may be granted more local powers.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 5, In Yemen an American drone attack killed local al-Qaida leader Ali Saleh Juraim and two others while they were traveling by car in the northwest province of al-Jawf.
(AP, 3/5/14)
2014 Mar 6, The Obama administration slapped new visa restrictions against pro-Russian opponents to the new Ukraine government in Kiev as lawmakers in Crimea declared their intention to split from Ukraine and join Russia instead. They scheduled a referendum in 10 days for voters to decide the fate of the disputed peninsula. Russia's parliament, clearly savoring the action, introduced a bill intended to make this happen.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, The US Climate Prediction Center (CPC) issued its first El Nino watch in almost 18 months, warning the phenomenon that can wreak havoc on weather and roil global crops could strike as early as the Northern Hemisphere summer.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Sheila MacRae (92), Broadway and TV star, died. She was best known for playing Alice Kramden to Jackie Gleason’s Ralph on the Jackie Gleason Show (1966-1970).
(SSFC, 3/9/14, p.C12)
2014 Mar 6, In Afghanistan 5 Afghan soldiers were killed in an accidental air strike by the NATO-led force in the eastern province of Logar.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Algerian security forces arrested about 40 people protesting in central Algiers against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika standing for a fourth term next month. Public demonstrations in Algeria remain banned, despite a state of emergency being lifted in 2011.
(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, The Czech Parliament banned the sale of alcoholic beverages during sessions of the lower house.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Cuba said it has accepted a proposal by the EU to open negotiations on a new political accord.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, European leaders said Russia will face sanctions over its military incursion in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula unless it withdraws its troops or engages in credible talks to defuse the situation. The EU froze the assets of ousted Ukraine leader Viktor Yanukovych, ex-premier Mykola Azarov and 16 former ministers, businessmen and security chiefs, all on grounds of fraud.
(AP, 3/6/14)(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, The Bank of Greece said the country’s banking sector needs to raise 6.4 billion euros ($8.9 billion) to be able to cushion potential future losses. This prompted some of the banks to outline their plans.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, In central Iraq a series of bombings and clashes near Fallujah left at least 42 people dead.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Lithuania says six US fighter jets and two tanker planes have arrived following a US decision to increase NATO's air policing mission of the three Baltic states.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Macedonia formally set April 27 as the date of the country's early parliamentary election, which was forced after government coalition partners failed to agree on a presidential candidate.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Niger extradited to Libya one of Moammar Gadhafi's sons, al-Saadi, who fled as his father's regime crumbled in 2011 and who was under house arrest in the desert West African nation ever since.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, In northern Nigeria four young men were convicted of gay sex and whipped publicly as punishment in an Islamic court in Bauchi city.
(AP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Poland's defense minister said a mission of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has been stopped from entering Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula by unidentified men in military fatigues.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, A new video showed two members of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot attacked by a group of men who poured rubbish and bright green paint over them and shouted obscenities at them at a McDonald's restaurant in Nizhny Novgorod.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, Saudi state news said a court has sentenced three men to death and jailed two others for up to 17 years for their part in a series of militant attacks including the deadly bombing of a foreign housing compound on Nov 8, 2003.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, South Africa imposed rolling power cuts for the first time since 2008 as it struggled to cope with coal shortages and technical problems caused by recent heavy rains.
(AFP, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, In Syria at least 15 people were killed and 12 others wounded in a car bomb blast in Homs. At least five people were killed and more than 20 wounded in a bomb blast near a security headquarters in Hama. At least 17 jihadists were killed in fighting near the rebel-held town of Yabrud.
(AFP, 3/6/14)(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, Tunisia's Pres. Moncef Marzouki lifted a state of emergency in force since the 2011 uprising that ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
(AP, 3/6/14)(SFC, 3/7/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 6, Uganda, under fire from Western nations, defended its toughened law on gays as being aimed at "protecting" youth from homosexuality and discouraging public displays of gay love.
(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, Ukraine's new leadership was reported to have reached out to oligarchs for help, appointing them as governors in eastern regions where loyalties to Moscow are strong.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 6, In Ukraine two Femen protesters were arrested in Crimea's capital Simferopol after staging a topless demonstration against Russia's intervention in Ukraine in front of the regional parliament. Pavel Gubarev, the leader of the most persistent pro-Moscow protest movement in eastern Ukraine, was arrested at his home in the city of Donetsk
(AFP, 3/6/14)(Reuters, 3/6/14)
2014 Mar 6, A Venezuelan soldier and a motorcyclist died in a confused melee sparked by the opposition's barricading of a Caracas street, boosting the death toll from nearly a month of violence to 20.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, In Washington DC the Organization of American States voted to approve a declaration that rejected violence and called for just outcomes for the 21 people the Venezuelan government says have died in weeks of street protests. The OAS also supported the Venezuelan government's attempts to use political dialogue to end the protests. The United States, Panama and Canada voted against the resolution.
(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 7, US officials said Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael McClendon, accused of secretly photographing and videotaping a dozen women the US Military Academy at West Point, has agreed to a plea bargain that includes a 33-month sentence, loss of pay, reduction in rank to private and a bad-conduct discharge.
(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 7, The US Centers for Disease Control issued an alert after health authorities in the United States reported that at least 19 women in five states had developed serious mycobacterial wound infections over the previous 12 months following cosmetic procedures in the Dominican Republic such as liposuction, tummy tucks and breast implants.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 7, In Michigan a house covered with stuffed animals and dolls became the latest casualty in a string of suspicious fires at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit.
(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 7, In Fort Hood, Texas, Army Sgt. 1st Class Gregory McQueen, a coordinator of the post’s sexual assault and harassment program, was charged with 21 counts of pandering, conspiracy and maltreatment of a subordinate.
(SSFC, 3/9/14, p.A9)
2014 Mar 7, In Washington state some 750 detainees at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma went on a hunger strike to protest deportations and conditions at the center.
(SSFC, 3/9/14, p.A9)
2014 Mar 7, Two shipping companies agreed to civil settlements following accusations that they fixed prices of government cargo transportation contracts between the US and Puerto Rico. Sea Star Line LLC agreed to pay $1.9 million and Horizon Lines LLC $1.5 million to settle the cases.
(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 7, Online retailer Coupons.com, which took coupon clipping to the Web in 1998, raised $168 million in its IPO and rose 88% to close at $30 per share.
(SFC, 3/8/14, p.D1)
2014 Mar 7, Hundreds of British lawyers marched on Parliament to protest legal aid cuts. The government planned to reduce the legal aid budget by $360 million a year through 2019.
(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 7, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, the cyber arm of Britain's premier defense contractor, published its own research on suspected Russian spyware known as Turla, which it called "snake." The sophisticated piece of spyware has been quietly infecting hundreds of government computers across Europe and the United States in one of the most complex cyber espionage programs uncovered to date.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Chinese authorities allowed the country's first corporate bond default, inflicting losses on small investors in a painful step toward making its financial system more market-oriented.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Congolese warlord Germain Katanga was convicted of being an accessory to war crimes including murder and pillage - only the second conviction in the 12-year history of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Katanga was convicted as an accessory in the attack on Bogoro village in 2003 that left some 200 civilians dead and many women raped and turned into sex slaves.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)(SFC, 3/8/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 7, Greek Dr. Costas Kastaniotis (57) was convicted of breaking anti-racism laws for putting up a "Jews not welcome" sign outside his office and given a 16-month suspended sentence. The neurologist denied he was the one to have put up the sign, which was written in German, and said he took it down when it was brought to his attention.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Hundreds of people protested in the streets in Indian-controlled Kashmir over the expulsion of dozens of Kashmiri college students because they cheered for the Pakistani cricket team over India's.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Kenya's president and cabinet agreed to a pay cut as part of austerity measures meant to reduce the government wage bill and free up funds for use in economic development. They called on lawmakers to do the same.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, An Indian naval officer was killed and "some" dock workers were injured in a gas leak aboard a yet-to-be commissioned naval ship.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, In Iraq shelling in Fallujah, held by anti-government fighters for more than two months, and a shooting targeting a local official killed seven people.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Mark Karpeles, head of the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange, said 200,000 missing bitcoins, valued at $116 million, were found in old format wallets. Some $378 million of bitcoin currency remained missing.
(SFC, 3/22/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 7, Macedonian police said they have arrested 13 people, including the head of a customs office at the Macedonia-Bulgaria border crossing, on suspicion of participating in a ring smuggling designer clothing from Greece and Bulgaria.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, A Malaysian court sentenced opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to five years in jail on sodomy charges, overturning a 2012 acquittal and throwing his political career into jeopardy.
(AP, 3/7/14)(Econ, 3/15/14, p.40)
2014 Mar 7, Malaysia banned an Ultraman comic book because it uses the word "Allah" to describe the Japanese action hero. The Home Ministry said that the Malay-edition of "Ultraman, The Ultra Power" contained elements that can undermine public security and societal morals.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Mozambican PM Alberto Vaquina says attacks by the opposition party and former rebel movement Renamo have displaced more than 6,000 people in the central parts of the country.
(AP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Russia rallied support for a Crimean bid to secede from Ukraine, with Russia's top lawmaker assuring her Crimean counterpart that the region would be welcomed as "an absolutely equal subject of the Russian Federation." Russia said that Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) observers, who were barred from Crimea, had failed to obtain "official invitations" from the Crimean authorities.
(AP, 3/7/14)(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Saudi Arabia identified the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group along with al-Qaida and two Syrian jihadist groups, warning those who join them or support them they could face five to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 3/7/14)(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, A diplomatic source said South Africa has expelled three Rwandan diplomats it says were linked to an attack by gunmen this week on the Johannesburg home of an exiled dissident Rwandan general. Rwanda retaliated by ordering out six South African diplomats.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, South Africa's under-fire police faced a fresh scandal after footage emerged of uniformed officers punching and kicking a half-naked and unarmed man on a Cape Town street.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, Syrian warplanes pounded an area near the rebel-held town of Yabrud near the Lebanese border.
(AFP, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 7, In Thailand 6 suspected drug dealers were shot dead during a firefight with Thai security forces who seized illegal amphetamines in the Mae Sai district of northernmost Chiang Rai province.
(AFP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 7, A Turkish court ordered the release of former army chief Ilker Basbug from a life sentence.
(Reuters, 3/7/14)
2014 Mar 8, In eastern Afghanistan bomb placed under the car seat of a district chief exploded, killing him and wounding six other people. 7 people, including 3 women and 2 children, were killed and eight others wounded when their car was hit by a roadside bomb while traveling in Helmand province. 2 other civilians were killed in a bombing in the Kajaki district. Security forces killed 13 Taliban insurgents in Helmand's Gereshk district.
(AP, 3/8/14)(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 8, Gerard Mortier (70), Belgian opera director, died. His nonconformist style often grated the tradition-bound elite and who became a fiercely avant-garde impresario. He became the director of Belgium's National Operation, known as La Monnaie, in 1981, steering it away from "bourgeois" entertainment and to international recognition and acclaim.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 8, In Burundi violent clashes in Bujumbura pitted opposition Movement for Solidarity and Development activists against police. 21 MSD activists were arrested.
(AFP, 3/16/14)(Econ, 3/29/14, p.50)
2014 Mar 8, China declared a "red line" on North Korea, saying that China will not permit chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, and that peace can only come through denuclearization.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, In southwest China a small plane belonging to a flight academy crashed into a farm field, killing both people on board.
(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton arrived in Tehran to discuss issues including Iran's disputed nuclear program, before another round of talks between Iran and world powers.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Attacks in Iraq killed 9 people, including a parliamentary candidate and four children. A suicide bomber used a stolen police Humvee to pass through a military checkpoint and set off his explosives, wounding 14 people in Ramadi.
(AFP, 3/8/14)(AP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, The Israeli pacifist group Yesh Gvul (There is a limit) published a letter by a group of 50 Israeli teenagers informing PM Benjamin Netanyahu they will refuse to serve in the military because of its role in the occupation of Palestinian land.
(AFP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 8, In Libya armed protesters controlling eastern ports said they had started independently exporting oil, bypassing the central government in a major escalation of their blockade to demand a share of the nation's petroleum wealth.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 fell off radar screens less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. Vietnamese air force planes spotted two large oil slicks close to where the Boeing 777 went missing early today. The aircraft carried 239 people. Foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna confirmed that names of two nationals listed on the manifest matched passports reported stolen in Thailand. The flight was carrying 154 people from China and Taiwan, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians and six Australians among the 227 passengers.
(AP, 3/8/14)(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Russia was reported to be reinforcing its military presence in Crimea as Moscow's foreign minister ruled out any dialogue with Ukraine's new authorities, whom he dismissed as puppets. Warning shots were fired when an unarmed OSCE military observer mission was turned back while trying to cross into Ukraine's Crimea region.
(AP, 3/8/14)(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Sri Lankan authorities said they have halted excavations after recovering 81 skeletal remains from an unmarked mass grave atop an old burial ground in the island's former war zone.
(AFP, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, Syrian government forces seized Zara from rebels near the Lebanese border, their latest attempt to cut off opposition fighters' fluid supply lines from the country. At least 20 people were killed after gunmen loyal to Pres. Assad entered the town, one of two last strongholds for rebels along the Lebanese border leading to the city of Homs, the other being the nearby village of al-Hosn. Syrian cameraman Omar Abdelqade was killed covering clashes between government forces and opposition fighters in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor.
(AP, 3/8/14)(Reuters, 3/9/14)(SSFC, 3/9/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 8, Ukraine's top security body said that it and the national news agency has been hit by cyber attacks, the latest suffered by state organizations since the start of the crisis over Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 8, In southern Yemen at least 2 soldiers and a militant were killed in a clash when militants tried to attack a military compound in Lawdar town.
(Reuters, 3/8/14)
2014 Mar 9, In NYC thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews filled the streets of lower Manhattan to protest Israel’s decision to draft strictly religious citizens into its army.
(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 9, Afghanistan's influential VP Mohammad Qasim Fahim (57) died. He was a leading commander in the alliance that fought the Taliban and was later accused with other warlords of targeting civilian areas during the country's civil war. A bomb exploded near a store, killing 2 civilians and wounding two others in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, The Arab League endorsed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rejection of Israel's demand for recognition as a Jewish state, as US-backed peace talks approach a deadline next month.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Brazilian officials inaugurated the Arena da Amazonia in the jungle city of Manaus, the ninth World Cup stadium to become available for football's showcase event. Three still have to be finished, including the one hosting the opener in Sao Paulo in about three months.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Colombia held congressional elections. Voters showed lukewarm support for peace talks with guerrillas by giving the country's president a majority in Congress, but also electing his conservative rival, ex-president Alvaro Uribe, to the senate.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 9, In Cuba Melba Hernandez (b.1921), a "heroine of the Cuban Revolution," died. She was one of two women who helped Fidel Castro launch his revolutionary battle with a failed 1953 attack on the Moncada military barracks.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 9, Egypt's powerful military chief launched a housing initiative to build a million homes in cooperation with a major Emirati construction firm, the first campaign-style move by Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who is widely expected to run for president.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, El Salvador held a 2nd round of presidential elections. Former Marxist guerrilla leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren (FMLN) was expected to win the presidency after promising to expand social programs for the poor and fending off his opponent's claims that he will impose radical policies. Mr. Sanchez won by just 6,634 votes. In 2017 a gangster named Nalo testified that politicians from the two main parties had paid gangsters for votes. The FMLN allegedly paid $250,000 and Arena $100,000, which the gangs spent on M-16s and AK-47s.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)(AP, 3/10/14)(Econ, 1/26/17, p.27)
2014 Mar 9, Two Indonesian naval personnel were killed during an inspection aboard a Thai fishing boat in Indonesian waters. Thailand police soon arrested three suspects. Four more were arrested in April.
(AP, 4/4/14)
2014 Mar 9, In southern Iraq a suicide bomber driving a minibus packed with explosives killed 21 civilians and 15 security personnel in Hillah. A gun attack on a checkpoint North of Hilla left 2 policemen dead and four others wounded. In Abu Ghraib gunmen shot dead at least 2 soldiers and wound one at an army checkpoint. Six attacks north of the capital killed 3 policemen and two soldiers and wound nearly 40.
(www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26505128)(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 9, Italian authorities in the northern city of Lecco arrested an Albanian mother who confessed to stabbing to death her three young daughters. The father had departed for Albania a day earlier, and the mother had no job.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, In Japan thousands of people rallied in Tokyo and marched to parliament to demand an end to nuclear power.
(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 9, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata (50) assumed command of the Int’l. Space Station (ISS).
(SSFC, 3/16/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 9, Libya's Defense Ministry said it has authorized the military to use force to stop a North Korean-flagged tanker from loading crude oil at a rebel-held port, bypassing the Tripoli government.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, In Mexico Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, a leader of the Knights Templar, was killed in a shootout with police near Apatzingan, Michoacan state. He had been reported slain in 2010, but his body was never found.
(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 9, Almost all North Koreans cast their ballots in a pre-determined election for a rubber-stamp parliament, an exercise that doubles as a national head count and may offer clues to power shifts in Pyongyang.
(AFP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, A court in Oman sentenced a former executive of an engineering firm to a total of 15 years in jail for five counts of bribery in exchange for contracts from a state-owned oil company. This was the second against former managing director of Galfar Engineering and Contracting, Mohammed Ali, who was sentenced to three years in jail in January over bribes made to Petroleum Development Oman (PDO).
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Russians took over a Ukrainian border post on the western edge of Crimea, trapping about 15 personnel inside. Germany's Angela Merkel delivered a rebuke to President Vladimir Putin, telling him that a planned Moscow-backed referendum on whether Crimea should join Russia was illegal and violated Ukraine's constitution.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, A Sierra Leone airport official said International airlines have cancelled flights to and from Sierra Leone after a UN aviation regulator discovered that the only functioning fire engine at its main airport had broken down.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Somali officials said African peacekeepers (AMISOM) operating with government forces have recaptured several strategic towns in the southwest from the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militia. Witnesses reported fierce fighting in Buudhubow.
(AFP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, In Syria Ali Moustafa, a Canadian freelance photographer, was killed alongside 7 other people after government aircraft dropped two explosive-laden containers in the rebel-held Hadariyeh area of Aleppo.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 9, Yemeni sources said at least 40 people have been killed in three days of fighting between Shi'ite Muslim rebels and Sunni tribesmen.
(Reuters, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 10, Colorado said marijuana sales brought in $3.5 million in tax revenues and fees in the first month retail pot outlets were allowed.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, A federal judge in Chicago ruled that Branko Bogdanov (58) and his wife Lela (52) are to remain in jail pending trial for stealing $7 million in a decade-long multistate shopping spree. They had emigrated from Yugoslavia and were in the US illegally.
(SFC, 3/11/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 10, Fruit supply companies Chiquita of the United States and Fyffes of Ireland said they had agreed to merge to create the world's biggest banana supplier. Fyffes is Europe's biggest banana importer and the oldest industry brand, dating to 1929.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Journalist Joe McGinniss (b.1942) died. His books included “The Selling of the President“ (1968) and “Fatal Vision" (1983).
(SFC, 3/11/14, p.A8)
2014 Mar 10, Two Bahraini suspects, one with a US passport, were arrested after they allegedly "demonstrated and attacked a police patrol using Molotov cocktails and iron bars" in the Shiite village of Maameer.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 10, A Burundian official said South Africa has expelled a diplomat from Burundi's embassy in connection with a raid on an exiled Rwandan general's Johannesburg home and Burundi is considering a response.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, State officials in the Central African Republic were paid their first wage for six months, a small sign of normality in a country that has been paralyzed by war for over a year. A group of UN-mandated investigators said they will launch a probe into human rights violations amid fears of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Cypriot Central Bank governor Panicos Demetriades, whose testy relations with island's government dogged a tumultuous tenure when Cyprus teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, resigned.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, In Germany Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness admitted to evading millions of euros (dollars) in taxes through an undeclared Swiss bank account at a trial that could send the German football great to prison.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian judge from Jordan in an altercation at a crossing point between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli military said Raed Alaa el-Deen Za'eiter (Raed Zeiter) had tried to seize a soldier's gun at the Allenby bridge.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Libyan officials said parliament has ordered a special force be sent within one week to "liberate" all rebel-held ports in the volatile east, raising the stakes over a blockage that has cut off vital oil revenues.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Flooding in parts of southern Mozambique prompted authorities to call on people to evacuate. More than 6,000 people living in the Incomati basin were at risk from flooding.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, The Philippines air dropped food and water to soldiers stationed on a grounded transport ship on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal. A day earlier China blocked two Filipino supply ships from reaching the troops.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 10, In the Philippines some 50 New People’s Army (NPA) rebels launched a series of attacks in southern Davao del Sur province's Matanao township, killing 10 government troops and wounding nine. At least two guerrillas were killed and nine captured. Security forces were on heightened alert for the NPA's founding anniversary on March 29, which rebels traditionally mark by attacking government troops and installations.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Russian troops opened fire with automatic rifles during a takeover of a Ukrainian naval post in Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, South Africa said it will ask Mozambican authorities to investigate reports of sexual abuse of its female nationals held in the neighbouring country's jails.
(AFP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Switzerland froze the assets and bank accounts of nine more Ukrainians, including another son of ousted president Viktor Yanukovich and the son of a former prime minister, all of whom are suspected of human rights abuses and misuse of state funds.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, The office of Switzerland's attorney general said its criminal investigation into former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford's massive Ponzi scheme has concluded that some of the victims' money was laundered in Swiss accounts.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, Activist group All Out said the global telecom company Orange has withdrawn advertising from Red Pepper, a Ugandan tabloid newspaper that printed the names of 200 suspected homosexuals after a severe anti-gay law was enacted last month.
(AP, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 11, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the CIA improperly searched a stand-alone computer network established for Congress in its investigation of allegations of CIA abuse in a Bush-era detention and interrogation program. She said the CIA's own inspector general has referred the matter to the Justice Department.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Eric Toth, a former Washington private school teacher, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in a child pornography case. He was captured in Nicaragua in 2013 after a year on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" fugitives list.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Glenn Ford (1949-2015) was released from a Louisiana prison after spending 30 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to die in the electric chair, he was sent to a Louisiana penitentiary in 1985.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_and_exoneration_of_Glenn_Ford)
2014 Mar 11, Jos. A. Bank of Hampstead, Md., and Men’s Wearhouse of Fremont, Ca., announced that Men’s Wearhouse will acquire Jos. A. Bank for $65/share or about $1.8 billion.
(SFC, 3/12/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 11, In Afghanistan Swedish journalist Nils Horner (51) was shot to death while he was talking to a translator on a street in Kabul.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Albanian authorities arrested seven Muslims, including two imams, for allegedly recruiting men to enlist with rebel groups fighting in Syria. About two-thirds of Albania's 3.2 million inhabitants are Muslims.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 12, Austria arrested Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash at the request of the USA which has been investigating him since 2006. He was suspected of violating laws on bribery and forming a criminal organization in the course of foreign business deals. On March 21 Firtash was released on 125 million-euro ($172.5 million) bail.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 11, Bank of England governor Mark Carney said the alleged manipulation of foreign exchange markets is "as serious as" the Libor rate rigging scandal that rocked the financial sector. Global regulators were investigating a number of firms linked to the suspected rigging of foreign exchange trading.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Michelle Bachelet took over the presidency of Chile for the second time. She planned to spend $15 billion on ambitious reforms aimed at redressing steep income inequality.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, China’s banking regulators approved a pilot scheme to allow privately owned banks in various parts of the country. The China Banking Regulatory Commission said ten companies, including Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent, have been picked to invest in China's first five privately owned banks.
(AP, 3/11/14)(Econ, 3/15/14, p.70)
2014 Mar 11, In CongoDRC a ground assault by government forces in Makoyoya followed UN helicopter attacks and killed 22 rebels.
(Econ, 3/15/14, p.47)
2014 Mar 11, In Croatia a court convicted former PM Ivo Sanader (2004-2009) of siphoning millions in state money while in power, and sentenced him to nine years in prison as part of efforts to root out corruption. Sanader was sentenced separately to 10 years in prison for bribery in 2012.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Egyptian authorities decided to take control of independent mosques in a move aimed at curbing Islamist dissent. In January, the Religious Endowments Ministry decided to set a theme topic sent to preachers around the country for Friday sermons. In late 2013 the ministry dismissed 55,000 imams (prayer leaders) who did not graduate from Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In Egypt Freij (aka Abu Abdullah), one of the founders of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Champions of Jerusalem), was killed when a bomb he was carrying was set off by a car accident.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 11, The European Commission agreed to extend nearly 500 million euros worth of trade benefits to Ukraine, removing duties on a wide range of agricultural goods, textiles and other imports in an effort to support the Ukrainian economy. G7 leaders called on Russia to stop all efforts to "annex" Ukraine's Crimea region.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 11, France returned three paintings stolen by the Nazis during WWII to their rightful owners. This brought the number of looted paintings returned by France to their rightful owners to 10 in less than a year.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In eastern India Maoist rebels ambushed police and killed 16 involved in a mine clearing operation in a remote part of Chhattisgarh state, demonstrating their strength ahead of a general election next month.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out any deal with the Palestinians unless they recognize Israel as the Jewish state and give up their refugees' right of return.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Israel expressed its regret over the death of Jordanian judge Raed Zeiter (38) while he was making his way to the occupied West Bank. He was shot a day earlier by Israeli soldiers after an altercation at the Allenby Bridge crossing.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, An Israeli air strike killed 3 militants of the Al-Quds Brigades in the southern Gaza Strip. The air strike came just hours after an unmanned aircraft of the sort Israel uses for surveillance and missile strikes crashed in the same area, just east of Khan Yunis.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In northern Nigeria gunmen on motorbikes began attacking Marabar Kindo village in Katsina state. Fulani herders were blamed for the attacks on Hausa farmers that left over 100 dead.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 11, Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut landed back on Earth in Kazakhstan after a stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) of over half a year.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In Libya angry MPs ousted PM Ali Zeidan after the North Korean-flagged Morning Glory, a tanker laden with oil from a rebel-held terminal, broke through a naval blockade and escaped to sea. Zeidan flew to Malta on a Libyan state plane, but then switched to a private jet after a brief stopover before departing for Germany. Libyan commander Ibrahim Jedran, whose militia took over vital oil terminals in the country's east, said he is seeking help from the United States in a standoff with the government over the seizure.
(AP, 3/11/14)(AP, 3/12/14)(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Lithuanian authorities arrested Russian national Yuri Mel (b.1968), suspected of involvement in clashes in January 1991 after declaration of independence from the USSR, at a checkpoint on the Kaliningrad border. Two days later he was placed in detention.
(http://tinyurl.com/o6ufjc4)
2014 Mar 11, Romania's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly voted to block an investigation by state prosecutors of former Finance Minister Daniel Chitoiu who they suspect abused his power to further the interests of a private insurance company. Romania ranks only behind Greece and Bulgaria in terms of corruption in the 28-nation EU, according to Transparency International.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Russia signed a preliminary agreement to build at least two more nuclear power plants in the Iranian port city of Bushehr.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 11, In northeastern Syria 3 suicide bombers detonated their explosives belts in a local administration building in a Kurdish town, killing at least 5 people.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, In Turkey police and protesters clashed in Ankara and Istanbul following the death of Berkin Elvan, a 15-year-old boy who suffered a head injury during anti-government demonstrations last summer. Elvan was the sixth person to die in violence surrounding nationwide protests in late May and June over Erdogan's plans to tear down a park in central Istanbul.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, Ukraine's interim leaders established a new National Guard and appealed to the United States and Britain for assistance against what they called Russian aggression in Crimea under a post-Cold War treaty.
(Reuters, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, The parliament of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula voted for full independence from Ukraine in preparation for a referendum to join Russia. France threatened sanctions against Moscow as early as this week. Gunmen took over air traffic control of the airport in the regional capital Simferopol and refused landing rights to a flight from the Ukrainian capital.
(AFP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 11, The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it is sending a new team to observe military developments in tense regions of Ukraine and that the new team's mandate has been extended beyond Crimea to eastern Ukraine. Pro-Russian forces rebuffed previous attempts to monitor Crimea.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 12, A NYC residential building in an East Harlem neighborhood exploded and collapsed, sparking a serious fire and engulfing the area in thick smoke. 8 people were killed and 60 injured in the incident at 116th Street and Park Avenue.
(AFP, 3/12/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A11)
2014 Mar 12, In Afghanistan three armed insurgents tried to storm a former intelligence headquarters in Kandahar. The ensuing gunbattle left the 3 attackers dead.
(SFC, 3/13/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 12, Burundi charged opposition leader Alexis Sinduhije, who is on the run from police, and 71 party supporters with rebellion following March 8 clashes.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 12, Canada ended military operations in Afghanistan, ending a 12-year mission ahead of an end-of-year deadline for foreign combat operations to end.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, European Union member states agreed on the wording of sanctions on Russia, including travel restrictions and asset freezes against those responsible for violating the sovereignty of Ukraine.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Egypt's military said it has destroyed 1,370 smuggling tunnels under its border with the Gaza Strip, as Cairo's ties remain sour with the Hamas movement that rules the Palestinian enclave.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Greece thousands of striking public sector workers marched through Athens to protest against planned job cuts demanded by foreign lenders as unemployment in the country holds near record highs.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Indonesia Rusli Zainal, a former governor of Riau, was found guilty of graft and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He had issued logging licenses that resulted in forest destruction.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.42)
2014 Mar 12, Israeli lawmakers passed a contentious law meant to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military, culminating a reform drive that generated mass protests by the religious community in Israel and beyond.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Kashmir unusually heavy snowfall unleashed avalanches overnight and collapsed homes, killing at least 14 people on both sides of the de-facto border between India and Pakistan.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Mexico 28 vigilantes were arrested in Michoacan state for breaking into a cartel leader’s ranch and trying to take two dozen purebred horses.
(SSFC, 3/16/14, p.A10)
2014 Mar 12, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan ordered a forensic audit by international firms into some $20 billion allegedly missing from petroleum sales, following weeks of public outrage and demands by a Senate committee and the finance minister.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Pakistan rival gangs opened fire and lobbed grenades in a notoriously violent district of Karachi, killing 14 people including 8 women and 3 children.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Palestinian militants fired at least 25 rockets at Israel, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Puerto Rico authorities said they have arrested 63 people accused of running a $10 million drug-trafficking operation in Ponce, the island's second largest city.
(AP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Sudanese police fired tear gas when mourners called for "revolution" following the funeral of a student allegedly gunned down by security forces at a protest against violence in Darfur.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Swiss authorities said they have opened a money laundering investigation into Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's Pres. Islam Karimov, related to the country's telecommunications market.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Thailand police rescued about 200 suspected Muslim Uighurs, believed to be from China's troubled far-western region of Xinjiang, from a human smuggling camp in southern Thailand.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 12, In Turkey tens of thousands of mourners chanting anti-government slogans marched through central Istanbul for the funeral of a teenager wounded in street protests last summer whose death has sparked renewed unrest across Turkey. Police clashed with protesters in at least 11 cities and at least two people were killed.
(Reuters, 3/12/14)(SFC, 3/12/14, p.A2)(AFP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 12, Ukraine's acting president said the country would not use its army to stop Crimea from seceding, the latest sign that a Russian annexation of the strategic peninsula may be imminent.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 12, Stephen Power (29) from Cardiff in Wales was reported to be one of the first trauma patients in the world to have a procedure in which 3D printing was used at every stage.
(AFP, 3/12/14)
2014 Mar 13, President Obama signed the first congressionally passed public lands bill in five years, and called on Congress to do more to protect the wilderness. The law officially expanded the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Glen Arbor, Mich., a move that will protect an additional 32,500 acres of Lake Michigan coastline.
(http://tinyurl.com/pkuv6nl)(SFC, 3/21/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 13, US authorities said Ahmed Bel Bacha (44), held for 12 years without charge at Guantanamo Bay, has been turned over to the Algerian government. This reduced the Gitmo prisoner population to 154.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, The Colorado Court of Appeals said people whose cases were under appeal when Amendment 64 took effect in Dec 1012, are eligible to have their convictions for possessing small amount of marijuana dismissed. The amendment allowed adults over 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 13, In Texas Rashad Charjuan Owens (21) drove drunk into a crowd at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin leaving 2 people dead and 23 injured. 9 remained hospitalized in critical condition. A 3rd person died of her injuries on March 17.
(AFP, 3/13/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A11)(SFC, 3/18/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 13, US border agent Esteban Manzanares (32) committed suicide. He was accused of kidnapping and assaulting an immigrant woman, her daughter and another girl a day earlier in Mission, Texas.
(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A10)(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 13, Bosnian police said the driver of a city bus was killed when a man threw a hand grenade into the vehicle as it stood at a bus stop in Banja Luka.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Edward Haughey (70), Northern Ireland's wealthiest man, died after his helicopter crashed in thick fog in eastern England. He had founded Norbrook Laboratories, a world-leading veterinary drugs company.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 13, The Toronto National Post reported that a new generation of mutant lice have become immune to poisons of decades past and constituted 97.1% of all Canadian head lice cases.
(SSFC, 3/16/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 13, Police in southwestern China took away veteran activist Huang Qi, who runs a rights monitoring website, and seized his computers and mobile phones in Chengdu.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Czech priest and intellectual Tomas Halik (65) won the 2014 Templeton Prize. Halik pushed for religious and cultural freedoms after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and became a leading advocate of dialogue among different faiths and non-believers.
(AFP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, East African heads of state met in Addis Ababa in the latest push for peace in war-torn South Sudan, where almost three months of raging conflict has left thousands dead.
(AFP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Egypt brokered a ceasefire aimed at ending a flare-up of rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli towns and Israeli air strikes in the Palestinian enclave.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Egypt an attack on an army bus killed one officer and wounded three others in Cairo. The army blamed the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, who in turn strongly condemned the attack.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, El Salvador’s electoral court said Sanchez Ceren (69), the leftist candidate of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), won the March 9 presidential election with got 50.1% of the votes.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, The Paris-based OECD said it has postponed all activities related to Russia's accession to the organization following a request from its 34 members.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Germany's Angela Merkel warned Moscow that it risked "massive" political and economic damage if it refused to change course on Ukraine.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Germany Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness was found guilty and sentenced to 3½ years in prison for evading millions of euros (dollars) in tax through an undeclared Swiss bank account.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Israeli warplanes pounded 29 Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip in response to heavy Palestinian rocket fire into the Jewish state as Gaza militants resumed rocket fire. Israel’s defense ministry shut down the Kerem Shalom goods crossing into southern Gaza following rocket fire over the border.
(AFP, 3/13/14)(AP, 3/13/14)(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Lebanon clashes broke out in Tripoli after gunmen fatally shot a Sunni man who had Alawite relatives and lived in a mostly Alawite area of the city.
(Reuters, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 13, Madagascar said it has restored ties with the International Monetary Fund for the first time since a coup in 2009.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Malaysian police arrested 62 people who had illegally crossed the porous border between Thailand and Malaysia.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Mexico a top leader of the self-defense movement in Michoacan state was charged in the murder of two members of a rival vigilante faction.
(SSFC, 3/16/14, p.A10)
2014 Mar 13, New Zealand's Reserve Bank raised its benchmark interest rate by quarter of a percentage point to 2.75 percent after holding it at a record low for three years.
(AP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, In northern Nigeria attackers returned to Marabar Kindo village in Katsina state and gunned down another 7 villagers.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 13, Russia said it will impose symmetrical sanctions if the United States and European Union impose their own.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 13, Sri Lanka's police arrested Balendran Jeyakumari and referred her daughter Vithushaini (13) to child care officials. Jeyakumari had been vocal in calling for the release of her 15-year-old son, a child recruit of the Tamil Tiger rebels, whom she had handed to the military as fighting ended in 2009.
(AP, 3/14/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 13, A court in Sudan sentenced former governor of the southern Blue Nile State and leader of the opposition group Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North Malik Agar and 17 other members of the group to death by hanging. 47 others were given life sentences in a hearing. All but one were tried in absentia.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 13, Syria's parliament unanimously approved a new election law allowing multiple candidates to run for president, opening the door — at least in theory — to other potential contenders besides President Assad. However only candidates who have lived in Syria for 10 consecutive prior to nomination can run.
(AP, 3/13/14)(SFC, 3/14/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 13, Ukraine's parliament appealed to the UN to discuss the occupation by Russian forces of its Crimea peninsula and said it reserved the right to ask individual countries for help in resolving the issue. A man (22) was stabbed to death in Donetsk in clashes between pro-Russian protesters and a crowd favoring European integration and denouncing Russian forces' seizure of Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/13/14)(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 13, In Yemen 6 Shiite rebels and 2 soldiers were killed in a firefight near Sanaa. Eight of the Huthi rebels, also known as Ansarullah (Partisans of God), were wounded in the clash in Qaratel.
(AFP, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 14, It was reported that Kevin Gorman (22) has become the official Wikipedian-in-Residence at UC Berkeley, the first post of its kind at a university.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 14, Reubin Askew (85), former two-term governor of Florida (1971-1979), died in Tallahassee.
(SFC, 3/14/14, p.D7)
2014 Mar 14, Boston Beer Co. said that it is withdrawing its sponsorship of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade because organizers exclude gay groups.
(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A11)
2014 Mar 14, Howard Buffett, son of investor Warren Buffett, pledged nearly $24 million for protecting rhinos in South Africa, earmarking the money for ranger teams, sniffer dogs and other security measures in what he hopes can be a robust model for fighting what he calls the "overwhelming" problem of poaching in parts of Africa.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, Sandwich shop Quiznos announced that it was filing for bankruptcy. In 2009, a class-action lawsuit settlement forced Quiznos to pay $95 million to its independently-owned franchises, that, according to the Post, originally sued because expensive ingredients made it nearly impossible to turn a profit.
(AOL.com, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, Tony Benn (88), the totem of the British left, died at his London home. The Labour cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s had spearheaded the movement against the Iraq war.
(AFP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, A Bulgarian policeman was killed and three officers wounded in a shootout with Petko Petkov (52), who had threatened the pupils and the headmaster of a school in the central town of Lyaskovets.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, In China a fellow dissident and lawyers said prominent Chinese human rights activist Cao Shunli, detained in September for staging sit-ins at the country's foreign ministry, has died after being denied medical treatment in detention.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, In southern China a fight between two food stall owners at a market left 5 people hacked to death and one person fatally shot by police in Changsha. A witness said the stand operators were Uighurs selling flatbread.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Estonia's President Toomas Hendrik Ilves nominated cabinet minister Taavi Roivas (34) to form a new government and seek approval from parliament to lead the small euro zone country. Roivas is set to take over from PM Andrus Ansip, who resigned on March 4.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, EU officials said they have drawn up a list of 120-130 names of Russians who could be hit with travel bans and asset freezes to punish Russia for its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, A French court ordered an ex-aide of Nicolas Sarkozy to pay 10,000 euros ($14,000) in damages and costs to the former French president over secret recordings that were published in an online journal, and instructed the publication to pull down the links.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, A French court sentenced Pascal Simbikangwa (54), a former member of the Rwandan presidential guard, to 25 years in prison. He was found guilty of perpetrating genocide and of complicity in crimes against humanity in 1994.
(AFP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, Most of France went under some sort of pollution alert with levels in the Parisian region surpassing those in cities such as Beijing and New Delhi.
(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 14, In India an old, seven-story residential building collapsed in a Mumbai suburb, killing at least 2 people and possibly trapping more under the debris.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Indonesia reported that Pres. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered relevant ministers and local authorities in peat-rich Riau province to handle forest fires that have been sending out heavy smoke threatening health and disrupting flight operations. Officers in the armed forces were said to be involved in illegal logging and burning.
(AP, 3/14/14)(Econ, 3/22/14, p.42)
2014 Mar 14, Indonesia’s Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former president and head of the opposition PDI-P, anointed Joko Widodo, Jakarta’s popular mayor, as her candidate for president.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.41)
2014 Mar 14, In Iraq bombings in and around Baghdad, including blasts near two markets, killed 7 people.
(AFP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, In Jordan protesters fought with riot police outside of the Israeli Embassy, as some 2,000 demonstrators called on the kingdom to end its peace treaty with the country over the killing of a Jordanian judge.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, The search for the missing Malaysian jetliner expanded east and west on Friday after American officials said it was emitting signals to satellites for hours after its last contact with air traffic control nearly a week ago over the South China Sea.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, A Mali military source said French air strikes in the mountains of northern Mali have killed Islamist militant Oumar Ould Hamaha, a jihadist with a $3 million US government bounty on his head. Paris said last week its forces had killed 10 suspected Islamist fighters in the northern Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, after the group was spotted by a US-made Reaper surveillance drone.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Moroccan and Spanish authorities arrested seven suspected members of an al-Qaida-linked extremist cell allegedly recruiting members to fight in Syria and other hotspots.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, The Nigerian Navy said it has destroyed 260 illegal oil refineries and burned 100,000 tons of contraband fuel, but critics say this targeting of small-time criminals fails to confront the biggest culprits in oil thefts — the politically-connected criminal cartels who sell on the international market.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 14, In northeastern Nigeria Boko Haram Islamists attacked the Giwa military base in Maiduguri and freed dozens of insurgents from custody. A military counter attack left some 500 people dead.
(AFP, 3/14/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A6)(Econ, 3/29/14, p.49)
2014 Mar 14, In Pakistan at least 10 people were killed when a motorcycle laden with explosives exploded near a college in the center of Quetta. In Peshawar a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a police vehicle, killing at least 7 bystanders including a woman and a child.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)(SFC, 3/15/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 14, In Pakistan a woman died after setting herself on fire a day earlier outside a police station after reporting men tried to rape her died. The woman's brother had filed a complaint with police in January, saying his sister had been abducted and the assailants tried to rape her.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Gaza militants fired a rocket at Israel after two days of intense exchanges. It exploded in southern Israel but caused no damage or injuries.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Russia called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to send its observers to monitor Crimea's controversial referendum on independence from Ukraine.
(AFP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Hackers knocked out the Russian presidency's website several times and brought down the central bank website.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Saudi Arabia said a man (19) has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 63 the deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, Diplomatic and other sources said major European and Saudi banks have stopped dealing with Sudan. The US imposed a trade embargo on Sudan in 1997 over accusations that included human rights violations.
(AFP, 3/14/14)
(Reuters, 3/14/14)(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, In Syria al Qaeda splinter group ISIL pulled out of two provinces in the country's northwest and headed to its eastern strongholds after months of clashes with rival rebels. A senior commander in the Nusra Front was killed on the outskirts of Yabroud during shelling and clashes with the army and Hezbollah fighters.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 14, In southern Thailand a Buddhist teacher was fatally shot on her way to school and then set ablaze, becoming the 170th teacher killed by suspected Muslim insurgents in the country's decade-long insurgency.
(AP, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 14, In Ukraine two people were killed and several wounded in a shootout that erupted after a clash in the city of Kharkiv between pro-Russian demonstrators and their opponents.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the United States its soldiers can leave at the end of the year because his military, which already protects 93% of the country, was ready to take over entirely.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Algeria about 100 activists from a new anti-government movement staged a rare protest against the ailing Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika (77) and his decision to run for a fourth term. 3 men from the Arab community died in clashes with Mozabite Berbers in Ghardaia. Clashes first erupted in December and 5 Mozabites were killed before violence was stopped by a heavy police deployment in late January.
(AP, 3/15/14)(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Egypt gunmen shot dead six army officers near Cairo, the 2nd attack on Egyptian security forces in three days that the military has blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed Pres. Mohamed Mursi.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Guyana businessman Lennox La Cruz (50) was arrested on suspicion of killing his wife and four of his five children by locking them inside their home and setting it on fire the previous evening.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Lebanon 10 people were reported killed in the last 48 hours of clashes in Tripoli linked to the conflict in neighboring Syria.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Malaysia’s PM Najib Razak said the missing Malaysian Flight 370 was deliberately diverted and continued flying for more than six hours after severing contact with the ground on March 8.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In central Nigeria some 40 assailants armed with guns and machetes stormed the villages of Angwan Gata, Chenshyi and Angwan Sankwai, attacking locals in their sleep and torching their homes on Kaduna state. The overnight attacks left at least 100 dead. Local residents, mostly Christians, blamed the bloodshed on Muslim Fulani herdsmen.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Nigeria at least 20 people were killed and dozens were injured in Abuja after thousands of panicked job-seekers stampeded during a government recruitment drive at the national stadium.
(AFP, 3/15/14)(AFP, 2/23/16)
2014 Mar 15, A Pakistani judicial official reduced the 33-year jail sentence of Dr. Shakil Afridi, alleged to have helped the US track down Osama bin Laden, to 23 years.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, The Gaza Strip's only power plant shut down due to a lack of fuel from Israel, which closed a goods crossing after militant rocket attacks.
(AFP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, In Russia tens of thousands have gathered in downtown Moscow in the largest anti-government demonstration since 2012, protesting against the March 16 Kremlin-backed referendum in Crimea on whether to break away from Ukraine and merge with Russia.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Russian forces seized a natural gas distribution station in Strelkova, about 10 km outside Crimea.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Russia vetoed a UN resolution declaring the March 15 referendum on the future of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula illegal, but close ally China abstained in a show of Moscow's isolation.
(AP, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Slovaks voted in the first round of a presidential election, a largely ceremonial post. PM Robert Fico and businessman-turned philanthropist Andrej Kiska (51) beat 12 other candidates in the first round of voting. Turnout was low at 43.4 percent. Both men will compete in a March 29 election.
(AFP, 3/15/14)(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 15, In South Africa Takalani Tshivhase (59), the executive director of Pinnacle Holdings, was arrested by the police's elite anti-corruption unit and released on bail the same day. He was charged with offering a $460,000 bribe to a senior police official in an attempt to win an equipment deal for the technology company.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 15, In South Africa 3 people were killed when their small plane crashed near a landing strip in KwaZulu Natal province.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Syrian soldiers entered eastern districts of the town of Yabroud, the last rebel bastion near the Lebanese border north of Damascus, and advanced towards the main street.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Ukraine's military scrambled aircraft and paratroops to repel an attempt by Russian forces to enter a long spit of land belonging to a region adjacent to Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/15/14)
2014 Mar 15, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro urged Washington to join a "high-level commission" to promote peace after more than a month of deadly anti-government demonstrations.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, US special forces seized the commercial Morning Glory tanker that fled with a cargo of oil from a Libyan port controlled by anti-government rebels, halting their attempt to sell petroleum on the global market.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 16, In New Mexico police outside Albuquerque shot and killed James Boyd (38), a homeless camper who suffered from schizophrenia. A helmet camera showed Boyd gathering his belongings before officers opened fire. On June 28 Boyd’s family filed suit against the city police.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Boyd_shooting)(SSFC, 6/29/14, p.A10)
2014 Mar 16, China’s government released its “people-centered" plan on urbanization. Under this some 100 million migrants will be given urban hukou (certificates) and access to urban services by the end of the decade. This would still leave some 200m unregistered. It instructed cities of less than 1 million to offer a local hukou to anyone who applied. In 2019 it called on cities with populations of less than 3 million to do the same.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.17)(Econ, 4/19/14, p.12)(Econ., 8/22/20, p.35)
2014 Mar 16, In China a monk from the Shaderi Monastery in Huangnan Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Qinghai province, set himself on fire.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In central China 4 people died in a fire at a hospital's in-patient building in Huangshi city, Hubei province.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In China Bishop Fan Zhongliang (97) died at his home in Shanghai. He was ordained by Pope John Paul II but not recognized by Chinese authorities, and spent more than 30 years in prisons and labor camps over the course of his life, starting in 1955.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 16, In France the body of a cyclist hit by a high-speed TGV trains was embedded into the front of the driver's carriage and carried 40 km (25 miles) before anyone noticed.
(AFP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 16, Israel allowed the resumption of diesel deliveries into Gaza, a day after the territory's sole power plant stopped working due to a lack of fuel.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In Lebanon a soldier and a civilian were killed in fighting between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, bringing the death toll from four days of clashes to 12. A suicide car bomb attack in a Hezbollah-dominated area of eastern Lebanon, near the Syrian border, left two people dead.
(Reuters, 3/16/14)(AFP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 16, Malaysia's government asked for help from nearly a dozen Asian countries that the missing jetliner may have flown over, saying that finding the plane would be very difficult without additional data on its final movements.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In Myanmar Rakhine mobs, egged on by Wirathu, a Buddhist-chauvinist monk, protested against a census that would allow Rohingyas to be able to define their ethnicity.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.44)
2014 Mar 16, NATO said hackers have brought down several public NATO websites, in what appeared to be the latest escalation in cyberspace over growing tensions over Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In Saudi Arabia the local Okaz daily reported that organizers at the Riyadh International Book Fair had confiscated "more than 10,000 copies of 420 books" during the exhibition, which began March 4. Organizers had announced ahead of the event that any book deemed "against Islam" or "undermining security" in the kingdom would be confiscated.
(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, Serbs voted in parliamentary election. The Serbian Socialist Party under Alexander Vucic, a pro-European advocate, won 157 seats in the 250-seat parliament. The Serbian Socialist Party came in 2nd with 45.
(AP, 3/16/14)(SFC, 3/17/14, p.A2)(Econ, 3/22/14, p.54)
2014 Mar 16, Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters seized Yabroud, a key rebel supply town on the Lebanese border, driving them from the area and scoring a major blow against them in the three-year-old-conflict.
(AP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, Residents in Ukraine's strategic Crimean Peninsula voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia, overwhelmingly approving a referendum that sought to unite the Black Sea region with the country it was part of for some 250 years. In eastern Ukraine thousands of pro-Russian protesters in the city of Donetsk rallied in support of Crimea's right to join Russia and to press for their own referendum. Ukraine's defense minister said his forces in Crimea have reached a temporary truce with Russia aimed at easing tensions surrounding the Black Sea peninsula's high-stakes secession referendum.
(AP, 3/16/14)(AFP, 3/16/14)
2014 Mar 16, In Venezuela a National Guardsman was shot and killed during violence in the city of Maracay.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that the BICEP2 team of scientists has spotted signs of gravitational waves that formed when the universe was but a trillionth of a second old. In 2015 the scientists retracted their findings.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.78)(Econ, 2/7/15, p.77)
2014 Mar 17, In Afghanistan gunmen killed district judge Abdul Latif and his bodyguard in an attack in western Herat province.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, A British judge ruled that Domenico Rancadore (65), a convicted Mafia boss, will be allowed to return to his comfortable home in west London rather than sent back to Italy and put in prison. The judge cited concerns about conditions in Italian prisons.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, British telecommunications company Vodafone agreed to buy Spain's Ono for 7.2 billion euros ($10 billion) as it seeks to expand operations across Europe.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, In London fashion designer L'Wren Scott, the girlfriend of Mick Jagger, died of an apparent suicide. Her LS Fashion Ltd. company was heavily in debt at the time it filed its most recent accounts.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 17, It was reported that Egypt’s crackdown on Islamists has jailed some 16,000 people over the last eight months.
(SFC, 3/17/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 17, Ten Egyptians, including a journalist working for a Muslim Brotherhood newspaper, were each sentenced to a year in jail for protesting against a constitutional referendum.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Paris, France, imposed drastic measures to combat its worst air pollution in years.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, A senior Iranian official said that an alleged attempt to sabotage one of Tehran's nuclear facilities involved foreign intelligence agencies who tampered with imported pumps.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Toyota said it has shut down production at its two auto-assembly plants in India, locking out 6,400 workers amid testy wage negotiations and allegations of threats against management.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, In Libya A car bomb targeting a military academy in Benghazi killed at least 7 soldiers and wounded twelve.
(AFP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Lithuania's domestic intelligence department accused a Russian diplomat of spying, saying he had sought to gain access to classified information during the Baltic state's presidency of the European Union last year.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Russia's government acknowledged for the first time on that the economy was in crisis, undermining earlier attempts by officials to suggest albeit weakening growth could weather sanctions over Ukraine.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, In Somalia a suicide bomber rammed a car packed full of explosives into a hotel in Buulo Berde, days after it was recaptured from the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab. At least 8 people were killed. 4 attackers were also reported killed.
(AFP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 17, South Africa’s government said 32 people had died because of the rains over the past two weeks in the northern and eastern provinces of North West, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. The toll included 25 drownings and six people killed by lightning.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, South Africa's state-owned rail freight firm Transet said it was ordering 1,064 new locomotives, in what it hailed as the country's biggest single corporate infrastructure investment. It ordered 599 electric locomotives from China's Zhuzhou and the South African subsidiary of Canada's Bombardier, as well as 465 diesel trains from General Electric.
(AFP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, In Palm Springs, South Africa, Sizwe Kubheka (16) returned home complaining of a headache following a beating by a teacher at school. Kubheka died at a hospital a week later and his teacher faced a possible murder charge.
(AP, 4/2/14)
2014 Mar 17, Sri Lanka’s military said Ruki Fernando, a human rights adviser, and Praveen Mahesahn, a pastor and director of a rights group, have been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), anti-terrorism legislation that was used to crush Tamil Tiger rebels during the final phase of a 26-year war. Both were released on March 18.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 17, Tunisia police shot and killed three suspected Islamist militants and arrested six others in a raid near the Algerian border.
(Reuters, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 17, Ukraine's Crimean peninsula declared itself independent after its residents voted overwhelmingly to secede and join Russia, while the United States and the European Union slapped sanctions against some of those who promoted the divisive referendum. Ukraine recalled its ambassador to Russia for consultations on the international ramifications of the situation in its Crimea region. Armed men came to the Ukrainian Belbek military airfield in the Crimean peninsula, fired shots in the air and took away the base’s commanding officer.
(AP, 3/17/14)(Reuters, 3/17/14)(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 17, Mining magnate Andrew Forrest launched the Global Freedom Network, an organization to end modern slavery, with the support of the Pope and the senior Islamic authority. In 2013 Mr. Forrest, Pierre Omidyar and the Legatum Foundation had launched the Freedom Fund to finance research into ways to reduce bonded labor.
(http://tinyurl.com/qb6e6mp)(Econ., 3/14/15, p.61)
2014 Mar 18, US Vice President Joe Biden warned Russia that the US and Europe will impose further sanctions as Moscow seeks to annex the Ukrainian territory.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, The United States and European Union (EU) accused China of using arrests and harassment to silence human rights activists, also voicing consternation at the death in custody of a prominent dissident.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, In NYC Guatemala’s ex-president Alfonso Portillo pleaded guilty in federal court to a conspiracy charge saying he accepted $2.5 million in bribes to continue to recognize Taiwan diplomatically during his 2000-2004 presidency.
(SFC, 3/19/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 18, In Washington state a news helicopter crashed near Seattle’s Space Needle killing pilot Gary Pfitzner and KOMO-TV photographer Bill Strothman.
(SFC, 3/19/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 18, The Mega Millions jackpot of $414 million, the third largest in the game’s history, went to two winners of tickets sold in Florida and Maryland.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 18, In northern Afghanistan a suicide bomber killed 15 people in an attack on a busy marketplace in Maimana, Faryab province.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, Britain suspended export licenses for military items to Russia.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, A Chechen Islamic militant group, the Caucasus Emirate, reported that its leader, Doku Umarov (49), was dead.
(SFC, 3/19/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 18, China's education ministry ordered a nationwide investigation into whether schools are giving students medication without permission after a protest in Xi’an by parents of kindergarteners who were given an antiviral drug.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, A Cairo court sentenced a police officer to 10 years in prison with labor in connection with the deaths of 37 Islamists last August. A legal source said the men had died from asphyxiation in the back of a crammed police van while they were being moved to a jail on the outskirts of Cairo.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Egypt the al-Qaida-inspired Ansar al-Shariah Brigades claimed it was behind the slayings of 26 Egyptian troops in what it describes as "the first phase of a campaign to punish traitors."
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said that leaders of the Group of Eight world powers have suspended Russia's participation in the club amid tensions over Ukraine and Russia's incursion into Crimea.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, French police arrested 57 Greenpeace activists who used a truck to ram their way into a nuclear power plant operated by EDF in eastern France.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, Greek authorities said they have recovered the bodies of 7 immigrants, including 2 children, who drowned overnight when a boat sank in the eastern Aegean Sea after traveling illegally from nearby Turkey.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, Iranians jumped over bonfires, threw firecrackers and floated wishing lanterns to celebrate an ancient festival (Chaharshanbe Souri) marking the end of the Persian year, ignoring calls by many Islamic clerics to shun a ritual that has officially been denounced as pagan.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Iraq a series of bombings targeting commercial streets and security forces in and south of Baghdad killed 8 people.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, An explosion in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights wounded four Israeli soldiers near the Syrian frontier. Israeli forces responded with artillery fire into Syrian-held territory.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, Gunmen from Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group and local Shiite residents tightened their chokehold on Arsal, a Sunni town near the Syrian border, sparking concerns the standoff would cut off aid to thousands of Syrian refugees stranded in the area.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Libya Adison Karkha (54), a Christian Iraqi medical school professor, was found slain inside his car in a central city.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Morocco hundreds of migrants tried to force their way into Spain's North African enclave of Melilla in two attempted mass crossings, throwing stones at police who tried to stop them. 500 people made it over.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)(SFC, 4/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 18, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty to annex Crimea, describing the move as correcting past injustice and a necessary response to what he called Western encroachment upon Russia's vital interests.
(AP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Serbia alleged Balkan drug boss Darko Saric (43), one of the most wanted figures in the crime-riddled region, surrendered to police as a dragnet involving the CIA closed in on him in Latin America. He faced 13 indictments including the trafficking of 5.7 metric tons of cocaine from South America to Europe and laundering of 22 million euros in Serbia.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, The Syria cabinet proudly announced the creation of a national space agency.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.50)
2014 Mar 18, Taiwanese activists occupied the main chamber of the Legislative Yuan to try to stop the government ratifying a contentious trade agreement with China. The three-week protest became known as the “Sunflower Movement."
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.39)(Econ, 12/6/14, p.44)
2014 Mar 18, In Crimea a confrontation between Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russian militia left two dead, a Ukrainian serviceman and a member of a militia.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, United Nations human rights investigators said they have added to their list of suspected war criminals from both sides in the Syrian civil war after a new round of atrocities in recent weeks.
(Reuters, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Venezuela Anthony Rojas (18), mechanical engineering student, was fatally shot in Tariba, on outskirts of San Cristobal. Rojas had participated in past opposition protests in San Cristobal, but was not doing so when he was shot.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 18, In Tuban, south Yemen, a suicide car bombing at a military intelligence headquarters killed one person and wounded a dozen others.
(AFP, 3/18/14)
2014 Mar 19, The US government announced a $1.2 billion settlement with Toyota Motor Corp. and filed a criminal charge alleging the company defrauded consumers by issuing misleading statements about safety issues in Toyota and Lexus vehicles. From 2010 through 2012, Toyota Motor Corp. paid fines totaling more than $66 million for delays in reporting unintended acceleration problems.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, US Vice President Joe Biden met with leaders of Lithuania and Latvia, part of a quick trip to reassure Baltic allies worried about what an emboldened, aggressive Russia might mean for their nations.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In California Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Del Fiorentino was shot and killed when he encountered Ricardo Anthony Chaney (32) on Highway 1 north of Fort Bragg. Chaney was later shot and killed by another Fort Bragg police officer. Authorities believed that Chaney had shot and killed George Bundy Wasson (79), a retired Univ. of Oregon instructor and Coquille Tribe elder, earlier the same day in Eugene, Or.
(SFC, 3/21/14, p.D2)(SFC, 3/24/14, p.C2)(SFC, 3/24/14, p.C2)
2014 Mar 19, Rev. Fred Phelps (84), an anti-gay minister and head of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, died.
(SFC, 3/21/14, p.D2)
2014 Mar 19, In NY state Tonawanda Coke Corp. was fined $12.5 million for illegally releasing carcinogen benzene into the air and improperly handling hazardous sludge.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 19, IBM said it is teaming up with the New York Genome Center to help fight brain cancer. IBM said its Watson cloud computing system will be used in partnership with the genetic research center to help sequence DNA for the treatment of glioblastoma, the most common type of brain cancer in US adults.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.C2)
2014 Mar 19, Tango, a mobile messaging app-maker, announced it has raised $280 million in a new funding round led by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
(Reuters, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 19, Australia’s Courier Mail reported that Canar Temel (22), a soldier who went AWOL from his Brisbane unit two years ago, has turned up dead after fighting alongside ISIL rebels in Syria.
(SSFC, 3/23/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 19, Bangladesh opposition leader Khaleda Zia was ordered to stand trial over charges that she and her associates embezzled more than $650,000 in a case that could see her jailed for life.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Belgium a shell or grenade from WWI exploded in an industrial site in Flanders killing two construction workers.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 19, A raid by Egyptian police, military and special forces on a suspected bomb factory outside of Cairo turned into an hours-long gun battle with insurgents who detonated car bombs in clashes that killed two high-ranking officers and at least 6 militants. A boy (13) was shot dead in clashes in the south of the country between police and protesters supporting deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
(AP, 3/19/14)(Reuters, 3/19/14)(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 19, The European Union said it has fined two EU and four Japanese companies a total of nearly 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) for rigging the market of key components in the car and truck industry at the expense of consumers.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, France’s highest court upheld the prison sentence for Jerome Kerviel (37), the rogue trader convicted of one of the biggest trading frauds in history. [In 2010 he was sentenced to 3 years in jail with two years suspended.] The court threw out the $7 billion in civil damages he’d been ordered to pay back.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 19, Greek civil servants, including hospital and teaching staff, started a two-day strike against austerity measures imposed under the debt-mired country's international bailout commitments.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Guinea health authorities said an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 23 people in the southeastern forest region since February when the first case was reported.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Hong Kong two senior figures from the Hong Kong Morning News Media Group were attacked weeks after Kevin Lau, a former editor of the liberal Ming Pao newspaper, was critically wounded in another assault.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 19, In India Maharashtra government spokesman Satish Lalit said authorities have confirmed 7 farmer suicides since Feb. 24. But Kishor Tiwari, president of pro-farmer group Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, put the toll much higher, at 32. The suicides followed freak hailstorms and heavy unseasonal rains destroyed crops across much of a western state.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Iraq violence across the county killed 30 people. This included 15 dead from shelling and clashes in Fallujah.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Israel launched air strikes against Syrian military sites in response to a roadside bombing that wounded four of its soldiers, but both sides signaled they were not seeking further escalation. The airstrikes in the Golan Heights killed one Syrian soldier and wounded seven.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Israel's Jerusalem municipality approved building plans for 184 new homes in two Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Israeli troops shot dead Palestinian teenager Yussef Sami Shawamreh (15) in the southern West Bank.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Kenya scientist Richard Leakey and Paula Kahumbu, the founding former chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service, urged Kenya's Pres. Uhuru Kenyatta to invoke emergency measures to protect the country's elephants and rhinos from a poaching crisis sweeping Africa.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Kyrgyzstan’s governing coalition collapsed after a party withdrew its support over unhappiness at the redevelopment of economically struggling cities in the south.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Nepal Maoist student activists led a partial strike in Kathmandu and stoned or set fire to a dozen vehicles, demanding that the newly elected government cancel a fuel price rise.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, South Africa's public ombudsman said that some of the $23 million taxpayer-funded refurbishments at Pres. Jacob Zuma's luxurious residence were unlawful and ordered him to repay part of the cost.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Sweden a court in Falun ordered the release of Sture Bergwall (63) from a secure psychiatric unit where he's been held since 1991. He had confessed to more than 30 killings over three decades and was convicted in eight cases. He later withdrew his confessions, saying they were made under heavy medication.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Syria rebels seized took control of the Gharaz Central Prison on the outskirts of Deraa where the uprising began three years ago this month and freed dozens of inmates.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Syria and its Russian ally criticized the decision by the United States to suspend the operations of Syria's embassy in Washington and consulates in other cities.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Pro-Russian forces overran Ukraine's naval headquarters in Crimea, ratcheting up tensions in Ukraine a day after Russian and Crimean leaders signed a treaty paving the way toward annexation.
(AP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, Hundreds of Taiwanese activists were locked in a tense standoff with police after they stormed parliament to try to stop the government ratifying a contentious trade agreement with China.
(AFP, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Turkey Veysi Erim, a worker at a statistics office in the eastern province of Kars, shot dead six people before committing suicide.
(Reuters, 3/19/14)
2014 Mar 19, In Venezuela a municipal worker was fatally shot while removing a street barricade in a Caracas middle class neighborhood. The mayor of San Cristobal, where recent protests began, was detained.
(AP, 3/19/14)(Econ, 3/22/14, p.37)
2014 Mar 19, In Vietnam a court sentenced dissident Pham Viet Dao to 15 months in prison for posting online criticism of the government.
(SFC, 3/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 20, President Barack Obama said the US is levying a new round of economic sanctions on individuals in Russia in retaliation for the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine. Obama says he has also signed a new executive order that would allow the US to sanction key sectors of the Russian economy. Rossiya, Russia’s 17th largest bank, was included on the sanctions list. Its owners had ties with Pres. Putin.
(AP, 3/20/14)(Econ, 2/14/15, p.59)
2014 Mar 20, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed his first bill into law as mayor, amending the Earned Sick Time Act ("ESTA"), which requires the City's private employers with five or more employees to provide paid sick time to their employees, effective April 1.
(https://tinyurl.com/ycvg4bh5) (Econ, 3/14/20, p.51)
2014 Mar 20, In NYC a 14-year-old boy opened fire in a gang dispute on a city bus in Brooklyn, fatally shooting a bystanding Dominican man in the head. Angel Rojas (39) of Brooklyn was pronounced dead at the hospital. The boy was arrested the next day and charged with 2nd degree murder.
(AP, 3/21/14)(SFC, 3/22/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 20, In North Carolina US Army Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, who carried on a three-year affair with a captain and had two other inappropriate relationships with subordinates, was reprimanded and docked $20,000 in pay, avoiding jail time in one of the military's most closely watched courts-martial.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 20, In Afghanistan four teenage gunmen walked into the Serena Hotel in Kabul, made their way to the restaurant, pulled out hidden pistols and started shooting diners. They killed 9 people, including shooting AFP journalist Sardar Ahmad, his wife and two of their children in the head. Police killed all four attackers after a three-hour standoff.
(AP, 3/21/14)(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 20, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle near a police station in Jalalabad while other Taliban insurgents stormed the building, killing 10 police officers and a civilian.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 20, British regulators fined Mark Stevenson, an ex-Credit Suisse trader, for attempting to rig the price of government bonds in order to profit from the Bank of England's quantitative easing program. He was fined £662,700 ($1.1 million, 794,000 euros) for "deliberately manipulating" a government bond, or gilt, on October 10, 2011.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, In Egypt a Cairo court sentenced 17 al-Azhar students to 14 years in jail for rioting, damaging public properties and attacking security personnel.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, In Iraq a suicide bomber struck a Baghdad café overnight killing at least 12 people.
(SFC, 3/21/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 20, Italian authorities said they have rescued more than 4,000 would-be migrants at sea over the past four days as the war in Syria and instability in Libya spawn new waves of refugees.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 20, Japan’s NTT Data Corp. agreed to digitize some 3,000 historical Vatican manuscripts and make them available online.
(SFC, 3/21/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 20, Kenya's parliament passed a bill allowing men to marry as many women as they want, prompting a furious backlash from female lawmakers who stormed out. Women are not allowed to marry more than one man in Kenya. The bill must now pass before the president to be signed before becoming law.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, In northeast Nigeria an explosion at Ngurosoye village market near hideouts of Islamic extremists killed 29 people. Three more died of their wounds over the next few days.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 20, A Sudanese worker for the International Committee of the Red Cross was killed in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, Syrian troops raised the national flag on the Crac des Chevaliers, a famous Crusades-era citadel near the border with Lebanon, after days of intense fighting against opposition fighters. 93 of the opposition fighters were reported killed as they fled to Lebanon.
(AP, 3/20/14)(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, Pro-Russian crowds seized two Ukrainian warships and Ukraine said its troops were being threatened in Crimea as the European Union considered new sanctions against Russia for its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 20, Turkey’s PM Tayyip Erdogan's defiantly vowed, on the campaign trail ahead of March 30 local polls, to "wipe out" Twitter, whatever the international community had to say about it.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 20, Several UN aid trucks crossed the Turkish border into Syria for the first time.
(Reuters, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 21, US first lady Michelle Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first day of her weeklong visit to China, in a sign that the leaders of the world's two largest economies are seeking to build stronger bonds.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In San Francisco Alejandro Nieto (28) was shot and killed by police after he pointed a Taser shock at them in Bernal Heights. Police said they mistook the Taser for a pistol and fired 59 shots at Nieto, who was struck 10-15 times. In 2015 four officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.
(SFC, 2/14/15, p.C1)(http://tinyurl.com/qjnxpzd)
2014 Mar 21, A US federal judge struck down Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage. The next day the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals froze the decision to overturn the ban. On March 25 a federal appeals court put an indefinite halt to gay marriage in Michigan.
(SFC, 3/22/14, p.A6)(SSFC, 3/23/14, p.A15)(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 21, In New Jersey a fire destroyed the Mariner’s Cover Motor Inn at Point Pleasant Beach killing 4 people. The hotel was housing people displaced in October, 2012, by Superstorm Sandy.
(SFC, 3/22/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 21, New Mexico withdrew a temporary permit allowing two new disposal vaults at a US government nuclear waste dump grappling with a release of radiation in February.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, Denis Flory, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said about 140 cases of missing or unauthorized use of nuclear and radioactive material were reported to the UN atomic agency in 2013.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Brazil top officials from Rio de Janeiro said they want elite federal police sent to the city to help quell a wave of violence in so-called "pacified" slums. The announcement came hours after suspected drug gang members attacked three police shantytown outposts, injuring three officers and burning one of the metal shipping containers they use as offices in slums.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, British state prosecutors said a London doctor and another man have become the first people to be charged in Britain over female genital mutilation.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Burundi sentenced 21 activists from a key opposition party to life in jail for "armed revolt" after a jogging protest earlier this month turned into violent clashes with police.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Peacekeepers in Central African Republic opened fire on a crowd in the capital to disrupt anti-Muslim violence, injuring six people including four who were under 16.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Four Chinese rights lawyers were tortured by police after they were rounded up following protests outside a detention center in Jiansanjiang, a farming community in the northeast. They had joined several people shouting to demand information about relatives believed locked up inside because they were members of Falun Gong — banned as a cult though they claim to be a peaceful spiritual movement.
(AP, 4/15/14)
2014 Mar 21, In eastern China a fire in Dujiatuan village, Shandong province, killed a farmer and injured three other farmers. Police later said a real estate developer and a village official directed arsonists who set the fire on the farmer’s tent pitched to guard his land against development.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 21, Cuba state media hundreds of thousands of medical workers will be getting a raise. At the high end, doctors with two specialties will see their salary go from the equivalent of $26 a month to $67. An entry-level nurse will make $25, up from $13.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Egypt's state news said Cairo University has expelled two dozen students for allegedly taking part in violent protests on campus earlier this week.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, The European Union and Ukraine signed a landmark political cooperation accord, committing to the same deal former president Viktor Yanukovich rejected last November, a decision that led to his overthrow.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, France said it is suspending military cooperation with Russia as Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Baltic states in a trip designed to reassure them as tensions mount with Russia over its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Guinea's ministry of health says that 49 people have been registered with viral hemorrhagic fever in the country's south since February, and 29 of those people have since died.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, An Indian court sentenced four men to life in prison for raping a call-center operator last August inside an abandoned textile mill in the financial hub of Mumbai.
(AP, 3/21/14)(SFC, 3/21/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 21, In western India 10 women drowned when a small boat loaded with farmworkers sank in a lake in Rajasthan's state Tonk district.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Iraq militants controlled the northern village of Sarha for several hours as attacks nationwide killed 27 people, including at least 10 policemen, amid a surge in bloodshed ahead of parliamentary elections. Scores of gunmen took over a federal police headquarters in Injana before driving a tanker laden with explosives into the building, killing many.
(AFP, 3/21/14)(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Israel's Mossad intelligence agency said 8 Iranian Jews who disappeared while trying to leave the Islamic Republic from 1994-1997 were captured and killed.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Israeli soldiers shot and wounded two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip near the border as two instigators attempted to climb over the security fence.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Lebanon people were killed in Tripoli in fighting between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Libya two rockets struck a runway at the international airport in Tripoli, forcing the suspension of flights. Since October, 2011, the airport has been under the control of former insurgents from Zintan, 170 km (105 miles) southwest of Tripoli.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Lithuania banned broadcasts of a Russian TV channel for three months for showing a film that authorities said lied about events in 1991, when the Soviet army tried unsuccessfully to remove its pro-independence government.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Mali an overnight blaze at the main market in Bamako destroyed around 2,000 shops, causing millions of dollars in damage as fire crews struggled to access the site and hydrants malfunctioned.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Nigerian police raided a home near Lagos where eight pregnant girls, most under age 20, were staying with plans to sell each of their newborns for nearly two thousand dollars.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, The Philippines said it will buy $524.7-million worth of aircraft from South Korea and Canada as part of a military upgrade amid territorial disputes with superpower neighbor China.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Russia’s Pres. Vladimir Putin completed his annexation of Crimea, signing a law making the Black Sea peninsula part of Russia just as Ukraine itself sealed a deal pulling it closer into Europe's orbit.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In South Korea the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, a curvy futuristic $450 million building meant to remake Seoul into a global design capital, opened to the public after years of debate about its impact on a historic city precinct. It was designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, In Syria 34 people were killed as Islamists sought to seize a border crossing into Turkey.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, Thailand’s Constitutional Court nullified the Feb 2 election because voting was not conducted nationwide on the same day.
(SFC, 3/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 21, Turkey blocked access to Twitter after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "rip out the roots" of the social network where links have proliferated to recordings that appear to incriminate him and other top officials in corruption.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Uganda news reported that authorities have ordered a police investigation into complaints by elite female runners that they suffered sexual harassment and abuse from a top athletics coach.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Uganda's health minister says the government has lost up to $6 million in annual US government support over the East African country's new anti-gay law.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Ukrainian police detained energy official Yevhen Bakulin, the chief executive of state energy company Naftogaz, as part of an investigation into corruption that it says may have cost the Ukrainian state about $4 billion.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, Venezuela's Pres. Maduro said that street protests for the past month have caused at least $10 billion in damage, accusing hardline foes of carrying out terrorist acts to sabotage public assets.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 21, Zambia scrapped restrictions on the use of dollars and other foreign currencies as it tried to halt the slide in its currency, which has lost nearly a fifth of its value in recent months.
(AFP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 22, The US Navy handed over to Libyan authorities the M/T Morning Glory oil tanker it intercepted after the vessel took to sea with crude illegally loaded at a rebel-held port.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In southwestern Colorado a small plane crashed into the Ridgeway Reservoir. On March 24 the bodies of 5 people were found in the wreckage.
(SFC, 3/24/14, p.A6)(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 22, In Texas a barge began leaking oil into the Houston Ship Channel after colliding with a bulk carrier near Texas City at the mouth of Galveston Bay.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Washington state a rain-drenched landslide hit midday near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle. 27 people were believed killed with 30 left missing. At least six homes were destroyed when the slide blocked the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. On July 22 searchers pulled the last missing body from the landslide that killed 43.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)(AFP, 3/24/14)(Reuters, 3/27/14)(AFP, 3/30/14)(SFC, 7/23/14, p.A7)
2014 Mar 22, In eastern Australia 5 people were killed after a light plane used for skydiving crashed at an airfield in Queensland.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Britain’s Scotland Yard arrested three boys after Shereka Fab-Ann Marsh (15) was shot dead in east London. On March 24 one boy (15) was charged with her murder. The two other boys (16) were released.
(AFP, 3/23/14)(AFP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 22, A satellite image released by China offered the latest sign that wreckage from a Malaysia Airlines plane lost on March 8 could be in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In France two masked robbers wielding a pump gun and an axe burst into the Colette boutique in the heart of Paris, making off with about 600,000 euros worth of goods from the trendy concept store.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Indian police arrested Zia Ur Rahman, a Pakistani bomb maker, along with three associates in Rajasthan. Police said Rehman helped the Indian Mujahideen, an Indian terror group blamed for a series of bombings in the nation's cities.
(AP, 3/23/14)(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, Indonesia police said they arrested three suspected Islamic extremists last week after intercepting a bomb shipment intended to attack brothels. The arrests included Ambo Intang, who was sought for his alleged involvement in the 2012 killings of two policemen in in the Central Sulawesi district of Poso.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Iraq a series of attacks killed 15 members of the security forces and civilians in areas north of Baghdad. A police officer was killed in a relatively rare attack in the port city of Basra, while security forces reopened a key highway after retaking a village from militants.
(AP, 3/22/14)(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Iraq a presidential guard, a captain in the Kurdish peshmerga forces, shot dead Mohammed Bidaiwi, a senior Iraqi journalist, during an argument in Baghdad and then fled, briefly sparking a standoff in which PM Nuri al-Maliki demanded he be handed over.
(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Israeli forces shot and killed Hamza Abu Alhija (24), a wanted Hamas Islamist militant, and two other militants dead in a raid on a home in the West Bank town of Jenin.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Libyan rebels occupying oil ports clashed with troops when they attacked an army base, wounding 16 people before tribal leaders brokered an end to the fighting.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, The Netherlands-based ICC said Charles Ble Goude, wanted by the International Criminal Court in connection with a wave of violence after Ivory Coast's 2010 elections, is in its court's custody and is on his way to its jail in The Hague.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Nigeria suspected Islamist militants detonated a bomb late today in a crowded northeastern marketplace killing at least 20 people in Bama, Borno state.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Pakistan a multi-vehicle collision involving two trucks and two passenger buses on a coastal highway in the southwest killed 35 people and injured 20.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Philippines security forces arrested the country's top communist leaders, a week ahead of the 45th anniversary of the group's armed struggle when it is expected to launch attacks on government targets.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Spanish police detained 24 people during street violence late today following a large anti-austerity demonstration in Madrid in which dozens were injured.
(AFP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Sudan some 300 gunmen attacked and burned a camp for displaced people in the Darfur region, adding to an upsurge of suspected militia violence which has wreaked havoc. At least one person was killed.
(AFP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Syria fighting raged between rebels and loyalist forces in northern Latakia province. Hilal al-Assad, a first cousin of the president and president of the Syrian Arabian Horse Association, was killed in the battle for a border crossing with Turkey in the north of Latakia.
(AFP, 3/22/14)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Assad_family)
2014 Mar 22, Turkish authorities sought to tighten a clampdown on Twitter after social media users easily evaded the government's attempt to block access to the service.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Uganda said at least 107 people were killed and dozens of others were missing after a boat carrying mostly Congolese refugees capsized on Lake Albert that runs along the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. An estimated 250 people were on the boat with 41 rescued.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)(AFP, 3/24/14)(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 22, Ukraine’s interior minister said police have seized 42 kg of gold and $4.8 million in cash during a search of the apartments of former Energy Minister Eduard Stavytsky. His career had blossomed under the presidency of ousted Viktor Yanukovich and was appointed energy minister in December 2012.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Ukraine Col. Yully Mamchur, the commander of Belbek Air Force base in Crimea, was seized by pro-Russian forces as they stormed the base near Sevastopol.
(SFC, 3/24/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 22, In eastern Ukraine more than 5,000 pro-Russia residents of Donetsk demonstrated in favor of holding a referendum on whether to seek to split off and become part of Russia.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, The UN Commission on the Status of Women approved a 45-page document to promote equality for women that reaffirms the sexual and reproductive rights of all women and endorses sex education for adolescents.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, Pope Francis named the initial members of a commission to advise him on sex abuse policy, tapping lay and religious experts.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 22, In Venezuela Police fired tear gas and made several arrests as 20,000 people marched in Caracas against what they say is President Nicolas Maduro's heavy-handed repression of dissent. At least 3 people were killed pushing the death toll from almost two months of anti-government demonstrations to 34.
(AFP, 3/22/14)(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 22, Yemeni tribesmen bombed Yemen's main crude export pipeline, forcing oil flows to be stopped. In the north 12 people were reported killed in clashes between government forces and Shiite rebels on the outskirts of the northern city of Amran.
(Reuters, 3/22/14)(AFP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 23, China and the Netherlands signed a trade pact pledging Dutch dairy expertise to help Chinese producers boost the quality and quantity of their milk. It was part of a raft of deals and memoranda of understanding inked on the 2nd day of a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is in the Netherlands with a large trade delegation.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In the first round of French local elections the governing left took 38% of the vote, behind the mainstream right with 46%.
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.58)
2014 Mar 23, France provided new satellite data showing possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, missing since March 8, as searchers continued combing a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, Guinea government officials said samples from victims of a viral hemorrhagic fever that has killed more than 50 people have tested positive for the Ebola virus.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, Israeli diplomats launched an unprecedented strike, forcing the complete closure of embassies around the world as they escalated a dispute over pay.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Israel Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Russia's republic of Chechnya, inaugurated a new, $10 million mosque in the Arab village of Abu Ghosh.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Kenya attackers shot dead 4 worshippers when they burst into a church service near the port city of Mombasa, spraying the congregation with bullets.
(AFP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Lebanon hours-long clashes overnight in a Beirut neighborhood between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad killed one person, prompting Lebanese troops to deploy in the area to calm tensions.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Myanmar dozens of protesters began a 2,400-km (1,500-mile) march to northern Myanmar, calling for the cancellation of a Chinese-backed hydroelectric dam project over environmental concerns.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In northern Pakistan a tourist van plunged off the road in rugged terrain near a hill resort, killing 10 people near Salgaran village.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, Tens of thousands of Palestinians rallied in Gaza to show support for their Islamist Hamas government, which has long been at loggerheads with Israel but is now shunned by Egypt as well. The rally was intended to commemorate 3 top Hamas leaders, including founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel a decade ago.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In the Philippines a large stash of high-grade cocaine was uncovered when several hidden packets tumbled from the ceiling of a shipping container in a private wharf. The find totaled more than 50 kg (110 pounds) with an estimated worth about 300 million pesos ($6.7 million).
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Spain Adolfo Suarez (b.1932), prime minister from 1976-1981, died. He had steered Spain through one of the most turbulent periods in its political history and built bridges between the "two Spains" after fascist dictator General Francisco Franco died in 1975.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Su%C3%A1rez)
2014 Mar 23, Sudanese officials said the country’s rich but under-developed archaeological heritage has received an unprecedented $135 million (98 million euros) in funding from the Gulf state of Qatar.
(AFP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Syria fighters from an array of armed opposition groups seized the predominantly Armenian Christian town of Kassab.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 23, Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said that the island needed to pass a contentious trade pact with China for the sake of its economy. Hundreds of protesters opposed to the far-reaching trade pact invaded Cabinet offices, marking a sharp escalation in a student-led movement against the island's rapidly developing ties with the communist mainland.
(Reuters, 3/23/14)(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, Turkish fighter jets shot down a Syrian warplane after it violated Turkey's airspace. The pilot safely ejected from the aircraft.
(AP, 3/23/14)
2014 Mar 23, In Venezuela Adriana Urquoila, a pregnant woman, was shot dead in the head after she left a bus stuck in traffic because of a barrier built by protesters.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 24, SF Bay Area prosecutors announced indictments of 16 people in a gang crackdown dubbed “Operation Sunny Day" that focused on East Palo Alto and at least 4 regional murders in 2012-2013.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 24, In NYC five former employees of Bernard Madoff were convicted after a 6-month trial on charges related to the massive fraud first revealed in Dec, 2008.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.D6)
2014 Mar 24, Major Texas shipping channels that deliver crude oil for more than one-tenth of the nation's refining capacity were shut for a third day, as the cleanup from a spill threatened to last through the week.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, In Virginia US Navy security forces at the Norfolk Naval Station killed civilian truck driver Jeffrey Tyrone Savage after he shot and killed Petty Officer 2nd class Mark Mayo aboard the USS Mahan.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 24, In southern Afghanistan Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint, sparking a gunbattle that killed 2 policemen and one of the militants in Helmand province. Five Taliban militants were arrested after reinforcements from a nearby checkpoint joined the fight.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Belgium and Italy said they had moved excess nuclear materials to the United States for disposal or downgrading under the terms of past agreements, at the start of a nuclear summit in the Netherlands.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, British Judge Jonathan Gosling Francis sentenced Paul Cullen (85), a former Catholic priest who spent decades on the run, to 15 years in jail for sexually abusing seven children between 1957 and 1991.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 24, An Egyptian court sentenced 529 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death for murder and other offences.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, The EU approved sanctions and said it will no longer import any fish caught by vessels from Cambodia, Belize and Guinea, accusing their governments of failing to cooperate in fighting illegal fishing.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, France-based Airbus Defence & Space captured images showing 122 potential objects, possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, in a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) area in the southern Indian Ocean.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 24, Guinea announced that samples taken from three suspected cases of Ebola, which led to two deaths in Conakry, had tested negative for the virus. Health workers said the outbreak from the Ebola virus, which has killed at least 59 people in Guinea, may have spread to Liberia.
(AFP, 3/24/14)(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 24, Italian financial police arrested a former executive of the state-controlled Finmeccanica defense contractor in a bribery investigation. Stefano Carlini, former head of external relations, was one of four people placed under house arrest.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Japanese and US leaders said Japan will turn over hundreds of kilograms of sensitive atomic material of potential use in bombs to the United States to be downgraded and disposed. This was shortly before leaders from 53 countries, including Obama and Abe, were due to hold a two-day summit at The Hague aimed at preventing al Qaeda-style militant groups from acquiring nuclear bombs.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Mexican authorities over the past week found more than 370 children in 14 states dumped by people smugglers while trying to make their way into the United States.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 24, In Mexico 3 women and a 7-year-old girl were shot to death in a village near the resort city of Acapulco.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 24, Russia's SMP Bank said around 9 billion rubles had been withdrawn by depositors since U.S. sanctions were announced last week.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Russian historian Andrei Zubov was fired from his teaching position at the Moscow State Institute of Int’l. Relations for drawing parallels between Russia’s occupation of Crimea and Germany’s annexation of Austria and Sudetenland territories in 1938-39.
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.53)
2014 Mar 24, A Saudi man convicted of shooting dead a compatriot in a dispute was beheaded by the sword. His execution in Hafr al-Batin brings to 12 the number of death sentences carried out this year in Saudi Arabia.
(AFP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, South Africa's platinum producers said a two-month strike was causing "irreparable" damage to the sector, which has to date lost nearly a billion dollars in revenue.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 24, Ukraine announced the evacuation of its troops and their families from Crimea, effectively acknowledging defeat in the face of Russian forces, who stormed one of the last remaining Ukrainian bases on the peninsula.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, In Venezuela Sgt. Miguel Antonio Parra was shot dead during a street demonstration in Merida. At least 32 people have died in protests over the last five weeks.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 24, In Yemen gunmen killed 20 soldiers in a dawn attack on a checkpoint in the eastern province of Hadramawt, most of them in their sleep, in the latest in a wave of deadly violence blamed on Al-Qaeda.
(AFP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 25, The US Coast Guard partially reopened the Houston Ship Channel following the March 22 collision between an oil barge and a bulk carrier near Texas City. 170,000 gallons of tar-like coal were spilled.
(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 25, Utah’s Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law that allows parents of children with severe epilepsy to obtain marijuana extract to help with seizures.
(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 25, Facebook said it has agreed to purchase Oculus VR, a startup specializing in virtual reality, for $2.3 billion in cash and stock.
(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 25, King Digital, ticker KING, raised $500 million from the sale of 22.2 million shares. Established in 2002, King's business has soared in the last two years thanks to the spectacular popularity of Candy Crush Saga, which boasts some 97 million players worldwide.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, In Afghanistan suicide bombers and gunmen attacked an election commission office beside the home of presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani, less than two weeks before a crucial election. 10 people were killed including 2 policemen, an election worker and a provincial council candidate. 3 suicide bombers entered a branch of Kabulbank in the eastern province of Kunar, killing at least 3 security guards and injuring two bank workers.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 25, The Arab League held a summit in Kuwait. UN peace mediator for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called for an end the flow of arms to the combatants in the war.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Royal Mail, Britain's main postal operator, said it plans to axe 1,600 jobs under a fresh cost-cutting program, six months after its controversial part-privatization by the government.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, China's eastern city of Hangzhou said will start restricting car sales on March 26, joining major cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, in the fight against snarling traffic and heavy smog in the world's largest automobile market.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Egypt's leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie (70), and 682 others went on trial on charges including murder. Defence lawyers boycotted the court session, attended by 60 of the defendants, after complaining of irregularities. Reporters were barred from the courtroom.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Indian police arrested Tehseen Akhtar (23), the alleged head of militant group the Indian Mujahideen. The group was blamed for a string of deadly attacks including one at a rally in October by election frontrunner Narendra Modi.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Ireland's police chief Martin Callinan resigned following months of criticism of his force's handling of allegations of illegal wire-tapping and corrupt enforcement of traffic laws.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Kenya’s wildlife authority said it needs help to curb the killings of elephants and rhinos for their tusks and horns. Poachers this year have killed 18 rhinos and 51 elephants.
(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 25, Myanmar said it will ban the export of logs starting April 1 to reduce deforestation and boost its wood-based industry by exporting only value-added products. Myanmar's forest cover shrank from 57.9 percent of its total land area in 1990 to 47.6 percent in 2005.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, NATO member Norway suspended all joint activities with the Russian military through May because of Moscow's annexation of Crimea.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, In the Netherlands 35 countries pledged to turn international guidelines on nuclear security into national laws, a move aimed at preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear material.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, In the Netherlands US President Barack Obama, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye met to discuss North Korea's security threat.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, Dutch police detained 28 anti-nuclear demonstrators at a reactor ahead of a visit by a delegation of energy sector bosses.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, In northeastern Nigeria two explosions in Maiduguri killed 11 people, including 5 policemen who were believed to have been targeted.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, In central Nigeria police recovered 7 bodies following an attack on Agena village, Benue state, in renewed violence between herdsmen and farmers.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, Singapore authorities intercepted about one ton of ivory worth $1.6 million in a shipping container from Africa marked as carrying coffee berries.
(AFP, 4/3/14)
2014 Mar 25, Sudan said a pro-government militia has killed 151 rebels in clashes this week in the country's restive Darfur region.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Syria's opposition fighters seized Samra a Mediterranean coastal village as they pushed to consolidate their presence in a key regime bastion near the Turkish border.
(AFP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Thai police seized 147 kg (323 pounds) of heroin they believe was from Myanmar and destined for Australia. The single haul exceeded some of Thailand's recent yearly seizure totals.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, Turkish special forces raided buildings in Istanbul used by suspected members of an Islamist militant group active in neighboring Syria and Iraq, leaving three policemen and two suspects wounded.
(Reuters, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 25, Ukraine lawmakers accepted the resignation of the defense minister Igor Tenyukh as thousands of troops began withdrawing from the Crimean Peninsula, now controlled by Russia. Col. Gen. Mikhail Kovalyov was voted in as his replacement.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Oleksander Muzychko, a prominent Ukrainian far-right activist, was shot dead by police overnight as he tried to escape from a cafe in the western region of Rivne. Police said he was wanted for "hooliganism" and an attack on a local prosecutor.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, The United Nations human rights office said an Egyptian court's decision to sentence 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death contravened international law.
(Reuters, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 25, Venezuela’s Pres. Maduro said officials have arrested three air force generals on charges of plotting a coup.
(SFC, 3/26/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 25, The World Health Organization published a report saying air pollution kills about 7 million people worldwide every year, with more than half of the fatalities due to fumes from indoor stoves.
(AP, 3/25/14)
2014 Mar 26, In California state Sen. Leland Yee was arrested in an FBI sting on charges that he conspired to traffic in firearms and traded favors in Sacramento for bribes. Yee represented half of San Francisco and most of San Mateo County. Yee was one of 26 people ensnared in a 5-year federal investigation that targeted Raymond “Shrimp Boy" Chow, a Chinatown gangster who had claimed to have gone straight.
(SFC, 3/27/14, p.A1)
2014 Mar 26, Daly City dentist Wilson Sy Lim was among 26 people arrested in a SF Bay Area FBI sting. State Sen. Leland Yee had introduced Lim to an undercover FBI agent as a connection for securing guns from the Philippines.
(SFC, 3/31/14, p.A8)
2014 Mar 26, A New York jury found Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and former Al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith (48) guilty on three counts of conspiracy to kill Americans and supporting terrorists.
(AFP, 3/26/14)(SFC, 3/27/14, p.A9)
2014 Mar 26, Charlotte, NC, Mayor Patrick Cannon, in office for less than six months, resigned hours after he was arrested and accused of taking over $48,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 26, A British financial watchdog said it has fined Spanish banking giant Santander almost £12.4 million for mis-advising customers.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, In Brussels Pres. Barack Obama and EU leaders presented a unified front against Russia's annexation of Crimea, promoting trans-Atlantic trade as an antidote to Russia's influence in the region and a way to help Europe become less dependent on Moscow for energy.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, The head of African peacekeepers in the Central African Republic said that vigilante groups known as "anti-balaka" will be considered and treated as "enemies" from now on.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, In southern China a fire in a lingerie factory killed 11 people in Puning County, Guangdong province.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, In Egypt one person was killed near Cairo University when protesters supporting ousted President Mohamed Mursi clashed with security forces.
(Reuters, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Guinea health officials said the death toll from the rare Ebola virus has risen to 63. The outbreak is the first in West Africa in 20 years.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Israeli navy ships opened fire on two suspected Palestinian smuggling boats off the Gaza coast. Both vessels sank after an explosion following the shooting.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, In their “Kuwait Declaration" Arab leaders called for a political solution to the conflict in Syria, overlooking Saudi-backed demands for greater military support for rebel forces to tip the balance in the war. The Arab League also announced their "total rejection of the call to consider Israel a Jewish state," in the final statement.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Myanmar’s Energy Ministry said major oil companies including Total, Chevron, Woodside Energy and Shell have won bids for offshore oil and gas exploration blocks off its western and southern coasts.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, North Korea test-fired two medium-range Rodong ballistic missiles. The Rodong launch, the first since 2009, violated UN Security Council resolutions and marked a big escalation from a series of shorter-range rocket launches the North has staged in recent weeks to protest ongoing annual military drills by the US and South Korea that Pyongyang claims are invasion preparation.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters said Russian mathematician Yakov G. Sinai (78) has won this year's $1 million Abel Prize in mathematics.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, A Pakistani government team traveled to a secret location in the northwest where it held the first-ever direct talks with the Taliban.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Russian forces took over the Ukrainian minesweeper Cherkasy, the last military ship controlled by Ukraine in Crimea.
(Reuters, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and NASA’s Steve Swanson blasted off from Kazakhstan. A software glitch delayed their docking with the International Space Station until March 27.
(SFC, 3/27/14, p.A2)(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 26, Somali government forces fighting alongside African Union troops said they had taken back control of the key town of El-Bur, driving Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels from a major central bastion.
(AFP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Spanish police arrested more than 50 students during a protest at a Madrid university during the first day of a strike to protest a government education reform and cutbacks in grants and staffing.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, A Turkish court ordered the telecommunications authority to restore access to Twitter, issuing an injunction five days after the government blocked access to the social network.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Ukraine’s Naftogaz officials said the price of gas will rise for domestic consumers by more than 50 per cent from May 1. Further rises will be implemented under a fixed timetable until 2018. The step were in response to demands by the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, Pope Francis permanently removed German bishop Franz-Peter Terbartz-van Elst from his Limburg diocese after his 31 million-euro ($43-million) new residence complex caused an uproar among the faithful. Francis had temporarily expelled him in October pending a church inquiry.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 26, The World Trade Organization ruled that China has violated international trade rules with its restrictions on the export of 17 "rare earths" and two other minerals that have key industrial and high-tech uses.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Mar 27, A visibly energized President Barack Obama held a nearly hour-long audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, expressing his great admiration for the pontiff and inviting him to visit the White House.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report saying one in 68 US children has been diagnosed with autism. The CDC report was based on data from 2010.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D1)
2014 Mar 27, The US Mint put new collector gold and silver coins on sale to commemorate the Baseball Hall of Fame which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The design by Cassie McFarland's featured a curved baseball glove.
(AOL.com, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 27, The US Air Force fired nine midlevel nuclear commanders and said it will discipline dozens of junior officers at a nuclear base in Great Falls, Montana, in response to an exam cheating scandal.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 27, Police in southern California served over two dozen search warrants and made six arrested in an investigation targeting the theft of baggage at Los Angeles Int’l. Airport. Those arrested did not directly work for the airport.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 27, Dr. James Schlesinger (1929), former US defense secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford, died in NYC. He also served as the first secretary of the new Energy Dept. under Pres. Carter. In 1960 he authored “The Political Economy of National Security: A study of the economic aspects of the contemporary power struggle."
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D2)
2014 Mar 27, Mark Stock (62), a realist figure painter, died in Oakland, Ca. He was known for a series of butlers in tuxedos including “"The Butler’s in Love" (1989).
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D3)
2014 Mar 27, In his first visit to Afghanistan as Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani called for regional unity as regional leaders celebrated the Persian New Year in Kabul.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Cambodia's opposition party said it will defy a government ban on meeting in one of the capital's public parks, setting up a possible clash with authorities.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In the Central African Republic at least 9 people were killed when extremists threw hand grenades at a crowd of mourners during a funeral service in Bangui. A recent uptick in violence had seen around 20 people killed in Bangui since March 22.
(AFP, 3/28/14)(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 27, China’s Defense Ministry said it will beef up its internet security after recent reports that the US government spied on a major telecommunications firm.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, China’s Xinhua state news said a Wuhu city court has sentenced to death a rapist who posed as a female on social networks to lure 16 girls to meet him. Wang Yong (40) was sentenced earlier this month for raping the girls aged 12 to 16 starting in 2009.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In China a man (34) involved in a property dispute stabbed six people to death in a Beijing district and injured others.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Colombia’s Pres. Juan Manuel Santos said Venezuela’s government has accepted the political opposition’s conditions for dialogue.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 27, Egypt’s Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ditched his military fatigues and resigned as Egypt's defense minister, a day after announcing he would run for president.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, A French court ordered Closer magazine to pay 15,000 euros for publishing photos of what it said was a helmeted President Francois Hollande visiting an actress for a secret tryst. Julie Gayet had sued the magazine for violation of privacy.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Germany's main airports were hit by a strike as public sector workers raised pressure on the government in pay talks.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Iraqi army forces began shelling the region of Zoba, just south of Fallujah, sparking clashes with militants. At least 3 people were killed and 53 wounded in the shelling and firefights. A series of attacks targeting commercial areas killed 26 people. In Ramadi 4 soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in a booby-trapped building.
(AFP, 3/28/14)(AP, 3/28/14)(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 27, Israel said it will allow into the Gaza Strip construction materials and electric equipment to help build a Turkish-sponsored hospital, in a possible sign of improving ties with Ankara.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Japan’s Shizuoka District Court suspended the death sentence and ordered a retrial for Iwao Hakamada (78). The world's longest-serving death row inmate had been convicted in the 1966 murder of a family and was sentenced to death in 1968. The judge who freed him found that police and prosecutors had fabricated evidence in the original trial.
(AP, 3/27/14)(Econ, 12/5/15, p.39)
2014 Mar 27, Lebanon’s government ordered the army and security forces to control the security situation in Tripoli and to seize arms caches in the city. A soldier was killed by two masked men on motorbikes in Tripoli. A day earlier a municipal worker was murdered in the same fashion.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Libya slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi's son Saadi asked Libyans for forgiveness in a taped interview released by prison authorities three weeks after his extradition from neighboring Niger.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Macau "The Grandmaster" won best picture, best director for Wong Kar Wai and five other honors at the Asian Film Awards.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, Mexican soldiers and police killed 10 Zetas drug cartel suspects in a gunfight in the eastern state of Veracruz.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Myanmar Buddhist-led mobs tore through streets hurling stones at the offices and residences of international aid workers in western Rakhine state, prompting the evacuation of almost all non-essential staff. One girl (11) was killed when police fired into the air to disperse crowds.
(AP, 3/27/14)(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 27, In Qatar Matthew and Grace Huang, an American couple charged with starving their adopted daughter (8) to death, were sentenced to three years in prison. Their daughter was pronounced dead when the Huangs took her to the hospital in January 2013.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The Philippine government signed a peace accord with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country's largest Muslim rebel group. The deal grants largely Muslim areas of the southern Mindanao region greater political autonomy in exchange for an end to armed rebellion.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would develop its own credit card system to reduce reliance on Western-based companies and soften the potential blow from US and EU sanctions.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Saudi Arabia’s reigning King Abdullah (~89) appointed by royal decree his youngest surviving brother, Muqrin (b.1945), as 2nd in line to the throne after ailing crown prince Salman (78).
(Econ, 4/5/14, p.40)
2014 Mar 27, South Korea's military seized a North Korean fishing boat that it said had crossed a disputed maritime border after ignoring warnings to retreat amid growing tension between the two sides.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, South Korea formally approved a request from women rights activists, including one "comfort woman", to meet North Korean counterparts at a conference on Japan's wartime use of sex slaves.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Syrian forces bombarded rebel positions with artillery and warplanes in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Turkey KanalTurk television station, linked to opponents of PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said authorities have withdrawn its license to broadcast nationally just days before crucial local elections.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, A scandal in Uganda over alleged sex abuse of female runners deepened after it emerged that Moses Kipsiro, the athlete who exposed the issue, was dropped from the national half-marathon team.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Ukraine PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned that everyone is going to feel some pain from necessary financial reforms ahead as the International Monetary Fund pledged up to $18 billion in loans to prop up the teetering economy. Former PM Yulia Tymoshenko announced that she will run for president in the vote set for May 25.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The UN passed a non-binding resolution declaring invalid Crimea's Moscow-backed referendum on seceding from Ukraine with 100 votes in favor, 11 against and 58 abstentions in the 193-nation General Assembly. Russia threatened several Eastern European and Central Asian states with retaliation if they voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 27, The UN's top human rights body agreed to launch an international criminal investigation into alleged abuses from Sri Lanka's ended civil war, approving a US-led resolution over the strong protests of Sri Lanka's government.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 28, President Barack Obama opened a fence-mending visit to Saudi Arabia, arriving in the oil-rich Gulf nation for meetings to reassure its elderly monarch of the US commitment to the Arab world.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, California’s Democratic controlled state Senate voted to suspend three members. They included Leland Yee of SF and San Mateo Ct. and Ron Calderon and Roderick Wright of LA County. The suspended senators would continue to receive pay until their terms expire.
(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A1)(SSFC, 3/30/14, p.C5)
2014 Mar 28, US authorities said 11 people have been arrested for trafficking methamphetamine to the Bakken oil patch and will face drug conspiracy charges in Montana.
(SSFC, 3/30/14, p.A11)
2014 Mar 28, In Afghanistan six foreigners including three Americans were trapped inside a Kabul guesthouse after a group of Taliban gunmen laid siege to the building. A gun battle erupted after a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up outside the building and insurgents forced their way in. The aid workers survived. One small Afghan girl, a passer-by, was killed as well as a driver and all five attackers.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)(AFP, 3/29/14)(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 28, Australian officials moved the search area for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, that disappeared March 8, 1,100 km (680 miles) to the northeast following a new analysis of radar data, and planes quickly found multiple objects in the new zone.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Brazilian prosecutors sought the arrest of 13 executives from 3 int’l. companies allegedly involved in a cartel to raise prices for the construction and upkeep of subway and train systems in Sao Paulo.
(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 28, In Egypt Journalist Mayada Ashraf, from the privately owned Al-Dustour newspaper, was shot in the head as she covered clashes between police and supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in the northern neighborhood of Ein Shams. 4 other people were killed including a Christian woman named Mary Sameh (26). Prosecutors the next day blamed five masked gunmen from the Muslim Brotherhood. A protester who attended the Ein Shams rally said it was the police who opened fire on the crowd as the demonstrators were about to disperse.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, The Guinean health ministry confirmed eight cases of Ebola in Conakry, including one fatality. The total number of suspected cases recorded from January to March 28 was 111 cases of haemorrhagic fever, including 70 deaths.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, An Indian air force cargo plane inducted into service just last year crashed during a training mission, killing all five crew members.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, In Iraq a triple bombing struck a busy market area in northern Baghdad, killing 4 people.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Israeli police and antiquities inspectors arrested a gang accused of looting ancient Jewish burial caskets from a cave in the Jerusalem area.
(AFP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 28, In the Ivory Coast Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama was elected the new head of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at a summit of the 15-nation regional bloc.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, In Kashmir at least three gunmen disguised as Indian soldiers opened fire on a car, killing a passenger and triggering a firefight with army troops in the Dayalchak area.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, A Lebanese policeman was killed by unknown gunmen in the northern city of Tripoli.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, In Morocco some 800 African migrants tried to climb barbed-wire fences to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Most were turned back by security forces from both sides.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Netherlands’ public prosecutor said Milutin Graic (41), wanted in Croatia on suspicion of war crimes during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, has been arrested in Roosendaal.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, New Zealand’s government announced it would sell a minority stake in power company Genesis Energy for 736 million New Zealand dollars ($638 million). The company will list on the New Zealand stock market on April 17. More than two-thirds of people who voted in a referendum last year said they opposed the government asset sales.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Nigeria’s military said they have arrested two Britons and 10 local citizens on charges of trying to bribe a military officer to facilitate oil theft. Security sources have said the sheer scale of oil theft would not be possible without systematic collusion by various security agencies.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, In eastern Pakistan gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire late today on a car carrying senior journalist Raza Rumi, killing his driver before escaping in Lahore.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, A Palestinian official said Israel will not free the final batch of prisoners they had been expecting alongside US-brokered peace talks. Israeli cabinet members had warned they would block the final release, anticipated for the end of March, if the Palestinians refused to extend the talks beyond their April 29 deadline.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, The Philippines signed contracts worth $527 million to buy 12 fighter jets from South Korea and four combat utility helicopters from Canada to boost the capability of its air force.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin said Ukraine could regain some arms and equipment of military units in Crimea that did not switch their loyalty to Russia.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Russia said Switzerland has imposed restrictions on military exports to Russia over events in Ukraine which were counterproductive and not in line with the country's policy of neutrality.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, Sweden sentenced a Malaysian couple to prison for beating their four children with sticks and clothes hangers. The abuse occurred from 2010 until December 2013, when Swedish police arrested the couple. The children, aged 7-14, were taken back to their home country following a massive social media campaign calling for their return.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, The UN's top human rights body voted overwhelmingly to renew its war crimes investigation in Syria for another year.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 28, The UN said over a million people in South Sudan have been forced from their homes during more than three months of ongoing fighting, with conditions continuing to worsen.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 28, Uruguay’s drug czar said every legal marijuana plant in the country will be registered and tracked using radio frequency tags.
(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 28, In southern Yemen 2 al-Qaeda militants and a soldier were killed in a raid by security forces on a residential building in Dalea.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 29, Hobie Alter (80), creator of the Hobie Cat sailboat, died at his home in Palm Desert, Ca. He was known as the Henry Ford of the surfboard industry. In 1959 he became the first person to mass produce surfboards made of polyurethane foam.
(SFC, 4/1/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 29, In Iowa a massive fire swept through the former Younkers department store in downtown Des Moines. The building, dating to 1899, was under renovation and would now have to be demolished.
(SSFC, 3/30/14, p.A11)
2014 Mar 29, In Afghanistan Taliban insurgents attacked the Independent Election Commission headquarters in Kabul with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. Police killed all 5 suicide bombers.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)(AP, 3/29/14)(SSFC, 3/30/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 29, Gay couples across England and Wales said "I do" as a law authorizing same-sex marriage came into effect at midnight, the final stage in a long fight for equality.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, British police said a male nurse has been charged with the murder of three patients who were poisoned with contaminated medical products at a hospital in Stockport. Victorino Chua (48), a father of two children, was charged with murdering 3 of 8 patients who died following the poisoning at Stepping Hill hospital, in June and July 2011. On May 18, 2015, Chua was convicted of using insulin to murder two patients and trying to poison twenty others.
(AFP, 3/29/14)(SFC, 5/19/15, p.A2)
2014 Mar 29, In Central African Republic Chadian soldiers, sent to repatriate their compatriots, killed at least 8 civilians when they opened fire on crowds in Bangui. Chadian troops were accused of killing 32 civilians when they opened fire on a crowd.
(AFP, 3/30/14)(AP, 4/3/14)
2014 Mar 29, Crimea's Tatars held a vote on whether to push for self-rule in their historic homeland following its annexation by Russia. The Crimean Tatars, who make up about 12 percent of Crimea's population, strongly opposed and largely boycotted the hastily-organized March 16 referendum.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Cuba’s parliament approved a new foreign investment law that for the first time allowed Cubans living abroad to invest in some enterprises.
(Econ, 4/5/14, p.30)
2014 Mar 29, An Egyptian court sentenced two supporters of former president Mohamed Mursi to death for murder during violence that broke out in Alexandria last year.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Egypt reopened the Gaza Strip's land border after a 50-day closure, but only for three days and then just for special cases.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the US National Security Agency kept more than 300 reports on Chancellor Angela Merkel in a special databank about scores of foreign heads of state. Other leaders listed in the databank include the heads of Peru, Somalia, Guatemala, Colombia and Belarus.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Guinea kept up its efforts to contain an Ebola epidemic which has killed dozens spreading from its southern forests to the capital Conakry, as neighboring Senegal closed its border.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, In southern Iraq commercial production on one of the biggest undeveloped oilfields in the world. Russian energy giant Lukoil was the principal firm developing the enormous West Qurna-2 field.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, In Lebanon 3 soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at a checkpoint at Aqabet al-Jurd in the Arsal region.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 29, Myanmar said that Muslims would not be allowed to register as "Rohingya" in its first census since 1983 despite UN assurances, on the eve of a survey that has fanned sectarian tensions.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, In southwest Pakistan a roadside bomb targeting a security force vehicle in Quetta killed a teenage girl and wounded 18 people.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, A Philippine government ship slipped past a Chinese coast guard blockade and brought food and fresh troops to a marooned navy ship used as a base by Filipino troops to bolster the country's territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Russia said it had "no intention" of invading eastern Ukraine, responding to Western warnings over a military buildup on the border following Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Slovak voters turned out in unexpectedly higher numbers for the runoff in the country's presidential election as underdog philanthropist Andrej Kiska challenged political heavyweight PM Robert Fico. Andrej Kiska trounced PM Robert Fico in the presidential election.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Sri Lanka held local elections. The ruling party won local elections, but with smaller than expected margins in a crucial mid-term test for President Mahinda Rajapakse.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 29, Syrian government forces captured two villages near the border with Lebanon, continuing a weeks-long advance that has cut a major supply route for weapons and fighters from eastern Lebanon.
(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, In Thailand tens of thousands of anti-government protesters rallied across Bangkok in their latest bid to topple PM Yingluck Shinawatra.
(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 29, Ukraine boxer turned opposition leader Vitali Klitschko dropped out of the May 25 snap presidential polls to help the candidacy of Petro Poroshenko, a charismatic tycoon who made a fortune selling chocolates and backs closer Western ties.
(AFP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Albuquerque, NM, a protest over recent police shootings turned to mayhem as demonstrators clashed with riot police. Violent confrontations between officers and residents have included 37 police shootings since 2010, 23 of them fatal.
(SFC, 3/31/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 30, Marc Platt (b.1913), Broadway dancer and the last surviving member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, died in Marin, Ca. His film work included roles in “Tonight and Every Night" (1945), “Tars and Spars" (1946) and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (1954).
(SFC, 4/1/14, p.C4)
2014 Mar 30, In southeastern Afghanistan a Romanian serviceman was killed and five troops wounded by a roadside bomb on the Kabul-Kandahar highway outside Qalat, Zabul province. Romania has 1,029 troops serving in the NATO mission in Afghanistan; 23 have been killed.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, A Bahrain court sentenced 13 people to life in prison for attempting to kill a policeman, attacking a police car and taking part in an illegal protest in March, 2012. One person was sentenced to 10 years in jail in the same case.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Belgium China’s Pres. Xi Jinping received a royal welcome and an honorary knighthood in Brussels at the start of a 3-day visit that will see him become the first Chinese leader to visit EU headquarters.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Brazil more than 1,400 police officers and Marines rolled into a massive complex of slums near Rio de Janeiro's international airport before dawn as part of the "pacification" program that began in 2008 and is meant to secure Rio ahead of not the World Cup and also the 2016 Summer Olympics.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, British actress Kate O'Mara (74), best known for her role in the 1980s soap opera "Dynasty," died in a nursing home in southern England after a short illness.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In southern China hundreds of protesters marched against a chemical plant and environmental degradation. The Maoming city government called the demonstration a "grave violation" by criminals causing chaos. Residents were protesting the production of paraxylene, a chemical used to make fabrics and plastic bottles at a plant run by the local government and state-owned Sinopec Corp, China's biggest refiner.
(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 30, In China Phuntso Wangye (b.1922), a veteran Tibetan Communist leader, died in Beijing. He had founded the Tibetan Communist Party and later become an outspoken critic of Beijing's hardline policies towards the Himalayan region. His book “A Long Way to Equality and Unity" was recently published in Hong Kong.
(Reuters, 3/30/14)(SFC, 3/31/14, p.C3)
2014 Mar 30, An Egyptian soldier was killed when militants attacked the bus he was driving in the town of Al-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula.
(Reuters, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, France held a second round of voting in local elections that are set to result in a breakthrough by the far right and trigger a reshuffle of the beleaguered Socialist government. 155 towns swung to the center-right UMP and the far-right National Front claim 11.
(AFP, 3/30/14)(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Iraq attackers sprayed with bullets a group of troops manning a checkpoint near Mosul killing 7 soldiers. A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives on a major bridge in Ramadi killing 7 people. Parts of the al-Houz bridge fell into the Euphrates river. Two police officers were killed by a roadside bomb that exploded near their car in Tikrit. A bomb explosion at the entrance of an out-door market killed 4 shoppers and wounded nine others in Baghdad's suburb of Youssifiyah.
(AFP, 3/30/14)(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, Japan and North Korea started high-level government talks for the first time in more than a year that were expected to focus on abductions of Japanese by North Korea decades ago.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Kenya a man died after an explosive device he was assembling blew up in a residential area of Nairobi. Police looked for three other men who were seen running out of the apartment after the blast.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, Myanmar began its first census since 1983. Those who identified themselves as Rohingya were not counted.
(AP, 4/2/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Nigeria 21 detainees, reportedly suspected Boko Haram insurgents, were killed during an attempted jailbreak after one inmate reportedly overpowered a guard and seized his weapon.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 30, The Philippines filed a case against China at an arbitration tribunal in The Hague, subjecting Beijing to international legal scrutiny over the territorial dispute in the South China Sea.
(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 30, The Seychelles transferred nine Somali pirates to serve the remainder of their jail sentences back home, taking the total transferred to more than 90.
(AFP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Taiwan hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the streets around Parliament to voice their opposition to a trade pact with China.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, Thais voted for half of the country's 150-seat Senate in a key test for Yingluck Shinawatra's troubled government.
(AP, 3/30/14)
2014 Mar 30, In Turkey violent feuds broke out in local elections for village and neighborhood leaders, leaving 6 people dead in the village of Yuvacik, Sanliurfa province, and 2 dead in the southern city of Hatay. PM Erdogan’s AK Party led the polls with 46%, retaining control of the two biggest cities Istanbul and Ankara and increasing its share of the national vote.
(AP, 3/30/14)(Reuters, 3/31/14)(SSFC, 4/6/14, p.A4)
2014 Mar 31, In Connecticut The Rev. Paul Gotta was arrested on seven sexual assault charges. Police say the assaults took place over the span of a year beginning in January 2012. He was arrested by federal authorities last year on charges including illegally transferring a gun, ammunition and explosive material to a juvenile.
(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 31, Charles Keating (b.1923), moral crusader and former Arizona land developer, died in Phoenix. He had bilked some 23,000 investors out of their savings in Lincoln Savings, a savings and loan association based in Irvine, Ca., that went bust in 1989.
(Econ, 4/12/14, p.94)
2014 Mar 31, In Afghanistan insurgent attacks across the country killed 18 people. In the north Taliban gunmen overnight abducted Hussain Nazari, a candidate running for a seat in a provincial council and seven members of his entourage.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Chinese prosecutors brought corruption charges against a top general. A military prosecutor charged Lt. Gen. Gu Junshan with embezzlement, bribery, misuse of state funds and abuse of power. Liu Han, a mining tycoon, his brother and 34 associates stood trial on allegations of running a vast criminal gang in Sichuan province that gunned down rivals, maintained fleets of Ferraris and bribed police to avoid prosecution.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, A Croatian court sentenced the country's former army chief retired general Mladen Kruljac to 18 months in prison, saying he and five others had manipulated real estate prices in deals that eventually cost Croatia 61.2 million kuna ($11 million).
(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, An Egyptian court in Alexandria sentenced 33 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to six years in prison each over clashes with opponents last December. Each defendant was also fined 50,000 Egyptian pounds (about $7,100).
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, German authorities arrested three people in raids against suspected supporters of a hardline Islamic group in Syria, a move meant to curb risks posed by extremists returning from Syria's civil war.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Germany's Lufthansa said it will cancel some 3,800 flights because of a three-day strike by the pilots' union later this week (April 2-4), hitting more than 425,000 passengers.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, In Germany workers at Amazon’s logistics center in Leipzig staged the short-term warning strike to try to get management to return to the negotiating table over wages.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Doctors Without Borders warned that health authorities in Guinea faced an "unprecedented epidemic" of Ebola, as the death toll from the disease that causes severe bleeding reached 78.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, An Israeli court convicted former PM Ehud Olmert (68) in a wide-ranging bribery case. Olmert was charged for acts committed while he was mayor of Jerusalem and minister of industry and trade.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, The International Court of Justice ordered a temporary halt to Japan's Antarctic whaling program, ruling that it is not for scientific purposes as the Japanese government had claimed.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, In Kenya three almost simultaneous blasts in Eastleigh, the main Somali district of Nairobi, left at least 6 people dead.
(AFP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 31, The Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund set up in 2006, said it is suing French bank Societe Generale in a British court for $1.5 billion (1.1 billion euros) for allegedly channeling bribes to allies of the son of slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
(AFP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, A Nigerian court ruled that lawmakers who defected to the main opposition coalition in December must vacate their seats. This was a victory for President Goodluck Jonathan ahead of what will be a closely fought election in February 2015.
(Reuters, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 31, North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire in disputed waters in an apparent new round of saber-rattling by Pyongyang during annual US-South Korean military exercises.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, A special Pakistani court indicted former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on five counts of high treason, a charge that potentially carries the death penalty. The development is the first time that an acting or former army chief has been indicted for treason in Pakistan.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Russia’s PM Medvedev said Crimea will be made a special economic zone offering tax breaks and reduced bureaucracy to attract investors.
(Reuters, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Switzerland's competition regulator named eight global banks it is investigating for possible manipulation of foreign exchange rates. It cited the two largest Swiss banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, along with Zurich Cantonal Bank, Julius Baer and JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Syrian army troops recaptured a key position in coastal Latakia province. Observatory 45 is a strategic hilltop that overlooks several areas inhabited by residents from the Alawite community.
(AP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Two Tunisian police officers were convicted of raping a young woman in September 2012, and sentenced to seven years in prison in a case that drew widespread protests after the victim was initially accused of immoral behavior.
(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 31, Key Ugandan opposition leader and mayor of the capital Erias Lukwago resumed office five months after being ousted in a power struggle with the ruling party. A court ruling last week said his removal had been illegal.
(AFP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, Ukraine reported a gradual withdrawal of Russian troops from its border that may be linked to Washington's latest push for a diplomatic solution to the worst East-West standoff since the Cold War.
(AFP, 3/31/14)
2014 Mar 31, In Ukraine a Right Sector member shot and wounded three people outside a restaurant adjacent to Kiev's main Independence Square, including a deputy city mayor, triggering a standoff that lasted overnight.
(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar, An Afghan officer brought the corpse of a high-ranking enemy commander into a town, telling villagers he'd killed him and putting a meat hook into the corpse's head, then stringing the body up with a rope. In 2019 German prosecutors charged Ahmad Zaheer D. (26) with war crimes for allegedly abusing prisoners and defiling the corpse.
(AP, 4/9/19)
2014 Mar, In Brazil former Petrobras executive Paulo Roberto Costa was arrested in a money laundering probe of the oil company. Costa ran the refining division of Petrobras from 2004-2012. He soon accused more than 40 politicians of involvement in a vast kickback scheme.
(Econ, 9/13/14, p.44)
2014 Mar, Britain’s Lord Tony Hall (63) took youth television channel BBC3 off the air.
(Econ, 3/15/14, p.56)
2014 Mar, In the Central African Rep. a dozen civilians went missing at Boali after a clash between local anti-Balaka militias drawn mainly from the Christian population and troops of an African Union mission known as MISCA. Two years after the trouble, a mass grave was found near a former MISCA base at Boali. The remains of 12 people were found in the grave in February 2016 and all were eventually identified as individuals detained by Congolese MISCA troops. In 2018 three Congolese soldiers were freed after serving most of their three years sentences for mass murder.
(AFP, 8/7/18)
2014 Mar, Chinese hackers broke into the computer networks of the US Office of Personnel Management with the intention of accessing the files of tens of thousands of federal employees who had applied for top-secret security clearances. Hackers gained access to some of the agency's databases before the threat was detected and blocked.
(AP, 7/10/14)
2014 Mar, In China rumors that the government owned Sheyang Rural Commercial Bank was low on cash sparked a bank run.
(Econ, 5/7/15, SR p.3)
2014 Mar, In Finland a man and a woman were arrested for plotting to kill about 50 people in an attack at the University of Helsinki. They were also charged with weapons possession. The suspects had met online and discussed the massacre using encrypted emails.
(AP, 5/26/14)
2014 Mar, Hungary signed a €10 billion loan agreement with Russia to expand and modernize Paks, a nuclear power station.
(Econ, 7/19/14, p.48)
2014 Mar, In Mali the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, the original instigator of the rebellion of 2012, broke in two.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.51)
2014 Mar, Lagos, Nigeria, (population 21 million) disgorged about 10,000 metric tons of waste per day. Municipal government were reckoned to collect 40% of this. Only 13% of recyclable material was being salvaged.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.42)
2014 Swaziland’s King Mswathi III cut the ribbon for a new airport named after himself.
(Econ, 10/3/15, p.49)
2014 Mar, In Swaziland Thulani Maseko, a lawyer who studied at American University's Washington College of Law, and Bheki Makhubu, editor of Swaziland's The Nation magazine, were jailed and charged with contempt of court for publishing articles in which they lamented alleged threats to judicial independence.
(AP, 6/20/14)
2014 Mar, Swiss authorities arrested three Iraqi citizens who were suspected of providing support to Islamic State and planning an attack in Europe. The arrests were first reported in September and confirmed by the government in October.
(Reuters, 10/31/14)
2014 Mar, In Syria Hezbollah commandos infiltrated Syrian rebel-held territory near the Lebanese border, watching rebel fighters come and go from a two-story villa before slipping inside to plant a powerful bomb. The next morning, they detonated it as three rebel explosive experts and four assistants met inside, turning the villa to rubble in seconds.
(AP, 4/12/14)
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