Today in History - April 7
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451 Apr 7,
Attila's Huns plundered Metz.
(MC, 4/7/02)
924 Apr 7, Berengarius I, Emperor
of Italy, was murdered.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1028 Apr 7, Pope Benedict VIII
died.
(PTA, 1980, p.288)
1118 Apr 7, Pope Gelasius II
excommunicated Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1348 Apr 7, Prague Univ., the 1st
in central Europe, was started by Charles IV.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1498 Apr 7, A crowd stormed
Savonarola's convent of San Marco in Florence, Italy.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1506 Apr 7, Francis Xavier, saint,
Jesuit missionary to India, Malaya, and Japan, was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1521 Apr 7, Inquisitor-general
Adrian Boeyens banned Lutheran books.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1521 Apr 7, Ferdinand Magellan
landed on Cebu Island, Philippines. Italian chronicler Antonio
Pigafetta reported a thriving port with large supplies of rice and
gold. In 2003 the island was a booming commercial center with a
population of 4 million.
(WSJ, 10/15/03, p.B2A)
1534 Apr 7, Josr de Anchieta,
Spanish Jesuit, missionary (Brazilian Tupi Indians), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1613 Apr 7, Gerard Dou, Dutch
painter (Night School), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1614 Apr 7, El Greco (b.1541),
Cretan born Spanish painter (View of Toledo), died in Toledo.
(WSJ, 6/18/01, p.A16)(MC, 4/7/02)
1625 Apr 7, Albrecht von
Wallenstein was appointed German supreme commander.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1645 Apr 7, Michael Cardozo became
the 1st Jewish lawyer in Brazil.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1652 Apr 7, The Dutch established
settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1712 Apr 7, There was a slave
revolt in New York City. A slave insurrection in New York City was
suppressed by the militia and ended with the execution of 21 blacks.
[see Jul 4]
(HN, 4/7/97)(HNQ, 6/10/98)
1719 Apr 7, Jean-Baptiste de la
Salle (67), French priest, explorer, saint, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1724 Apr 7, Johann S. Bach's "St.
John Passion" premiered in Leipzig.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1763 Apr 7, Domenico Dragonetti,
composer, was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1768 Apr 7, Michel Mathieu (78),
composer, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1770 Apr 7, William Wordsworth,
English poet laureate, was born. He wrote "The Prelude" and "Lyrical
Ballads." In 1998 Kenneth R. Johnston published “The Hidden Wordsworth:
Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy.” The biography covered the first 30 years of
the poet’s life. In 1896 Emile Legouis also published a biography of
the poet’s youth. The poet was responsible for such phrases as: “love
of nature,” “love of man,” and “emotion recollected in tranquility.”
(V.D.-H.K.p.230)(WSJ, 6/23/98, p.A18)(SFEC, 8/23/98,
BR p.5)(HN, 4/7/99)
1775 Apr 7, Francis C. Lowell was
born. He founded the 1st raw cotton-to-cloth textile mill.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1794 Apr 7, In
Poland at the battle of Raclawice the revolutionary forces of Tadeusz
Kosci-usko defeated the imperial armies.
(DrEE, 9/21/96, p.5)
1795 Apr 7,
In the National Convention of Revolutionary France put into
effect a new calen-dar system, similar to that of ancient Egypt. The
year began with the autumn equinox, and had 360 days divided into
twelve months of thirty days. Five extra days were placed at the end of
the year. The months were divided into three 10 day groups. The day was
divided into 10 new hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute
into 100 seconds.
(K.I.-365D, p.42)
1798 Apr 7, Territory of
Mississippi was organized.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1803 Apr 7, Francois D. Toussaint
L'Ouverture (Louverture), Haitian revolutionary, died in a dungeon at
Fort Joux in the French Alps. In 2007 Madison Smartt Bell authored
“Toussaint Louverture: A Biography.”
(AP,
4/7/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_L'Ouverture)(SFC,
1/15/07, p.D7)
1805 Apr 7, Francis Wilkinson
Pickens (d.1869), (Gov SC, Confederacy), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1805 Apr 7, Beethoven conducted
the premiere of his "Eroica" symphony. It was 1st pub-lished in Vienna.
(MC, 4/7/02)(WSJ, 5/20/03, p.A1)
1818 Apr 7, Gen. Andrew Jackson
captured St. Marks, Fla., from the Seminole Indians.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1827 Apr 7, English chemist John
Walker invented wooden matches.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1831 Apr 7, Pedro I of Brazil
abdicated in favor of his 5-year-old son, Pedro de Alcantara, Pedro II.
(EWH, 4th ed., p.855)
1837 Apr 7, J. Pierpont Morgan
(J.P. Morgan, d.1913), American financier, was born in Hart-ford, Conn.
He later owned U.S. Steel and International Harvester. In 1999 Jean
Strouse pub-lished the biography "Morgan: American Financier."
(WUD, 1994 p.931)(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A24)(HN, 4/7/99)
1853 Apr 7, Dr. John Snow
administered chloroform to Queen Victoria at the birth of her 8th
child, Prince Leopold.
(ON, 5/05, p.9)
1858 Apr 7, Anton Diabelli (76),
Austrian publisher, composer, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1859 Apr 7, Walter Camp,
father of American football, was born in Connecticut.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1860 Apr 7, William Keith Kellogg,
the brother of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943), was born. Will
later founded the W.K. Kellogg company in Battle Creek, Mich., to
market the corn-flakes invented by his older brother. [see 1895]
(HN,
4/7/99)(http://www.ivu.org/history/adventists/kellogg.html)(WSJ,
9/29/00, p.W17)
1862 Apr 7, Union forces led by
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the bat-tle of
Shiloh in Tennessee. Gen. Ulysses Grant after the Battle of Shiloh
said: “I saw an open field... so covered with dead that it would have
been possible to walk across... in any direction, stepping on dead
bodies without a foot touching the ground.” More than 9,000 Americans
died.
(SFC, 6/19/96, p.E5)(HT, 4/97, p.13)(AP, 4/7/97)
1863 Apr 7, Battle of Charleston,
SC. The Federal fleet attack on Fort Sumter failed.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1865 Apr 7, Battle of Farmville,
VA.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1888 Apr 7, Start of Sherlock
Holmes adventure "Yellow Face."
(MC, 4/7/02)
1890 Apr 7, Marjory Stoneman
Douglas, environmentalist (1st Lady of Everglades), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1891 Apr 7, Nebraska introduced an
8 hour work day.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1891 Apr 7, Phineas T. Barnum
(88), US circus promoter (B & Bailey), died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1893 Apr 7, Allan W. Dulles, US
diplomat, CIA head (1953-61) (Germany's Underground), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1897 Apr 7, Walter Winchell,
American newscaster and newspaper columnist, was born in Harlem, NYC.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1902 Apr 7, The Texas Fuel Co. was
founded. It soon changed its name to the Texas Co. and eventually
became Texaco.
(SFC, 10/20/04, p.C6)
1908 Apr 7, Percy Faith, conductor
(Summer Place), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1913 Apr 7, The suffragists'
marched to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. By the second dec-ade of the
20th century, woman suffrage--women's right to vote--had become an
issue of na-tional importance in America. The growth in the numbers of
American working women and the valuable contributions women made in war
production during World War I further increased the suffragists'
support. On August 20, 1919, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was
ratified, giving women the right to vote.
(HNPD, 4/7/99)
1914 Apr 7, British House of
Commons passed the Irish Home Rule Bill.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1915 Apr 7, Billie Holliday, jazz
and blues legend, was born. She sang "God Bless the Child."
(HN, 4/7/99)
1917 Apr 7, De Falla's ballet "El
Sombrero de tres Picos," premiered in Madrid.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1920 Apr 7, Ravi Shankar, sitar
player, was born in Benares, India.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1922 Apr 7, U.S. Secretary
of Interior leased Naval Reserve #3, "Teapot Dome," in Wyo-ming
to Harry F. Sinclair.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1923 Apr 7, The Workers Party of
America in NYC became an official communist party.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1923 Apr 7, The 1st brain tumor
operation under local anesthetic was performed at Beth Is-rael Hospital
in NYC by Dr K. Winfield Ney.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1926 Apr 7, In San Luis Obispo,
Ca., lightning sparked a 5-day oil fire killing 2 people. Over 6
million barrels of oil were burned. Final damages were estimated at $15
million.
(SFC, 4/7/09, p.D8)
1926 Apr 7, Mussolini's Irish wife
broke his Italian nose.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1927 Apr 7, Secretary of Commerce
Herbert Hoover was on hand for the first inter-city (DC to Manhattan)
transmission by telephone of video imagery. Hoover’s image and voice
were trans-mitted across telephone lines.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927_in_television)(AH, 4/07, p.14)
1928 Apr 7, James Garner, actor
(Rockford Files, Bret Maverick), was born in Norman, Okla.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1928 Apr 7, Alan J. Pakula,
director (All the President's Men, Klute), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1931 Apr 7, Donald Barthelme
(d.1989), US writer, was born in Philadelphia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme)(WSJ,
2/21/09, p.W8)
1931 Apr 7, Daniel Ellsberg,
anti-war activist and the man who released the Pentagon Pa-pers, was
born.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1932 Apr 7, Erv A. Kelley, US
policeman, was shot to death by Pretty Boy Floyd.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, “Near beer” (3.2 beer)
became legal after FDR signed an amendment to the Vol-stead Act, which
had made drinking alcohol a federal crime. Prohibition ended when Utah
be-came the 38th state to ratify 21st Amendment. [see Dec 5]
(SFC, 4/7/96, p.B-11)(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, The 1st two Nazi
anti-Jewish laws barred Jews from legal and public service.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1933 Apr 7, Jan Erik/Eric Jan
Hanussen, Berlin astrologer, illusionist, was murdered.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1934 Apr 7, In India, Mahatma
Gandhi suspended his campaign of civil disobedience.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1938 Apr 7, [Edmund G] Jerry Brown
Jr, (Gov-D-Cal, Mayor of Oakland), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1939 Apr 7, Francis Ford Coppola,
director (Godfather, Apocalypse Now), was born in Detroit.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1939 Apr 7, Italy invaded Albania,
which offered only token resistance. Less than a week later, Italy
annexed Albania. [see Apr 8]
(AP, 4/7/99)
1942 Apr 7, There was a heavy
German assault on Malta.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, The NFL adopted its
free substitution rule.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, US Marine Lt. James
Swett (1920-2009), division leader of Squadron 221, shot down 7
Japanese bombers over the Solomon Islands. He was later awarded the
Medal of Honor for his actions on this day.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.B3)
1943 Apr 7, British and American
armies link up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa,
forming a solid line against the German army.
(HN, 4/7/99)
1943 Apr 7, Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, Lt. Colonel Claus von
Stauffenberg was seriously wounded during allied air raid.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1945 Apr 7,
During World War II, American planes intercepted a Japanese fleet that
was headed for Okinawa on a suicide mission. The Japanese battleship
Yamato, the world's largest battleship, was sunk during the battle for
Okinawa along with 4 Japanese destroyers.
(AP, 4/7/97)(HN, 4/7/99)(MC, 4/7/02)
1947 Apr 7, Auto pioneer Henry
Ford (b.1863) died in Dearborn, Mich. Most of his personal estate,
valued at $205 million, was left to the Ford Foundation. In 2001 Neil
Baldwin authored "Henry Ford and the Jews - The Mass Production of
Hate." In 2003 Douglas Brinkley authored "Wheels for the World - Henry
Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress." In 2005 Steven Watts
authored “The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century.”
(AP, 4/7/97)(HN, 2/20/98)(SFC, 6/13/03, p.B4)(SSFC,
8/28/05, p.C2)
1947 Apr 7, Arab students,
influenced by national socialist movements in Europe, founded the Baath
Party. Satia al-Husri, father of Ba’athism, was a disciple of German
philosopher Johann Fichte. This became a holiday in Iraq until
abolished in 2003.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.D4)(AP, 7/13/03)
1947 Apr 7, At Mont Pelerin,
Switzerland, Friedrich A. von Hayek invited a group of classical
liberals to discuss the threat of freedom posed by the expansionist
governments of the day. The group founded the Mont Pelerin Society to
continue meetings and discussions in the future. They viewed central
planning as the single most important threat to liberty.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A22)
1948 Apr 7, The World Health
Organization was founded by the UN. In 1948, the First World Health
Assembly called for the creation of a "World Health Day" to mark the
founding of the World Health Organization. Since 1950, World Health Day
has been celebrated on the 7th of April annually.
(AP,
4/7/97)(www.who.int/world-health-day/previous/en/index.html)
1949 Apr 7, The
Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific" opened on Broadway at
the Majestic Theater for 1928 performances.
(AP, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1951 Apr 7, Janis Ian, [Janis Eddy
Fink], lesbian, folk rocker, was born in NYC.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1953 Apr 7, The
U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961) as
Secre-tary-General of the UN.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP, 4/7/97)
1954 Apr 7, Jackie Chan, martial
art actor (Rumble in the Bronx), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1954 Apr 7, Pres. Eisenhower spoke
at a press conference about why we needed to protect Vietnam and
mentioned his fear of a "domino-effect" in Indochina.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2630)
1954 Apr 7, The West German
government refused to recognize DDR (East Germany).
(MC, 4/7/02)
1955 Apr 7, Theda Bara (Theodosia
Goodman), silent screen sex symbol, died. Her films in-cluded "A Fool
There Was" and "Kathleen Mavoureen."
(HNPD, 7/24/98)(WUD, 1994 p.118)
1957 Apr 7, The
last of New York City's electric trolleys completed its final run from
the city's borough of Queens to Manhattan.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1958 Apr 7, Anti-nuclear peace
protesters arrived at the Atomic Weapons Establishment near
Aldermaston, England, after marching for several days from London.
(AP, 4/7/08)
1959 Apr 7, Oklahoma ended
prohibition after 51 years.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1961 Apr 7, Tad Szulc (d.2001)
wrote a front page NY times article on anti-Castro forces training to
fight at Florida bases and predicted a probable invasion on April 18.
The invasion took place Apr 17.
(SFC, 5/24/01, p.C4)
1961 Apr 7, Marian Jordan (62),
radio comedienne (Fibber McGee and Molly), died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1963 Apr 7, Yugoslavia
proclaimed itself a Socialist republic.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1964 Apr 7, IBM introduced its
innovative System/360, the company's first line of compatible mainframe
computers that gave customers the option of upgrading from lower-cost
models to more powerful, expensive ones.
(AP, 4/7/04)
1966 Apr 7, The
United States recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of
Spain.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1967 Apr 7, A, Israeli-Syrian
minor border incident escalated into a full-scale aerial battle over
the Golan Heights, resulting in the loss of six Syrian MiG-21s to
Israeli Air Force (IAF) Dassault Mirage IIIs, and the latter's flight
over Damascus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War)
1969 Apr 7, The
US Supreme Court in Stanley v. Georgia unanimously struck down laws
prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
(AP, 4/7/07)
1970 Apr 7, "Effects of Gamma Rays
on Man-in-the-moon Marigolds," premiered in NYC. The play was written
in 1964 by Paul Zindel, playwright and science teacher. Zindel received
the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Effect_of_Gamma_Rays_on_Man-in-the-Moon_Marigolds)
1970 Apr 7, In the 42nd Academy
Awards in Los Angeles "Midnight Cowboy" won for best pic-ture, John
Wayne for best actor (True Grit) and Maggie Smith for best actress (The
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Academy_Awards)
1971 Apr 7, President Nixon
pledged a withdrawal of 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1971 Apr 7, Pres. Nixon ordered
Lt. Calley, imprisoned for the Mi Lai massacre, free.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1972 Apr 7, Richard McCoy
(1942-1974), Vietnam veteran and pilot, hijacked a United Air Lines jet
and extorted $500,000 in copycat version of the DB Cooper crime. He
parachuted into a Utah desert, but was caught with the money in his
house and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He escaped and died in a
shootout with FBI agent Nicholas O’Hara in Nov, 1974.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, Z1
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McCoy,_Jr.)
1972 Apr 7, "Crazy" Joe Gallo,
flamboyant mobster, was gunned down at his 43rd birthday party in
Manhattan’s Umberto's Clam House.
(SFC, 12/30/04, p.A2)
1972 Apr 7, Sheik Abeid Amane
Karume, Zanzibari vice-president of the republic of Tanzania, was
assassinated.
(Econ, 12/13/03,
p.43)(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404703463.html)
1976 Apr 7, Robert A. Swanson
(d.1999 at 52), a venture capitalist, and Herb Boyer, a UCSF molecular
biologist and co-discoverer of gene-splicing in 1973, incorporated
Genentech Inc. They planned to use gene splicing to create a genre of
medicines.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.B1)(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)(SSFC,
4/1/01, p.B1)
1976 Apr 7, China's leadership
deposed Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and appointed Hua Kuo-feng
(Guofeng) prime minister and first deputy chairman of the Communist
Party.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1977 Apr 7, Pres. Carter stopped
the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel rods in order to dis-courage the
proliferation of nuclear weapons.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1977 Apr 7, The RAF gunned down
Siegfried Bubeck, a West German federal prosecutor, his driver,
Wolfgang Goebel, and the guard Georg Wurster. In 2009 police, using new
DNA evi-dence, arrested Verena Becker (57), a former German leftist
terrorist on suspicion of involve-ment in the slayings. Becker had been
arrested a month after the ambush, following a shootout with police.
Prosecutors at the time did not have enough evidence to try her on
charges of in-volvement in the Buback slaying, but convicted her of
armed robbery and attempted murder stemming from the shootout. She was
sentenced to life in prison. In 1989 she was pardoned of those charges
by German Pres. Richard von Weizsaecker and released from prison. In
2010 Becker was charged with 3 counts of murder for her alleged role in
the fatal 1977 ambush.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A8)(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 4/21/10)
1978 Apr 7, President Carter
announced he was deferring development of the neutron bomb, a
high-radiation weapon.
(AP, 4/7/08)
1978 Apr 7, A Gutenberg bible sold
for a record $2.2 million in NYC. It was bought by Martin Breslauer for
the state museum of Baden Wurttemberg.
(www.biblio.com/details.php?dcx=35363264&aid=frg)
1980 Apr 7, The US broke
relations with Iran during the hostage crises. Pres. Carter ordered all
Iranian diplomats expelled from the US and prohibited any further
exports to the nation. Pres. Carter signed Executive Order 12205 for
economic sanctions against Iran.
(HN,
4/7/97)(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=33235)
1982 Apr 7, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh
(b.1936), Iran’s minister of foreign affairs, was arrested. He was
convicted of plotting against the government and executed on Sep 15.
(www.cedmagic.com/home/ced-digest/ced-digest-vol-07/ced-digest0714.html)
1983 Apr 7, Specialist Story
Musgrave and Don Peterson took the first US space walk in al-most a
decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly
four hours.
(HN, 4/7/97)(AP, 4/7/03)
1984 Apr 7, Frank Church (b.1924),
Sen-D-Idaho, (1957-81), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church)
1986 Apr 7, Dimitris Angelopoulos
(79), a Greek industrialist, was killed by Nov. 17 militants. In 2003
Patroklos Tselentis testified that he drove the getaway motorcycle.
(AP, 3/26/03)(http://tinyurl.com/yzu4sj)
1987 Apr 7,
Chicago Mayor Harold Washington handily won a second term, quashing a
chal-lenge by archrival Edward Vrdolyak.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1987 Apr 7, Frances Newton (22)
allegedly killed her husband and 2 children in Houston to gain
insurance benefits. According to a reprieve petition, Adrian Newton was
a drug user and drug seller and there was evidence that some sort of
trouble in this regard was brewing before the murder. In 2005 she was
executed in Huntsville, Texas, the 1st black woman to be exe-cuted by
the state since the Civil War.
(SFC, 9/15/05, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/9mw34)
1987 Apr 7, Ali Mecili, a lawyer
active in Algeria's human rights movement, was killed by three gunshots
in the foyer of his Paris apartment. Colleagues accused the Algerian
government of involvement. In 2008 Algerian diplomat Mohamed Ziane
Hasseni was arrested at an airport in the French port city of
Marseille, based on an international arrest warrant. A Paris judge had
signed the orders for the arrest of Hassani and the suspected killer,
Abdelmalek Amellouet, in December last year.
(AP, 10/17/08)(http://tinyurl.com/67pryj)
1988 Apr 7, Soviet leader Mikhail
S. Gorbachev and Afghan leader Najibullah met in the So-viet Central
Asian city of Tashkent. They later issued a joint statement, announcing
an to end the civil war in Afghanistan and withdraw Soviet troops.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1989 Apr 7, A week after the Exxon
Valdez oil spill disaster, President Bush pledged federal assistance to
help in the clean-up.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1989 Apr 7, A Soviet
nuclear-powered submarine, the Komsomolets, caught fire and sank in the
Norwegian Sea, claiming 42 of 69 lives.
(AP, 4/7/99)(SFC, 8/14/00, p.A13)
1990 Apr 7, A display of Robert
Mapplethorpe photographs opened at Cincinnati's Contempo-rary Arts
Center, the same day the center and its director were indicted on
obscenity charges. Both were later acquitted.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1990 Apr 7, Former national
security adviser John M. Poindexter was convicted of five counts at his
Iran-Contra trial. However, a federal appeals court later reversed the
convictions.
(HN, 4/7/97)(AP, 4/7/00)
1990 Apr 7, In Burma (later
Myanmar) a double-decker ferry sank in Gyaing River during a storm and
215 people were believed drowned.
(www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0005329.html)
1990 Apr 7, An arson fire aboard a
ferry enroute from Norway to Denmark killed 158 people.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1991 Apr 7, US military planes
began airdropping supplies to Kurdish refugees who were fac-ing
starvation and exposure in the snow-covered mountains of northern Iraq.
The United States warned Iraq not to interfere with the relief effort.
(AP, 4/7/01)
1991 Apr 7, In Puerto Rico 3
prisoners escaped from the Rio Piedras State Penitentiary in a hijacked
helicopter with the help of accomplices. Two were recaptured, while a
third remained at large.
(AP, 12/31/02)
1992 Apr 7,
Democrat Bill Clinton swept the New York, Kansas and Wisconsin
primaries.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1992 Apr 7, PLO
chairman Yasser Arafat survived the crash landing of his plane in the
Lib-yan desert; three crew members were killed.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1992 Apr 7, The
Sacramento Bee, The New York Times and Newsday won two Pulitzer prizes
each; playwright Robert Schenkkan was honored for "The Kentucky Cycle,"
novelist Jane Smiley for "A Thousand Acres."
(AP, 4/7/97)
1993 Apr 7, European warplanes
began arriving in Italy, prepared to enforce a no-fly zone over
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1994 Apr 7, Angelus Gottfried
"Golo" Mann (85), German-US historian, died.
(www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/MannGolo/)
1994 Apr 7, Civil war erupted in
Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the
presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. Former Defense Minister Colonel
Theoneste Bagosora reportedly instigated the killing spree by Hutu
militia. Within twenty-four hours fighting resulted in the deaths of
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the prime minister of Rwanda, Joseph
Kava-ruganda, the president of the Supreme Court and hundreds of
others. In the months that fol-lowed, hundreds of thousands of minority
Tutsi and Hutu intellectuals were slaughtered. In Kibeho thousands of
Tutsis gathered in a church where they were bombed, shot or hacked to
death by Hutu soldiers and militiamen.
(AP, 4/7/99)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.C3)(SSFC, 4/7/02,
p.A19)(MC, 4/7/02)
1994 Apr 7, UN officer Colonel Luc
Marchal ordered troops to escort Rwandan prime minister Agathe
Uwilingyimana to a radio station in Kigali. The party was ambushed, the
troops hacked to death, and the prime minister was raped and murdered.
Augustin Ndindiliyimana, head of the Gendarmerie Nationale, was later
charged in the killing of 10 Belgian peacekeepers charged with guarding
Uwilingyimana and for his role in the Tutsi extermination.
Ndindiliyimana was ar-rested in Belgium in 2000.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A16)
1994 Apr 7, In Rwanda Augustin
Bizimungu made a speech, several days before he was made army chief, in
the northern district of Mukingo, calling for the killing of Tutsis.
Bizimungu was arrested in Angola in 2002. In 2011 he received a 30-year
jail term for his role in the mass killing of Tutsis.
(AP, 5/17/11)
1994 Apr 7, Pope John Paul II made
remarks at the conclusion of a concert in commemora-tion of the Shoah
(holocaust), in which he acknowledged the Nazi Holocaust killing of
Jews.
(http://tinyurl.com/c9vt8)
1995 Apr 7, President Clinton
threatened to veto a lengthy list of bills passed by the
Republi-can-controlled House if they were not modified in the Senate.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1995 Apr 7, In a prime-time
television address, House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared the GOP
"Contract with America" was only a beginning.
(AP, 4/7/00)
1996 Apr 7, Monica Lewinsky
informed pres. Clinton that she was to be transferred from the White
House. He promised to bring her back following the elections and they
had another sex-ual encounter.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A13)
1996 Apr 7,
Celebrating Easter Mass under a glorious spring sky, Pope John Paul II
ap-pealed for support for the "artisans" of peace in Bosnia, Northern
Ireland and the Holy Land.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1997 Apr 7, The Pulitzer Prize for
fiction went to Steven Millhauser for "Martin Dressler: The Tale of an
American Dreamer," but no award was given for drama. The Times-Picayune
of New Orleans won two journalism Pulitzers, including the public
service prize, for a series examining how overfishing and pollution are
devastating the oceans.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1997 Apr 7, In Columbia prisoners
took over a 1,200 inmate facility in Bucaramanga, the 3rd prison to be
seized in a week.
(WSJ, 4/8/97, p.A1)
1997 Apr 7, In Zaire deserting
government soldiers of the 21st Brigade donned white scarves and
declared themselves on the side of the rebels as the rebels approached
Lubumbashi, the capital of the copper and cobalt rich Shaba province.
(SFC, 4/8/97, p.A8)
1998 Apr 7, President Clinton held
a town meeting in Kansas City, Mo., on the future of Social Security.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1998 Apr 7, Mary Bono, the widow
of entertainer-turned-politician Sonny Bono, won a special election to
serve out the remainder of her husband's congressional term.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1998 Apr 7, Indonesia and the IMF
agreed on a new plan for the economy. Pres. Suharto and the fund made
concessions, that included continuing subsidies on food and fuel and
closing more insolvent banks.
(SFC, 4/8/98, p.A12)
1999 Apr 7, In Kentucky 2
volunteer firefighters, Kenneth Nickell (28) and Kevin Smith (30), were
killed while battling a blaze at the Daniel Boone National Forest.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A13)
1999 Apr 7, The US State Dept.
made public a list of Serb commanders whose names were to be sent to
the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A10)
1999 Apr 7, Chechen gunmen killed
4 Russian policemen patrolling the border near Stavro-pol.
(WSJ, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, Spyros Kyprianou, the
acting president of Cyprus, planned to fly to Belgrade to negotiate the
release of the 3 American soldiers held by Serbia.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, In Macedonia the
government evacuated a huge refugee encampment overnight and sent them
to locations in Albania, Greece and Turkey.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 7, Heavy NATO bombing
reportedly killed 10 civilians in Pristina, Kosovo. The Pro-vincial
Executive Council Building, which housed the offices of Zoran
Andjelkovic, Kosovo's top Serbian official, were was hit by bombs.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.AQ10)
1999 Apr 7, Yugoslav forces sealed
the Morini border with Albania and the border at Mace-donia and told
refugees to return home. The wave of refugees approached the
half-million mark.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A1)(SFC, 4/20/99, p.A7)(AP, 4/7/00)
2000 Apr 7, Pres. Clinton signed a
bill to allow people aged 65-70 to earn as much as they can without
losing Social Security benefits.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 7, Attorney General Janet
Reno met in Washington with the father of Elian Gon-zalez; Reno later
told reporters that officials would arrange for Juan Miguel Gonzalez to
reclaim his son, but she gave Elian’s Miami relatives one more chance
to drop their resistance and join in a peaceful transfer.
(AP, 4/7/01)
2000 Apr 7, A Miami jury ruled
that cigarettes caused the diseases of 3 smokers chosen as
representatives in a class-action suit. Compensatory damages totaled
12.7 million and opened the door to huge punitive damages.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 7, Iqbal Masih, a slain
child labor spokesperson, was named in Sweden as the first winner of
the World’s Children’s prize. Masih was gunned down at age 13 after
speaking out against child labor in carpet factories where he had
worked from age 5-10. Prize money was earmarked to establish the Iqbal
Masih Freedom Center for the Rights of the Child in Pakistan.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.C1)
2001 Apr 7, In Cincinnati Timothy
Thomas (19), an unarmed black man wanted on 14 misde-meanor warrants,
was fatally shot by a white police officer. The shooting led to
city-wide riots. Officer Stephen Roach was later charged with negligent
homicide and obstructing official busi-ness.
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.A10)(SFC, 5/8/01, p.A3)(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, The $297 million Mars
Odyssey was launched on a six-month, 286-million-mile journey to the
Red Planet and was expected to arrive near Mars Oct 24. A 2-year orbit
to map the planet’s chemistry and minerals was planned.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A2)(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.A13)(AP,
4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, Actress Beatrice
Straight died in Los Angeles at age 86.
(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 7, China rejected US
statements of regret and continued to demand an apology for the April 1
collision between a US spy plane and Chinese jet.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C1)
2001 Apr 7, In Tehran 40-42 people
were arrested including members of the opposition Free-dom Movement.
The Revolutionary Court said some were linked to the Iraq-based
Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK).
(SFC, 4/9/01, p.A8)
2001 Apr 7, The weeklong Jewish
Passover began at sundown.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C3)
2001 Apr 7, In the Philippines
Manila went dark for 14 hours when a transmission line over-loaded and
cut power to 35 million people.
(WSJ, 4/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Apr 7, In Vietnam a
Russian-made M-17 helicopter carrying a team searching for Ameri-can
MIAs crashed and all aboard were reported killed. Rescuers recovered
the bodies of 9 Vietnamese and 7 Americans the next day.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.C2)(SFC, 4/9/01, p.A7)
2002 Apr 7, Pres. Bush ended
weekend talks with Britain’s PM Tony Blair in Texas. Blair said he
would back a US military action against Iraq.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, Arthur Andersen
announced it would lay off more than a quarter of its US work-force, a
direct result of Enron filing for bankruptcy in the fall of 2001.
(AP, 4/8/03)
2002 Apr 7, Actor John Agar (81)
died in Burbank, California.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2002 Apr 7, In Colombia 2
bombs killed 12 people in Villavicencio and FARC rebels were suspected.
One bomb was used to attract people when the was 2nd detonated.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, In Costa Rica Abel
Pacheco (68), psychiatrist, poet and former TV commentator, was elected
president in a runoff against Rolando Araya.
(WSJ, 4/8/02, p.A1)
2002 Apr 7, In Iraq Saddam Hussein
pledged to defeat the US if attacked and promised to continue supplying
Palestinians to defend against Israel.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A9)
2002 Apr 7, Israeli forces
continued Operation Defensive Shield and news reporters were kept away.
12 Palestinians were killed in Nablus with stiff resistance in the
Jenin refugee camp. Worldwide protests included a march in Morocco by a
half million people and in Brussels by some 10,000.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A1,8)(AP, 4/7/03)
2003 Apr 7, Syracuse beat Kansas
81-78 in the NCAA Basketball finals.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, The US Supreme Court
voted 6-3 to uphold a 50-year-old Virginia law making it a crime to
burn a cross as an act of intimidation.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2003 Apr 7, Pulitzer Prize winners
included the Boston Globe for public service, Jeffrey Eugenides for
fiction (Middlesex); Rick Atkinson for history ((An Army at Dawn: The
War in North Africa (1942-1943); and Samantha Power for general
nonfiction (A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide”).
The Boston Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service for its
coverage of the priest sex abuse scandal.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A2)(AP, 4/7/08)
2003 Apr 7, Jewelry valued at $4.5
million was stolen from the Lang Estate and Jewelry store on Union
Square in SF. 2 men were later arrested. In 2006 Troy Smith (44) was
convicted in the robbery and faced 35 years to life in prison. His
brother Dino Smith (48) and George Turner (46) were convicted in 2005.
The robbers entered on a Sunday night and forced employees to open the
safes the next morning and escaped with 1,300 pieces of jewelry.
(SFC, 12/21/04, p.B3)(SFC, 11/1/06, p.B7)(SFC,
10/1/09, p.E3)
2003 Apr 7, In the 19th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom US forces in tanks and armored vehi-cles
stormed into the center of Baghdad, seizing Saddam Hussein's Sijood and
Republican pal-aces. As many as 5 marines were killed. Many Iraqis died
in constant suicidal attacks. It was later speculated that the US and
the Baath regime arranged a secret deal (safqua) to hand over Baghdad.
(AP, 4/7/03)(SFC, 4/7/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/8/03,
p.A1)(SSFC, 4/20/03, p.D3)
2003 Apr 7, A US warplane dropped
4 precision-guided 2,000-pound JDAMs and left a smok-ing crater 60 feet
deep in the upscale al-Mansour section of western Baghdad, where Saddam
Hussein was believed to have been in a meeting with top officials.
(AP, 4/8/03)(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, Capt. Harry Alexander
Hornbuckle on the road to Baghdad led 80 US soldiers against 300 Iraqi
and Syrian fighters. 200 enemy were killed with no US casualties.
(WSJ, 11/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 7, The SF Chronicle ran a
$45,000 full-page ad that called for the impeachment of Pres. Bush.
Former US Attorney Gen’l. Ramsey Clark led the ad sponsors.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A12)
2003 Apr 7, Juan Emeterio Rivas,
Colombia radio journalist for station Calor Estereo, was shot and
killed by gunmen after he told his police body guards to take time off.
Rivas' body and that of an engineering student were discovered in a
rural area outside Barrancabermeja. Julio Cesar Ardila, the mayor of
Barrancabermeja, was later charged with ordering the murder. He was
among three men convicted in the murder of Jose Emeterio Rivas. In 2009
Ardila was sen-tenced to 28 years in prison for ordering the murder.
(AP, 4/7/03)(AP, 7/12/03)(AP, 1/22/09)
2003 Apr 7, Cuba handed down
sentences of 15-27 years to the 1st 7 of 80 recently rounded
dissidents. Activists of Oswaldo Paya’s Christian Liberation Movement
made up more than two-thirds of those arrested. In response the EU
imposed diplomatic sanctions and Cuban officials boycotted embassy
functions in what came to be called the “cocktail war.” The sanctions
were suspended in 2005 and lifted in 2008.
(AP, 4/8/03)(Econ, 12/17/05, p.38)(Econ, 6/28/08,
p.44)
2003 Apr 7, Cecile de Brunhoff
(99), the inspiration for Babar the elephant whose adventures
captivated generations of children, died in Paris. She first invented
the tale of a little elephant as a bedtime story for her boys in 1931.
They in turn told their father, painter Jean de Brunhoff, who
illustrated the story and filled in details.
(AP, 4/8/03)
2003 Apr 7, Israeli soldiers shot
and killed a Palestinian man who approached the fence of a Jewish
settlement in the Gaza Strip overnight. In Tulkarem, Israeli troops
arrested Maslama Thabet, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2003 Apr 7, Mexico said it would
prepay $3.84 billion in the last outstanding Brady par bonds. They
originally totaled $34 billion.
(WSJ, 4/9/03, p.A10)
2003 Apr 7, In the northern
Siberian republic of Yakutia a fire engulfed an old wooden school,
killing 21 students and a teacher.
(AP, 4/7/03)
2004 Apr 7, Citizens Against
Government Waste (CAGW) issued its latest "Pig Book," an ex-position of
"improper of unnecessary" US federal expenditures.
(SSFC, 4/4/04, Par p.24)
2004 Apr 7, The US government
issued the 1st license for a manned suborbital rocket to Scaled
Composites of Mojave headed by Burt Rutan.
(SFC, 4/8/04, p.A2)
2004 Apr 7, In Brazil Amazon
Indians attacked prospectors who were illegally digging for dia-monds.
Cinta Larga Indians massacred 29 illegal wildcat diamond miners on
their remote northern reservation. 28 Indians were charged in the
killings, but the case has stalled over ju-risdictional questions.
(AP, 4/14/04)(AP, 12/10/07)
2004 Apr 7, In Germany a court in
Hamburg released Mounir el-Motassadeq (30), the only man convicted so
far of involvement in the Sep 11, 2001, attacks.
(WSJ, 4/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr 7, A U.S.-led
multinational force trying to bring stability to Haiti helped
detain Wil-ford Ferdinand, a top rebel figure.
(AP, 4/9/04)
2004 Apr 7, In India a land mine
killed at least 26 policemen in the eastern state of Jhark-hand.
Communist guerrillas, calling for a boycott of India's national
elections, were suspected.
(AP, 4/8/04)
2004 Apr 7, U.S. Marines in a
fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that hit a
mosque compound filled with worshippers, and witnesses said as many as
40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread to nearly all of
the country.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, Militiamen loyal to
al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, clashed with Polish troops in
Karbala, and Muntadhir al-Mussawi, an aide to the cleric, was killed.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, In Iraq 2 German
counter-terrorism GSG-9 security agents were ambushed and went missing
while on a routine trip from Jordan to Baghdad.
(AP, 4/10/04)
2004 Apr 7, In Malaysia 3 men
armed with firebombs, machetes and an ax attacked Myan-mar's embassy,
hacking one senior official and starting a fire that destroyed the
building.
(AP, 4/7/04)
2004 Apr 7, A Moscow court
sentenced Russian arms control researcher Igor Sutyagin, a military
analyst with the USA and Canada Institute, a respected Moscow-based
think-tank, to 15 years on charges of passing information on nuclear
submarines and other weapons to a British company that Russia claimed
was a CIA cover. Sutyagin insisted on his innocence, saying the
information he provided was available from open sources. In 2010 he was
released as part of a spy swap with the US.
(AP, 4/7/04)(AP, 7/9/10)
2005 Apr 7, Pres. Bush met with
Premier Berlusconi and Pres. Ciampi one day after viewing the pope’s
body at the Vatican.
(SFC, 4/7/05, p.A13)
2005 Apr 7, In Delaware police
arrested Allison L. Norman (22) after he killed 2 people and wounded 4
others during a rampage.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, Montana voted to ban
smoking in all public places. Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he would sign
the legislation.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, Pfizer Inc. agreed to
suspend sales and marketing of its arthritis drug Bextra at the request
of US and EU drug regulators, who said the risks outweigh the drug's
benefits.
(AP, 4/7/05)(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr 7, California state
prosecutors charged Julie Lee, a top volunteer fund-raiser for former
Sec. of State Kevin Shelley, with grand theft and other felonies. In
2008 Lee (62) was found guilty on 5 of 7 charges relating to Shelley’s
2002 campaign, All the charges related to a $500,000 grant for a SF
Sunset District community center that was never built. In state court
Lee pleaded guilty to 9 counts.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A1)(SFC, 7/12/08, p.A1)(SFC,
7/17/08, p.B1)
2005 Apr 7, Riza Malaj (34),
Albania's most wanted man, blew himself up about this time while
fishing with dynamite. He lost both hands, badly hurt his eyes and
suffered serious wounds all over his body while trying to catch trout.
(AP, 4/11/05)
2005 Apr 7, Australia’s PM John
Howard and Malaysia’s Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced plans to
negotiate a free trade agreement but refused to concede ground on key
differences regarding Canberra's role in the region.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2005 Apr 7, A bomb blast rocked a
Cairo bazaar popular with foreigners. An American tourist died the next
day from wounds sustained in a bomb blast raising the death toll to
three. Hassan Rafaat Ahmed Bashandi (17-18), was carrying almost 7
pounds of TNT in a leather bag filled with nails when it exploded
prematurely.
(AP, 4/8/05)(AP, 4/11/05)
2005 Apr 7, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a
Shiite, was named Iraq's interim prime minister; Kurdish leader Jalal
Talabani was sworn in as interim president.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2005 Apr 7, The Irish Republican
Army said it will consider an appeal by Sinn Fein party chief Gerry
Adams to renounce violence, a long-elusive goal in Northern Ireland
peacemaking.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2005 Apr 7, Mexico City's leftist
mayor formally declared his intention to run for president next year
even as Congress was to decide whether he should face criminal charges
for allegedly disobeying a court order in a land-use case.
(AP, 4/8/05)
2005 Apr 7, Passengers on historic
bus trips between the Pakistani and Indian portions of Kashmir crossed
a bridge spanning the de facto border, voyages both sides hope will
lead to lasting peace on the subcontinent. Kashmiris walked across the
“Peace Bridge,” on the Line of Control between India and Pakistan.
(AP, 4/7/05)(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 7, President Robert
Mugabe of Zimbabwe defied a European Union travel ban and arrived in
Rome to join world leaders attending Pope John Paul II's funeral. Italy
has a pact with the Vatican in which it does not interfere with people
transiting the country to see the pope.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2006 Apr 7, The US Court of
International Law ruled that US Customs violated a provision of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in applying a law known as
the Byrd amendment to antidumping and countervailing duties on goods
from Canada and Mexico.
(Reuters, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Republican leaders
called on Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., to step down from his ranking
post on the House ethics committee because of allegations that he
provided legisla-tive earmarks benefiting companies and individuals who
helped make him a millionaire.
(SFC, 4/8/06, p.A4)
2006 Apr 7, Dena Schlosser,
charged with murder for cutting off her baby daughter Marga-ret's arms
in what her lawyers portrayed as a religious frenzy, was found not
guilty by reason of insanity by a judge in McKinney, Texas.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2006 Apr 7, In Tennessee 10 people
were killed as tornadoes hit the area for the 2nd time in a week.
(AP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, It was reported that
scientists at MIT had harnessed a replicating virus, that binds to gold
and cobalt oxide, to create a nanotechnology battery.
(WSJ, 4/7/06, p.B2)
2006 Apr 7, In southern Algeria
gunmen attacked a convoy of customs agents traveling through the
desert, killing 13 and wounding eight others.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Australian PM John
Howard moved to ease Indonesian outrage over a decision to grant visas
to asylum-seekers from Papua, saying his government would review the
process.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Austria a 2-day
meeting began in Vienna for European Imams aimed at creat-ing a
distinct identity for European Muslims.
(SFC, 4/7/06, p.A16)
2006 Apr 7, A British judge ruled
that author Dan Brown did not steal ideas for "The Da Vinci Code" from
a nonfiction work.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2006 Apr 7, Britain’s BAE Systems
announced plans to sell its stake in aircraft maker Airbus to its
French-German partner EADS.
(AFP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Chile an appeals
court upheld the indictment of former dictator Gen. Pinochet on charges
of evading up to $3 million in taxes related to secret accounts in
foreign banks.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, The EU said it has cut
off direct aid payments to the Hamas-led Palestinian gov-ernment
because of its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, A bus skidded off a
narrow mountain road and plunged into a river in a remote region of
Indian Kashmir and dozens were feared dead.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, A toned-down edition
of Playboy magazine went on sale in Indonesia, defying threats of
protests by Islamic hardliners in the world's most populous Muslim
nation.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, At least 2 suicide
attackers, one wearing a woman's cloaks, blew themselves up at the
Buratha Shiite mosque in northern Baghdad, killing some 79-90 people
and wounding scores. One US service member died of wounds suffered
while on patrol in western Baghdad.
(AP, 4/7/06)(AP, 4/8/06)(Econ, 4/22/06, p.48)
2006 Apr 7, Israeli troops shot
and killed a Palestinian man during an overnight arrest raid in the
West Bank city of Nablus.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Israeli missiles
slammed into a car in Gaza City, killing two members of a Pales-tinian
rocket squad in the 2nd deadly airstrike since the Islamic militant
group Hamas assumed power last week. An Israeli airstrike killed six
Palestinian militants and wounded five at a militant training camp in
central Gaza.
(AP, 4/8/06)(SFC, 4/8/06, p.A7)
2006 Apr 7, Japan’s health and
welfare ministry said the nation’s population shrank in the year
through November 2005, the first annual decrease on record, confirming
an earlier gov-ernment prediction.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, In Nepal police fired
tear gas and fought frenzied street battles with protesters on the
second day of a strike called by government adversaries of King
Gyanendra. Protesters said 150 people were arrested.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, It was reported that
some AIDS patients in South Africa were choosing cash dis-ability
grants over advanced AIDS drugs in order to sustain their families.
(WSJ, 4/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Apr 7, In Turkey a suicide
bomber blew herself up injuring 2 people, including a sus-pected
accomplice. Turkish forces killed 6 Kurdish rebels in Sirnak.
(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.A1)(AP, 4/8/06)
2006 Apr 7, The UN appealed for
$426 million to help victims of drought in Horn of Africa, where more
than 40 percent of people are undernourished and thousands have died
because of complications due to hunger.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 7, Venezuela Attorney
General Isaias Rodriguez said that five suspects were being charged
with willful homicide in the slayings of the 3 Faddoul brothers, whose
bodies were found April 4. Supporters of President Hugo Chavez pelted
the car of the US ambassador with eggs and tomatoes, then chased after
his convoy on motorcycles.
(AP, 4/7/06)(AP, 4/8/06)
2007 Apr 7, The New York Times
reported in its Sunday edition that the Bush administration in January
allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from North Korea in
an appar-ent violation of a UN Security Council sanctions resolution
passed months earlier over its nu-clear test.
(Reuters, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Thousands of people
marched through downtown Los Angeles, demanding a way for the country's
estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens and
condemning President Bush's latest proposal.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, It was reported that
Ray Irani, Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s chairman and chief executive,
took in more than $400 million in compensation in 2006, one of the
biggest single-year payouts in US corporate history.
(Reuters, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, The sport salmon
fishing season opened in California.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A1)
2007 Apr 7, In Oregon 15 libraries
in Jackson were due to close following the loss of $7 mil-lion in
federal funding.
(SSFC, 3/4/07, p.A1)
2007 Apr 7, It was reported that
injections of Mycobacterium vaccae into mice caused their immune
systems to produce serotonin. This neurotransmitter, when low in
humans, was known to be related to depression.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.79)
2007 Apr 7, Johnny Hart (76),
creator of the B.C. comic strip (1958), died at his home in Endi-cott,
NY. He and Brant Parker created the “Wizard of Id” strip.
(SFC, 4/9/07, p.B3)
2007 Apr 7, Actor Barry Nelson
(b.1917) died in Bucks County, Pa. He was the first actor to portray
Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond in a 1954 TV adoption of Casino
Royale.
(SFC, 4/16/07, p.B8)(AP,
4/7/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Nelson)
2007 Apr 7, In southwestern
Afghanistan suspected Taliban militants ambushed Afghan workers of an
American de-mining company, leaving seven people dead and four wounded.
Of-ficials said more than 1,000 NATO and Afghan troops clashed with
Taliban and took over con-trol of Sangin, a district center in southern
Afghanistan long held by the militants.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Suspected Islamist
militants opened fire on a military patrol in northwestern Alge-ria,
starting a gunbattle that left nine soldiers and six attackers dead.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, In Brazil Martin
Strel, a 52-year-old Slovenian, completed a 3,272 swim down the Amazon
River that could set a world record for distance. In 2000, he completed
an 1,866-mile swim along the Danube. He broke that record two years
later after swimming 2,360 miles down the Mississippi. In 2004 he broke
it again by swimming 2,487 miles along the Yangtze river in China.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, In India a jeep
carrying a gelatin-based explosive used for a highway construction
project exploded in a southern village, killing 16 people and injuring
22 more.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, US warplanes attacked
suspected militiamen wielding shoulder-fired rockets in the second day
of fierce fighting against Shiite gunmen south of Baghdad. At least one
civilian was killed and five were seriously wounded when an American
tank fired on their house in Di-waniyah. Iraqi troops killed Abu Baraa
al-Libi, a Libyan al-Qaida figure, in a raid on his Baghdad hideout
just before the man could detonate an explosives belt he was wearing.
US forces also killed one suspect and captured 8 others in raids in
Baghdad and south of Ramadi. A roadside bomb exploded next to a joint
American-Iraqi army patrol on a highway leading into Annah, 175 miles
northwest of Baghdad. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and two were
wounded. Police in Fallujah reported finding four bodies in the center
of the city. Four American soldiers were killed in an explosion near
their vehicle in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. Duaa Khalil
Aswad (17), a member of the insular Yazidi religious sect, was stoned
to death for loving a Sunni Mus-lim boy [see April 22].
(AP, 4/7/07)(AP, 4/8/07)(SFC, 5/22/07, p.A8)
2007 Apr 7, An Israeli helicopter
launched an airstrike along the Gaza Strip's border with Is-rael,
killing a Palestinian militant and wounding two others.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, The 17-year insurgency
in Kashmir continued with an average of 3 lives lost every day. India
had an estimated 600,000 soldiers and paramilitary police stationed in
Jammu & Kashmir state.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.14)
2007 Apr 7, Emergency officials
said 247 dead seals have washed up on the shores of the Caspian Sea in
Kazakhstan in the past week.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Libya’s
foreign-exchange reserves were estimated at $56 billion. The population
was reported to be about 5.6 million.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.46)
2007 Apr 7, Malaysian ministers
issued fresh attacks on bloggers, threatening to take away their rights
and accusing them of trying to overthrow the government, according to
reports.
(AFP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, In northern Pakistan
some 40 people were killed and more than 70 injured in 2 days of
sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Kurram.
(AFP, 4/7/07)(Econ, 4/14/07, p.43)
2007 Apr 7, In the southern
Philippines 9 soldiers and a civilian were killed in a clash in a small
army camp in Jolo island’s Parang town.
(AP, 4/8/07)
2007 Apr 7, A Russian rocket
carrying the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word
roared into the night skies over Kazakhstan, sending Charles Simonyi
and two cosmo-nauts soaring into orbit on a two-day journey to the
international space station.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, A roadside bomb tore
through a civilian bus in northern Sri Lanka, killing seven people and
wounding 26. The army blamed Tamil Tiger rebels for the attack.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Thousands of
supporters of Ukrainian PM Viktor Yanukovych rallied for a fifth day in
the streets of Kiev, calling for stability amid a political crisis over
the president's dissolution of parliament.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 7, Yemeni police arrested
three men suspected of setting fire to a mosque and wounding at least
33 people.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2008 Apr 7, The Washington Post
won 6 Pulitzer Prizes, the most in its history. Junot Diaz won the
fiction award for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Tracy Letts
won the drama award for “August: Osage County.” Bob Dylan won a special
citation for his life’s work.
(SFC, 4/8/08, p.A8)
2008 Apr 7, In North Carolina
Thomas Wright, a former state lawmaker, was convicted of mishandling
charitable contributions and fraudulently obtaining a loan. He was
sentenced to 6-8 years in prison.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A2)
2008 Apr 7, In Ohio 9 mortgage
lenders agreed to modify adjustable-rate mortgages for bor-rowers
facing foreclosure. In Pennsylvania mortgage companies and consumer
advocates opened talks to help cash-strapped homeowners avoid
foreclosure. Last week Maryland’s Gov. signed a measure creating a
150-day moratorium on foreclosures.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A4)
2008 Apr 7, Samuel (b.1913)
Frankel, Detroit area developer and philanthropist, died. In the 1960s
Frankel collaborated with Harry Cunningham to create the discount-store
concept, build-ing the first Kmart store. In 1969, he developed
Somerset Mall. In 2005 he and his wife Jean provided a $20 million
endowment to establish the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic
Stud-ies at the University of Michigan.
(www.lsa.umich.edu/judaic/html/history_goals_3_2.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/5srvs6)
2008 Apr 7, In southern
Afghanistan, militants attacked a police convoy in Uruzgan province,
and the ensuing clash left 13 insurgents dead and five wounded. In the
western province of Herat, Taliban militants attacked a checkpoint in
Shindand district, killing two police officers and wounding another.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Australia 5 teenage
boys armed with machetes and baseball bats invaded a Sydney high
school, smashing classrooms and injuring 18 students and a teacher.
(AFP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In London a coroner's
jury decided that Diana and Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed due to
reckless speed and drinking by their driver, and by the reckless
pursuit of vehicles chasing them, not as part of a murder conspiracy.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, In London Oleg
Gordievsky, a double agent who became the most senior Soviet spy to
defect to the West during the Cold War, said that he became sick after
taking the pills at his home in southern England on Oct. 31.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Bulgaria gunmen
killed Georgy Stoyev, the country’s best-known author of books on the
mafia. The night before, Borislav Georgiev, the chief executive of a
large energy company, was killed in his apartment building with two
bullets to the head.
(http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iOiGGOjL2rCkZuEhCa9kkLtaA5LA)
2008 Apr 7, China’s official
Xinhua News Agency said Zhang Rongkun, a Shanghai tycoon, has been
sentenced to 19 years in prison in a pension funds scandal that toppled
the city's communist party chief.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, China and New Zealand
signed a free-trade agreement effective October 1.
(www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-04/07/content_6596491.htm)(WSJ,
4/8/08, p.A14)
2008 Apr 7, A Chinese fishing boat
capsized after colliding with a South Korean cargo ship off South
Korea's southernmost island, leaving six Chinese sailors missing.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, The Muslim
Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition force, called on Egyptians to
boycott local council elections due on Tuesday in protest at the
disqualification of most of its candidates.
(Reuters, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, The EU opened the way
for air travelers to use mobile phones to talk, text or send e-mails on
planes throughout Europe's airspace.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Security officials
extinguished the Olympic torch three times as protests against China's
human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series
of stops and starts. France's former sports minister, Jean-Francois
Lamour, said that though the torch had been put out, the Olympic flame
itself still burned in the lantern where it is kept overnight and on
airplane flights.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Haiti protesters
angered by high food prices flooded the streets of Port-au-Prince,
forcing businesses and schools to close as unrest spread from the
countryside. Wit-nesses said at least one person was killed by hotel
security guards during a protest in the southern city of Les Cayes.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, Iraq’s prime minister
issued his strongest warning yet to radical Shiite cleric Mu-qtada
al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or face political isolation.
The Sadrists said a move to ban them from elections would be
unconstitutional. Hospital officials said nine more people were killed,
including five children and two women, and dozens wounded as gunbattles
continued. That pushed the two-day death toll to at least 25.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas resumed
face-to-face negotiations, trying to push forward peace efforts after
nearly two months marred by heavy Gaza Strip violence and new Israeli
plans to expand settlements.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Italian police
arrested 38 suspects in a sweep against a clan of the 'ndrangheta
organized crime syndicate accused of murder, extortion and arms and
drug trafficking.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Kosovo’s leaders
signed the country’s new Constitution.
(SFC, 4/8/08, p.A3)
2008 Apr 7, In Morocco 9 Islamists
serving long sentences for the deadly 2003 Casablanca bombings escaped
from Kenitra prison, north of Rabat. In January, 2009, Hicham Alami one
of the escapees who had been sentenced to life, was captured in Algeria
and returned to Mo-rocco.
(AFP, 4/7/08)(AP, 1/9/09)
2008 Apr 7, Nepal was rocked by
two bombings, the latest violence to hit campaigning for this week's
vote on the country's political future following a peace deal with
Maoist rebels.
(AFP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Spanish officials said
2 people in Spain have died of the human variant of mad cow disease, in
the first such fatalities since 2005. The two new victims apparently
contracted the disease prior to 2001 and health controls on livestock
and meat production are much tighter now than they were then. Spain has
reported more than 700 cases of mad cow disease since it was first
detected in this country in 2000.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, Switzerland's Novartis
AG said it will spend about $39 billion in a two-step bid for a
majority stake in U.S. eye-care company Alcon.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 7, It was reported that
Thailand’s market bubble in religious talismans had popped leaving many
small business people in debt. The market in Jatukam Ramathep amulets
had swelled to $1.5 billion in 2007.
(WSJ, 4/7/08, p.A1)
2008 Apr 7, In Yemen 7 people were
arrested on suspicion of involvement in attacks the pre-vious day
against a residential complex for Westerners in San’a, Yemen's capital.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 7, Zimbabwe authorities
released Barry Bearak, a NY Times journalist, along with an
unidentified British citizen. They had been accused of reporting
without official accreditation.
(WSJ, 4/8/08, p.A10)
2009 Apr 7, US military leaders
said the Pentagon has spent over $100 million in the past 6 months
responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other
computer network problems.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.C3)
2009 Apr 7, In Alabama authorities
found the body of Kevin Lee Garner (45) near his burned home in
Priceville. The home had burned overnight. Garner's body was found
following a day of searching for him in several north Alabama counties
following the murders of four of his family members in the Greenhill
community of Lauderdale County.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090408/ap_on_re_us/alabama_four_dead)(SFC,
4/8/09, p.A5)
2009 Apr 7, In southern California
a gunman in Temecula opened fire at a Korean Christian retreat center,
leaving one woman dead and four people injured.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, A lawsuit filed in US
District Court in Denver by the SEC alleged that Shawn Merriman, an
unlicensed broker, collected up to $20 million from investors in
several states to support a lavish lifestyle. The former bishop in The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints allegedly operated a Ponzi
scheme from his suburban Denver home for about 15 years, bilking
investors out of millions of dollars to collect religious art and
classic cars.
(AP, 4/9/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Texas Jon Dale
Jones (46), a former Army hospital nurse, pleaded guilty to assault and
theft. He was accused of infecting 15 patients with hepatitis C. Jones
was arrested on federal charges in March of 2008 for using dirty
needles to administer anesthesia, and ac-cused of stealing painkillers
for himself.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)(www.mahalo.com/Jon_Dale_Jones)
2009 Apr 7, Vermont became the
first state to legalize same sex marriage through a legisla-ture’s vote.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)
2009 Apr 7, GM and Segway
announced that they are working together to develop a two-wheeled,
two-seat electric vehicle designed to be a fast, safe, inexpensive and
clean alternative to traditional cars and trucks for cities across the
world. The project was called P.U.M.A. (Per-sonal Urban Mobility and
Accessibility).
(AP, 4/7/09)(WSJ, 4/8/09, p.B4)
2009 Apr 7, Samuel Beer, Harvard
professor (1946-1982), died. His books included “British Politics in
the Collectivist Age” (1965), which established him as the foremost
scholar on mod-ern British politics.
(Econ, 5/2/09, p.88)
2009 Apr 7, Jack Wrangler (b.1946
as John Robert Stillman), porn star and musical theater producer, died
in Manhattan. He appeared in over 30 gay sex films and 20 straight
films includ-ing “The Devil in Miss Jones” (1982).
(SFC, 4/10/09, p.B5)
2009 Apr 7, Australia announced
plans to build a 30 billion US dollar broadband network, its biggest
infrastructure project ever, opting to retain government control rather
than contract out the deal.
(AFP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, Cuba’s President Raul
Castro met with six visiting members of the Congressional Black Caucus
for more than four hours, his first face-to-face discussions with US
leaders since he became president last year. A "very healthy, very
energetic" Fidel Castro asked visiting Congressional Black Caucus
members what Cuba could do to help President Barack Obama improve
bilateral relations during his first meeting with US officials since
falling ill in 2006.
(AP, 4/7/09)(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Ethiopia, the world's
sixth largest coffee producer, said it did not intend to nation-alize
the coffee sector after revoking licenses of six exporters for hoarding
the beans. PM Meles Zenawi had warned the exporters against hoarding
coffee, accusing them of speculation in the world markets.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, A man opened fire at a
courthouse in Bavaria, killing his sister-in-law and injuring two other
people. He then shot himself dead. The incident appeared to stem from a
long-running inheritance dispute.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, President Barack Obama
flew into Iraq from Turkey on a trip shrouded in se-crecy, for a brief
look at a war he opposed as a candidate and now vows to end as
commander in chief. A car bomb in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad
killed at least nine people and wounded 18 others. A suicide car bomb
killed three people at a police checkpoint in Fallujah. In Iskandariyah
police found the bullet-riddled body a member of the Awakening Council,
a group of former Sunni insurgents who sided with the US in the fight
against al-Qaida in Iraq. The councilman was kidnapped a day earlier. A
car bombing in Kazimiyah killed nine people, includ-ing a mother who
was riding in a taxi with her infant son.
(AP, 4/7/09)(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Israeli police fatally
shot a Palestinian motorist as he tried to run over officers guarding
the demolition of the home of a militant who killed three Israelis with
a construction vehicle in July.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Moldova
anti-communist protesters stormed the Parliament, hurling computers
through shattered windows and setting fire to furniture in a violent
demonstration against what they said were fraudulent elections. 3
people were left dead and hundreds were detained.
(AP, 4/7/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.46)
2009 Apr 7, In southern Pakistan
police arrested five men alleged to be planning suicide at-tacks on the
city of Karachi.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 7, Former Peruvian
President Alberto Fujimori (70) was found guilty of murder and
kidnapping for death squad activities during his 10-year rule during
the 1990s. He was sen-tenced to 25 years in prison. His daughter,
Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori (33), said people's outrage over the
"vengeful" verdict will propel her to Peru's presidency in 2011. Then
she'll par-don him.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, Saudi authorities
beheaded 3 Pakistanis convicted of killing a fellow Pakistani during a
jewelry heist. This brought to 20 the number of beheadings in the
kingdom this year.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In South Korea former
Pres. Roh Moo-hyun announced that his wife had received money from Park
Yeon-cha, chairman of Taekwang Industrial Co., a shoe manufacturer,
sev-eral hours following the arrest of Chung Sangmoon, a former aide
who had accepted the money for the president’s wife.
for the president’s wife.
(WSJ, 4/8/09, p.A8)
2009 Apr 7, In Thailand protesters
surrounded the prime minister's car and smashed a win-dow as he rode in
it, escalating tensions a day before a massive anti-government rally
that the leader said has sparked concerns of civil war.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Turkey Pres. Obama
wrapped up his first European trip as president with a re-quest of the
world: Look past his nation's stereotypes and flaws. "You will find a
partner and a supporter and a friend in the United States of America."
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, UNESCO awarded the
World Press Freedom Prize to Lasantha Wickrematunge, a murdered Sri
Lankan journalist, whose self-written obituary accused the government
of silenc-ing him. His self-written obituary was published three days
after his murder in early January, in which no arrests have been made.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Venezuela
legislators loyal to President Hugo Chavez approved a new law that
erodes the authority of Caracas' opposition Mayor Antonio Ledezma by
subordinating him to a government-appointed official.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2010 Apr 7, An Emeryville, Ca.,
drug analysis laboratory was raided as part of 3-year DEA investigation
dubbed “Operation Lude Behavior.” 3 men at the lab were among 22
charged in a nationwide Quaalude trafficking ring.
(SFC, 4/9/10, p.C5)
2010 Apr 7, Afghan and foreign
troops killed several insurgents during an operation to capture a
senior Taliban commander suspected of providing materials used in
making roadside bombs. 2 insurgents were captured during the operation
in Helmand province's Kajaki Sofla.
(AP, 4/9/10)
2010 Apr 7, Bangladesh deployed
the army to guard water pumps in the capital Dhaka after acute
shortages triggered widespread protests.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Brazil rains kept
pummeling Rio de Janeiro as officials scrambled to restore transit
after at least 96 people were killed by landslides and floods.
(Reuters, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, China and India signed
an agreement to set up a hot line linking their top leaders.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Innovation for the
Development and Protection of the Environment (IDPE) said that from
March 3-28 Congo government troops killed 7 hippos and 5 elephants as
well as five antelopes, four baboons, three chimpanzees and two buffalo
in Virunga national Park, a UNESCO world heritage. The soldiers "use
their wives and cousins to sell the meat" in villages near the park,
the IDPE said in a report that included photos of decomposing elephant
car-casses.
(AFP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, Auto giants Renault,
Nissan and Daimler launched a partnership to save billions of euros and
accelerate sales of low-pollution electric cars.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Indonesia a
magnitude 7.7 earthquake shook Indonesia's northwest island of Sumatra,
triggering a small tsunami, snapping power lines and sending panicked
residents rushing for higher ground.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Iraq spokesman
Salah al-Obeidi announced that a survey of supporters of anti-American
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr voted 24% for him to support Shiite politician
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was interim prime minister from 2005 to 2006.
Iraq's incumbent PM Nouri al-Maliki and his chief rival Ayad Allawi
received only 10% and 9% of votes respectively. In northern Iraq 2
American soldiers died in combat while conducting a patrol.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, Israel’s police said 6
Israelis have been detained on suspicion of running an in-ternational
organ trafficking ring and breaking promises to donors to pay for their
removed kid-neys.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Kyrgyzstan
anti-government unrest rocked Bishkek as thousands of protesters
stormed the main government building, set fire to the prosecutor's
office and looted state TV headquarters. At least 83 people were killed
and some 1500 injured in clashes nationwide.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/8/10)(Econ, 4/17/10, p.46)
2010 Apr 7, In Mexico police in
the border state of Nuevo Leon found the bodies of a police chief and
two police officers who had been kidnapped a day earlier. In the
central state of More-los, gunmen attacked the offices of federal
prosecutors in the city of Cuernavaca, killing a guard. A bystander was
killed during a shootout between gunmen and federal police in the town
of Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas state, on the Guatemalan border.
(AP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 7, In northwestern
Pakistan militants attached a bomb to a tanker carrying fuel to NATO
forces in Afghanistan, destroying the vehicle and killing a boy who was
riding in a van behind it.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Somali pirates off the
coast of Kenya hijacked the MV Yasin C, a Turkish vessel with 25 crew
onboard, the day after a hostage drowned during a separate encounter
between naval forces and a pirated vessel. The crew locked themselves
in the engine room and realized that the pirates had left the ship on
April 9.
(AP, 4/7/10)(AP, 4/10/10)
2010 Apr 7, South Africa's
governing party said it has asked all its wings to stop singing
con-troversial songs including one with lyrics that encourage people to
shoot white farmers which some blame for the slaying of a white
supremacist leader.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Spain Baltasar
Garzon (54), the judge who became an international hero by going after
Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden, was indicted for having dared to
investi-gate what is arguably Spain's own biggest unresolved case:
atrocities committed during and af-ter its ruinous Civil War.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Switzerland the
Solar Impulse aircraft, a pioneering Swiss bid to fly around the world
on solar energy, successfully completed its first test flight.
(AFP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 7, Thai PM Abhisit
Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in Bangkok, handing the army
broad powers to restore order after anti-government protesters broke
into Parliament, forcing some lawmakers to flee by helicopter.
(AP, 4/7/10)
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