Today in History - March 30

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1282        Mar 30, Furious inhabitants of Palermo attacked French occupation force in the "Sicilian Vespers." The Mafia appeared in Sicily to revolt against French rule after a drunken soldier attacked a young woman on her wedding day.
    (WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(MC, 3/30/02)

1298        Mar 30, Duke Vytenis joined with Riga and its archbishop against the Livonian order.
    (LHC, 3/30/03)

1422        Mar 30, Ketsugan, a Zen teacher, performed exorcisms to free the Aizoji temple.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1423        Mar 30, Lithuania and Poland reached an agreement at Kezmark with Emperor Sigismund, who agreed to recall Sigismund Kaributa from Poland.
    (LHC, 3/30/03)

1492        Mar 30, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella signed a decree expelling all Jews from Spain. Jews numbered about 80,000 and it was estimated that about half chose to convert. [see Mar 31]
    (HN, 3/30/98)(WSJ, 4/16/98, p.A20)

1533        Mar 30, Henry VIII made Thomas Cranmer archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer had advised Henry that his 1509 marriage to Catherine of Aragon was null and void because she had previously married Henry’s late brother Arthur, even though that marriage was ever consummated.
    (PCh, 1992ed, p.177)

1603        Mar 30, Battle at Mellifont: English army under Lord Mountjoy beat the Irish.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1719        Mar 30, Sir John Hawkins, author of the first history of music, was born.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1767        Mar 30, Jonas Kristupas Glaubicas, one of the founders of the Vilnius school of baroque architecture, died.
    (LHC, 3/30/03)

1814        Mar 30, Britain and allies marched into Paris after defeating Napoleon.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1820        Mar 30, Anna Sewell, English novelist, was born. Her "Black Beauty" has become the classic story about horses.
    (HN, 3/30/99)

1822        Mar 30, Congress combined East and West Florida into the Florida Territory.
    (AP, 3/30/97)(MC, 3/30/02)

1840        Mar 30, "Beau" Brummell (b.1778), English dandy and former favorite of the prince regent, died of syphilis in a French lunatic asylum for paupers. In 2005 Ian Kelly authored the biography “Beau Brummel: The Ultimate Dandy.”
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Brummell)(WSJ, 5/7/06, p.P9)

1842        Mar 30, Crawford Williamson Long (1815-1878) of Jefferson, Ga., utilized ether the first time to remove a tumor from the neck of his patient, Mr. James M. Venable.
    (AP, 3/30/97)(www.general-anaesthesia.com/images/crawford-long.html)
1842        Mar 30, Elisabeth Viglee Le Brun (b.1755), French artist, died in Paris. She had served as the portrait painter to Marie Antoinette.
    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_%C3%89lisabeth_Vig%C3%A9e_Le_Brun)(Econ, 2/20/15, p.76)

1850        Mar 30, Charles Dickens published the first issue of his magazine “Household Words.”
    (Econ, 9/10/11, p.95)(www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/hw.html)

1853        Mar 30, Vincent Van Gogh (d.1890), Dutch artist, was born in Zundert, Neth. His work included “The Drawbridge and Sunflowers in a Vase,” and “Harvest in Prevance,” which was done both in oil and as a watercolor. The watercolor sold in 1997 for $14.7 mil. He produced an estimated 900 paintings and 1200 drawings but sold virtually none of them. In 1997 it was reported that more than 100 of his paintings and drawings might be fakes. 300 of his canvasses were painted in the last 15 months of his life.
    (AAP,1964)(WUD,1994, p.606)(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A21)(SFC, 7/5/97, p.A8)(SFEC, 1/4/98, Z1p.8)(HN, 3/30/98)

1855        Mar 30, First election in Territorial Kansas. Some 5,000 "Border Ruffians" invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1856        Mar 30, Russia signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War. It guaranteed the integrity of Ottoman Turkey and obliged Russia to surrender southern Bessarabia, at the mouth of the Danube. The Black Sea was neutralized, and the Danube River was opened to the shipping of all nations. In 2010 Allen Lane authored “Crimea: The Last Crusade.”
    (www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War)(Econ, 10/2/10, p.89)

1858        Mar 30, Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia patented the pencil with an eraser attached on one end.
    (HN, 3/30/98)(SFC, 9/16/98, Z1 p.6)

1864        Mar 30, Skirmish at Mount Elba, Arkansas.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1867        Mar 30, US Secretary of State William H. Seward signed an agreement with Russia’s Baron Edouard de Stoeckl to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, two cents an acre, a deal roundly ridiculed as "Seward's Folly," "Seward's icebox," and President Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden."
    (AP, 3/30/97)(HN, 3/30/01)(Reuters, 5/24/11)

1870        Mar 30, The 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race, was declared in effect by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.
    (HN, 3/30/98)(AP, 3/30/08)
1870        Mar 30, Texas was the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union.
    (AP, 3/30/97)(HN, 3/30/98)

1873        Mar 30, Benedict Augustin Morel (63), psychologist (dementia praecox), died.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1880        Mar 30, Sean O'Casey (d. 1964), Irish playwright, was born. "It is my rule never to lose me temper till it would be detrimental to keep it."
    (AP, 3/17/00)(HN, 3/30/01)

1883        Mar 30, Jo Davidson, American sculptor, was born.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1885        Mar 30, Russian troops inflicted a crushing defeat on Afghan forces at Ak Teppe despite orders not to fight. In the Panjdeh Incident Russian forces seize the Panjdeh Oasis, a piece of Afghan territory north of the Oxus River. Afghans tried to retake it, but were finally forced to allow the Russians to keep Panjdeh, and the Russians promised to honor Afghan territorial integrity in the future.
    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panjdeh_incident)(http://tinyurl.com/y2fzk4xm)

1902        Mar 30, Roberta Brooke Russell (d.2007) was born in Portsmouth, NH. In 1953 she married millionaire Vincent Astor (d.1959) and became a major philanthropist following his death.
    (SFC, 8/14/07, p.B5)

1909        Mar 30, The Queensboro Bridge, the first double decker bridge, opened and linked the New York boroughs of Manhattan and Queens.
    (AP, 3/30/97)(HN, 3/30/98)

1912        Mar 30, The Treaty of Fez was signed. Sultan Abdelhafid made Morocco a French protectorate, resolving the Agadir Crisis of July 1, 1911.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Fez)

1916        Mar 30, Pancho Villa killed 172 at the Guerrero garrison in Mexico.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1919        Mar 30, Gandhi announced resistance against Rowlatt Act.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1921        Mar 30, Countess of Sutherland, English great land owner, multi-millionaire, was born.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1925        Mar 30, Stalin supported rights of non-Serbian Yugoslavians.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1926        Mar 30, Feliks E. Dzerzjinski (48), Lithuanian organizer (KGB), died. Felix Dzerzhinsky was the founder of the communist secret police, the Cheka.
    (MC, 3/30/02)(WSJ, 10/15/02, p.D6)

1930        Mar 30, David Staple, joint president of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, was born.
    (MC, 3/30/02)
1930        Mar 30, In Germany Heinrich Brüning (1885-1970) became chancellor and continued to 1932.
    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Br%C3%BCning)(Econ, 4/29/17, p.57)

1931        Mar 30, In Scottsboro, Ala., 9 young black men were indicted for rape. By the end of April all were tried, convicted and sentenced to death, except for one age 13, who was sentenced to life in prison. The US Supreme Court later overturned the convictions, but they were convicted at a 2nd trial, even though one of the accused said no rape had occurred. Five convictions were overturned in 1937 after one alleged victim recanted her story. Clarence Norris received a pardon before his death in 1976. In 2013 Alabama’s parole board approved posthumous pardons for the “Scottsboro Boys” during a hearing for three black men whose convictions were never overturned.
    (WSJ, 6/20/07, p.A17)(SFC, 11/22/13, p.A15)

1935        Mar 30, Britain and Russia agreed on treaties intended to curb the power of the Reich.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1936        Mar 30, Britain announced a naval construction program of 38 warships. This was the largest construction program in 15 years.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1937        Mar 30, Warren Beatty, American actor and director, was born in Richmond, Va., as Henry Warren Beaty. His older sister became famous as actress Shirley MacLaine (b.1934). In 2010 Peter Biskind authored ”How Warren Beatty Seduced America.”
    (SSFC, 1/10/10, Books p.F1)

1940        Mar 30, The Japanese set up a puppet government called Manchuko in Nanking, China.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1941        Mar 30, Graeme Edge, rock drummer (Moody Blues-Your Wildest Dreams), was born in England.
    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Edge)
1941        Mar 30, The U.S. seized Italian, German and Danish ships in 16 ports.
    (HN, 3/30/98)
1941        Mar 30, The German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel began its first offensive against British forces in Libya.
    (HN, 3/30/99)

1942        Mar 30, SS murdered 200 inmates of Trawniki labor camp.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1944        Mar 30, The U.S. fleet attacked Palau, near the Philippines.
    (HN, 3/30/98)
1944        Mar 30, Gobbledygook was coined by US Rep. Maury Maverick, a Texas Democrat, in a memo banning "gobbledygook language" at the Smaller War Plants Corporation. It was a reaction to his frustration with the "convoluted language of bureaucrats." However, the first time the new word was seen by the average person was on May 21, 1944. That day, he wrote a long article for the New York Times magazine, explaining how he invented the word, and giving readers many examples of how the new word could be used.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobbledygook)(NYT, 5/21/1944, p.SM11)
1944        Mar 30, 781 British bombers attacked Nuremberg.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1945        Mar 30, A Soviet cable was intercepted that referred to an agent named Ales, later suspected of being Alger Hiss. The intercepted cables were classified as part of the “Venona Project” released in 1996. The US began releasing the coded Venona cables in 1995. They implicated 349 US citizens and residents as Soviet helpers. In 1999 John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr published "Venona," the story of the Soviet infiltration of Washington.
    (SFC, 11/21/96, p.A27)(WSJ, 6/24/99, p.A20)
1945        Mar 30, 289 anti-fascists were murdered by Nazis in Rombergpark, Dortmund.
    (MC, 3/30/02)
1945        Mar 30, The Soviet Union invaded Austria during World War II.
    (AP, 3/30/97)(HN, 3/30/98)

1946        Mar 30, The Allies seized 1,000 Nazis who were attempting to revive the Nazi party in Frankfurt.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1949        Mar 30, Friedrich C.R. Bergius (64), chemist (brown coal, Nobel 1931), died.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1950        Mar 30, President Truman denounced Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.
    (HN, 3/30/98)
1950        Mar 30, Phototransistor invention was announced in Murray Hill, NJ. It was invented by Dr. John Northrup Shive of the Bell Telephone Laboratories.
    (http://tinyurl.com/ewxqh)

1953        Mar 30, Einstein announced a revised unified field theory.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1954        Mar. 30, Canada's first subway line opened in Toronto.
    (CFA, '96, p.42)(HN, 3/30/98)

1957        Mar 30, Tunisia and Morocco signed a friendship treaty in Rabat.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1959        Mar 30, Dalai Lama (b.1935), Tenzin Gyatso, having fled the Chinese suppression of a national uprising in Tibet, crossed the border into India. India granted him political asylum.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1959)

1961        Mar 30, The UN adopted its Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs. It included language that prohibited the chewing of coca leaves. It became effective on Dec 13, 1964.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs)(SFC, 1/19/11, p.A2)
1961        Mar 30, P.J. Melotte, discovered Jupiter's 8th satellite, Pasiphae, died.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1962        Mar 30, M.C. Hammer, [Stanley Kirk Burrell], rapper (Hammer Time), was born in Oakland, Ca.
    (MC, 3/30/02)

1964        Mar 30, Tracy Chapman, US singer, songwriter (Freedom Now, I Got a Fast Car), was born.
    (MC, 3/30/02)
1964        Mar 30, John Glenn withdrew from the Ohio race for U.S. Senate because of injuries suffered in a fall.
    (AP, 3/30/97)
1964        Mar 30, The original version of the TV game show "Jeopardy!" premiered on NBC. Merv Griffin (1925-2007) created the TV game show “Jeopardy.” He sold the rights for the show to Coca-Cola for $250 million in 1986. The show was hosted by Art Fleming until 1975. It resurfaced in syndication in 1984 with Alex Trebek as host.
    (SFC, 8/13/07, p.A1)(WSJ, 8/15/07, p.D12)(AP, 3/30/08)

1966        Mar 30, President Johnson asked Congress for authority to ship to India 3.5 million tons of bread grains, 200,000 tons of corn, 150 million pounds of vegetable oils, and 125 million pounds of milk powder.
    (file:///C:/Users/AALGI_~1/AppData/Local/Temp/mn-ag-econ-488.pdf)

1968        Mar 30, General Ludvik Svoboda (1895-1979) was elected president of Czechoslovakia. He stayed in office to 1975.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludv%C3%ADk_Svoboda)

1970        Mar 30, Secretariat, race horse, triple crown (1973), was born.
    (MC, 3/30/02)
1970        Mar 30, The musical "Applause" with Lauren Bacall opened on Broadway. It was based on the movie "All About Eve."
    (SFEC, 5/18/97, Par p.7)(AP, 3/30/07)

1972        Mar 30, Hanoi launched its heaviest attack in four years, crossing the DMZ in the Easter offensive. 200,000 North Vietnamese soldiers under the command of General Vo Nguyen Giap wage an all-out attempt to conquer South Vietnam. The offensive is a tremendous gamble by Giap and is undertaken as a result of US troop withdrawal, the strength of the anti-war movement in America likely preventing a US retaliatory response, and the poor performance of South Vietnam's Army during Operation Lam Son 719 in 1971. The Communist Easter invasion in South Vietnam was defeated.
    (WSJ, 10/5/98, p.A21)(www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1969.html)

1973         Mar 30, Ellsworth Bunker resigned as US ambassador to South Vietnam. He was succeeded by Graham A. Martin.
    (AP, 3/30/97)(HN, 3/30/98)

1975        Mar 30, As the North Vietnamese forces moved toward Saigon, desperate South Vietnamese soldiers mobbed rescue jets. Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap masterminded the North Vietnamese victory. Da Nang fell as 100,000 South Vietnamese soldiers surrender after being abandoned by their commanding officers.
    (SFEC, 4/9/00, p.C16)(www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1969.html)

1976        Mar 30, Israel killed 6 Palestinians protesting land confiscation.
    (www.balad.org/index.php?id=138)

1979        Mar 30, Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave, a leading member of the British parliament, was killed by a bomb planted by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) in the House of Commons car park in London.
    (AP, 3/30/99)(AP, 2/8/10)
1979        Mar 30, Anthrax spores leaked from a secret germ-warfare plant and spread over Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), Russia. Over the course of 2 months at least 105 people died of anthrax poisoning. [see Apr 2] Reports did not emerge until October.
    (WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_Anthrax_leak)

1980        Mar 30, The Mormon Church celebrated its 150th anniversary in Salt Lake City, Utah.
    (HN, 3/30/98)

1981        Mar 30, John W. Hinckley Jr. shot and wounded Pres. Ronald Reagan outside a Washington, D.C., hotel. Press Sec. James Brady took a bullet as did Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and District of Columbia police officer Thomas Delahanty.
    (SFC, 7/14/96, Par p.2)(HN, 3/30/02)(AP, 3/30/08)

1985        Mar 30, Workers at cemeteries in Colma, Ca., joined striking East Bay graveyard employees.
    (SSFC, 3/28/10, DB p.42)
1985        Mar 30, In Virginia Jens Soering (b.1966), the son of a Germany diplomat, stabbed to death the parents of his girlfriend, Derek (72) and Nancy Haysom (53). In court, Jens Soering claimed that Elizabeth Haysom (b.1964) was the murderer and he wanted to spare her the death penalty by confessing.
    (SFC, 7/7/10, p.A4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Soering)

1986        Mar 30, Actor James Cagney (86) died at his farm in Stanfordville, N.Y.
    (AP, 3/30/97)

1987        Mar 30, Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" was bought for $39.85 million. The Vincent van Gogh painting “Sunflowers” was presented by art teacher Claude-Emile Schuffenecker at a 1901 Paris exhibition. It sold in 1987 for $40.3 million to the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Co. and was reported in 1997 to be a possible fake. Van Gogh’s letters refer to only 6 paintings of sunflowers, and the Yasuda painting is a seventh.
    (SFC,10/27/97, p.D4)(HN, 3/30/98)   
1987        Mar 30, The movie "Platoon" won four Academy Awards, including best picture; Paul Newman was named best actor for "The Color of Money," Marlee Matlin won best actress for "Children of a Lesser God."
    (AP, 3/30/97)

1988        Mar 30, US House Democratic and Republican leaders said that they had agreed in principle on a package of about $50 million to aid the Nicaraguan rebels.
    (http://tinyurl.com/n6uak)
1988        Mar 30, An attorney for the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart said the televangelist would return to the pulpit, defying national Assemblies of God church officials who had suspended him for at least a year for "moral failure."
    (AP, 3/30/98)

1989        Mar 30, "The Heidi Chronicles" by Wendy Wasserstein won the Pulitzer Prize for drama; in the journalism category, the Anchorage Daily News won the public service award for its reports on alcoholism and suicide among native Alaskans.
    (AP, 3/30/99)

1990        Mar 30, Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus vetoed a highly restrictive state abortion measure, saying the bill gave a woman and her family no flexibility in cases of rape and incest.
    (AP, 3/30/00)
1990        Mar 30, Harry Bridges (b.1901), Australian-born SF labor activist, died.
    (SFC, 7/27/01, p.A19)

1991        Mar 30, Patricia Bowman, a resident of Jupiter, Florida, told authorities she’d been raped hours earlier by William Kennedy Smith, the nephew of Senator Edward Kennedy, at the family’s Palm Beach estate. Smith was later acquitted at trial.
    (AP, 3/30/01)
1991        Mar 30, In Milwaukee, Wisc., serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer killed and dismembered Konerak Sinthasomphone (b.1976).
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer)

1992        Mar 30, "The Silence of the Lambs" won five Oscars at the 64th annual Academy Awards, including best picture, best actress for Jodie Foster and best actor for Anthony Hopkins.
    (AP, 3/30/97)   
1992        Mar 30, Debra Chasnoff (1957-2017) won an Oscar for her documentary “Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment,” an expose of GE’s production of nuclear weapons. Chasnoff came out as a lesbian by thanking her female partner, Kim Klausner.
    (SSFC, 11/12/17, p.C1)

1993        Mar 30, Washington attorney Robert Altman went on trial in New York City, charged with wrongdoing in connection with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). He was later acquitted.
    (AP, 3/30/98)
1993        Mar, 30, Richard Diebenkorn (b.1922), SF Bay Area artist, died. He moved between figuration and abstraction when the two modes were widely thought to be inimical. In 2012 his 1971 painting “Ocean Park #48” fetched $13.5 million.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Diebenkorn)(SFEC, 9/28/97, DB p.36)(SFC, 10/9/97, p.E1,6)(Econ, 11/24/12, p.69)
1993        Mar 30, Israeli authorities barred West Bank Palestinians from entering Israel after two traffic police officers were shot to death.
    (AP, 3/30/98)

1994        Mar 30, The Clinton administration announced it was lifting virtually all export controls on non-military products to China and the former Soviet bloc.
    (AP, 3/30/99)
1994        Mar 30, Serbs and Croats signed a cease-fire to end their war in Croatia while Bosnian Muslims and Serbs continued to battle each other.
    (AP, 3/30/99)

1995        Mar 30, Pope John Paul II issued the 11th encyclical of his papacy in which he condemned abortion and euthanasia as crimes that no human laws could legitimize.
    (AP, 3/30/00)
1995        Mar 30, In Japan Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency, was seriously wounded by a masked gunman. Two months later a police officer confessed to the attack. He was a member of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult and said that he was ordered to carry out the attack. The confession was kept secret until anonymous newspaper accounts warned of a cover-up in 1996.
    (SFC, 10/30/96, p.A1,6)
1995        Mar 30, Tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees, fleeing violence in Burundi, began a two-day trek to sanctuary in Tanzania.
    (AP, 3/30/00)

1996        Mar 30, In the NCAA basketball finals, Kentucky beat Syracuse, 76-67.
    (WSJ, 4/3/96, p.A-20)
1996        Mar 30 The space shuttle Atlantis narrowly avoided having to make an emergency landing when its cargo-bay doors wouldn't open at first to release built-up heat.
    (AP, 3/30/97)
1996        Mar 30, The El Bethal Church in Satartia, Miss., burned down. Arson was suspected and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
    (SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996        Mar 30, Funeral services were held in Bethesda, Maryland, for former senator and secretary of state Edmund Muskie.
    (AP, 3/30/01)
1996        Mar 30, Hezbollah guerillas fired 30 Katyusha rockets across the Lebanon border into northern Israel. Israel responded by shelling 15 Shiite Muslim villages. Israel contended that responsibility for the attacks lies with Lebanon and Syria, which occupies Lebanon with 35,000 troops and exercises dominion over government decisions.
    (WSJ, 4/1/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 4/14/96, p.A-10)
1996        Mar 30, Tamil rebels mounted suicide attacks on a naval convoy and killed a crew of ten. 35 rebels were killed and six of their vessels were sunk off the island nation’s northeast coast.
    (WSJ, 4/1/96, p.A-1)
1996        Mar 30, The Olympic torch was lit in Greece and began its journey to the games in Atlanta, USA. The games will run 17 days from 7/19-8/4.
    (WSJ, 4/1/96, p.A-1)

1997        Mar 30, The reigning champion Lady Vols of Tennessee won their fifth NCAA women's basketball title by defeating Old Dominion, 68-59.
    (AP, 3/30/98)
1997        Mar 30, In Cambodia a grenade attack at a political rally killed 10 and wounded over 100 as opposition leader Sam Rainsy led some 200 members of his Khmer Nation Party in front of the National Assembly.
    (SFEC, 3/30/97, p.A18)
1997        Mar 30, In South Africa Celeste Nurse (18) woke up in the maternity ward of a Cape Town hospital to find her three-day-old baby had vanished from her cot. In 2016 a South African woman was convicted of kidnapping the baby (Zephany Nurse) and raising her for 17 years before an astonishing coincidence reunited the girl with her biological family. On August 15, 2016, the kidnapper (51) was sentenced to ten years in prison.
    (AP, 3/10/16)(Reuters, 8/15/16)

1998        Mar 30, The Univ. of Kentucky beat the Utah Utes 78-69 at the Alamodome in San Antonio for the NCAA men’s basketball finals. It was Kentucky’s 7th national title.
    (WSJ, 4/1/98, p.A16)
1998        Mar 30, In eastern Arizona nearly a dozen Mexican gray wolves were released into the White Mountains after an absence of 30 years.
    (SFC, 3/31/98, p.A3)
1998        Mar 30, In Columbia Falls, Mont., it was reported that $100 million would be distributed amongst 1000 employees of the Columbia Falls Aluminum plant. Roberta Gilmore led a winning legal suit that claimed the company did not divvy out profits to workers as promised.
    (WSJ, 3/30/98, p.A1,12)
1998        Mar 30, In Algeria some 123 people including 58 civilians and many children were reported killed in the west and south in the last 3 days.
    (WSJ, 3/30/98, p.A1)
1998        Mar 30, In Armenia Prime Minister Robert Kocharian led the runoff vote with 60%.
    (SFC, 3/31/98, p.B5)(WSJ, 4/1/98, p.A1)
1998        Mar 30, In Britain the Rolls-Royce company of Vickers PLC was sold to BMW of Germany for $570 million. However, BMW was later successfully outbid by Volkswagen AG
    (SFC, 3/31/98, p.B4)(AP, 3/30/08)
1998        Mar 30, Prince Norodom Ranariddh returned to Cambodia and will oppose Hun Sen in the Jul 26 elections.
    (SFC, 3/31/98, p.B4)
1998        Mar 30, In Columbia it was reported that oil pipeline sabotage had spilled 1.5 million barrels of crude over the last decade.
    (SFC, 3/30/98, p.A8)
1998        Mar 30, In Romania Prime Minister Victor Ciorbea resigned and stepped down from his role as mayor of Bucharest.
    (SFC, 3/31/98, p.B3)
1998        Mar 30, In Somalia Ali Mohamed Mahdi and Hussein Mohamed Aidid agreed to a joint administration for Mogadishu after 7 years of fighting. 30 people were killed as rival clans clashed in Kismayu.
    (SFC, 3/31/98, p.B3)
1998        Mar 30, A Syrian-Iraqi Health week started. Health Minister Iyad Shatti arrived in Iraq from Syria with 12 trucks of food and medicine.
    (SFC, 3/30/98, p.A9)

1999        Mar 30, A jury in Oregon hit Philip Morris with an $81 million verdict for damages in the lung cancer death of Jesse Williams who died of lung cancer after smoking Marlboros for four decades. $821,000 was for compensatory damages and the rest for punitive damages. The Supreme Court threw out the verdict in October 2003, saying it should be reviewed by lower courts to ensure it was not unconstitutionally excessive. In 2007 the Supreme Court rejected the original $79.5 million punitive payout, but declined to lay down numerical limits for such damages. By 2008 damages due to interest reached $143 million. In 2009 the Supreme Court decided not to a challenge by Philip Morris.
    (SFC, 3/31/99, p.A1)(AP, 3/30/04)(Econ, 2/24/07, p.76)(SFC, 4/1/09, p.A8)
1999        Mar 30, Olusegun Obasanjo, pres. elect of Nigeria, met with Pres. Clinton and vowed to build democracy.
    (WSJ, 3/31/99, p.A1)   
1999        Mar 30, Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic insisted that NATO attacks stop before he moved toward peace, declaring his forces ready to fight "to the very end." The US called the offer "woefully inadequate." NATO moved to step up the air war and Serbian forces continued unopposed in Kosovo as refugees streamed out. NATO answered with new resolve to wreck his military with a relentless air assault.
    (AP, 3/30/00)(WSJ, 3/31/99, p.A1)
1999        Mar 30, Tanzania arrested a former Rwanda army officer suspected in the killing of 10 Belgian peacekeepers in 1994. The officer was freed Mar 29 by a UN war crimes tribunal.
    (WSJ, 3/31/99, p.A1)

2000        Mar 30, Russia’s Alexei Yagudin won his third title in the World Figure Skating Championships; Canada’s Elvis Stojko finished second, and American Michael Weiss was third.
    (AP, 3/30/01)
2000        Mar 30, In the midst of the 2000 presidential campaign, Vice President Al Gore broke with the Clinton administration, saying he supported legislation to allow six-year-old Elian Gonzalez to remain in the country while the courts resolved his custody case.
    (AP, 3/30/01)
2000        Mar 30, In Colombia a truck bomb exploded in Cachipay. 4 people were killed and at least 14 were injured.
    (SFC, 3/31/00, p.A21)
2000        Mar 30, In Japan Mount Usu erupted on Hokaido following 22 years of dormancy. Evacuations from Date, Sobetsu and Abuta preceded the eruption.
    (SFC, 3/31/00, p.A17)(WSJ, 4/3/00, p.A1)
2000        Mar 30, In Sri Lanka an air force plane leased from a Ukrainian company crashed and 36 military personnel were killed along with 4 Russian crew members.
    (SFC, 3/31/00, p.E4)
2000        Mar 30, In Uganda 80 more bodies were unearthed in Rushojwa. This brought the doomsday sect body count to 724.
    (SFC, 3/31/00, p.A16)

2001        Mar 30, The Bush administration suspended a late Clinton rule that directed federal agencies to assess whether prospective contractors had violated federal laws.
    (SFC, 3/31/01, p.A3)
2001        Mar 30, A Bruce Rozet, a landlord-developer, admitted to taking part in a $3.4 million fraud scheme against HUD and agreed to pay $10.2 million in fines and penalties.
    (SFC, 3/31/01, p.A3)
2001        Mar 30, Top environment officials from North, Central and South America ended two days of talks in Montreal without a consensus agreement on global warming. A statement signed by 26 ministers from Latin American and Caribbean countries faulted a decision by the United States to reject the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
    (AP, 3/30/02)
2001        Mar 30, In Indonesia 2 human rights defenders and their driver were killed in Aceh province after leaving the police station in Simpang Tiga Alue Pakuk.
    (SFC, 3/31/01, p.A14)
2001        Mar 30, Israeli Arabs observed Land Day with peaceful marches. Israeli soldiers shot to death 6 Palestinians and wounded over 100.
    (SFC, 3/31/01, p.A10)
2001        Mar 30, Macedonia declared a successful conclusion to their offensive against ethnic Albanian insurgents.
    (SFC, 3/31/01, p.A10)

2002        Mar 30, The United States joined other U.N. Security Council members in adopting a resolution calling on Israel to withdraw its troops from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, where Yasser Arafat headquarters was under siege.
    (AP, 3/30/03)
2002        Mar 30, The Angola government and Unita signed a preliminary cease-fire agreement. The deal carved up the nation’s diamond mines among officials in Luanda and the rebels.
    (SSFC, 3/31/02, p.A12)(WSJ, 4/1/02, p.A1)
2002         Mar 30, It was reported that a massive dust storm spread from northwest China to South Korea. It was largest recorded since records began 130 years ago. Trans Pacific winds carried the dust clouds west.
    (SFC, 3/30/02, p.A20)
2002        Mar 30, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth (b.1900), the Queen Mother, died at age 101 in her sleep at Royal Lodge, Windsor. In 2009 William Shawcross authored “Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother: The Official Biography.”
    (SSFC, 3/31/02, p.A3)(AP, 3/30/04)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.97)
2002        Mar 30, In Kashmir suspected Islamic militants exchanged fire with Indian police in Jammu and 10 people were killed.
    (SSFC, 3/31/02, p.A17)
2002        Mar 30, A suicide bomber, Mohannad Salahat (22), struck in Tel Aviv and 32 people were injured. Israeli troops sealed Arafat in his Ramallah compound.
    (SSFC, 3/31/02, p.A1)(SFC, 4/1/02, p.A1)(SFC, 7/24/02, p.A14)

2003        Mar 30, In the 12th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom an Iraqi general, captured by British forces in southern Iraq, was pressed to provide information. A British TV correspondent covering the war in Iraq died after apparently falling from a hotel roof.
    (AP, 3/30/03)
2003        Mar 30, Students in China staged a rare state-sanctioned protest as hundreds of thousands around the world staged another day of rallies denouncing the US led war in Iraq.
    (AP, 3/30/03)
2003        Mar 30, In Jakarta, Indonesia, tens of thousands of protesters marched upon the U.S. Embassy chanting "America Imperialist, No. 1 terrorist!"
    (AP, 3/30/03)
2003        Mar 30, In Netanya, Israel, Rami Ghanem (20), a Palestinian suicide bomber, exploded near the London Café and at least 30 people were injured. The Islamic Jihad called the attack "Palestine's gift to the heroic people of Iraq."
    (SFC, 3/31/03, p.A1)(AP, 3/30/04)

2004        Mar 30, President Bush agreed to do what he had insisted for weeks he would not: allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly and under oath before an independent panel investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, AT&T officially began to offer phone calls via the Internet (VOIP) in 2 state, New Jersey and Texas.
    (WSJ, 3/30/04, p.B1)
2004        Mar 30, Alistair Cooke (b.1908), television host and author, died in NYC at age 95. His books included "Alistair Cooke's America" (1972).
    (Econ, 4/3/04, p.89)
2004        Mar 30, In Bolivia an angry miner with dynamite strapped to his chest blew himself up inside Congress, also killing two police officers.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, British police raids in London led to the arrest of 8 men and the seizure of half a ton of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer compound used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, Cuba arrested Carlos Ahumada, a Mexican businessman, wanted in Mexico for his role in a graft scandal involving Mexico City Mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador. Ahumada was soon deported to Mexico.
    (WSJ, 4/29/04, p.A14)
2004        Mar 30, French PM Jean-Pierre Raffarin was spared the ax despite a massive local election defeat, but ordered to form a new government to push ahead with unpopular social and economic reforms.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, In Iraq a suicide bombing outside the house of a police chief killed the attacker and wounded seven others. Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier died in a bomb blast, and Spanish soldiers and Iraqi police quelled a riot by jobseekers.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, Myanmar's military government said it will take the first step on a self-proclaimed "road to democracy" by reconvening a constitutional convention that was suspended eight years ago.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, Philippine officials reported the arrest of 4 Muslim extremists in the brutal al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group. They were found with a stash of TNT targeted for terror attacks on trains and shopping malls in the Philippine capital. A suspected Muslim extremist told police interrogators he planted TNT in a television set on a ferry that caught fire last month, killing more than 100 people
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, Serbian lawmakers awarded salaries, legal fees and other financial perks to former President Slobodan Milosevic and fellow Serbian war crimes suspects being tried by a U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, A boat carrying 107 people sank during the crossing from Somalia to Yemen and only four other people, including two crew members, were rescued.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, In Sri Lanka gunmen stormed the home of a Tamil parliamentary candidate who was allied to a renegade rebel leader, killing the candidate and one of his relatives.
    (AP, 3/30/04)
2004        Mar 30, In Uzbekistan gunfire and explosions resounded in Tashkent as government forces battled for hours with suspected Islamic militants after two more suicide attacks. Officials claimed 20 terrorists and three police died in the fighting.
    (AP, 3/30/04)

2005        Mar 30, The US Bureau of Economic Analysis final estimate of inflation adjusted GDP indicated 3.8% growth for the 4th quarter of 2004.
    (www.bea.gov/bea/dn1.htm)
2005        Mar 30, The US Supreme Court ruled that federal law allows people 40 and over to file age bias claims over salary and hiring even if employers never intended any harm.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2005        Mar 30, Fred Korematsu (86), who'd challenged the World War II internment policy that sent Japanese-Americans to detention camps, died in Larkspur, Ca.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2005        Mar 30, Robert Creeley (b.1926), US poet, died in Odessa, Texas.
    (SFC, 4/1/05, p.B7)
2005        Mar 30, Under heavy protection, First Lady Laura Bush visited the capital of Afghanistan, where she talked with Afghan women freed from Taliban repression and urged greater rights.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2005        Mar 30, Inmates of Barbados' lone prison set fires and battled guards and each other for a second day, leaving one prisoner dead and eight injured.
    (AP, 3/30/05)
2005        Mar 30, In Toronto, Canada, a massive blaze ravaged a plastics factory in the city's west-end, closing a section of a major highway and keeping firefighters on the scene for hours as they struggled to contain the six-alarm blaze.
    (AP, 3/31/05)
2005        Mar 30, In India shops kept their shutters down as striking traders said they would step up their protest against a new value-added tax (VAT) due to take effect on April 1.
    (AP, 3/30/05)
2005        Mar 30, In Iraq two US soldiers died in separate clashes. A car bomb exploded in western Baghdad, killing one person and injuring at least six others. Gunmen also opened fire on a truck carrying faithful near Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad. One person was killed.
    (AP, 3/30/05)(AP, 3/31/05)
2005        Mar 30, Dutch bank ABN Amro announced a 6.3 billion euros ($8.1 billion) bid for the 87 percent of Italian bank Antonveneta it does not already own, the second foreign offer for an Italian bank in as many days.
    (AP, 3/30/05)
2005        Mar 30, Nepalese Finance Minister Madhukar Shumsher Rana and Pakistan's Minister of State for Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar concluded two days of talks by signing an agreement to boost trade and investment. Pakistan offered Nepal five million dollars in trade credits and talks on a free trade agreement after the first meeting of senior economic officials of the two countries in a decade.
    (AFP, 3/30/05)
2005        Mar 30, The UN-backed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report was released. It identified 24 main ecosystem services, most of which are found in forests.
    (www.maweb.org/en/article.aspx?id=58)(Econ, 9/25/10, SR p.6)

2006        Mar 30, Pres. Bush arrived in Cancun, Mexico, for 2 days of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks with Canadian PM Stephen Harper and Mexico’s Pres. Fox.
    (Reuters, 3/30/06)(WSJ, 3/30/06, p.A1)
2006        Mar 30, The Bush administration said that it is filing a trade case against China before the World Trade Organization in a dispute involving auto parts from the US and other nations.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, The Massachusetts top court said gay couples can’t marry in Massachusetts if they are from US states where same-sex unions are prohibited.
    (WSJ, 3/31/06, p.A1)
2006        Mar 30, US Major League Baseball began its investigation into alleged steroid use by Barry Bonds and others.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2006        Mar 30, The Translational Genomics Research Institute announced that researchers have identified a genetic cause for epilepsy, which could lead to the development of medicines to treat epilepsy and autism.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, In eastern Afghanistan suspected Taliban militants killed a district chief and three of his staff in an ambush. In the south rebels killed a police commander and his brother.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, Researchers reported in the journal Science that record levels of greenhouse gases may be trapping heat above the ice sheets of Antarctica.
    (SFC, 3/31/06, p.A2)
2006        Mar 30, Researchers in Australia's Outback launched a test flight of a supersonic jet designed to fly 10 times faster than conventional airplanes.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, Australia's remote northwest shore was lashed by 80 mph winds as Cyclone Glenda made landfall. There were no immediate reports of substantial damage.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, A cruise boat carrying some 130 people capsized in calm Gulf waters only a few hundred yards off the Bahrain coast. 58 people were killed.
    (SFC, 3/31/06, p.A11)(AP, 4/2/07)
2006        Mar 30, China said it would spend 1.2 billion dollars cleaning up the Songhua River following a major chemical spill last year that contaminated water supplies for millions of people.
    (AFP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was appointed chairman of the consortium building a strategically vital gas pipeline linking Russia's vast reserves with German markets, and awarded a salary of about $300,000.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, Germany's metal-working sector was hit by a second consecutive day of strikes as members of the giant IG Metall union applied more pressure for a five-percent pay rise.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, In western Guatemala 4 people were killed and 12 others were injured in an explosion at a home-based fireworks factory.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, In Iraq Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, was set free nearly three months after she was kidnapped in a bloody ambush that killed her translator. She said she had been treated well. Assailants in speeding cars gunned down a police commando as he was leaving his house in south Baghdad, and drive-by shooters killed a lawyer as she got out of a taxi in the southern city of Basra.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, John McGahern (71), Irish writer, died in Dublin. His stark depiction of love and despair in repressive rural Ireland made him one of his country's most acclaimed fiction writers.
    (www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/books/31mcgahern.html)
2006        Mar 30, In Jamaica Portia Simpson Miller (60) became Jamaica's prime minister and first female head of government.
    (Econ, 3/25/06, p.42)(AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, Japan and the US pledged to work together to defend intellectual property rights amid concern in both countries about piracy in rapidly growing China.
    (AFP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, A Palestinian militant killed four Israelis in a suicide bombing in the West Bank, weeks after being released from a Palestinian prison.
    (AP, 3/31/06)
2006        Mar 30, The EU, Russia, the UN and the US warned the Hamas-led Palestinian government that it must recognize Israel and seek peace talks if it wants to be guaranteed continued aid.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, A Russian-American crew and Marcos Pontes, Brazil’s 1st astronaut, lifted off in a Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft to dock with the int’l. space station.
    (SFC, 3/31/06, p.A3)
2006        Mar 30, Russia's natural-gas monopoly OAO Gazprom said that Belarus must pay European rates for its gas, an apparent bargaining ploy to win control over its neighbor's gas pipeline system and one that could stir trouble between the allies.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, Spain's lower house of parliament approved a divisive proposal to grant greater autonomy to Catalonia and boost the wealthy region's tax collecting and judicial powers.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, In southeast Turkey violent protests by thousands of Kurdish demonstrators left at least 20 hurt as protesters hurled firebombs and police opened fire to disperse the crowds.
    (AP, 3/3006)
2006        Mar 30, In the UAR hours after a human rights group blasted the United Arab Emirates for what it called wanton abuses of Asian workers, the country's labor minister said a law in the works will give laborers the right to form trade unions and bargain collectively.
    (AP, 3/30/06)
2006        Mar 30, In Uganda a fire destroyed a school dormitory in Kabarole where the children had been reading by candlelight, killing at least 10 of the students.
    (AP, 3/31/06)
2006        Mar 30, Uruguay said it will repay $630 million to the IMF ahead of schedule, clearing all its 2006 obligations to the agency in a sign of the country's improving economic health.
    (AP, 3/30/06)

2007        Mar 30, President Bush went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he apologized to troops for shoddy conditions in outpatient housing.
    (AP, 3/30/08)
2007        Mar 30, The Pentagon released a transcript in which Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent, told a military hearing at Guantanamo that he was tortured into confessing that he was involved in the bombing of the USS Cole.
    (AP, 3/31/07)
2007        Mar 30, A military judge at Guantanamo Bay said the prison sentence of David Hicks (31), an Australian detainee who pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism. would be limited to seven years under terms of a plea bargain. Marine Corps Judge Col. Ralph Kohlmann said all but nine months would be suspended. The deal required his silence about alleged abuse.
    (AP, 3/30/07)(AP, 3/31/07)
2007        Mar 30, The Food and Drug Administration said it had found melamine, a chemical used to make plastics, in samples of Menu Foods pet food, as well as in wheat gluten used as an ingredient in the wet-style products.
    (AP, 3/30/08)
2007        Mar 30, The Bush administration, facing heavy pressure to deal with soaring trade deficits, said it is imposing economic sanctions against China to protect American paper producers from unfair Chinese government subsidies.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, It was reported that shark overfishing has led scallops to decline because their predators, mainly rays, aren’t being eaten.
    (WSJ, 3/30/07, p.A1)
2007        Mar 30, Man Group PLC, the world's largest publicly traded hedge fund company, said it plans to split off its brokerage business, making it an independent company through an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, In Lombard, Illinois, Hubert D. Thompson (28), a former Michigan State football player, hurled James Malone (66) to his death from a 3rd floor apartment balcony. In 2009 an Illinois judge ruled Thompson not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered him confined to a mental institution. Thompson was once the nation’s top-rated defensive end prospect. He was ejected from the 2000 Citrus Bowl for fighting with a Florida offensive lineman.
    (SFC, 9/11/09, p.A9)(http://cbs2chicago.com/local/Lombard.standoff.Hubert.2.336248.html)
2007        Mar 30, Leaked extracts of a UN report said Australia will suffer more droughts, fires, floods and storms due to global warming and its famous Great Barrier Reef will be devastated by 2030.
    (AFP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, In Bangladesh 6 top Islamic militants convicted of killing two judges in a 2005 bomb attack in southern Bangladesh were hanged. Bangladesh officials said bird flu has spread to five more farms in central and northern districts.
    (AP, 3/30/07)(Reuters, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, A protest by air traffic controllers forced the suspension of flights from Brazilian airports, stranding thousands of travelers across the country.
    (AP, 3/31/07)
2007        Mar 30, In Canada Menu Foods Income Fund, maker of the tainted pet foods at the center of this month's massive recall, said it is no longer using a Chinese supplier of wheat gluten after US officials found the chemical melamine in some of the recalled products.
    (Reuters, 3/31/07)
2007        Mar 30, In El Salvador Maria Julia Hernandez (b.1939), a renowned human rights activist, died of a heart attack. She had aided victims of El Salvador's civil war.
    (AP, 3/31/07)(Econ, 4/14/07, p.97)
2007        Mar 30, A French architect claimed to have uncovered the mystery about how Egypt's Great Pyramid of Khufu was built. Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 meters beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.
    (Reuters, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, A leading German retailer said that it will pay $117.5 million to compensate a Jewish family for real estate that was taken by the Nazis and eventually resold to the firm. The Jewish Claims Conference said it will use an unspecified amount of the money from KarstadtQuelle AG to fund programs for Holocaust victims, and give the rest to heirs of the Wertheim family, which was been seeking compensation for 15 years.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, In Guinea a motorized wooden boat crowded with passengers and merchandise capsized offshore from Conakry, drowning at least 46 people and possibly dozens more.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, One of the 15 British service members held captive in Iran appeared on the government's Arabic-language TV and said he apologized "deeply" for entering Iranian waters without permission.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, The radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr issued a scathing attack on the US, following one of the country's bloodiest days, blaming Washington for Iraq's troubles and calling for a mass demonstration April 9, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, Islamic countries pushed through a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council urging a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion, a response largely to the furor last year over caricatures published in a Danish newspaper of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
    (AP, 3/31/07)
2007        Mar 30, A video purportedly showing the beheading of a drug cartel hit man appeared on video-sharing Web site YouTube, and its makers called on Mexicans to kill more members of the gang.
    (AP, 4/1/07)
2007        Mar 30, Nepal's seven ruling political parties and the country's former Maoist rebels agreed to form a joint government, the latest step in ending a decade of civil war.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, In Pakistan fighting between local and foreign militants near the Afghan border killed 52 people.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, In Somalia insurgents shot down a helicopter gunship in Mogadishu and mortar shells slammed into a hospital in the worst fighting seen here in more than 15 years.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, Authorities arrested a man armed with a knife who hijacked a Sudan Airways plane while flying from Libya to Sudan.
    (AP, 3/30/07)
2007        Mar 30, In an unprecedented show of support to empower the physically and mentally impaired, 80 countries signed a UN convention enshrining the rights of the world's 650 million disabled. 19 more ratifications are needed before the convention comes into force.
    (AP, 3/31/07)
2007        Mar 30, A Vietnamese court sentenced a dissident Catholic priest to eight years in prison for anti-government activities after a dramatic trial in which the defendant shouted denunciations of the ruling Communist Party. A judge at Thua Thien Hue Provincial People's Court in central Vietnam sentenced Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly on charges of disseminating anti-government documents and communicating with pro-democracy activists overseas.
    (AP, 3/30/07)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y9Mzp-61fU)
2007        Mar 30, The World Health Organization (WHO) said demand for human organ transplants far exceeds supply, fueling a growth in "transplant tourism" to developing nations where organs can be bought.
    (AP, 3/30/07)

2008        Mar 30, The Pritzker jury announced French architect jean Nouvel (62) as the winner of the 2008 Pritzker Prize.
    (WSJ, 3/31/08, p.A5)
2008        Mar 30, Leading doctors urged a return to older, tried-and-true treatments for high cholesterol after hearing full results of a failed trial of Vytorin.
    (AP, 3/31/08)
2008        Mar 30, British Airways cancelled another batch of flights as it struggled to cope with a massive backlog of luggage at London Heathrow airport's new multi-billion-pound Terminal 5.
    (AP, 3/30/08)
2008        Mar 30, Dith Pran (65), whose experiences during the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s were adapted into the award-winning movie "The Killing Fields," died in New Jersey.
    (AFP, 3/30/08)
2008        Mar 30, Pernod Ricard SA, a French spirits company, agreed to pay the Swedish government 5.28 billion euros for Vin & Sprit, the maker of Absolut, outbidding three competitors.
    (AP, 3/31/08)
2008        Mar 30, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr offered to pull his fighters off the streets of Basra and other cities if the government halts raids against his followers and releases prisoners held without charge.
    (AP, 3/30/08)
2008        Mar 30, Israel pledged to remove 50 West Bank roadblocks as part of a package to improve everyday life for Palestinians after US Sec. of State Rice met with Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, and Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad.
    (AP, 3/30/08)
2008        Mar 30, In Syria Iraq refused to endorse the final declaration of the Arab summit because it did not condemn terrorism in the country, a divisive end to a gathering marred by disputes and boycotts.
    (AP, 3/30/08)
2008        Mar 30, The Vatican said Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism in number of adherents. It recently put the Roman Catholic number at 1.13 billion. Others estimated Muslims to number around 1.3 billion.
    (WSJ, 3/31/08, p.A8)
2008        Mar 30, Zimbabwe's opposition said it had won the most crucial election since independence, but President Robert Mugabe's government warned premature victory claims would be seen as an attempted coup.
    (AP, 3/30/08)

2009        Mar 30, President Barack Obama said that neither General Motors nor Chrysler has proposed sweeping enough changes to justify further large federal bailouts, and demanded "painful concessions" from creditors, unions and others as their price for survival. Driving home the point, the White House ousted the GM Chairman Rick Wagoner as it rejected GM and Chrysler's restructuring plans. Fritz Henderson, GM's president and chief operating officer, became the new CEO. Board member Kent Kresa, the former chairman and CEO of defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp., was named interim chairman of the GM board.
    (AP, 3/30/09)
2009        Mar 30, Pres. Obama signed legislation setting aside over 2 million acres as protected wilderness.
    (SFC, 3/31/09, p.A6)
2009        Mar 30, An “Open Cloud” manifesto was published. IBM and other tech companies issued a statement of principles that called for keeping cloud computing services as open as possible.
    (www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090329_463505.htm)
2009        Mar 30, Intel released Nehalem, its new superfast chip for servers.
    (Econ, 4/4/09, p.73)
2009        Mar 30, Findings were presented for an experimental combo pill, to prevent heart attacks and strokes, indicating it as effective as nearly all of its components taken alone, with no greater side effects. The study tested the Polycap, an experimental combo formulated by Cadila Pharmaceuticals of Ahmedabad, India.
    (AP, 3/30/09)
2009        Mar 30, In southern Afghanistan a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up inside a police headquarters in Kandahar, killing nine people and wounding eight. A roadside bomb killed three police in the eastern province of Paktia.
    (AP, 3/30/09)
2009        Mar 30, Argentina’s health minister acknowledged that the country was in the middle of a dengue fever epidemic with nearly 8,000 people infected. Neighboring Bolivia had about 51,000 cases reported, while Brazil counted some 40,000 cases.
    (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46371)(SSFC, 4/19/09, p.G3)
2009        Mar 30, Downtown Sydney, Australia's largest city, was plunged into chaos during the late rush hour when a power cut blacked out traffic lights, caused gridlock on the roads and left tens of thousands of buildings in darkness. The blackout exposed a flaw in the city's terrorism warning system.
    (AP, 3/30/09)(AP, 3/31/09)
2009        Mar 30, Banking officials meeting in Colombia said Argentina and China have tentatively agreed to swap $10 billion worth of their currencies to enable South America's second-largest economy to avoid using dollars in trade between the nations.
    (AP, 3/30/09)
2009        Mar 30, The French government banned companies that get state funding from issuing stock options to top managers and limited some other forms of compensation in an effort to quell public anger over executive pay.
    (WSJ, 3/31/09, p.B1)
2009        Mar 30, Hungary’s ruling Socialist Party nominated economy minister Gordon Bajnai (b.1968) to become the country’s next prime minister.
    (WSJ, 3/31/09, p.A14)
2009        Mar 30, In Lahore, Pakistan, a group of gunmen attacked the Manawan Police Training School and rampaged through it for hours, throwing grenades, seizing hostages and killing 7 police and 2 civilians before being overpowered by Pakistani security forces in armored vehicles and helicopters. Six militants were arrested and 8 others died in the 8-hour battle. A suicide car bombing killed four soldiers in Bannu district.
    (AP, 3/30/09)(AFP, 3/31/09)
2009        Mar 30, Malaysia's national car maker Proton and Detroit Electric, a Dutch-based company, signed a $555 million deal to make zero emission electric cars that they said would be more powerful that any existing model.
    (AP, 3/30/09)
2009        Mar 30, In Northern Ireland suspected IRA dissidents and their supporters hijacked cars in working-class Catholic areas in a coordinated effort to block roads and threaten police stations.
    (AP, 3/31/09)
2009        Mar 30, Fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught and soon ate a megamouth shark, one of the rarest fishes in the world with only 40 others recorded to have been encountered. The 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) 13-foot (4-meter) megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen's net off Burias island.
    (AP, 4/7/09)
2009        Mar 30, In Qatar Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi stormed out of an Arab summit after denouncing the Saudi king and declaring himself "the dean of Arab rulers."
    (AP, 3/30/09)
2009        Mar 30, In Russia PM Putin pledged over $1 billion in state support to its ailing car industry in a bid to avoid heavy job losses and potential social unrest.
    (WSJ, 3/31/09, p.B2)(http://tinyurl.com/csyby9)
2009        Mar 30, In Russia Sergei Protazanov, a newspaper employee in a Moscow suburb, died one day after being beaten near his home in the in the town of Khimki. Protazanov had been compiling an issue that included reports on alleged falsifications in local mayoral elections.
    (AP, 4/1/09)
2009        Mar 30, In Sri Lanka 26 rebels were killed in a sea battle off Chalai. Four boats belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were sunk in the battle, which lasted about four hours before dawn. A leader of the Sea Tigers, the rebels' naval wing, was among the dead while one government sailor died and three were wounded.
    (AP, 3/30/09)
2009        Mar 30, Thailand's prime minister avoided his office, as thousands of protesters calling for his resignation surrounded the seat of government for the fifth day and ignored police warnings to disperse.
    (AP, 3/30/09)

2010        Mar 30, Pres. Obama signed into law the final changes to the sweeping medical plan approved by lawmakers last week, along with reforms in college student loan programs.
    (Reuters, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, A US federal court ruled that the US patents held by Myriad Genetics on the BRCA genes are unsustainable as a matter of law.
    (Econ, 4/17/10, p.91)(http://tinyurl.com/y8camvj)
2010        Mar 30, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera sued the escrow firm Rehab Financial Corp. after learning the company had abruptly shuttered its Huntington Beach office and drained accounts holding city funds. The suit accused the company of misappropriating several million dollars from SF and at least a dozen other California cities.
    (SFC, 4/1/10, p.C2)
2010        Mar 30, A gunman sprayed bullets from a moving vehicle into a crowd in southeastern Washington, killing four and wounding at least five others, before leading police on a chase into neighboring Maryland. Three people were arrested in the drive-by shooting.
    (AP, 3/31/10)
2010        Mar 30, Chevron said the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has ruled in favor of its claim against Ecuador related to past operations of its Texaco unit. The tribunal ruled that Ecuador’s courts delayed rulings on a contract dispute and awarded Chevron about $700 million as of Dec 22, 2006. A separate case over a $27 billion pollution claim remained pending.
    (SFC, 3/31/10, p.A2)
2010        Mar 30, Jaime Escalante (b.1930), a Bolivia-born math teacher in East Los Angeles, died. The 1987 film "Stand and Deliver," starring Lou Diamond Phillips, was based on the story of his success teaching math to inner-urban kids.
    (SFC, 3/31/10, p.C6)
2010        Mar 30, In western Afghanistan 5 civilians have been killed after their van hit a bomb planted in the road outside Herat.
    (AFP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, Australian media groups and sports bodies signed a code of conduct aimed at ending years of disputes and boycotts over press coverage of major sporting events.
    (AP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, Canada’s PM Stephen Harper told US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton that its military mission in Afghanistan will end in 2011.
    (SFC, 3/31/10, p.A2)
2010        Mar 30, In Quebec, Canada, the world's leading industrial nations (G8) called for stronger action against Iran over its nuclear program and the United States said it was confident China would agree on the need for sanctions.
    (Reuters, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, Google Inc said its mobile services have been partially blocked in China for two days, while searches on its Chinese-language site became erratic, about a week after the company shut its mainland Chinese portal and rerouted Web searches to a Hong Kong site.
    (AP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, In Ecuador journalist Emilio Palacio, facing a 3-year prison sentence for defamation, accused President Rafael Correa of orchestrating his prosecution as a warning that critics of the government will be severely punished.
    (AP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, Amnesty International said Europe had its first year without executions in 2009. But the London-based organization said the spell was recently broken by the execution of two men in Belarus.
    (AP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, Britain's media watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission, upheld a complaint against a blog written by a journalist in what was its first-ever move to censure a newspaper or magazine over comments by a blogger. Former BBC journalist and commentator Rod Liddle was censured over a blog in which he said that young Afro-Caribbean men carried out the "overwhelming majority" of violent crime in London. The blog which was published in December on the website of right-wing weekly magazine The Spectator.
    (AFP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, In India Paramhamsa Nityananda (32), a Hindu holy man with thousands of followers across India, resigned as head of Dhyanapeetam (knowledge center) after police began investigating his role in a sex scandal. On April 21 Nityananda, who claims to have devotees in 33 countries, and an aide Nithya Bhaktananda, were nabbed in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh on charges including obscenity and hurting religious sentiments.
    (Reuters, 3/30/10)(AFP, 4/21/10)
2010        Mar 30, An Indian naval spokesman said Somali pirates may be holding several dhows carrying an estimated 100 Indian sailors they have seized over the past five days.
    (AP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, Iran's state television reported that its intelligence agents mounted a "complicated" cross-border mission and freed an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in 2008 by gunmen in northwestern Pakistan. Heshmatollah Attarzadeh and his Pakistani bodyguard were driving over a narrow bridge in Peshawar on Nov. 13, 2008 when two gunmen blocked their way with a car and opened fire.
    (AP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, Japan’s government approved a plan to halt the privatization of Japan Post, the world’s biggest bank, and increased the amount of deposits it can take from a customer to 20 million yen. The government will retain a stake of over one-third, giving it veto power.
    (Econ, 4/3/10, p.77)
2010        Mar 30, In northern Mexico dozens of gunmen mounted rare and apparently coordinated attacks targeting two army garrisons, touching off firefights that killed 18 attackers in the border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon.
    (AP, 4/1/10)
2010        Mar 30, Russia's Pres. Medvedev signed an order formally implementing UN Security Council-approved sanctions against North Korea. The sanctions were passed in June by the Security Council, which includes Russia.
    (AP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, Serbia's parliament approved a declaration condemning the 1995 Serb massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, in a bid to distance the country from past warmongering under the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
    (AP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, said Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir has long been working to ensure next month's elections are rigged, making the eventual winner illegitimate.
    (AFP, 3/31/10)
2010        Mar 30, In Switzerland scientists cheered the historic crash of two proton beams at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
    (SFC, 3/31/10, p.A4)
2010        Mar 30, Vietnam and the United States signed a pact described as a key foundation for development of peaceful atomic power in the communist country.
    (AFP, 3/30/10)
2010        Mar 30, In Zimbabwe 13 legislators from both parties in the coalition government were not allowed to enter the Chiadzwa diamond district. They spent 2 days waiting for clearance.
    (AP, 4/1/10)

2011        Mar 30, President Barack Obama set an ambitious goal to cut US oil imports by a third over 10 years, focusing on a source of anxiety for Americans as high gasoline prices threaten economic recovery.
    (Reuters, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, US officials revealed that the CIA has sent small teams of operatives into rebel-held eastern Libya while the White House debates whether to arm the opposition. The British government said Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa had arrived in Britain from Tunisia and resigned.
    (AP, 3/31/11)
2011        Mar 30, In Chicago final demolition began for the Cabrini Green public high-rises. The complex, dating back to the 1940s, at its peak housed 13,000 people in 23 high-rises.
    (SFC, 3/31/11, p.A8)
2011        Mar 30, The Ohio Legislature pass a bill severely limiting union rights for 350,000 public workers. Gov. John Kasich was expected to sign it this week.
    (SFC, 3/31/11, p.A8)
2011        Mar 30, It was reported that GE has calculated a corporate tax bill for 2010 that adds up to zero, in spite of robust profits of $14.2 billion worldwide, via a creative series of tax referrals and revenue shifts. This was, indeed, the second year running that the company—which has an enormous, and famously nimble, 975-employee tax division, led by former Treasury official John Samuels—paid nothing in US taxes.
    (http://tinyurl.com/69odvgp)
2011        Mar 30, A new study in the journal Conservation Letters by an American and Canadian research team suggested that the discovery of more than 100 dead dolphins on Gulf of Mexico shores likely reflects only a small fraction of the total killed by the BP oil spill last year.
    (AFP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, Ministers from around the Asia-Pacific region signed a non-binding framework agreement to tackle smuggling networks and humanely process the large numbers of migrants moving through the region.
    (AFP, 3/31/11)
2011        Mar 30, Britain said it has expelled five Libyan diplomats loyal to Moammar Gadhafi's regime because of their intimidation of opposition supporters and their potential threat to the UK's national security.
    (AP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, China executed 3 Filipinos convicted of drug trafficking. Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, Ramon Credo and Elizabeth Batain were arrested separately in 2008 carrying packages of at least 4 kilograms of heroin.
    (SFC, 3/31/11, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/4oluzcf)
2011        Mar 30, China ordained a new Catholic bishop approved by the Vatican for the first time since ties between the sides soured last year. Paul Liang Jiansen was made bishop of the southern city of Jiangmen.
    (AP, 4/11/11)
2011        Mar 30, Cuban state media said the government has authorized state banks to offer credit to farmers and small-business owners.
    (SFC, 3/31/11, p.A2)
2011        Mar 30, Former President Jimmy Carter left Cuba without gaining the release of Alan Gross, a US government contractor jailed the past 16 months.
    (AP, 3/31/11)
2011        Mar 30, Egypt's military rulers issued an interim constitution under which the transitional administration will run the country until elections allow power to be returned to an elected government.
    (AP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, Ethiopia's government said it plans to build a hydroelectric power dam along the Blue Nile River despite objections from Egypt and Sudan.
    (AP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, In Guatemala Juan Ortiz Lopez, a reputed top drug trafficker, was captured in a joint operation involving the government and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. A US federal indictment was unsealed in Florida charging Ortiz with two counts of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
    (AP, 3/31/11)
2011        Mar 30, In Guatemala three men were publicly lynched by a mob after being accused of stealing a truckload of coffee in the town of La Democracia. Police said some 3,000 people were involved in the lynching.
    (AP, 3/31/11)
2011        Mar 30, Hong Kong said it had passed laws to comply with UN sanctions against Iran, two months after 20 shipping firms in the city were accused of having links to Tehran's weapons buildup.
    (AFP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, An Israeli aircraft attacked a pair of Palestinian militants riding on a motorcycle in the Gaza Strip, killing one and wounding the other.
    (AP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi promised to evacuate the thousands of North African migrants who have overwhelmed the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, earning cheers from residents exasperated by the arrivals.
    (AP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, In Ivory Coast a spokesman for incumbent Laurent Gbagbo called for a cease-fire as rebel forces backing Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of the disputed election, advanced toward the capital from two different directions. Choi Young-jin, the top United Nations envoy in Ivory Coast, told French radio that as many as 50,000 soldiers, police and members of the security force have abandoned Gbagbo in recent days.
    (AP, 3/30/11)(AP, 4/1/11)
2011        Mar 30, Japan weighed a series of creative solutions to its unfolding nuclear disaster, from draping reactors with special fabric to sending in military robots to do the risky work. TEPCO said 4 of the 6 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plants were damaged beyond repair. UN nuclear agency officials said that readings outside the exclusion zone of the Japan nuclear disaster showed radiation exceeding recommended evacuation levels by the agency.
    (AP, 3/30/11)(SFC, 3/31/11, p.A4)
2011        Mar 30, Kosovo's Constitutional Court said that the newly elected multimillionaire businessman Behgjet Pacolli must step down from his post as president because his election violated the country's constitution. Pacolli said he would abide by the court's decision.
    (AP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, Libya's government warned that it would sue any international company that concluded energy deals with rebels who control some of the country's oil infrastructure. Rebels retreated from the oil port of Ras Lanouf along the coastal road leading to the capital Tripoli after they came under heavy shelling from ground forces loyal to leader Moammar Gadhafi. Coalition aircraft sank 5 government ships blocking the supply of humanitarian aid to Misrata.
    (Reuters, 3/30/11)(AP, 3/30/11)(Econ, 4/2/11, p.42)
2011        Mar 30, Malaysia's main Christian grouping rejected a government attempt to settle a protracted row over seized shipments of Malay-language Bibles, calling instead for the right to freely practice its religion.
    (AP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, A prominent Mexican businessman accused of luring poor girls to his home was sentenced to 13 years on child pornography charges in a case that tarnished the reputations of a state governor and another businessman. Jean Succar Kuri, a legal US resident, was extradited to Mexico in 2006. Targeted by an investigation in Mexico in 2003, Succar fled to the United States but was arrested during a traffic stop in Arizona in February 2004 and extradited two years later. On Aug 31 a judge extended Kuri’s prison term to 60 years.
    (AP, 3/31/11)(AP, 9/1/11)
2011        Mar 30, Myanmar made way for a nominally civilian government after almost half a century in power, as the junta was disbanded and a new president talked of a "changing era."
    (AFP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, In northwestern Pakistan a suicide bomber killed 10 people in the town of Swabi.
    (AFP, 4/1/11)
2011        Mar 30, Peru received a first shipment of the Incan artifacts taken from the mountain citadel of Machu Picchu a century ago. Yale University returned 366 pieces, after a lawsuit and personal lobbying of the US president. The pieces were among some 4,000 adventurer Hiram Bingham took beginning in 1911 from what has become Peru's leading tourist attraction.
    (AP, 3/31/11)
2011        Mar 30, Russia’s Pres. Medvedev ordered government ministers to vacate their seats on the boards of state firms.
    (Econ, 4/9/11, p.57)
2011        Mar 30, Syrian President Bashar Assad blamed "conspirators" for a wave of dissent against his authoritarian rule, but he failed to lift the country's despised emergency law or offer any concessions in his first speech since the protests began nearly two weeks ago.
    (AP, 3/30/11)
2011        Mar 30, Thailand mobilized its only aircraft carrier to rescue thousands trapped on the storm-swept resort island of Koh Samui after severe flooding across the south killed 15.
    (AP, 3/30/11)(SFC, 3/31/11, p.A2)
2011        Mar 30, Thailand confiscated two tons of African elephant tusks worth millions of dollars being smuggled through a Bangkok port. This was the country's largest ivory seizure.
    (AP, 4/1/11)
2011        Mar 30, In Yemen hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters packed the streets of several cities to demand the president's ouster and denounce a munitions factory blast that left at least 100 people dead.
    (AP, 3/30/11)

2012        Mar 30, The US government agreed with Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania to cut red tape and speed up consideration for wind farms in the Great Lakes.
    (SFC, 3/31/12, p.A5)
2012        Mar 30, Lottery ticket-holders in Illinois, Kansas and Maryland each selected the winning numbers for the world record-breaking $640 million Mega Millions jackpot. The jackpot rose to $656 million as more sales were totaled.
    (AP, 3/31/12)(SFC, 4/3/12, p.A7)
2012        Mar 30, In Florida two people were fatally shot and 12 others were wounded when gunmen opened fire on mourners at a funeral in Miami.
    (SSFC, 4/1/12, p.A7)
2012        Mar 30, In Ohio Jessica Rae Sacco (21) was found dead in her apartment in Urbana. She had been stabbed, suffocated and dismembered in a bathtub before some of her remains were taken across the state line to Kentucky. 5 people were soon arrested including her on-and-off boyfriend. Matthew Puccio (25) was among five people charged in connection with the death of Sacco. Puccio said he met her through Facebook while looking for new friends and that he met two of his alleged accomplices at a library just three days before the killing.
    (SFC, 4/2/12, p.A5)(AP, 4/8/12)
2012        Mar 30, Four giant card-payment processors and large US banks that issue debit and credit cards were reported hit by a data-security breach after third-party services provider Global Payments Inc discovered its systems were compromised by unauthorized access.
    (Reuters, 3/31/12)
2012        Mar 30, An Afghan policeman shot to death nine of his fellow officers as they slept in a village in Paktika province, an eastern Taliban stronghold. He then took their weapons, piled them in a pickup truck and sped away. A motorcycle bomb parked by the side of a road exploded, killing an Afghan police officer and wounding another in Sangin district of southwest Helmand province. A NATO service member died in a southern roadside bomb explosion.
    (AP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, In Afghanistan the bodies of a boy (15) and a girl (12) were discovered in wasteland in the Esfandi area of Ghazni province. They were killed in an acid attack. Witnesses claimed it was because of their friendship.
    (AFP, 3/31/12)
2012        Mar 30, Australian artist Tim Storrier won the 91st Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney for his painting “The Histrionic Wayfarer (after Bosch).” The Archibald Prize is one of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious art prizes.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, Bangladesh police arrested two school teachers on suspicion of staging a drama containing blasphemous remarks about the Prophet Mohammed. Violence erupted the next day as up to 7,000 Muslims shouted slogans and set ablaze the house of the drama's director, who has fled the remote area.
    (AFP, 3/31/12)
2012        Mar 30, Amnesty International blasted a Brazilian verdict by an appeals court as "outrageous" and called it an "affront to the most basic human rights. The Superior Court of Justice ruled this week that a man accused of having sex with three 12-year-olds couldn't be convicted of rape because of extenuating circumstances, including the fact the girls had previously worked as prostitutes.
    (AP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, In China two Tibetan monks, identified as Tenpa Darjey and Chimey Palden, set themselves on fire in the western city of Maerkang in the latest in a wave of self-immolations protesting against Chinese rule.
    (AP, 3/31/12)
2012        Mar 30, The UN refugee agency warned that attacks by the renegade Lord's Resistance Army were on the rise and forcing thousands of people to flee. Since March 6, 13 new attacks were recorded in northwest CongoDRC, displacing 1,160 people in the region.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, In Egypt dozens of anti-military activists tore down a wall in central Cairo erected by the military in December to end bloody clashes with protesters.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, In Fiji flash flooding cut highways and forced evacuations, with residents sheltering from rising waters on rooftops as authorities scrambled to find rescue boats. The flooding left at least 5 people dead.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)(SFC, 4/4/12, p.A2)
2012        Mar 30, Indonesian police killed two suspected terrorists in a raid on the outskirts of Jakarta. Anti-terror police confiscated a revolver, explosive materials, several books about jihad and documents outlining a bank robbery.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, In Mali Tuareg separatist rebels and an allied armed Islamist group entered the strategic town of Kidal, 1,000 km (620 miles) from the capital. Embattled coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo asked for help to halt advancing Tuareg rebels and Islamist fighters. Panic spread following the threat of financial sanctions by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
    (AFP, 3/30/12)(AP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, Mauritius President Anerood Jugnauth, who has been in open conflict with PM Navinchandra Ramgoolam, said he was resigning to join the opposition. Jugnauth will be replaced by Vice President Monique Ohsan Bellepeau, who is in the same party as the PM.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, Prosecutors in northern Mexico said 8 people have been arrested for allegedly killing two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman in ritual sacrifices by the cult of La Santa Muerte, or Saint Death. The first of the three victims was apparently killed in 2009, the second in 2010 and the latest earlier this month in Sonora state.
    (AP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, In Nigeria suspected members of Islamist group Boko Haram used bombs and gunfire to attack a police station and rob a bank in northeastern town of Askira Uba, with four people feared dead.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, In Northern Ireland IRA dissidents launched a violent protest against the convictions of Brendan McConville (40) and John Paul Wootton (20) in the March 9, 2009, killing of Constable Stephen Carroll. Masked men hijacked and burned a van and two cars in Craigavon, the town southwest of Belfast where Carroll was killed and McConville lived. Police urged drivers to avoid the area.
    (AP, 3/31/12)
2012        Mar 30, In Pakistan dozens of militants attacked a paramilitary checkpoint overnight, killing two soldiers and sparking clashes which left up to 21 of the militants dead in the Orakzai tribal district. A US drone launched a missile attack on a militant compound in North Waziristan, killing four insurgents. The blast destroyed five shops including a bakery, three grocery shops and a telephone kiosk.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, Thousands of Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Israeli troops at Qalandia checkpoint in the West Bank as hundreds more gathered by Jerusalem's Old City to mark Land Day. This annual event commemorates the deaths of six Arab Israeli protesters at the hands of Israeli forces during mass demonstrations in 1976 against plans to confiscate Arab land in northern Israel. Protester Mahmoud Zaqout (21) was killed at the border in Gaza.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)(SFC, 3/31/12, p.A3)
2012        Mar 30, Philippine police rescued some 300 badly injured pitbulls and arrested seven South Koreans after busting a massive online dog fighting syndicate at a two-hectare farm in the city of San Pablo. 20 of the dogs needed to be euthanized. 9 more were euthanized Apr 3 and dozens more are likely to be because there are no facilities to rehabilitate them and prevent them from reappearing in underground arenas.
    (AFP, 4/1/12)(AP, 4/3/12)
2012        Mar 30, A flare on Total's Elgin platform off Scotland's east coast was extinguished, diminishing the looming threat of an explosion. Total said it is preparing to sink two relief wells to stop the gas leak at the North Sea platform in parallel with a plugging operation.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)(Reuters, 3/31/12)
2012        Mar 30, Somali government troops backed by African forces said they took control of one of the Islamist rebellion's last strongholds, sparking intense clashes on the outskirts of Mogadishu.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, Sudanese troops fought deadly battles with rebel fighters in the strategic village of Talodi, close to the border with the newly independent south.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, Fresh clashes between Syrian soldiers and rebels erupted across many parts of Syria as UN envoy Kofi Annan urged the government to lay down its weapons first to immediately end the nation's yearlong crisis. The Local Coordination Committees said 15 people were killed across the country, including eight who died in the town of Quriya in the eastern Deir el-Zour province. Thousands across the country held demonstrations calling for Assad's ouster as they emerged from mosques following Friday prayers.
    (AP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, Venezuelan regulators shut down four radio stations for allegedly operating without licenses, including one run by a brother of Monagas governor, Jose Briceno, on the outs with President Hugo Chavez. Briceno's falling out came this month after the governor accused National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello of trying to seize control of the governor's office.
    (AP, 3/30/12)
2012        Mar 30, In Yemen unmanned US drones targeted al-Qaida positions inside Shabwa province killing four militants. Al-Qaeda members sabotaged a southern gas pipeline after eight people, including suspected Al-Qaeda members, were killed in an air strike and a shooting.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)(AP, 3/31/12)
2012        Mar 30, Zimbabwe's education ministry said it is investigating how school text books donated by the U.N. children's agency wind up in the hands of bookstores and street vendors.
    (AFP, 3/30/12)

2012        Mar 31, In Kentucky riot police used pepper spray in small amounts for crowd control as thousands of rowdy fans swarmed into the streets near the University of Kentucky campus, overturning cars and lighting couches ablaze after a victory over cross-state rival Louisville in a Final Four matchup.
    (AP, 4/1/12)
2012        Mar 31, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb in the Gizab district of Uruzgan province killed two local council members and an Afghan policeman.
    (AP, 4/1/12)
2012        Mar 31, Millions of people switched off their lights for Earth Hour in a global effort to raise awareness about climate change that will even be monitored from space. Newcomers to the Sydney-led initiative, now in its sixth year, included Libya, Iraq and the International Space Station, which will watch over the event as it rolls across the globe.
    (AFP, 3/31/12)

2013        Mar 30, In Mississippi nearly 50 people were arrested at a dogfight in Benton County following a months-long investigation.
    (SFC, 4/2/13, p.A4)
2013        Mar 30, In Nevada a freeway crash on I-15 killed five Southern California family members and injured two others. On April 10 Jean Ervin Soriano (18), a juvenile detention escapee, was charged with seven felony charges of driving under the influence. He had a blood-alcohol percentage of 0.12, well above the Nevada legal limit of 0.08 percent.
    (AP, 4/10/13)
2013        Mar 30, Phil Ramone (1934), Grammy-award winning producer, died. He was a pioneer of digital recording and produced what is regarded as the first major commercial release on compact disc, “52nd Street,” which came out in 1982.
    (SSFC, 3/31/13, p.A12)
2013        Mar 30, In Afghanistan US special operations forces handed over their base in Nirkh district, Wardak province, to local Afghan special forces.
    (AP, 3/30/13)
2013        Mar 30, Officials said big depositors at Cyprus' largest bank may be forced to accept losses of up to 60 percent, far more than initially estimated under the European rescue package to save the country from bankruptcy.
    (AP, 3/30/13)
2013        Mar 30, Egyptian state prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Bassem Youssef, a popular TV satirist for allegedly insulting Islam and the country's president.
    (AP, 3/30/13)
2013        Mar 30, Egyptian police detained 13 people including five lawyers, accusing them of assaulting police in the city of Alexandria.
    (AP, 3/30/13)
2013        Mar 30, In northern France five young siblings, aged 2-10, died after a fire erupted in a home in the town of Saint Quentin.
    (AP, 3/31/13)
2013        Mar 30, Xabier Lopez Pena (alias Thierry), a former leader of armed Basque separatist group ETA, died from a stroke in a French hospital.
    (AP, 3/30/13)
2013        Mar 30, Italy’s Pres. Giorgio Napolitano named 10 outside experts to try to help end political gridlock that has prevented the formation of a government more than a month after inconclusive national elections.
    (SSFC, 3/31/13, p.A5)
2013        Mar 30, Kenya's Supreme Court upheld the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as the country's next president. Protests led to clashes leaving 5 people dead.
    (AP, 3/30/13)(SFC, 4/1/13, p.A2)
2013        Mar 30, In Lebanon shells from inside Syria exploded in 4 villages late today near the northern border. Residents reported an unpleasant smell after the strikes.
    (AP, 3/31/13)
2013        Mar 30, In northern Mali fighting Islamic extremists linked to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, attacked Timbuktu late today. Fighting continued in to the next day.
    (AP, 3/31/13)
2013        Mar 30, In Mauritius rivers of water rose swiftly in a pedestrian underpass leading to the waterfront and an underground car park in Port Louis. At least 11 people were killed in the flash flooding. The next day PM Navinchandra Ramgoolam blamed climate change for the floods.
    (AP, 4/1/13)
2013        Mar 30, In Mexico a bus collided with a truck in Veracruz state and plunged over a cliff killing 12 people.
    (SFC, 4/1/13, p.A2)
2013        Mar 30, North Korea warned Seoul that the Korean Peninsula had entered "a state of war" and threatened to shut down a border factory complex that's the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.
    (AP, 3/30/13)
2013        Mar 30, In southern Pakistan a man armed with a gun and grenades attacked a school in Karachi during a prize distribution ceremony, killing its principal and wounding six children before fleeing.
    (AP, 3/30/13)
2013        Mar 30, Five South African air force members died in the crash of a helicopter that was patrolling in an anti-rhino poaching operation in Kruger National Park.
    (AP, 3/31/13)(SFC, 4/1/13, p.A2)
2013        Mar 30, Syrian rebels pushed into a strategic neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo after days of heavy clashes, seizing control of at least part of the hilltop district and killing Hassan Seifeddine, a pro-government Sunni Muslim cleric captured in the fighting. Activists reported violence in areas the southern province of Daraa, the suburbs of Damascus and the northern regions of Idlib and Raqqa.
    (AP, 3/30/13)

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)

2015        Mar 30, In San Francisco an indictment, filed on March 25, was unsealed and charged Carl Force (46), a special agent with the DEA, and Shaun Bridges (32), a special agent with the US Secret Service, with stealing digital currency during the investigation of the Silk Road online marketplace and its founder Ross William Ulbricht. On Oct 19 Force was sentenced to 6½ years in federal prison and ordered to pay $340,000 in restitution to the government.
    (SFC, 3/31/15, p.A8)(SFC, 10/20/15, p.C2)
2015        Mar 30, In Florida a church van ran through a stop sign, crossed all four lanes of a rural highway and crashed into in a canal, killing 8 people and injuring ten.
    (AP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Maryland one cross-dressing man was killed and another injured as they mistakenly crashed a stolen Ford Escape into a police cruiser at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade.
    (SFC, 3/31/15, p.A6)
2015        Mar 30, In eastern Afghanistan a roadside bombing in Ghazni province killed 7 people, all members of the same family.
    (AP, 3/31/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Bangladesh blogger Oyasiqur Rhaman (27) was hacked to death by three men in Dhaka. Two of the attackers, students at madrassas, were caught near the scene.
    (AP, 3/30/15)(SFC, 3/31/15, p.A2)
2015        Mar 30, In Belgium thousands of demonstrators and trade union activists protested against austerity measures for a second day.
    (SFC, 3/31/15, p.A2)
2015        Mar 30, China’s government said nearly 70 "illegal" courses have been closed, seemingly enforcing a decade-old ban for the first time.
    (AFP, 3/31/15)
2015        Mar 30, Gambia sentenced three soldiers to death after a secret trial in which they were convicted of participating in a December 30 attempted coup. Three other soldiers received life sentences.
    (SFC, 4/2/15, p.A2)
2015        Mar 30, Germany said that the euro zone would give Athens no further financial aid until it has a more detailed list of reforms and some are enacted into law, adding to skepticism over plans presented last week.
    (Reuters, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Gibraltar a family of four, including a six-week-old baby girl and her four-year-old sister, were found dead in a flat in the tiny British territory.
    (AFP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In eastern India a bus driver lost control of his vehicle on a sharp curve on a mountain road and plunged into a gorge, killing at least 11 people in Garhwa district of Jharkhand state.
    (AP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, Iran's Revolutionary Guard said a US drone strike killed two of its advisers near the Iraqi city of Tikrit on March 23, where a major offensive is underway against the Islamic State group. The US said its coalition conducted no airstrikes in the area during the time of the incident.
    (AP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Iraq a pair of car bombings in a Baghdad suburb killed at least 11 people and wounded dozens, hours after the arrival of UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, for talks with the Iraqi officials.
    (AP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Israel a Jerusalem court found Ehud Olmert (69), former premier (2006-2008), guilty of corruption in a retrial of allegations he received envelopes of cash from US businessman Morris Talansky while trade and industry minister in the early 2000s.
    (AFP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, An Israeli committee approved controversial plans for eventual construction of 2,200 Palestinian homes in occupied east Jerusalem, in the largest such project since 1967.
    (AFP, 4/1/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Malaysia three editors of the Malaysia Insider news website were arrested on suspicion of violating the country’s Sedition Act and Communications and Multimedia Act. The next day two executives of the Malaysia Insider were arrested.
    (SFC, 4/1/15, p.A6)
2015        Mar 30, The Maldives' Parliament passed a law that strips people serving prison sentences of their political party memberships, a rule critics say is designed to oust jailed former President Mohamed Nasheed from politics.
    (AP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In northern Mali an international Red Cross worker was killed and a local colleague wounded when the aid truck they were driving came under fire, in an attack claimed by the MUJAO jihadist group.
    (AFP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Mexico Jose Guadalupe Reyes Rivera was arrested in a machine shop in Ciudad Victoria in connection with the Aug 24, 2010, massacre of 72 migrants.
    (AFP, 4/1/15)
2015        Mar 30, Myanmar peace negotiators agreed the draft text of a historic nationwide ceasefire agreement, as the country edged closer to ending decades of conflict between ethnic minority groups and the government.
    (AFP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In southern Nepal a wild rhino charged into the outskirts of Hetauda city, killing a woman (61), injuring several others and chasing panicked people through the main market and a hospital.
    (AP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Niger militants tried to attack the town of Bosso, just over the border with Nigeria. Troops from Niger and Chad intervened, killing 47 militants and destroying several of their vehicles and mortars.
    (AP, 3/31/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Nigeria some 2,000 women protesting against the conduct of elections in Rivers state were teargassed as they tried to register their complaints with electoral officials.
    (AFP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In northeastern Nigeria 8 suspected Boko Haram fighters were killed during fighting in Gombe and Bauchi states.
    (AFP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, Peru's Congress sacked PM Ana Jara over alleged spying against lawmakers, reporters, business leaders and other citizens.
    (AFP, 3/31/15)
2015        Apr 1, In South Sudan 3 staff members of the UN World Food Program disappeared while traveling in a convoy from Malakal to distribute food to Melut, Upper Nile state. UN food operation in some parts of the country were soon suspended.
    (SFC, 4/23/15, p.A2)
2015        Mar 30, Spanish police arrested 12 people suspected of belonging to an anarchist group called Coordinated Anarchists Groups, and were suspected of sabotage offenses and planting explosive devices.
    (AP, 3/30/15)
2015        Mar 30, In Uganda Joan Kagezi, a prosecutor in the trial of about a dozen men facing terrorism charges, was shot and killed in Kampala.
    (SFC, 4/1/15, p.A2)
2015        Mar 30, In Yemen warships, believed to be from Egypt, shelled a column of Houthi fighters and troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh as they tried to advance on the southern port city of Aden. In the north an air strike killed 45 people at the Al-Mazrak camp in Hajja province. Warplanes carried out a fifth night of air strikes around Sanaa.
    (Reuters, 3/30/15)(AFP, 3/30/15)

2016        Mar 30, Pres. Obama commuted the prison sentences of 61 drug offenders including more than a third serving life sentences.
    (SFC, 3/31/16, p.A6)
2016        Mar 30, The Obama administration announced a new partnership with 41 energy companies that have agreed to voluntarily reduce methane emissions from natural gas operations to help combat climate change.
    (SFC, 3/31/16, p.A7)
2016        Mar 30, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said the United States has told China it will not recognize an exclusion zone in the South China Sea.
    (Reuters, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, A Bangladeshi court issued arrest warrants for former PM Khaleda Zia and 27 other opposition party leaders on accusations they instigated an arson attack on a passenger bus during an anti-government protest last year.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Burundi Jacques Bihozagara, a former Rwandan ambassador to France and Belgium and an ex-government minister, died in a jail where he was being held on suspicion of spying, adding to cross-border tensions that have increased dangerously in recent months. He had been held on espionage charges since December.
    (Reuters, 3/31/16)
2016        Mar 30, Central African Republic's newly elected president Faustin Archange Touadera (58) took the oath of office.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, The Colombian government said it will announce the start of peace negotiations with the country's second-biggest guerrilla group, the left-wing ELN, broadening the push to end a half-century conflict.
    (AFP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, The Czech government approved a Defense Ministry plan to send up to 35 instructors to Iraq to train pilots for Czech-made planes. The deployment still needed approval by Parliament.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, An Egyptian court sentenced 23 supporters of Mohamed Morsi to lengthy prison terms over a violent protest against the Islamist president's ouster in 2013.
    (AFP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, President Francois Hollande abandoned plans to strip French nationality from people convicted of terrorism.
    (Reuters, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Hungary hundreds of teachers across the country walked out of class for one hour, demanding changes to official policies, including cutting bureaucratic tasks, greater choice in textbooks, more funds for education and reducing students' mandatory school time.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In central India Maoist rebels killed at least 7 paramilitary soldiers by blowing up their armored vehicle in Chhattisgarh state.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, Indian giant Tata Steel put its British business up for sale, sparking calls for the government to intervene and safeguard thousands of jobs in the crisis-hit industry.
    (AFP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, Italian policed arrested a nurse (55) on suspicion of murdering 13 elderly patients in the intensive care ward where she had worked for decades. The alleged murders all took place in 2014 and 2015, although she had worked there for many years prior to that.
    (Reuters, 3/31/16)
2016        Mar 30, Japanese regulators approved the use of a giant refrigeration system to create an unprecedented underground frozen barrier around buildings at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in an attempt to contain leaking radioactive water. The system was switched on the next day.
    (AP, 3/30/16)(AP, 3/31/16)
2016        Mar 30, Kuwait inked a $2.93 billion contract with three South Korean firms for the construction of the largest Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) import facility in the oil-rich country.
    (AFP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Libya Fayez Serraj, the head of a UN-brokered unity government arrived in Tripoli with six deputies to set up a temporary seat of power in a naval base despite threats from competing factions.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, Lithuania, in its annual report the State Security Department, said Russia continues to pose a political and military threat.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Mali Souleymane Keita, the top jihadist leader in the south of the country, was transferred to Bamako following his arrest a few days earlier on the Mauritanian border.
    (AFP, 3/31/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Mongolia thousands of demonstrators criticized foreign mining concessions and demanded action to prop up the tottering economy. More than 2,000 demonstrators in Ulaanbaatar's Freedom Square also called for parliament to be dissolved and a new government formed over alleged corruption.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Myanmar Htin Kyaw, a trusted aide to ruling-party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was sworn in along with his two vice presidents and 18 Cabinet ministers.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, Northern Ireland police arrested a 54-year-old Belfast man on suspicion of involvement in the Irish Republican Army killing of two plainclothes detectives in a dockside bar on Aug 26, 1987.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Pakistan hundreds of radical Islamists who had rallied for four days in the heart of Islamabad ended their demonstrations hours after the government threatened to use force to disperse them. The Islamists were protesting last month's hanging of a policeman who had shot and killed a secular governor over his opposition to the country's strict blasphemy laws.
    (AP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Romania Ioan Ficior (88), head of the Periprava camp in southeast Romania between 1958 and 1963, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity. At least 103 prisoners died at the camp, considered one of the country's worst, while he was in command.
    (AFP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, Russia's RIA news reported that around 20 Islamic State followers have been arrested in Moscow trying to recruit new fighters for the group.
    (Reuters, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad said that any transitional government should include both the regime and opposition, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged greater efforts to tackle the country's refugee crisis.
    (AFP, 3/30/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Syria airstrikes hit near a school and a hospital east of Damascus killing at least 23 people. A drone strike, likely by the coalition, killed Abu al-Haija, a Tunisian commander summoned by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from Iraq.
    (AP, 3/31/16)(AP, 4/3/16)
2016        Mar 30, In Yemen loyalist forces pushed Al-Qaeda out of parts of Aden in a new drive against the jihadists where the internationally recognized government is based.
    (AFP, 3/30/16)

2017        Mar 30, SpaceX launched its first recycled rocket. The Falcon 9 hoisted a broadcasting satellite into the sky from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
    (SFC, 3/31/17, p.C2)
2017        Mar 30, In Chicago five people were killed in separate shootings in the South Shore area. A drive-by shooting in the same area killed another two people.
    (SFC, 4/1/17, p.A7)
2017        Mar 30, In Atlanta, Ga., a fire caused a portion of I-85 to collapse. Basil Eleby was arrested the next day in connection with the fire.
    (SSFC, 4/2/17, p.A5)
2017        Mar 30, North Carolina’s Gov. Roy Cooper signed a bill rolling back the state’s “bathroom bill” to end a yearlong backlash over transgender rights that has cost the state dearly in various business projects, conventions and sport tournaments.
    (SFC, 3/30/17, p.A12)
2017        Mar 30, In Argentina port workers in Greater Rosario suspended plans for a 24-hour strike after a truck driver ran over and killed a protester.
    (Reuters, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, Ethiopia's parliament approved a four month extension of a state of emergency that was first imposed in October to quell nearly a year of anti-government protests.
    (AFP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accused Greece of failing to protect migrant workers who had been subject to "forced labor" and shot at by security guards when they protested over unpaid wages. It ordered Athens to pay 16,000 euros each to the workers whose case had triggered outrage across the country.
    (Reuters, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, Volkswagen AG said it has agreed to pay $157.45 million to settle environmental claims from 10 US states over its excess diesel emissions, as the world's largest automaker looks to move past the scandal.
    (Reuters, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet approved a plan to create Israel's first new settlement in the occupied West Bank in more than 20 years despite international concern over the issue. Netanyahu also ordered limitations on settlement expansion in territory Palestinians claim for a state.
    (AFP, 3/30/17)(AP, 3/31/17)(SFC, 3/30/17, p.A2)
2017        Mar 30, Italian police arrested three Kosovans in the lagoon city of Venice after one was caught on a phone intercept proposing they bomb the famed Rialto bridge while others lauded the recent attack in London. A minor was also detained.
    (AP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, A Lithuanian university says a scholar has discovered a missing copy of the country's 1918 Independence Act in the archives of Germany's foreign ministry in Berlin. The document was apparently sent in 1918 to inform Germany it could no longer control the territory that was occupied by German Empire troops. The original was kept in Kaunas but disappeared in 1940 when Soviet Russia occupied the country.
    (AP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, Malaysia said it has agreed to release the body of Kim Jong Nam to North Korea in exchange for the return of nine Malaysians held in the North's capital.
    (AP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, In Nigeria Boko Haram jihadists raided the village of Pulka near border with Cameroon and kidnapped 18 girls. Jihadists outside Dumba killed a herdsman who had tried to escape after refusing to pay protection money. They shot dead 50 of his cattle and took four women from his family along with the rest of his herd.
    (AFP, 4/1/17)
2017        Mar 30, In Pakistan a suspected militant killed Saleem Latif, a lawyer from the country's minority Ahmadi sect, over blasphemy allegations. Security forces arrested the attacker following the killing in eastern Punjab province.
    (AP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, In Paraguay the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) opened in Asuncion.
    (Econ, 4/8/17, p.30)
2017        Mar 30, Philippine Pres. Rodrigo Duterte unleashed an expletive-laden tirade against the country's leading newspaper and TV network and threatened to humiliate them and their owners, whom he accused of distorting news of his anti-drug crackdown.
    (AP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, Visa requirement between Russia and South Africa were scrapped allowing up to 90 days of trouble-free travel.
    (Econ, 3/18/17, p.53)
2017        Mar 30, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma late today fired the Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in a Cabinet reshuffle, intensifying a rift in the party that took power after the 1994 end of white minority rule as well as concerns about corruption at top levels of government.
    (AP, 3/31/17)
2017        Mar 30, In Syria Russian warplanes pounded rebel-held areas north of the city of Hama in an escalation of air strikes, as government forces fought to reverse the insurgents' biggest assault in months.
    (Reuters, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, In southern Thailand an army ranger was found shot dead. Five gunmen opened fire at a police station in Narathiwat province, killing a policeman and wounding three others in the latest killings in a region troubled by violent Muslim separatism.
    (AP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, Uganda’s military said Michael Omona, a key aide to warlord Joseph Kony has, surrendered to Ugandan forces. A day earlier the US indicated it was pulling out of the international manhunt for one of Africa's most notorious fugitives.
    (AP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, The UN refugee agency said the number of Syrians who have fled their country after six years of civil war has surpassed the 5-million mark.
    (AP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, Venezuela's Supreme Court took over legislative powers from the opposition-majority National Assembly, a dramatic tightening of leftist President Nicolas Maduro and his allies' grip amid a devastating economic crisis.
    (AFP, 3/30/17)
2017        Mar 30, Zambia’s Pres. Edgar Lungu said a Chinese bank will help finance the construction of 2,000 homes for local military personnel who face a critical shortage of housing.
    (Reuters, 3/30/17)

2018        Mar 30, California Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned five ex-convicts facing deportation, including two whose families fled the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia four decades ago. They were among 56 pardoned by Gov. Brown.
    (AP, 3/31/18)
2018        Mar 30, In Kentucky hundreds of teachers called in sick to protest last minute changes to their pension system. The state's pension system is at least $41 billion short of the money it needs to pay retirement benefits over the next 30 years.
    (SFC, 3/31/18, p.A6)
2018        Mar 30, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber killed provincial council member Shahwali Hemat in northeast Kunar province. A second person was also killed in the explosion and another one was wounded. A daylong gun battle in neighboring Badakhshan province left four civilians dead and another eight wounded.
    (AP, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, Bulgaria's PM Boyko Borissov said his country, the current chair of the European Union presidency, will not expel Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack in England that the British government has blamed on Moscow.
    (Reuters, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, A Chinese court sentenced Gao Chengyong (54), dubbed the country's "Jack the Ripper," to death for the rape and murder of 11 women and girls over the course of 14 years (1988-2002).
    (Reuters, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, The Czech Republic said it has extradited Russian citizen Yevgeniy Nikulin (29) to the US where he is accused of hacking social networks including LinkedIn.
    (Reuters, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, Egyptian state media reported that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has won a second term with 96.9 percent of valid votes, raising a previous tally from the preliminary count. An estimate of turnout was raised to 42.08 percent.
    (AFP, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, In southern France a gunman shot and gravely wounded exiled Azeri journalist Rahim Namazov and killed his wife near Toulouse. Namazov was an outspoken critic of the Azeri political leadership and served time in prison before seeking exile in France in 2010.
    (Reuters, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, Air France staff went on strike for the third time in a month, forcing the airline to cancel a quarter of flights. Lawyers were also set to strike nationwide against reforms that they say will over-centralize France's court system.
    (AFP, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, A Greek lawyer representing Maria Efimova, a Russian woman who blew the whistle on alleged wrongdoing at Malta-based Pilatus Bank, said his client fears for her life if she is extradited to Malta. Efimova was identified by slain investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia as one of her sources. Galizia, killed in a car-bomb attack in Oct. 2017, had reported that the Maltese prime minister's wife was the ultimate beneficiary of funds in a secret company in Panama, including funds from Azerbaijan transferred through Pilatus Bank.
    (Reuters, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, In Greece a man (58), his daughter (23) and an unnamed accomplice were arrested late today over the abduction of a man (47) and his sister (48), the older suspect's cousins, beginning July 27 in the city of Serres. The brother and sister, described as "cognitively impaired," were held prisoner for over eight months near Thessaloniki and forced, under threats of violence, to transfer large amounts to their captors' bank accounts.
    (AP, 3/31/18)
2018        Mar 30, Irish pubs in Ireland opened on Good Friday for the first time since a 1927 ban.
    (SFC, 3/31/18, p.A2)
2018        Mar 30, Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, in a filing to the Shenzhen stock exchange, agreed to launch a $930 million Indian joint solar energy venture with Chinese firm GCL System Integration Technology Co as part of its India solar investment roadmap.
    (Reuters, 4/2/18)
2018        Mar 30, Kosovo's PM Ramush Haradinaj said he has fired his interior minister and the intelligence chief for deporting six Turks without his permission.
    (AP, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, In northeastern Nigeria four teenage girl suicide bombers killed two people in multiple attacks in Maiduguri.
    (AFP, 3/31/18)
2018        Mar 30, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach met with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang and said the North Korean leader is committed to having his country participate in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and the Beijing Winter Games in 2022.
    (AP, 3/31/18)
2018        Mar 30, Clashes erupted as tens of thousands of Gazans marched near the Israeli border, leaving at least 15 Palestinians dead and many more wounded in one of the worst days of violence in recent years. Protesters were demanding hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948 be allowed to return. Organizers said the six-week protest would run until the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem around May 14.
    (AFP, 3/30/18)(Reuters, 3/30/18)(Reuters, 3/31/18)
2018        Mar 30, In the Philippines seven Roman Catholic devotees, including a woman, were nailed to wooden crosses in a Good Friday reenactment of Jesus Christ's suffering that was watched by thousands of spectators but frowned upon by church leaders.
    (AP, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, Russia ordered new cuts to the number of British envoys in the country, escalating a dispute with the West over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain. Scores of foreign ambassadors streamed into the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow to receive the notices given to 23 nations: Albania, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine.
    (AP, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, In Scotland Drue Heinz (103), widow of the former head of the H.J. Heinz Co. and a longtime patron of the literary arts, died in Lasswade.
    (AP, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, A court in Senegal sentenced opposition leader Khalifa Sall, a former mayor of the capital Dakar, to five years in prison for embezzlement and falsifying documents. Sall was arrested a year ago on suspicion of embezzling 1.8 billion CFA francs ($3.40 million).
    (Reuters, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, In western Thailand a fire on a double-decker bus carrying migrant workers from Myanmar killed 20 people early today in Tak province.
    (AP, 3/30/18)(SFC, 3/31/18, p.A4)
2018        Mar 30, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey has started preparations to clear northern Syria's Ayn al-Arab, Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad regions from militants up to the Iraqi border, adding that it would also clear militants from Iraq.
    (Reuters, 3/30/18)
2018        Mar 30, The UN Security Council annnounced a new package of sanctions that targeted smuggling at sea by North Korea. The UN blacklisted 27 ships, 21 shipping companies and one individual accused of helping North Korea evade previous sanctions. The ships included five based in China, 15 North Korean ships and 12 non-North Korean ships.
    (AP, 3/31/18)(SSFC, 4/1/18, p.A4)(Reuters, 4/3/18)

2019        Mar 30, Cities around the world marked Earth Hour this night by turning off the lights in a call for global action on climate change. Beginning in Sydney in 2007, Earth Hour has spread to more than 180 countries, with tens of millions of people joining in. The UN headquarters in New York, the pyramids of Egypt and Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue were among top world monuments plunged into darkness for an hour to put the spotlight on climate change and its impact on the planet.
    (AP, 3/30/19)(AFP, 3/31/19)
2019        Mar 30, The US government cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras after President Donald Trump blasted the Central American countries for sending migrants to the United States and threatened to shutter the US-Mexico border.
    (Reuters, 3/31/19)
2019        Mar 30, In Florida Yujing Zhang (32), a Chinese woman, was held on charges of illegal entering and lying to US agents. Court documents later alleged she told a Secret Service agent she was a Mar-a-Lago member there to use the pool.
    (AP, 4/4/19)
2019        Mar 30, Illinois state Trooper Gerald Ellis (36) was killed when a wrong-way vehicle struck his squad car in Green Oaks. The driver of the other vehicle was also killed.
    (SSFC, 3/31/19, p.A7)
2019        Mar 30, Billy Adams (79), Hall of Fame pioneer of rockabilly music, died in Westmoreland, Tenn. His hits included "Rock, Pretty Mama" (1957).
    (SFC, 4/4/19, p.C4)
2019        Mar 30, An Afghan government official said flash floods have killed at least 32 people across seven western provinces, destroyed homes and swept through makeshift shelters that housed displaced families.
    (Reuters, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, In Afghanistan a Taliban assault on a police checkpoint led to the deaths of four students in eastern Ghazni province. 17 others, including 15 students and two teachers, were wounded when an explosion, likely caused by rocket fire, hit the school in Andar district. Vice president, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum escaped unharmed after Taliban ambushed his convoy while traveling form northern Balkh to neighboring Zawzjan province. A security guard in the convoy was killed, and two others wounded in the attack.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, In Australia two Japanese teenagers were found dead in Lake McKenzie after being reported missing from a school tour.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, China's Customs Administration confiscated nearly 7.5 tons (6,803 kg) of ivory. Since the start of the year, customs officers have seized a total of 8.5 tons (7,711 kg) of ivory products through 53 investigations.
    (AP, 4/15/19)
2019        Mar 30, Egypt President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said he has raised the minimum wage to 2,000 Egyptian pounds ($115.74) per month from 1,200 ($69.27).
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, An Egyptian court sentenced 18 suspected militants to life in prison for allegedly forming a "terrorist cell" affiliated with the Islamic State group. The Cairo criminal court sentenced another 12 defendants to 10 to 15 years on charges that include plotting attacks on the country's Christian minority in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, French "yellow vests" demonstrators staged their 20th week of anti-government protests despite bans in hotspot areas, as banks called for an end to violence against branches, cash machines and personnel.
    (AFP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, Authorities in Iran worked to evacuate villages threatened by flooding in southwestern areas as forecasters predicted more of the heavy rains that have killed at least 45 people this week.
    (Reuters, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man near the perimeter fence early today hours before a planned mass rally. Tens of thousands of Palestinians rallied in heavy rain at the Israel-Gaza border to mark the first anniversary of a new wave of protests, facing off against Israeli tanks and troops massed on the fortified frontier. Four Palestinians were killed at the Israel-Gaza border on the first anniversary of the 'Great March of Return' demonstrations.
    (AP, 3/30/19)(Reuters, 3/30/19)(Reuters, 3/31/19)
2019        Mar 30, In Italy the US-based International Organization for the Family began a 2-day congress in Verona. The organization defines family as strictly centering around a mother and father. A coalition of civic groups mobilized against what they see as a counter-reform movement to limit LGBT and women's rights.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, Mozambique authorities said cholera cases among cyclone survivors have jumped to 271, a figure that nearly doubled from the previous day.
    (AP, 3/30/19)   
2019        Mar 30, In Nicaragua at least four people were hurt and 10 detained during a demonstration calling for the release of prisoners, a day after President Daniel Ortega's government and the opposition reached an agreement to restore protest and press freedom rights while disarming paramilitaries.
    (AFP, 3/31/19)
2019        Mar 30, In Pakistan a bus hit a rickshaw killing six schoolgirls and driver in the eastern Bhakkar district of Lahore.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, Pakistani journalist Matloob Musavi was forcibly taken by masked men in private and police vehicles in Karachi.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, Philippine police killed 14 suspected communist rebels after they opened fire during raids in a central province. Rights groups countered that the men were farmers and the latest victims of extrajudicial killings.
    (AP, 3/31/19)
2019        Mar 30, Slovakia voted in an election dominated by calls for change, with anti-corruption activist Zuzana Caputova likely to be chosen as its first female president a year after a journalist's murder sparked mass anti-government protests.
    (AFP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, In Spain police in Barcelona arrested seven people during clashes with radical Catalan separatists protesting against a political rally by Vox, a new far-right party.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, Thailand's King Maha Vajiralongkorn revoked royal decorations that had been awarded to ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a document published in the royal gazette. The royal command was for Thaksin's 2008 corruption conviction and for fleeing the country to escape a two-year prison sentence.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, In Turkey the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, or HDP, said in a statement that 53 people were detained in Istanbul overnight in the lead-up to the March 31 municipal elections.
    (AP, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, United Nations officials said at least 746 people have been reported killed in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe since Cyclone Idai landed on March 14.
    (Reuters, 3/30/19)
2019        Mar 30, Pope Francis started a two-day visit to Morocco. He said that problems of migration would never be resolved by physical barriers but instead required social justice and correcting the world's economic imbalances. He also backed Moroccan King Mohammed VI's efforts to spread a moderate form of Islam that promotes inter-religious dialogue and rejects any form of terrorism or violence in God's name.
    (Reuters, 3/30/19)

2020        Mar 30, The Trump administration renewed several waivers on US sanctions against Iran, allowing Russian, European and Chinese companies to continue to work on Iran's civilian nuclear facilities without drawing American penalties.
    (AP, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, The US death toll in the COVID-19 pandemic surpassed 3,000, with more than 160,000 confirmed infections.
    (The Week, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, US federal judges temporarily blocked bans on abortion imposed in Texas, Ohio, and Alabama during the coronavirus pandemic.
    (The Week, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, The captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, docked in Guam, asked for permission to isolate the bulk of his roughly 5,000 crew members on shore, which would take the warship out of duty in an effort to save lives. Navy Capt. Brett Crozier said the spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating and that removing all but 10% of the crew is a “necessary risk” in order to stop the spread of the virus. A day later the US Navy promised to isolate crew members ashore for rotating quarantine within 24 hours.
    (AP, 4/1/20)(SFC, 4/1/20, p.A1)
2020        Mar 30, It was reported that the Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory this past weekend declaring that firearms dealers should be considered essential services.
    (AP, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, SF Mayor Lond Breed said the city's shelter-in-place order will be extended to at least May 1. The SF Bay Area had over 1,900 coronavirus cases and 49 deaths.
    (ABC News, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, American singer-songwriter Bill Withers (81) died in Los Angeles of heart complications. His soulful hits such as "Lean on Me" and "Ain't No Sunshine" earned him induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Withers)
2020        Mar 30, Florida Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne turned himself in to authorities in Hernando County. Detectives said he held two services a day earlier with hundreds of people and violated a safer-at-home order in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
    (AP, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Idaho's Gov. Brad Little signed two bill making Idaho the first US state to ban transgender girls and women from competing in female sports leagues, enacting new laws that also prevent trans people from changing their birth certificates.
    (Reuters, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, The Cook County Jail in Chicago said 134 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19, up from just 38 March 27.
    (Good Morning America, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., issued stay-at-home directives, virtually shutting down the capital region in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
    (NY Times, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, New York state reported at least 1,026 coronavirus-related deaths, with about three-quarters of those in New York City. A 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship docked in Manhattan and a field hospital was going up in Central Park for coronavirus patients, as officials in New York City pleaded for more help from Washington.
    (AP, 3/30/20)(Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Daniel Prude (41), a Black man from Rochester, N.Y., died after he was taken off life support, seven days after an encounter with police. Prude had run naked through the streets before officers placed a hood on him and pressed his face into the ground for two minutes.
    (NY Times, 9/3/20)(AP, 9/3/20)(SFC, 9/3/20, p.A4)
2020        Mar 30, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) resigned from Congress to become President Trump's new chief of staff. Meadows replaces former colleague Mick Mulvaney, who had the job for just over a year.
    (The Week, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, In Pennsylvania Roderick Bliss IV (38), upset over losing his job due to the coronavirus pandemic, shot his girlfriend and then killed himself in an attempted murder-suicide in Wilson Borough.
    (NBC News, 4/1/20)
2020        Mar 30, It was reported that nearly a dozen students at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., have developed symptoms of Covid-19. The school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., reopened its campus last week after calling the response to the pandemic an “overreaction”.
    (NY Times, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Wisconsin police arrested Sagal Hussein (25). The body of her young son was found in a duffel bag in her car apparently months after he died.
    (SFC, 5/2/20, p.A3)
2020        Mar 30, Facebook Inc pledged $100 million in financing and advertising spending to support news organizations, including local publishers in the United States, reeling from pressure due to the coronavirus pandemic.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Johnson & Johnson said that it and the US government will invest $1 billion to create enough manufacturing capacity to make more than 1 billion doses of a vaccine it is testing to stop the new coronavirus that has killed more than 35,000 people around the world.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Thirty-nine Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in the tiny Pyrenean principality of Andorra to help it battle the coronavirus.
    (AFP, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Australia unleashed a record A$130 billion ($80 billion) jobs-rescue plan, pledging to subsidize workers’ wages as the coronavirus outbreak wreaks havoc on the economy and throws thousands out of work.
    (Bloomberg, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, Former Bolivian interior minister Luis Arce Gomez (82), known as "Minister for Cocaine" for his role in turning the impoverished nation into a narco-state during a military dictatorship in the 1980s, died after decades in prison.
    (Reuters, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc said US regulators have approved its Imfinzi treatment for use against an aggressive type of lung cancer in previously untreated patients, as it moves to expand its specialization in tackling the disease.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Guinness World Records confirmed 112-year-old Bob Weighton of the United Kingdom as the newest title holder, just one day after his birthday.
    (Good Morning America, 4/3/20)
2020        Mar 30, Romek Marber (b.1925), graphic designer and Holocaust survivor, died in Essex, England. His wartime memoir "No Return: Journeys in the Holocaust" was published in 2010.
    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romek_Marber)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.73)
2020        Mar 30, Bulgaria has 399 confirmed cases of coronavirus and eight deaths.
    (Reuters, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, In China a forest fire near Xichang in Sichuan province killed at least 19 people.
    (SFC, 4/2/20, p.A2)
2020        Mar 30, The National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest active guerrilla group in Colombia, said it will observe a unilateral cease-fire for one month from April 1 in an effort to help stem the spread of coronavirus. Colombia has reported 702 cases and 10 deaths of COVID-19. By the end of the month the ELN said they would not extend the ceasefire and would return to violence.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)(Econ., 6/20/20, p.50)
2020        Mar 30, Cyprus imposed a curfew to contain the spread of coronavirus, extending a broad lockdown introduced two weeks ago after a weekend spike in recorded cases.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, In Egypt Dr. Ahmed el-Lawah (57) died of the coronavirus in Ismailia.
    (AP, 4/10/20)
2020        Mar 30, In El Salvador crowds broke the lockdown to request aid from the government; police used pepper spray to disperse them.
    (https://tinyurl.com/y95muu2u)(Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, The European Commission said that EU countries should allow the hundreds of thousands of seasonal migrant workers who plant or harvest crops to cross borders despite national measures to contain the coronavirus.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, The European Commission authorized France's scheme to support small companies and self-employed people affected by the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, French army helicopters transported coronavirus patients fighting for their lives from eastern France to hospitals in Germany and Switzerland as the country battled to free up space in life-support units.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, French carmaker Renault put most of its white collar staff in the Ile-de-France region around Paris on partial unemployment as the lockdown imposed due to the coronavirus outbreak lowered activity.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Hungary’s parliament issued a "coronavirus law" handing PM Viktor Orban the right to rule by decree indefinitely, effectively putting the European Union democracy under his sole command for as long as he sees fit.
    (Bloomberg, 3/30/20)(Econ, 4/25/20, p.49)
2020        Mar 30, India's health ministry invited doctors in Indian-administered Kashmir to an online training session on managing ventilators. Most, however, were unable to attend because of long-running curbs on the internet that have prevented those living in Kashmir from accessing information about the coronavirus.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Indian health workers caused outrage by spraying a group of migrants with disinfectant, amid fears that a large scale movement of people from cities to the countryside risked spreading the coronavirus. India has registered more than a thousand cases of the new coronavirus, of whom 29 have died.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, In Indonesia gunmen killed New Zealand    miner Graeme Thomas Wall and wounded six others near the Grasberg copper and gold mine in the Papua region. The West papua Liberation Army soon claimed responsibility.
    (SFC, 3/31/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 4/12/20, p.A4)
2020        Mar 30, Iran's death toll from the new coronavirus increased to 2,757 with 117 new deaths in the past 24 hours. The total number of cases has climbed to 41,495.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Israel said it is offering its second-biggest airport as a place for foreign carriers to park planes grounded by the coronavirus outbreak.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy rose by around 458 in a day to some 6,818. The number of cases in the region increased by some 1,154 to around 42,161. The national death toll stood at 11,591.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)(Reuters, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, Japanese organizers announced that the opening ceremony of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo has been rescheduled for July 23, 2021.
    (Good Morning America, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Kazakhstan, a Central Asian nation of 19 million, has confirmed 302 cases of the disease and has closed its borders, locked down most of its major cities and shut down most businesses in the two biggest population centers for a week.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, In Kenya Yasin Moyo (13) was fatally shot as he stood on a balcony in March watching police enforce a night-time curfew. At least seven people were killed in different parts of Kenya in the first five nights of the curfew. In June policeman Duncan Ndiema was charged with the murder of Moyo. Ndiema pleaded not guilty.
    (AP, 6/23/20)
2020        Mar 30, Kenya's Archbishop Mwana a'Nzeki (b1931) died. He was the lastborn of a family of five children, was ordained as a priest in 1961, and served the Catholic Church until his retirement in 2007. In the early 1990s he helped Nobel Peace laureate Prof Wangari Maathai evade the security forces during a brutal government crackdown on human rights activists.
    (BBC, 4/6/20)
2020        Mar 30, Mexican journalist Maria Elena Ferral was shot to death in the city of Papantla, in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. Her attackers apparently approached her on a motorcycle and fired four shots at her.
    (AP, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, Myanmar authorities arrested Nay Myo Lin, editor of the the independent Voice of Myanmar news site on terrorism charges for publishing an interview with a rebel army spokesman.
    (SFC, 4/4/20, p.A2)
2020        Mar 30, The Singer Laren museum in the Netherlands announced that the painting "Spring Garden" (1884) by Vincent Van Gogh vanished after thieves broke into the building early in the morning.
    (The Week, 3/31/20)
2020        Mar 30, The MS Zaandam exited the Panama Canal. At least 189 people aboard the Holland America Line cruise ship were suffering flu-like symptoms and four people have died.
    (Good Morning America, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Moscow, with its more than 12 million people, went into lockdown while other parts of Russia moved to introduce similar steps to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
    (AFP, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Saudi Arabia said it will finance treatment for anyone infected with the coronavirus in the country. The agriculture ministry took steps to boost wheat and livestock supplies amid global fears of a food shortage. The kingdom has registered eight deaths among 1,453 infections.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, The Saudi-led military coalition launched airstrikes on Yemen's rebel-held capital. More than 12 airstrikes hit rebel-held Sanaa.
    (AP, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, In Serbia 13 people, out of a population of 7 million, have died from the coronavirus. 741 have been diagnosed with the infection. Orthodox Bishop Milutin Knezevic (71) died of the coronavirus overnight in a Belgrade hospital.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Sierra Leone overturned a ban on pregnant girls attending school in a victory for human rights activists who had fought against it for five years.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, In Spain an overnight death toll of 812 people brought total fatalities to 7,340, while the number of infections rose by 8% to 85,195. Business leaders and regional authorities criticized the government's decision to further restrict the movement of people and keep non-essential workers at home until mid-April.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, In northeastern Syria imprisoned Islamic State militants broke into riots again near the city of Hassakeh. Kurdish forces again fought to restore order as US forces dropped light bombs to illuminate the area.
    (SFC, 3/31/20, p.A2)
2020        Mar 30, Turkey placed 39 residential areas in 18 cities under quarantine to contain the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed 131 people in the country.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, United Arab Emirates carrier flydubai said it will reduce pay for its employees for three months from April due to the impact of the global coronavirus crisis on its business.
    (Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, UN members voted by e-mail to keep troops in Sudan’s restive Darfur region until the end of May and maintain the UN political mission in Somalia until June 30.
    (AP, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, UN members extended the mandate of the UN panel of experts monitoring sanctions against North Korea until April 30, 2021, and stressed the importance of supporting the UN's far-flung peacekeeping operations.
    (AP, 3/30/20)
2020        Mar 30, Venezuela's ANBV Naiguata patrol vessel reportedly rammed the RCGS Resolute, a Portuguese-flagged cruise ship and promptly sank. 44 Venezuelan sailors were rescued.
    (SFC, 4/17/20, p.24)
 2020        Mar 30, Zimbabwe entered a “total lockdown” over the coronavirus. Hundreds of public hospital doctors and nurses have gone on strike over the lack of protective equipment. However, social distancing was being pushed aside in the struggle to obtain food, cash, cheap public transport, even clean water.
    (AP, 3/30/20)

2021        Mar 30, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said the state will drop its mask mandate immediately and open up coronavirus vaccinations to anyone 16 and older.
    (SFC, 3/31/21, p.A4)
2021         Mar 30, California to date had 3,643,279 cases of coronavirus and 58,676 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 421,893 cases and 5,891 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,391,227 with the death toll at 550,951.
    (sfist.com, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill into law that will eliminate certain fines and fees for juvenile offenders.
    (Tribune Publ., 3/31/21)
2021        Mar 30, Virgin Galactic rolled out its newest spaceship as the company looks to resume test flights in the coming months at its headquarters in the New Mexico desert.
    (AP, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, New York state's highest court cleared the way for Summer Zervos, a former contestant on "The Apprentice," to sue Donald Trump for defamation, after the former US president called her a liar for accusing him of sexual assault.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, An uncrewed SpaceX Starship prototype rocket failed to land safely after a test launch from Boca Chica, Texas, and engineers were investigating.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, G. Gordon Liddy (90), cloak-and-dagger lawyer who concocted the 1972 bungled burglary that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon, died in Mount Vernon, Va.
    (NY Times, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Cisco Systems Inc announced new products to help mobile network operators manage increased data traffic generated by homeworking because of the pandemic and as the 5G rollout connects billions more devices to the internet.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Microsoft Corp said that it aims to place 50,000 people in jobs that require technology skills as part of a broader push being undertaken with its professional networking website LinkedIn to help workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic move into new fields.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, In eastern Afghanistan attackers gunned down three women working to administer the polio vaccine in Jalalabad, a day after authorities launched a new campaign against the crippling children's disease.
    (AP, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Britain accused China of breaching the joint declaration guaranteeing Hong Kong’s freedoms after Beijing passed a law that would bar candidates from elections on the grounds of insufficient patriotism.
    (The Telegraph, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Britain cut humanitarian funding to Syria by nearly a third at a major United Nations donor conference, a reduction which aid agencies working in the conflict-wracked country said “will put lives at risk”.
    (The Telegraph, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, In the Central African Rep. President Faustin Archange Touadera was sworn in for a second term as he faces a growing threat from an armed rebellion linked to the country's former strongman Francois Bozize.
    (AP, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, China announced the reduction of the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kong's legislature following a 2-day meeting of its top legislature. Hong Kong's legislature will be expanded to 90 seats with only 20 elected by the public.
    (SFC, 3/31/21, p.A2)
2021        Mar 30, The EU and UN hosted dozens of nations and international organizations in virtual talks to help tackle the humanitarian crisis deepening in Syria and neighboring countries as the civil war there entered its 11th year without a political solution in sight.
    (AP, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Armin Laschet, the new leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party pledged to restore voters' confidence after discontent over Germany's pandemic management and a scandal over lawmakers enriching themselves in mask-procurement deals led to a sharp drop in its approval ratings.
    (AP, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Germany's vaccine regulator said it has recorded 31 cases of a rare blood clot in the brain, nine of which resulted in deaths, after people received a COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Indian payments firm MobiKwik said it will get an independent forensic audit but assured customers their information was safe after allegations emerged of a breach that exposed the data of millions of its users.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, It was reported that India's drug regulator has allowed the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to be used for up to nine months from its manufacture date, as opposed to the prescribed six months.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Iran said it will not stop its 20% uranium enrichment before the US lifts all sanctions, after a US media report said Washington would offer a new proposal to jump-start talks.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Iran said a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic had taken hold in western and central areas of the country, triggered by widespread travel and celebrations during the current Iranian New Year holidays.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Israel's Health Ministry said on new coronavirus strain has been identified in Israel, and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, used primarily in a swift nationwide inoculation drive, appeared to be effective against it.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Japan-based Lexus, a luxury auto brand owned by Toyota Motor Corp, said it plans to introduce 20 new or improved models by 2025, of which more than 10 will be electric.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Two women and three children drowned when a boat carrying dozens of Europe-bound migrants capsized off Libya. A total of 400 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya late today.
    (AP, 3/31/21)
2021        Mar 30, In eastern Myanmar air raids left six civilians dead and 11 wounded. The Karen National Union said government troops are advancing into its territory on all fronts. Thailand denied that its security forces had forced villagers back to Myanmar.
    (SFC, 3/31/21, p.A2)
2021        Mar 30, Netherlands's health authorities said new coronavirus cases in the country increased for a seventh consecutive week, despite lockdown and social distancing rules aimed at curbing the virus' spread.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Pakistan said it will import Chinese Cansino Biologics COVID-19 vaccines in bulk to package 3 million doses locally. Coronavirus cases have soared with PM Imran Khan, Pres. Arif Alvi and Defense Minister Pervez Khattak all testing positive. The country has recorded 14,356 deaths and 663,200 infections since the start of the pandemic.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)(SFC, 3/31/21, p.A4)
2021        Mar 30, Papua New Guinea PM James Marape received the first COVID-19 shot in the Pacific Island country under a small vaccination program aimed at curbing soaring infections. Australia sent Papua New Guinea 8,000 doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine last week after warning of a worsening humanitarian crisis.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, A Russian health official said a third wave of coronavirus infections was emerging in the country, which has recorded more than 4.5 million cases since the start of the pandemic. Russia reported 8,277 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours, including 1,291 in Moscow. The country also reported 409 deaths, raising the official toll to 98,442.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Slovakia's PM Igor Matovic and his government resigned to ease a political crisis triggered by a secret deal to buy Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. President Zuzana Caputova accepted the resignation and asked Eduard Heger from Matovic’s Ordinary People party to form a new government. Heger’s Cabinet is expected to be the same as Matovic’s.
    (AP, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, In South Africa Ace Magashule, secretary-general of South Africa's African National Congress (ANC), was given a 30-day ultimatum to step down after being charged with embezzling public funds while he was premier of the Free State province. He refused to resign voluntarily, which resulted in the ANC suspending him.
    (BBC, 5/6/21)
2021        Mar 30, South Korea's K-pop music group BTS called for an end to anti-Asian racism and said it had also suffered racist abuse which had made them feel powerless and hurt their self esteem.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, Health officials said number of Swedes needing intensive care as a result of COVID infection increased 9% compared to last week as the country grapples with a third wave of the virus.
    (Reuters, 3/30/21)
2021        Mar 30, In Syria the president's office said Bashar Assad and his wife have recovered from COVID-19 and returned to their regular duties, three weeks after they had tested positive for the coronavirus.
    (AP, 3/30/21)
 2021        Mar 30, The WHO and more than 20 heads of government and global agencies called for an international treaty for pandemic preparedness that they say will protect future generations.
    (AP, 3/30/21)

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