Today in History - April 20
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121 Apr 20,
Marcus Aurelius (d.180), 16th Roman emperor, philosopher, was born. He
authored the “Meditations.” [see Apr 26]
(V.D.-H.K.p.64)(HN, 4/20/98)
1164 Apr 20, Victor IV, [Ottaviano
Montecello], Italian antipope (1159-64), died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1139 Apr 20, The Second Lateran
Council opened in Rome. The crossbow was outlawed in the 12th century,
at least against Christians, by the second Lateran council (the 10th
ecumenical council), called by Pope Innocent II. Capable of piercing
chain mail from a range of up to 1,000 feet, this formidable missile
weapon remained a fixture of technically-advanced European armies
throughout the Middle Ages. Although it was used after the introduction
of firearms, it was eventually succeeded by the harquebus—a primitive
gun—in the late 15th century. The council attempted universal
enforcement of priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church.
(HN, 4/20/98)(HN, 4/20/98)(HNQ, 12/5/00)(SFC,
3/16/02, p.A3)
1314 Apr 20, Clement V, [Bertrand
Got], pope (1305-14) who moved papacy to Avignon, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1317 Apr 20, Agnes van
Montepulciano, Italian mystic, saint, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1442 Apr 20, Edward IV, King of
England (1461-83), was born. [see Apr 28]
(MC, 4/20/02)
1494 Apr 20, John Agricola,
[Schneider], German theologian, prime minister, was born.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1505 Apr 20, Jews were expelled
from Orange, Burgundy, by Philibert of Luxembourg.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1534 Apr 20, Elizabeth Barton, [St
Magd van Kent], British prophet, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1534 Apr 20, Jacques Cartier
departed St. Malo on the 1st of his 3 expeditions to the New World.
(http://tinyurl.com/ddztr)
1632 Apr 20, Nicolas Antione,
converted to Judaism, was burned at the stake. [see Dec 20]
(MC, 4/20/02)
1643 Apr 20, Christoph Demantius
(75), composer, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1653 Apr 20, Oliver Cromwell
dissolved the English parliament. “You have sat too long for any good
you have been doing lately…”
(www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/glossary/rump-parliament.htm)(Econ,
5/8/10, p.60)
1657 Apr 20, English Admiral
Robert Blake fought his last battle when he destroyed the Spanish fleet
in Santa Cruz Bay.
(HN, 4/20/99)
1662 Apr 20, Gerard Terborch, the
elder, painter, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1695 Apr 20, Georg Caspar Weckler
(63), composer, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1715 Apr 20, Nicholas Rowe's
"Tragedy of Lady Jane Gray," premiered in London.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1745 Apr 20, Philippe Pinel,
founder of psychiatry, was born.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1761 Apr 20, Johann Gottlieb Karl
Spazier, composer, was born.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1768 Apr 20, Giovanni AC Canaletto
(70), Italian painter, cartoonist (Rialto), died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1769 Apr 20, Ottawa Chief Pontiac
(b~1720) was murdered by an Indian in Cahokia.
(WUD, 1994, p.1117)(HN, 4/20/98)
1770 Apr 20, Captain Cook arrived
in New South Wales, Australia.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1775 Apr 20, British troops began
the siege of Boston.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1777 Apr 20, New York adopted a
new constitution as an independent state. [see Apr 14]
(MC, 4/20/02)
1786 Apr 20, John Goodricke (21),
English deaf and dumb astronomer, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1792 Apr 20, France declared war
on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia, marking the start of the French
Revolutionary wars.
(AP, 4/20/97)(HN, 4/20/98)
1799 Apr 20, Friedrich von
Schiller's "Wallensteins Tod," premiered in Weimar.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1804 Apr 20, Jean-Jacques
Dessalines, Haitian rebel leader, commanded a massacre of the French at
town of Cape Francois.
(www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/dessalines.htm)
1807 Apr 20, Aloysius Bertrand
("Gaspard de la Nuit"), French poet, was born.
(HN, 4/20/01)
1808 Apr 20, Charles Louis
Napoleon (d.1873), nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was born. He later
served as president (1848-1852) and as emperor of France (1852-1870).
(WUD, 1994, p.950)(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)(HN, 4/20/98)
1809 Apr 20, Napoleon defeated
Austria at Battle of Abensberg, Bavaria.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1812 Apr 20, George Clinton (73),
the 4th vice president of the United States, died in Washington,
becoming the first vice president to die while in office.
(AP, 4/20/97)
1820 Apr 20, Arthur Young, author
(Annals of Agriculture), died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1821 Apr 20, Franz K. Achard (67),
German physicist, chemist, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1827 Apr 20, John Gibbon (d.1896),
Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1836 Apr 20, The Territory of
Wisconsin was established by Congress.
(AP, 4/20/97)(HN, 4/20/98)
1836 Apr 20, Johan I Jozef (75),
monarch of Liechtenstein, field marshal, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1839 Apr 20, Giuseppe Rossini,
father of Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1841 Apr 20, Edgar Allen Poe’s
first detective story, "Murders in Rue Morgue," was published. Poe
published in this year 2 secret messages, as the work of W.B. Tyler,
that were not deciphered until 1992 and 2000. [see Mar 20, Apr 14 1841]
(HN, 4/20/98)(SFC, 12/1/00, p.A3)(MC, 4/20/02)
1850 Apr 20, Daniel Chester French
(d.1931), sculptor of the Concord Minuteman, was born at Exeter, New
Hampshire. He had his estate in Stockbridge, Mass. His work also
included the Lincoln Memorial. His Chesterwood estate became a museum
with an annual 6-month summer season. [Ph. 413-298-3579]
(HN, 4/20/98)(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)
1861 Apr 20, Robert E. Lee
resigned from U.S. Army.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1861 Apr 20, Thaddeus Lowe landed
in South Carolina only to be surrounded by a group of incredulous
Carolinians who believed he was a spy. Lowe managed to persuade the
crowd that his 500-mile trip from Cincinnati, Ohio, was merely an
innocent aerial journey to test his strange craft. He later tried to
convince the Union to use his skill as a balloonist.
(HNQ, 4/5/01)(ON, 2/05, p.7)
1861 Apr 20, Battle of Norfolk,
VA. [see Apr 21]
(MC, 4/20/02)
1865 Apr 20, Chicago's Crosby
Opera House opened.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1869 Apr 20, Johann Carl Gottfried
Loewe (72), composer, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1871 Apr 20, The US 3rd
Enforcement Act, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, allowed the
President to suspend writ of habeas corpus.
(http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/events/04_20)(AH,
6/03, p.31)
1879 Apr 20, The first mobile home
(horse drawn) was used in a journey from London to Cyprus. [what about
Gypsy wagons, Conestoga wagons?]
(HN, 4/20/98)
1888 Apr 20, 246 people were
reported killed by hail in Moradabad, India.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1889 Apr 20, Adolf Hitler, leader
of National Socialist Party (1921-1945), was born in Braunau, Austria.
He was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933-1945 and started World
War II by invading Poland. He committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.
The German Fascist leader, promised to bring Germany to the promised
land on one condition: that the state would have total control over all
the organs, organizations, and citizens of the nation. Brigitte Hammann
later authored “Hitler in Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship.” In 1998
Ron Rosenbaum published “Explaining Hitler,” a look at the various
agendas and needs of different scholars in their examination of Hitler.
In 1999 Ian Kershaw published "Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris."
(V.D.-H.K.p.309)(HN, 4/20/98)(SFEC, 10/18/98, BR
p.5)(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A16) (AP, 4/20/99)(HN, 4/20/99)(WSJ, 4/4/01, p.A6)
1893 Apr 20, Harold Lloyd, film
comedian, was born. He is best remembered for his film "Safety Last."
(HN, 4/20/99)
1893 Apr 20, Joan Miró
(Joan Miro), Spanish painter, was born.
(HN, 4/20/01)
1896 Apr 20, 1st public film
showing in US John Philip Sousa's "El Capitan," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1898 Apr 20, President
McKinley signed a congressional resolution recognizing Cuban
independence from Spain. He signed the Joint Resolution for War with
Spain that authorized U.S. military intervention to Cuban independence.
(AP, 4/20/97)(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A19)
1902 Apr 20, Radium was isolated
as a pure metal by Curie and André-Louis Debierne through the
electrolysis of a pure radium chloride solution. Pierre and Marie Curie
had discovered the element in 1898.
(AP, 4/20/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium)
1910 Apr 20, Robert F. Wagner,
(Mayor-D-NYC, 1954-65), was born.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1910 Apr 20, Eva Swan (26), a SF
schoolteacher, disappeared. Doctor’s assistant Ben Gordon (18) kept the
secret until after a fight with Dr. James Grant over $18 in wages. He
then went to the police. Her body was found on Sep 23 buried under a
basement at 320 Eureka St. and soaking in nitric acid with every joint
sawed through. Grant and nurse Marie Messerschmidt were arrested on
murder charges after the failed abortion went awry.
(http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/deaths/bl10eswan.htm)(SSFC,
9/19/10, DB p.50)
1912 Apr 20, Bram Stoker, Irish
theater manager, writer (Dracula), died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1914 Apr 20, Soldiers killed 33
during mine strike in Ludlow, Colo. In the Ludlow Massacre 2 women and
11 children perished in a mining camp torched by Colorado militiamen
called in by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to settle a strike. More than 75
people died during the Colorado coal strike with more than half of them
being company guards. In 2007 Scott Martelle authored “Blood Passion:
The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West.”
(SFEC, 5/31/98, BR
p.3)(www.du.edu/anthro/ludlow/strike_000.html)(SSFC, 8/5/07, p.M2)
1915 Apr 20, The Turks fired the
first shot at Van; the first Armenians were deported from Zeitoun on
the 8th April, and there is a record of their arrival in Syria as early
as the l9th.
(http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/docs/bryce2.htm)
1916 Apr 20, The Chicago Cubs,
after merging with the Chicago Whales, began playing at Weeghman Park.
In 1926 the stadium became known as Wrigley Field.
(http://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/nl/WrigleyField.htm)
1916 Apr 20, German-British sea
battle off Belgian coast.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1917 Apr 20, In the Pravda
newspaper Lenin named Russia "Free land of world."
(MC, 4/20/02)
1919 Apr 20, Polish Army captured
Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania from Soviet Army.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1920 Apr 20, John Paul Stevens,
103rd Supreme Court Justice (1975-), was born in Illinois.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1920 Apr 20, Balfour Declaration
was recognized following a conference in San Remo, Italy. It was agreed
that a mandate to Britain should be formally given by the League of
Nations over an area, which in 2010 comprised Israel, Jordan and the
Golan Heights, to be called the "Mandate of Palestine". The Balfour
Declaration was to apply to the whole of the mandated territory. The
doctrine was named after British Foreign Secretary Arthur James
Balfour, who had first articulated it as a policy on 2 November 1917.
(www.ijs.org.au/The-Balfour-Declaration/default.aspx)
1923 Apr 20, Tito Puente,
bandleader, was born.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1924 Apr 20, Nina Foch (d.2008),
film, theater and TV actress, was born in Leyden, Netherlands.
Her films later included “An American in Paris” (1951).
(SFC, 12/13/08, p.A5)
1927 Apr 20, Alex Muller, Nobel
Prize-winning physicist, was born.
(HN, 4/20/01)
1930 Apr 20, Charles (d.1974) and
Anne Lindbergh (d.2001 at 94) set a transcontinental speed record
flying from Los Angeles to New York in 14 hours and 45 minutes. Anne
was 7 months pregnant. [see Jan 20]
(SFC, 2/8/01, p.C2)
1931 Apr 20, British House of
Commons agreed to sports play on Sunday.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1935 Apr 20, "Your Hit Parade"
debuted on NBC radio. It was called the "Lucky Strike Hit Parade" by
the newspapers. The show was re-named "Your Hit Parade" on November 9.
The first number one song chosen for the first show was "Soon" by Bing
Crosby.
(Bruce C. Byrd, Your Hit Parade & American Top
Ten Hits, 4th edition, 1994, p.15)
1936 Apr 20, Serious rioting took
place on the borders between Jaffa and Tel-Aviv, in particular in the
Catton, Manshieh and Saknat Abu Kebir quarters..
(http://tinyurl.com/j93pg)
1939 Apr 20, The Kehlsteinhous,
aka the Eagle’s Nest, a mountaintop teahouse located in the Kehlstein
mountains near Berchtesgaden, was given to Adolf Hitler as a 50th
birthday present.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.G4)
1940 Apr 20, RCA publicly
demonstrated its new and powerful electron microscope in Philadelphia,
Pa.
(AP, 4/20/97)(HN, 4/20/98)(MC, 4/20/02)
1941 Apr 20, Joni Evans, publisher
of Simon & Schuster, Random House, was born in NYC.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1941 Apr 20, Ryan O'Neal, actor
(Peyton Place, Paper Moon, was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1942 Apr 20, Pierre Laval, the
premier of Vichy France, in a radio broadcast, established a policy of
"true reconciliation with Germany."
(HN, 4/20/99)
1942 Apr 20, Heavy German assault
on Malta.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1942 Apr 20, The battle for Moscow
ended. It officially lasted from September 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942,
but in reality spanned more than those 203 days of unremitting mass
murder, and marked the first time that Hitler's armies failed to
triumph with their Blitzkrieg tactics. In 2007 Andrew Nagorski authored
“The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for
Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II.”
(WSJ, 1/11/08, p.W6)
1945 Apr 20, During World War II,
Allied forces, the U.S. 7th army, took control of the German cities of
Nuremberg and Stuttgart.
(AP, 4/20/97)(HN, 4/20/98)
1945 Apr 20, American forces
liberated Buchenwald. 350 Americans were imprisoned at Berga, a
sub-camp of Buchenwald, following their Dec, 1944, capture at the
Battle of the Bulge. Charles Guggenheim's (d.2002) last documentary
film was title "Berga." [see Apr 10-11]
(WSJ, 5/28/03, p.D8)
1945 Apr 20, US forces conquered
Motobu peninsula on Okinawa.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1945 Apr 20, Soviet troops began
their attack on Berlin.
(HFA, '96, p.28)(HN, 4/20/98)
1946 Apr 20, 1st baseball game
telecast was in Chicago with the Cards vs. Cubs.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1948 Apr 20, United Auto Workers
president Walter P. Reuther was shot and wounded at his home in
Detroit. [see Apr 14]
(AP, 4/20/98)
1949 Apr 20, Jockey Bill Shoemaker
won his 1st race, in Albany, California.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1949 Apr 20, Scientists at the
Mayo Clinic announced they'd succeeded in synthesizing a hormone found
to be useful in treating rheumatoid arthritis; the substance was named
"cortisone."
(AP, 4/20/99)
1951 Apr 20, Gen. MacArthur
addressed a joint session of Congress after being relieved by President
Truman.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1953 Apr 20, Operation Little
Switch began in Korea, the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of
war.
(HN, 4/20/99)
1958 Apr 20, The last Key System
train left San Francisco for Oakland. Ferry service from the SF Ferry
Building ended when the Southern Pacific "Eureka" made its last
crossing to Oakland. Train tracks were taken off the lower deck of the
Bay Bridge and the lanes were paved in for car traffic.
(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A5)(SFC, 9/4/98, p.A25)(SFC,
8/7/07, p.A6)(SFC, 4/18/08, p.B1)
1959 Apr 20, British ballerina
Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991)) was arrested and briefly detained in a
Panama prison. She and her diplomat husband, Roberto Arias, had sought
Fidel Castro's help in a revolution that failed because of a
last-minute blunder. Fonteyn, born Peggy Hookham, went on to reach even
greater creative heights through her acclaimed partnership with Russian
dancer Rudolf Nureyev. She returned to Panama with her husband years
later and died there.
(AP, 5/27/10)
1961 Apr 20, American Harold
Graham made 1st rocket belt flight.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1962 Apr 20, New Orleans Citizens
Committee gave a free one-way ride to blacks to move North.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1962 Apr 20, NASA civilian pilot
Neil A. Armstrong took the X-15 to 63,250 m.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1962 Apr 20, The Secret Army
Organization (OAS) leader and ex-general Salan was arrested in Algiers.
(MC, 4/20/02)(PCh, 1992, p.984)
1964 Apr 20, August Sander
(b.1876), German photographer, died. He attempted to make a complete
portrait survey of 20th century German society. His “Face of Our Time,”
a volume of 60 photographs, was published in 1929.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Sander)(WSJ,
6/3/04, p.D8)(Econ, 8/29/09, p.74)
1967 Apr 20, U.S. planes bombed
Haiphong for first time during the Vietnam War.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1968 Apr 20, Pierre Elliott
Trudeau was sworn in as prime minister of Canada. He succeeded Lester
B. Pierson.
(AP,
4/20/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Trudeau)
1970 Apr 20, Paul Celan (49),
Romania born poet, drowned himself in the Seine. English translations
of his poems were published in 2001.
(SSFC, 4/1/01, BR p.5)
1971 Apr 20, The US Supreme Court,
in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upheld the use of
busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools. The ruling allowed
Charlotte, NC., and other cities nationwide to use mandatory busing and
student assignment based on race to attempt to further integrate
schools. The case arose in 1965 when a black parent, James E. Swann,
challenged the system that kept Charlotte's black students apart from
the white majority. In 2001 an appeals court ruled that the dual school
system was dismantled and busing could end. A failed appeal to the
Supreme Court ended the case in 2002.
(http://tinyurl.com/6lntd5)(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.D1)(AP,
4/20/07)(SFC, 4/16/02, p.A3)
1972 Apr 20, The manned lunar
module from Apollo 16 landed on the moon.
(AP, 4/20/97)
1977 Apr 20, The film "Annie Hall"
premiered. Diane Keaton starred in the Woody Allen film Annie Hall. It
was rated #31 by the Amer. Film Inst. in 1998.
(www.variety.com/profiles/Film/main/24544/Annie%20Hall.html?dataSet=1)(SFC,
1/9/97, p.E1)
1977 Apr 20, The US Supreme Court,
in Wooley v. Maynard, said car owners could refuse to display state
mottoes on license plates. The Court ruled that "Live Free or Die" may
be covered on NH license plates.
(AP, 4/20/07)
1978 Apr 20, A South Korean Air
Lines Boeing 707 crash-landed in northwestern Russia. Flight 902 was
fired on by a Soviet interceptor after entering Soviet airspace. 107
passengers and crew survived after the plane made an emergency landing
on a frozen lake and 2 passengers were killed.
(AP,
4/20/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_902)
1979 Apr 20, Howard K. Smith
(d.2002) resigned as news analyst for ABC over the curtailment of his
commentary.
(SFC, 2/19/02, p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/384oxz)
1980 Apr 20, The first Cubans
sailing to the United States as part of the massive Mariel boatlift
reached Florida.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A14)(AP, 9/26/97)(AP, 4/20/00)
1981 Apr 20, The final performance
of TV show "Soap" aired.
(www.tv.com/soap/show/605/summary.html)
1983 Apr 20, Pres. Reagan signed a
$165B bail out for Social Security.
(www.ssa.gov/history/reports/crsleghist3.html)
1984 Apr 20, Julie Connell (18), a
senior at Arroyo High School, disappeared in Hayward. Her body was
found 5 days later in Palomares Canyon near Castro Valley. In 2000 DNA
evidence revealed that Robert Rhoades (47), a Yuba City man on death
row, had kidnapped, raped and stabbed her to death.
(SFC, 1/26/00, p.A14)(SFC, 3/13/07, p.B3)
1986 Apr 20, The Atlas Star, a
double-decker ferry, sank in stormy weather in Bangladesh. 500
passengers were feared drowned.
(http://tinyurl.com/q28gb)
1986 Apr 20, Following an absence
of six decades, Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in the
Soviet Union to a packed audience at the Grand Hall of the Tchaikovsky
Conservatory in Moscow.
(AP, 4/20/06)
1987 Apr 20, The United States
deported Karl Linnas to the Soviet Union, where he had been convicted
in absentia of Nazi war crimes and faced a death sentence. Linnas, who
maintained his innocence, died of heart disease in Leningrad the
following July.
(AP, 4/20/97)
1988 Apr 20, Gunmen who had
hijacked a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet were allowed safe passage out of
Algeria. An agreement also freed the remaining 31 hostages and ended a
15-day siege in which two passengers were slain.
(AP, 4/20/98)
1988 Apr 20, Hector Felix, a
muckraking Mexican journalist, was murdered. He had dubbed Jorge Hank,
owner of the Tijuana Agua Caliente Racetrack, as “the Abominable
Snowman” for a reputed cocaine habit.
(SSFC, 8/5/07,
p.A15)(www.elandar.com/back/fall99/gato.html)
1989 Apr 20, Ramon Salcido, a
California winery worker later convicted of killing six relatives and a
co-worker, was deported from Mexico to the U.S.
(AP, 4/20/99)
1989 Apr 20, The case of Oliver
North went to the jury in his Iran-Contra trial.
(AP, 4/20/99)
1990 Apr 20, Former junk bond
financier Michael Milken agreed to plead guilty to six felonies and pay
$600 million in penalties to settle the largest securities fraud case
in history.
(AP, 4/20/00)
1990 Apr 20, Pete Rose pleaded
guilty to two felony counts of filing false income tax returns.
(http://reds.enquirer.com/2004/01/06/red1timeline.html)
1991 Apr 20, US Marines landed in
northern Iraq to begin building the first center for Kurdish refugees
on Iraqi territory. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the US commander of
Operation Desert Storm, left Saudi Arabia for home.
(AP, 4/20/01)
1992 Apr 20, Defending champion
Ibrahim Hussein of Kenya became the sixth three-time winner of the
Boston Marathon, while Russia's Olga Markova won the women's division.
(AP, 4/20/97)
1992 Apr 20, The Russian congress
adopted a resolution affirming Russia's membership in the Commonwealth
of Independent States in a victory for President Boris Yeltsin.
(AP, 4/20/97)
1993 Apr 20, President Clinton
said he accepted responsibility for the decision to try to end the
51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Texas, yet laid
"ultimate responsibility" on David Koresh for the deaths that resulted.
(AP, 4/20/98)
1993 Apr 20, Mario Moreno (81),
Mexican comedian known as Cantinflas, died in Mexico City. His films
included "Around the World in 80 Days."
(AP, 4/20/98)
1994 Apr 20, Israeli and PLO
negotiators wrapped up an agreement transferring civilian government
powers to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
(AP, 4/20/99)
1994 Apr 20, The Serbian army
bombed Gorazde, Bosnia, and the local hospital was hit.
(www.snd-us.com/history/dolecek/dolecek_accuse.htm)
1995 Apr 20, In the aftermath of
the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI announced it was looking for two men
suspected of renting the truck used to carry the explosive; rescue
teams suspended the search for survivors so that the remaining
structure of the Alfred P. Murrah Building could be shored up.
(AP, 4/20/00)
1996 Apr 20, Russia and the
leaders of the world's seven richest democracies agreed in Moscow to
end nuclear tests by the fall and pledged new steps to keep nuclear
materials out of the wrong hands.
(AP, 4/20/97)
1997 Apr 20, In Atlanta, Ga.,
Timmie Sinclair (27) was beaten by police officers in a scene that was
captured on videotape and showed excessive use of force and baton
beating.
(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A6)
1997 Apr 20, An article in the
Astrophysics Journal identified some of the missing matter (dark
matter) of the universe as ionized hydrogen and helium gas spread out
between the galaxies. The atoms were stripped of their electrons early
in the formation of the universe.
(SFEC, 4/21/97, p.A3)
1997 Apr 20, Lameck Aguta of Kenya
won the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:10:34. Ethiopia’s Fatuma Roba
won the women’s best time at 2:26:24.
(WSJ, 4/22/97, p.A1)
1997 Apr 20, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escaped indictment in an influence-peddling
scandal, with prosecutors saying they lacked evidence.
(AP, 4/20/98)
1997 Apr 20, Hwang Jang Yop, the
highest-ranking North Korean to defect, arrived in South Korea, ending
a 67-day odyssey that began in China.
(AP, 4/20/98)
1998 Apr 20, In an unusual use of
a racketeering law designed to fight the mob, a federal jury in Chicago
ruled that anti-abortion protest organizers had used threats and
violence to shut down clinics. However, the US Supreme Court ruled in
February 2003 that federal racketeering and extortion laws were wrongly
used to try to stop blockades, harassment and violent protests outside
clinics.
(AP, 4/20/03)
1998 Apr 20, The Goldman
Environmental Awards were presented in SF. The prizes were increased to
$100,000 from $75,000. Berita Kuwar U’wa (44) of Columbia won for
leading the U’wa tribe’s struggle against Occidental Petroleum; Kory
Johnson (19) of Phoenix won for organizing Children for a Safe
Environment; Sven “Bobby” Peek (31) of South Africa won for fighting
for the rights of poor people in industrialized South Durban; Anna
Giordano (32) of Italy for her campaign against illegal hunting of
birds in Sicily and southern Italy; Atherton Martin (52) for his work
against a copper mine in Dominica; and Hirofumi Yamashita (64) for
fighting against the conversion of tidal flats to farmland on Ishaya
Bay on Kyushu.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A8)
1998 Apr 20, Moses Tanui of Kenya
won the 102nd Boston Marathon in 2 hrs, 7 min . and 43 sec. Fatuma Roba
of Ethiopia won among the women in 2:23:21.
(WSJ, 4/21/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 20, A report was
published that suggested that the drug raloxifene, sold by Eli Lilly as
Evista, can prevent breast cancer in addition to tamoxifen. Both
synthetic drugs block the action of estrogen.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A7)
1998 Apr 20, A poll of 400
scientists indicated that 7 of 10 believed that a “mass extinction” is
under way, and that one-fifth of all living species could disappear
within 30 years.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A7)
1998 Apr 20, In Columbia a Boeing
727 leased to Air France crashed after takeoff from Bogota and all 53
people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A12)(AP, 4/20/99)
1998 Apr 20, In Nigeria the last
of 5 government-sanctioned parties agreed to back Sani Abacha in the
presidential elections. the government gave each party $250,000 for its
convention.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A13)
1998 Apr 20, Three Russian
security agents met at a guest house outside Moscow to make an
extraordinary video in which they claimed their bosses had ordered them
to kill, kidnap and frame prominent Russians. In 2006 Alexander
Litvinenko, one of the 3 agents on the tape, was poisoned with a rare
radioactive isotope in London.
(AP, 5/23/07)(WSJ, 5/23/07, p.A14)
1998 Apr 20, Turkmenistan Pres.
Saparmurat Niyazov visited the US and planned to discuss oil and gas
pipeline routes.
(WSJ, 4/20/98, p.B7D)
1999 Apr 20, Jay Scott Ballinger
(36), arrested in Feb., was indicted on charges of burning 10 churches
in Indiana and Georgia.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A7)
1999 Apr 20, In New Jersey
Attorney Gen'l. Peter Verniero acknowledged that state troopers had
engaged in racial profiling to target minority motorists.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A7)
1999 Apr 20, In Littleton, Colo.,
2 Columbine High School students, students Eric Harris (18) and Dylan
Klebold (17), used guns and explosives to randomly kill 12 other
students and one teacher before killing themselves: Cassie Bernall,
Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Daniel
Rohrbough, Rachel Scott, Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend,
Kyle Velasquez and teacher William "Dave" Sanders, were killed by Eric
Harris and Dylan Klebold. They wounded 28 other students and were part
of a small clique that identified themselves as the "Trench Coat
Mafia." 30 homemade bombs attributed to Harris and Klebold were found
at the school. Harris and Klebold had both worked at the Blackjack
Pizza No. 2025. Klebold and Harris recorded 5 videos prior to the
shooting in which they spoke of a bloodbath with hundreds killed. In
2001 it was reported that Daniel Rohrbough was shot and killed by
police. An independent investigation in 2002 cleared the police. In
2004 it was reported that local police had 15 contacts with Harris and
Klebold prior to the massacre.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/21/99, A1)(SFC, 4/22/99,
p.A1)(WSJ, 6/23/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A3)(SFC, 12/28/01,
p.A9)(SFC, 4/18/02, p.A4)(WSJ, 2/27/04, p.A1)
1999 Apr 20, NATO bombing
continued in Yugoslavia. The UN refugee agency in Macedonia declared
its camps full beyond capacity and left 2,000 to 3,000 refugees at the
border. Another few thousand crossed the border to the hamlet of
Milana. The border with Albania was again opened but only a few crossed
over.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A1,10)
1999 Apr 20, Bulgaria and Romania
offered to let NATO use their airspace to bomb Yugoslavia.
(WSJ, 4/21/99, A22)
1999 Apr 20, Russia defaulted on
$1.3 billion Ministry of Finance bonds.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A13)
1999 Apr 20, In South Africa the
police beating of 4 carjacking suspects was broadcast over TV. One
suspect died from the beating and the officers were suspended and put
under criminal investigation.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A13)
2000 Apr 20, Littleton, Colorado,
paused to remember the victims on the first anniversary of the
Columbine High School massacre.
(AP, 4/20/01)
2000 Apr 20, In Chechnya Pres.
Maskhadov told a Russian news agency that he had declared a unilateral
cease-fire. Maskhadov later said his remarks meant that fighting would
stop only if both sides agreed to stop fighting and negotiate a
settlement.
(WSJ, 4/21/00, p.A1)(SFC, 4/25/00, p.A10)
2000 Apr 20, In China the
Communist party announced that Cheng Kejie, a deputy chairman in the
national legislature, was expelled and charged with amassing $4.5
million in bribes and kickbacks.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A20)
2000 Apr 20, In Italy the
center-left parties closed ranks behind Treasury Minister Giuliano
Amato following the resignation of Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema.
(WSJ, 4/21/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 20, In Slovakia police
arrested former Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar for paying unauthorized
bonuses to Cabinet members during his 5 years in office. He was
released after several hours.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A18)
2001 Apr 20, President Bush
attended his first international summit as leaders of the Western
Hemisphere's 34 democracies met in Quebec to advance plans to create
the world's largest free-trade zone; police in riot gear clashed with
protesters. Protestors pushed to interrupt the Summit of the Americas
and held that the free trade efforts put corporate interests ahead of
workers, human rights and the environment.
(SFC, 4/21/01, p.A1)(AP, 4/20/02)
2001 Apr 20, Two therapists were
convicted in Golden, Colo., of reckless child abuse in a young girl's
suffocation death during a "rebirthing" therapy session. Connell
Watkins and Julie Ponder were later sentenced to 16 years in prison.
(AP, 4/20/02)
2001 Apr 20, Yasser Arafat
proposed that he and Ariel Sharon simultaneously call for an end
Israeli-Palestinian violence.
(SFC, 4/21/01, p.A12)
2001 Apr 20, In Peru an air force
jet shot down a Cessna 185 carrying US missionaries. Veronica Bowers
(35) and her infant daughter, Charity, were killed when the plane crash
landed in the Amazon River. The plane was identified by a US
surveillance plane and was believed to be trafficking in narcotics.
(SFC, 4/21/01, p.A12)(SFC, 4/22/01, p.D1)(AP,
4/20/02)
2001 Apr 20-21, The 13th annual
National Youth Service Day called on youths and adult volunteers to
help make their schools and communities better.
(SSFC, 4/15/01, Par p.4)
2002 Apr 20, Representatives of
the Group of Seven countries, meeting in Washington, agreed to
intensify efforts to combat terrorist financing and also adopted a plan
to better deal with international debt crises.
(AP, 4/20/03)
2002 Apr 20, A US Navy F-4 crashed
during an air show at Ventura, Ca., and its 2 crew members were killed.
(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.A29)
2002 Apr 20, Eiman Judeh, a
Palestinian gunman, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at the Erez
Checkpoint, Gaza, after he killed border guard, Uriel Ben Maimon (21).
(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.A1)
2002 Apr 20, Sudanese government
forces began a major offensive against 3 southern provinces to oust the
rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Rebels said hundreds of thousands
of people were displaced.
(SFC, 4/24/02, p.A)
2002 Apr 20, In Vietnam a fire,
raging for weeks, was reported to have destroyed half of U Minh
National Park in Kien Giang province. Extended drought was blamed.
(SFC, 4/20/02, p.A24)
2003 Apr 20, An Australian navy
vessel boarded a North Korean ship off Sydney and charged it with
involvement in a $48 million heroin shipment to Victoria.
(WSJ, 4/22/03, A1)
2003 Apr 20, After reporting a
nearly tenfold increase in SARS cases in the capital, China announced
the sacking of its top health official and the capital's mayor from key
Communist Party positions. The number of infections in Beijing soared
from 37 to 346.
(AP, 4/20/03)
2003 Apr 20, Chechen rebels opened
fire on Russian troops, killing 7 soldiers and wounding 7 others.
(AP, 4/20/03)
2003 Apr 20, In Colombia the army
said it killed 16 members of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia) in eastern Antioquia state.
(AP, 4/20/03)
2003 Apr 20, It was reported that
the US planned a long-term military relationship with the emerging
government in Iraq to include access to military bases in the region.
US Army forces took control of Baghdad from the Marines in a changing
of the guard that thinned the military presence in the capital.
Celebrating Easter, the Reverend Emmanuel Delly, a longtime Iraqi
bishop, pleaded for safeguards against the persecution of Christians in
the new Iraq.
(SSFC, 4/20/03, p.A3)(AP, 4/20/04)
2003 Apr 20, Jamal Mustafa
Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti (9 of clubs), son-in-law to Saddam Hussein
and former deputy head of Iraq's tribal affairs office, left Syria and
surrendered to members of the Iraqi National Congress.
(AP, 4/21/03)
2003 Apr 20, In southern
Kyrgyzstan a landslide swept through a village, killing 38 people.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2003 Apr 20, In northern Laos
gunmen opened fire at a bus, killing at least 12 people and injuring 30
others, in an attack officials with the communist government blamed on
Hmong rebels.
(AP, 4/21/03)
2004 Apr 20, The US Labor Dept.
established new rules on overtime pay. It expanded the range for lower
income workers and put a ceiling on overtime for higher income workers.
(WSJ, 4/21/04, p.D1)
2004 Apr 20, The US federal
government agreed to settle a civil suit filed by leaders of Earth
First following an FBI arrest in Oakland May 24, 1990. Darryl Cherney
and the estate of Judi Bari expected to receive $2 million.
(SFC, 4/23/04, p.B1)
2004 Apr 20, A US federal
commission said oceans of the US are in dire shape due to pollution and
over fishing.
(WSJ, 4/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr 20, An Oregon judge
ordered a halt to same sex marriages. He also ordered official
recognition of marriages already held in Multnomah County.
(SFC, 4/21/04, p.A3)
2004 Apr 20, Karen Jurgensen, the
editor of USA Today, resigned following charges of fabrication and
fraud against foreign correspondent Jack Kelley.
(Econ, 4/24/04, p.66)
2004 Apr 20, WorldCom emerged from
bankruptcy renamed as MCI.
(WSJ, 2/18/05, p.A1)
2004 Apr 20, The NASA Gravity
Probe B satellite, designed by Stanford researchers, was launched to
test Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
(SFC, 4/21/04, p.A7)
2004 Apr 20, A tornado hit Utica,
Ill., and 8 people were killed in the basement of a tavern.
(SFC, 4/22/04, p.A6)(WSJ, 4/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr 20, Afghanistan carried
out its first execution since the fall of the hardline Taliban, putting
a bullet to the head of a former military commander convicted of more
than 20 murders. "During his detention, Abdullah Shah reportedly
revealed first hand evidence against several regional commanders
currently in positions of power against whom no charges have been
brought."
(AP, 4/27/04)
2004 Apr 20, In Argentina a
federal judge issued an international arrest warrant for former
President Carlos Menem who has refused to appear for questioning in a
corruption probe.
(AP, 4/21/04)
2004 Apr 20, British PM Tony Blair
said he would put a new European Union constitution to a nationwide
vote. No date was set.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 20, China urged North
Korean leader Kim Jong Il to rethink his demands for a written U.S.
pledge not to attack, saying only a softer line can ease the standoff
over Pyongyang's nuclear program.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 20, Yang Xiuzhu, former
vice-mayor of Wenzhou and vice-director of the Zhejiang Provincial
Construction Bureau, fled abroad as investigations began on bribery
charges. She was believed to have taken bribes of 253.2 million yuan
(US$30 million).
(http://tinyurl.com/aza8m)(Econ, 6/4/05, p.42)
2004 Apr 20, Chinese state media
reported that from April last year, about 50 to 60 infants died from
malnutrition after being fed a milk formula with virtually no
nutritional value.
(AP, 4/20/04)(SFC, 4/21/04, p.A8)
2004 Apr 20, Gen. Jose Miguel Soto
Jimenez said the Dominican Republic will pull its troops out of Iraq
early, in the next few weeks, following the lead of Spain and Honduras.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 20, Elections began in
India for the 1st of 5 stages culminating May 10. India's general
elections implemented the use of computerized voting machines.
(WSJ, 4/19/04, p.A1)(AP, 4/22/04)
2004 Apr 20, Indonesia's Golkar
Party chose ex-Gen. Wiranto as its presidential candidate. He was
indicted by the UN for human-rights abuses in East Timor in 1999.
(WSJ, 4/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr 20, In Iraq a barrage of
18 mortars hit a Baghdad jail, killing 21 prisoners.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 20, Authorities in
southern Italy reported that they had seized about 7,500 Kalashnikov
assault rifles and other combat-grade firearms from a Turkish-flagged
ship headed for New York. The weapons were destined for a company in
the U.S. state of Georgia.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 20, In Jordan police shot
and killed three suspected terrorists who were believed to have planned
to detonate a bomb that would have flattened a large part of the
capital Amman.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 20, Palestinians fired a
barrage of homemade rockets and mortar shells at Gaza Strip settlements
and towns inside Israel in retaliation for the killing of Hamas leader
Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Over two days, 15 Qassam rockets hit Israeli
targets, wounding one Israeli and damaging at least five structures.
Israeli soldiers raided the Gaza neighborhood where some of the rockets
originated, killing 5 Palestinians, among them 3 militants, and
wounding 21 others.
(AP, 4/20/04)(SFC, 4/21/04, p.A12)
2004 Apr 20, Palestinian militants
stormed a Palestinian police station in Gaza City and released three
men with possible links to a deadly bombing of a U.S. diplomatic convoy.
(AP, 4/23/04)
2005 Apr 20, Pres. Bush signed new
legislation to make individual bankruptcy more difficult.
(SFC, 4/21/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 20, The US government
said consumer prices jumped 0.6 percent in March, the biggest inflation
surge in 5 months, as the costs of energy, clothing and airline fares
all rose sharply. The DJIA fell 115.5 to 10,012.36.
(AP, 4/20/05)(SFC, 4/21/05, p.C1)
2005 Apr 20, The NYSE, in a move
toward computerized trading, agreed to buy Archipelago Holdings of
Chicago in a reverse merger. The new company, to be called NYSE Group
was valued at $3.5 billion.
(WSJ, 4/21/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr 20, Gov. Jodi Rell signed
legislation making Connecticut the 2nd state after Vermont to offer
civil unions to gay couples.
(SFC, 4/21/05, p.A3)
2005 Apr 20, An air tanker
Lockheed P-3 Orion crashed in California’s Lassen National Forest
killing 3 crew members during a training run. A report in 2006 was
unable to determine the cause of the crash.
(SFC, 4/22/05, p.B3)(SFC, 9/5/06, p.B1)
2005 Apr 20, In Afghanistan 2
former Taliban leaders joined a reconciliation drive that American
commanders hope will undermine a three-year-old insurgency.
(AP, 4/21/05)
2005 Apr 20, Ecuador’s 100-member
Congress voted 60 to 0 to remove President Lucio Gutierrez from office
amid street protests calling for his ouster for abuse of power and
misrule. Brazil granted asylum to Gutierrez. Alfredo Palacio, a heart
surgeon and Ecuador's vice president, assumed the presidency.
(SFC, 4/21/05, p.A3)(Econ, 4/23/05, p.37)
2005 Apr 20, Pernod, French
spirits producer, announced the $14 billion purchase of Britain’s
Allied Domecq.
(Econ, 4/23/05, p.62)
2005 Apr 20, Haiti's former
national police commander agreed to plead guilty to two of eight counts
in a federal indictment accusing him of smuggling drugs and laundering
money.
(AP, 4/21/05)
2005 Apr 20, Iraq’s President
Jalal Talabani said the bodies of more than 50 people have been
recovered from the Tigris River and have been identified. The bodies
were believed to have been those of hostages seized in the Madain
(Madaen) region earlier this month.
(AP, 4/20/05)(Econ, 5/7/05, p.19)
2005 Apr 20, Italian Premier
Silvio Berlusconi said he would step down but pledged to form a new
government, an attempt to strengthen a coalition left weakened by
electoral defeat and concerns over a slow economy.
(AP, 4/20/05)
2005 Apr 20, Mexican prosecutors
charged Mexico City's popular leftist mayor with abuse of authority in
a case that could knock him out of the 2006 presidential race.
(AP, 4/21/05)(WSJ, 4/21/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr 20, Oxfam reported that
Vietnam’s Red River was at its lowest point for 100 years, and if the
drought persisted beyond May then significant numbers of people will
need food aid.
(www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/emergencies/country/eastasia/)
2005 Apr 20, In his first Mass as
pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI pledged to work for unity among Christians
and to seek an open and sincere dialogue'' with other faiths.
(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 Apr 20, Pres. Bush welcomed
Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House as the two leaders
embarked on talks aimed at cooling tensions over a yawning US-China
trade gap. Bush urged Hui Jintao to make trade concessions, improve
human rights and exert more influence over North Korea. The 2 leaders
broke no new ground on sensitive issues.
(AP, 4/20/06)(SFC, 4/21/06, p.A1)
2006 Apr 20, The CIA fired Mary
McCarthy, a top intelligence analyst, who admitted leaking classified
information about a network of secret CIA prisons. She had provided
information that contributed to a Washington Post story last year
disclosing secret US prisons in Eastern Europe.
(AP, 4/22/06)
2006 Apr 20, John Negroponte, US
National Intelligence Director, said the US employs almost 100,000
people in 16 federal departments and agencies dealing with intelligence.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.A18)
2006 Apr 20, America’s FDA issued
a statement saying that smoked marijuana has no accepted medical use in
treatment in the US. Medicinal use of marijuana was well established
around the world.
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.83)
2006 Apr 20, Arkansas Republican
Governor Mike Huckabee signed a $1.10 state minimum wage increase into
law to be effective Oct 1. The previous minimum was at the federal
standard of $5.15 per hour.
(http://tinyurl.com/mrppf)
2006 Apr 20, Georgia’s Gov. Sonny
Perdue signed a bill into law that offered government-sanctioned
elective classes on the Bible in public high schools. He also signed a
bill permitting the display of the Ten Commandments at courthouses.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Apr 20, In Columbus, Kansas,
5 teenage boys were arrested for threatening to carry out a shooting
spree at their high school on the anniversary of the Columbine
bloodbath.
(SFC, 4/25/06, p.A3)
2006 Apr 20, In SF federal and
local agents raided a chapter of the Hells Angels in the Dogpatch
neighborhood of Potrero Hill. They found a pound of methamphetamine.
Agents targeted 16 locations including Livermore and San Mateo County
recovering weapons and a total of 6 pounds of methamphetamine.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.B1)
2006 Apr 20, Oil jumped to a fresh
record high above $74 a barrel after a steep drop in US gasoline
inventories fueled fears of tight summer supplies at a time of growing
anxiety over Iran's exports.
(Reuters, 4/20/06)
2006 Apr 20, Scott Crossfield, the
hotshot test pilot who in 1953 became the first man to fly at twice the
speed of sound, was killed in the crash of his small plane in Georgia.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2006 Apr 20, Stanley Hiller Jr.
(b.1925), boy-wonder and helicopter pioneer, died in California.
(SSFC, 4/23/06, p.B7)
2006 Apr 20, Suspected Taliban
militants killed six Afghan policemen in Afghanistan's volatile south
and burned four of their bodies. US military said a soldier was killed
in a clash while inspecting a weapons cache in the central Uruzgan
province's district of Dihrawud.
(AP, 4/21/06)
2006 Apr 20, The Belgian
parliament narrowly approved a bill to grant same-sex couples equal
rights in adoption. Belgium became the fourth European Union member
state to allow same-sex couples equal rights in adoption, after Spain,
the Netherlands and Sweden.
(AP, 4/21/06)
2006 Apr 20, China denied it is
engaged in industrial espionage in Canada, calling accusations by
Ottawa's foreign minister baseless and irresponsible.
(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 Apr 20, In northeastern
Colombia leftist rebels ambushed a military convoy, killing 16 soldiers
and secret police officers in the deadliest attack on security forces
this year.
(AP, 4/21/06)
2006 Apr 20, In northeastern India
a bus carrying wedding guests veered off a road and plunged into a
lake, killing at least 64 people. Another bus crash later in the day
killed at least 15 people.
(AP, 4/20/06)(AP, 4/21/06)
2006 Apr 20, Bowing to intense
pressure, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari agreed to abandon his
claim to another term.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2006 Apr 20, In Mexico a violent
confrontation between 800 federal and state police agents and more than
500 striking steelworkers left two workers dead and dozens of workers
and police agents injured at the Siderurgica Lazaro Cardenas-Las
Truchas, SA (Sicartsa) steel plant in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas
in the state of Michoacan. The decapitated heads of two police
officials were found dumped in front of a government building in
Acapulco.
(http://ww4report.com/node/1879)(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 Apr 20, Nepalese police
opened fire on thousands of pro-democracy protesters marching toward
the capital in defiance of a government-imposed curfew, killing at
least three and wounding dozens.
(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 Apr 20, Militants ambushed a
convoy of Pakistani troops in a northwestern tribal region near the
Afghan border, killing seven soldiers and wounding 22. A suspected
foreign Islamic militant linked to al-Qaida and a security official
were killed in a gunfight at a roadblock near Afghan border.
(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 Apr 20, Tamil Tiger rebels
announced they were indefinitely postponing talks aimed at saving a
truce with the Sri Lankan government as 4 more people were killed in
fresh violence.
(AFP, 4/20/06)
2007 Apr 20, Vermont senators
voted to call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney, saying their actions have raised "serious questions of
constitutionality."
(AP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 20, In NYC 13 people were
indicted on charges stemming from their roles in a credit card fraud.
Waiters in about 40 restaurants, in New York and as well eateries in
Florida, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Connecticut, had quietly
recorded customers' credit card information and passed it on to people
who used the information to make more than $3 million worth of worth of
illegal purchases. The conspirators had operated from November 2005
until this week.
(AP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 20, The American Economic
Association announced that Susan Athey (36), professor at Harvard, had
won the John Bates Clark medal. This prestigious honor was awarded
every 2 years to the nation’s most promising economist under age 40.
(WSJ, 4/21/07, p.A1)
2007 Apr 20, The family of
Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who shot and killed 32 people and
himself, said they felt ‘‘hopeless, helpless and lost,’’ and ‘‘never
could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence.’’
(AP, 4/20/08)
2007 Apr 20, Andrew Hill (b.1931),
jazz pianist, died in New Jersey.
(SFC, 4/23/07, p.B6)
2007 Apr 20, William Phillips, a
NASA contract worker, shot and killed David Beverly, a NASA civil
servant, and then killed himself at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston, Texas.
(SFC, 4/21/07, p.A3)
2007 Apr 20, A purported Taliban
statement demanded the release of a number of the group's fighters and
the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan in exchange for the
freedom of two kidnapped French aid workers. In southern Afghanistan
separate explosions killed two NATO soldiers. A Dutch soldier was
killed in one explosion, the first fatality from hostile action among
Dutch troops serving with NATO forces in the country.
(AP, 4/20/07)(AP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 20, Bolivia’s military
retook control of a natural gas pipeline to Argentina after days of
violent protests at gas installations in southern Bolivia. More than
1,000 protesters had seized the Yacuiba pipeline station run by
Transredes, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. The disturbances killed
at least one person and wounded dozens more.
(AP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 20, Eight workers went
missing after a fire swept through a fish-processing ship off southern
Chile, killing one person. 116 members of the Hercules' crew were
rescued.
(AP, 4/22/07)
2007 Apr 20, Bishop Fu Tieshan
(76), the hard-line chairman of the state-sanctioned Catholic Church,
died. He sparred had with the Vatican over China's insistence on
appointing its own bishops. An upsurge of gas in a coal mine killed 11
miners in the Tao'er Coal Mine in Handan, an industrial city in Hebei
province.
(AP, 4/21/07)(AP, 4/24/07)
2007 Apr 20, Final results from a
nationwide referendum showed an overwhelming majority of Ecuadoreans
supported President Rafael Correa's push for a special assembly to
rewrite the constitution.
(AP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 20, German Defence
Minister Franz Josef Jung arrived in South Korea to discuss the
proposed sale of second-hand Patriot missiles and other military issues.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 20, It was reported that
German researchers had discovered a natural anti-HIV factor. The 20
amino acid peptide chain blocked multiple strains of HIV.
(SFC, 4/20/07, p.A7)
2007 Apr 20, AIDA, Germany’s
largest cruise line, christened the new 2,050 passenger AIDAdiva in the
Hamburg harbor.
(SFC, 4/21/07, p.A5)
2007 Apr 20, Thousands of mine
workers in Indonesia's remote Papua province protested for a third day
as marathon talks with US firm Freeport McMoRan over pay and benefits
showed signs of progress.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 20, Clashes erupted
between gunmen and US and Iraqi forces around a Shiite mosque in
western Baghdad before Friday prayers, and two suspected insurgents
were killed. US forces killed eight suspected insurgents and captured
41 in several raids across Iraq. A roadside bombing in Diwaniyah killed
a Polish soldier.
(AP, 4/20/07)(AP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 20, Libya's National Oil
Corporation and US firm Dow Chemical announced a joint venture to
operate and expand the Ras Lanuf petrochemical complex in Libya.
(AFP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 20, In Nigeria the
opposition said that troops have intercepted a truck-load of already
completed ballots a day before the presidential election, heightening
fears the vote will be rigged. A Nigerian navy helicopter crashed in
the country's south, killing its three crew members. 7 policemen on
election duty were ambushed and shot dead near Karu town in central
Nassarawa State.
(Reuters, 4/20/07)(AFP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 20, North Korea restated
its commitment to a landmark nuclear disarmament deal, saying it would
invite UN atomic inspectors and discuss shutting down its bomb-making
atomic reactor as soon as it confirmed the release of its funds frozen
in a banking dispute.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 20, In Paraguay Japanese
businessman Hirokazu Ota, the leader of Sun Myung Moon's Unification
Church in Paraguay, was freed following a 19-day abduction and a
140,000-dollar ransom payment.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 20, In Somalia a local
human rights group said 3 days of fighting between Islamic insurgents
and Ethiopian troops backing the government has killed at least 113
civilians.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 20, In Sri Lanka’s
northern district of Vavuniya troops on foot patrol fired at suspected
Tamil Tigers killing four rebels. A landmine explosion in the
northeastern district of Polonnaruwa killed two soldiers and wounded
two others.
(AP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 20, A Vatican committee
issued a report concluding that unbaptized babies who die may go to
heaven and not be stuck in Limbo, which “reflects an unduly restrictive
view of salvation.”
(SFC, 4/21/07, p.A7)
2008 Apr 20, Pope Benedict XVI
held a Mass at Yankee Stadium on his last day in the US.
(WSJ, 4/21/08, p.A1)
2008 Apr 20,
The US Coast Guard recovered the bodies of 20 migrants, 19
Haitians and one Honduran, from the sea near the Bahamas after their
boat apparently capsized.
(AP, 4/21/08)
2008 Apr 20, In eastern
Afghanistan a child was killed in a militant rocket attack on an army
base in Kunar province. 4 Taliban were killed in a gun battle
with Afghan security forces in Kandahar province.
(AP, 4/20/08)
2008 Apr 20, In Brazil Rev. Adelir
Antonio de Carli, a 41-year-old Roman Catholic priest, went missing
after he lifted off under hundreds of balloons from the port city of
Paranagua wearing a helmet, an aluminum thermal flight suit, waterproof
coveralls and a parachute. Tugboat workers discovered a body off Rio de
Janeiro in early July that authorities believed belonged to the cleric.
DNA confirmed that it was the body of the priest.
(AP, 4/23/08)(AP, 7/29/08)
2008 Apr 20,
China unveiled a new draft food safety law that provides for
penalties of up to life imprisonment for people responsible for the
production of substandard food.
(Reuters, 4/20/08)
2008 Apr 20, The second and final
day of voting in Ethiopia's local and parliamentary polls was held amid
tight security. The 2 largest opposition parties boycotted the
elections saying intimidation had forced out over 17,000 of their
candidates.
(AP, 4/20/08)(WSJ, 4/21/08, p.A8)
2008 Apr 20, A Georgian unmanned
reconnaissance flight was shot down over the Georgian rebel region of
Abkhazia. The next day Georgia's air force commander said a Russian
fighter jet shot down the spy plane as it flew over Abkhazia, but
Russia said it had been shot down by separatist forces and that the
flight violated UN ceasefire agreements. A UN report on May 26 said a
Russian jet shot down the spy drone.
(Reuters, 4/22/08)(AP, 4/22/08)(SFC, 5/27/08, p.A12)
2008 Apr 20, In Indonesia several
thousand hardline Muslims protested outside the presidential palace in
Jakarta demanding that Pres. Yudhoyono ban Ahmadiyah, an unorthodox but
moderate Muslim sect founded in India in the 19th century.
(Econ, 4/26/08, p.59)
2008 Apr 20,
US troops killed 12 militants during an "uptick" in fighting, as
fierce clashes broke out in Baghdad's Sadr City district after radical
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned he will declare war if a crackdown
against his followers persists. 6 civilians, four men and two boys ages
8 and 10, were killed in fighting in Sadr City after midnight. An armed
drone fired a Hellfire missile at a group of gunmen killing all three.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Baghdad for a trip she
said was intended to promote fresh political gains she sees to be
flowing from the government-led assaults on radical militias.
(AP, 4/20/08)(AP, 4/21/08)
2008 Apr 20,
Israeli airstrikes killed 2 more Hamas militants one day after
the group detonated two jeeps packed with hundreds of kilograms of
explosives on the Gaza border.
(AP, 4/20/08)
2008 Apr 20,
In Mauritius a conference of the 14-nation Southern African
Development Community (SADC) opened for talks on poverty and food
prices.
(AFP, 4/19/08)
2008 Apr 20, In Pakistan gunmen
riding a motorcycle killed three paramilitary soldiers in an ambush in
the town of Hub.
(AP, 4/21/08)
2008 Apr 20,
A group of Palestinian refugees stranded on the Iraq-Syria border
since 2006 flew to Chile under a resettlement plan sponsored by the
Catholic Church in the South American country and the UN agency for
refugees.
(AP, 4/20/08)
2008 Apr 20,
Paraguay held elections. The Colorado Party, in office since
1947, had the longest current run of uninterrupted governance in Latin
America. Fernando Lugo (56), a former Roman Catholic bishop, won over
Blanca Ovelar, a protege of President Nicanor Duarte. She had sought to
become Paraguay's first woman president. 43 percent of the country's
6.5 million people lived in poverty.
(AP, 4/20/08)(AP, 4/21/08)
2008 Apr 20, Russia closed down a
plutonium producing reactor in Seversk, marking a milestone in US
nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
(AP, 4/20/08)
2008 Apr 20, Pirates off the
Somali coast, armed with grenade launchers, stormed a Spanish tuna
fishing boat, the Playa de Bakio, with 26 crew members.
(AFP, 4/21/08)
2008 Apr 20,
Sri Lankan forces killed a Roman Catholic priest who was also a
top human rights campaigner inside rebel-held territory, as fighting
raged in the troubled north.
(AP, 4/20/08)
2008 Apr 20, Zimbabwe announced a
delay in the partial recount of its disputed March 29 election. The
opposition accused the authorities of waging a "war" that has killed 10
people and injured 500 others since disputed parliamentary and
presidential elections. The secretary general of the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change said 400 opposition supporters have been
detained in Zimbabwe following the elections.
(AFP, 4/20/08)
2009 Apr 20, President Barack
Obama convened his first formal Cabinet meeting and asked department
and agency chiefs to look for ways over the next 90 days to cut $100
million out of the federal budget.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, New York-based Human
Rights Watch said gunmen with suspected links to Hamas security forces
in the Gaza Strip killed at least 32 Palestinians and wounded dozens in
attacks on political opponents and alleged informers during and after
Israel's recent war in the coastal territory. The report said 18
Palestinians were killed by Hamas during the three-week war, which
ended Jan. 18, and 14 others were killed afterward.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Chesapeake Energy
Corp. filed its proxy statement revealing a compensation package to CEO
Aubrey McClendon that totaled $112 million for 2008, even as the
company’s stock price tumbled.
(WSJ, 4/28/09, p.B1)
2009 Apr 20, In Florida 7 more
Venezuelan polo horses sickened just before a tournament died
overnight, raising the death toll to 21. Officials said they may have
been killed by some type of poison. On April 23 Franck’s Pharmacy
admitted to having prepared a generic version of Biodyl, a vitamin
supplement banned in the US, which was administered to all the dead
horses.
(AP, 4/20/09)(SFC, 4/24/09, p.A7)
2009 Apr 20, In Maryland a Loyola
college student, her visiting parents and younger sister were found
dead in a hotel room near Baltimore in an apparent murder suicide.
(WSJ, 4/22/09, p.A6)
2009 Apr 20, In Washington state
former Tacoma elementary school teacher Jennifer Rice (33) was
convicted of having sex with a student (10) and his brother (15).
(SFC, 4/21/09, p.A6)
2009 Apr 20, Chicago cancelled a
$2.52 billion deal to privatize Midway Airport after a winning
consortium failed to line up funding.
(WSJ, 4/21/09, p.B4)
2009 Apr 20, Oracle Corp. snapped
up computer server and software maker Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.4
billion. The opportunity opened up after rival IBM Corp. abandoned an
earlier bid to buy one of Silicon Valley's best known, and most
troubled companies.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Benjamin F. Edwards
III (77), former president (1967-2001) of St. Louis-based brokerage
firm A.G. Edwards Inc., died. Under him the family firm grew from fewer
than 50 branches to nearly 700.
(WSJ, 4/25/09, p.A4)
2009 Apr 20, In southern
Afghanistan two police were killed and four others wounded during a
clash with insurgents in Zabul province. A roadside bomb in Uruzgan
province killed a civilian, while a second roadside bomb in eastern
Khost province killed two civilians.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Thousands of Tamils
blocked some of London's busiest roads, demonstrating outside the
Houses of Parliament for an immediate ceasefire in the war between
Tamil rebels and Sri Lanka's government.
(AFP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, British
pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline said it has agreed to buy US-based
skincare group Stiefel Laboratories in a deal worth up to 2.4 billion
pounds ($3.6 billion).
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, At the Shanghai Motor
Show Rolls Royce CEO Tom Purves announced that the company's new model
would be called Ghost.
(http://tinyurl.com/dfqycq)(Econ, 5/9/09, p.66)
2009 Apr 20, In Chile Gen. Gonzalo
Santelices, former head of the Santiago army garrison, was indicted
along with 2 other officers in the killing of 14 dissidents in the
early days of the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
(SFC, 4/21/09, p.A2)
2009 Apr 20, In China a new
English-language paper published by the Communist Party hit newsstands,
part of Beijing's efforts to raise its profile on the global stage and
find an international audience for the party line.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Ecuador’s finance
minister Maria Elsa Viteri said the government will buy back about $3.2
billion in Global 2012 and 2030 bonds, worth about 32% of Ecuador's
total foreign debt at a 70% discount, ending months of speculation
about a default. A government audit last year determined that
conditions surrounding the debt sale had left the bonds "illegal and
illegitimate," prompting President Rafael Correa to order the
refinancing.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, In southeast France
workers at a French subsidiary of the American company Molex detained
two bosses to protest plans to close the plant.
(AP, 4/21/09)
2009 Apr 20, In Iraq a suicide
bomber killed 3 Iraqi police officers and wounded eight US soldiers
visiting the mayor of Baqouba city. At least 9 civilians were also
injured.
(AP, 4/20/09)(SFC, 4/21/09, p.A4)
2009 Apr 20, In Mexico police
found a body in flames dumped along a main thoroughfare on the
outskirts the northern border city of Tijuana. The victim was found
with his head wrapped in packing tape, a common practice used by drug
smugglers against rivals.
(AP, 4/22/09)
2009 Apr 20, New Zealand's PM John
Key said that he wants an exit strategy before sending the country's
Special Air Service combat troops back to Afghanistan as the US has
requested.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Nigerian pirates
attacked the Aleyna Mercan ship about 50 nautical miles off Onne port,
near the oil city of Port Harcourt. The vessel was delivering equipment
to French oil group Total. On April 22 the kidnappers released the
Turkish captain and the chief engineer.
(AFP, 4/23/09)
2009 Apr 20, Pakistan's central
bank lowered the discount interest rate by one percentage point,
acknowledging that the economy in the poverty-stricken, nuclear-armed
nation was showing resilience. Pakistani security forces shelled and
launched airstrikes against Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal
region overnight, killing 4 civilians and 8 suspected militants.
(AFP, 4/20/09)(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Paraguay's Pres.
Fernando Lugo (57) was hit with another paternity claim, just a week
after the former Roman Catholic bishop acknowledged fathering a
different illegitimate child while still subject to his vows of
chastity. Benigna Leguizamon, an impoverished soap-seller, said Lugo's
previous admission inspired her to go public about her 6-year-old.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Vladimir Lukin,
Russia's parliament-appointed human rights ombudsman, presented an
annual report on human rights in Russia that included violations of
religious freedoms, prisoners' rights and freedom of political
expression. He said he is concerned about a growing number of claims
that police and judicial authorities committed abuses.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Somali pirates in two
boats with about six pirates each attacked the Maltese-flagged MV
Atlantica, before the ship took evasive maneuvers and escaped in the
Gulf of Aden without damages or injury. Other pirates released a
Togo-flagged, Lebanese-owned ship after they found out it was supposed
to pick up food destined for Somalia. The MV Sea Horse was hijacked
April 14 with 19 crew as it headed to India to pick up more than 7,300
tons of food destined for Somalia. The pirates also were paid "a
reward" of $100,000 by two Somali businessmen for freeing the aid ship.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Sri Lanka’s military
said some 35,000 civilians fled the last corner of territory held by
the Tamil Tigers, as the government warned the rebels it would launch a
final assault in 24 hours. According to Tamil rebels 1,000 civilians
died in a government raid on their territory. The military denied the
accusation saying only 17 civilians were killed and that they died in
rebels suicide bombing. Over the next 9 days some 114,520 civilians
fled the area.
(AP, 4/20/09)(AP, 4/21/09)(Econ, 5/2/09, p.44)
2009 Apr 20, A south Sudan
district official said weekend clashes left more than 170 people dead
as armed fighters from the Murle ethnic group in remote Akobo county in
eastern Jonglei state attacked Lou Nuer villages.
(AFP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, A UN racism
conference opened in Geneva. Iran’s Pres. Ahmadinejad accused Israel of
being the "most cruel and racist regime," sparking a walkout by angry
Western diplomats. The US, Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy,
Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland boycotted the conference out of
concern that it could be used by Muslim countries to criticize Israel
and to limit free speech when it comes to criticizing their religion.
(AP, 4/19/09)(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 20, Zimbabwe's central
bank governor admitted that he took hard currency from the bank
accounts of private businesses and foreign aid groups without
permission, saying he was trying to keep his country's cash-strapped
ministries running.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2010 Apr 20, The US Supreme Court
struck down a federal law aimed at banning videos that show graphic
violence against animals, saying it violates the right to free speech.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, America’s Commodity
Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approved the second of 2 exchanges
that would allow trading of contracts based on films’ box-office
takings.
(Econ, 4/24/10, p.74)
2010 Apr 20, The space shuttle
Discovery landed in Florida ending its 15-day voyage to the int’l.
space station.
(SFC, 4/21/10, p.A8)
2010 Apr 20, An explosion and fire
damaged an oil rig and critically injured 7 people off the coast of
Louisiana leaving 11 workers missing in the Gulf of Mexico. The
Deepwater Horizon rig sank 2 days later. Officials feared as much as
336,000 gallons of crude oil a day could be rising from the sea floor
nearly 5,000 feet below. On April 23 no oil appeared to be leaking from
the well head at the ocean floor, nor was any leaking at the water's
surface. On April 25 it was reported that some 1000 barrels per day
were leaking from 2 conduit sources related to the sunken oil rig. An
internal investigation later said the deadly blowout was triggered by a
bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill
column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and
barriers before exploding. In June it was reported that BP had been
trying to seal cracks in the Macondo well more than 2 months before the
explosion.
(AFP, 4/21/10)(AFP, 4/23/10)(AP, 4/25/10)(AP,
5/8/10)(SFC, 6/18/10, p.A13)
2010 Apr 20, Dorothy Height (98),
a longtime leader of the US civil rights movement and the chairwoman of
the National Council of Negro Women, died in Washington, DC.
(Reuters, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Argentina's last
dictator, Reynaldo Bignone (82), was convicted and sentenced to 25
years in prison for kidnappings and torture during the nation's
1976-1983 military regime.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, A UN court delivered
a long-awaited ruling rejecting Argentina's claim that an Uruguayan
pulp mill pollutes their shared river. Both sides said the decision by
the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands gave them what
they need to resolve their differences, with Argentina taking heart
from a part of the ruling that said Uruguay did not properly inform it
about the project. Argentine activists were still blocking the main
bridge across the river and refused to give up their fight. Activists
in June voted to lift their four-year bridge blockade.
(AP, 4/21/10)(AP, 6/17/10)
2010 Apr 20, Australia’s PM Kevin
Rudd said he had reached agreement with all but one of Australia's
states on major health reforms which he hopes will spearhead his 2010
re-election campaign.
(Reuters, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Bolivia’s Pres. Evo
Morales said that men should stay away from eating chicken if they want
to maintain their hair and virility. He said chicken producers inject
the birds with female hormones. Producers in the US, EU and other
countries abandoned the use of hormones in poultry several decades ago.
(SFC, 4/21/10, p.A2)
2010 Apr 20, Brazil speedily
awarded the tender for the controversial Belo Monte hydro-electric dam
projected to be the world's third-largest, despite fierce opposition
from environmentalists. The tender was awarded to Norte Energia, a
consortium led by Chesf, a subsidiary of the state electricity company
Electrobras, after a series of court injunctions that had blocked and
unblocked the auction process. The reservoir of the dammed Xingu river
will cover 516 square km. and leave scores of villages awash.
(AFP, 4/20/10)(Econ, 4/24/10, p.34)
2010 Apr 20, Airplanes gradually
took to the skies after five days of being grounded by a volcanic ash
cloud that has devastated European travel. Only limited flights were
allowed to resume at some European airports and UK authorities said
London airports would remained closed for at least another day due to
new danger from the invisible ash cloud.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Colombian Gen.
Fernando Joya and five other members of the military died in a
helicopter collision at a base in the nation's southwest.
(AP, 4/21/10)
2010 Apr 20, In Dagestan
assailants gunned down two traffic policemen who pulled over their car
in the provincial capital, Makhachkala.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Ethiopia said that it
would go ahead with a new deal with six other countries on sharing the
waters of the Nile and accused Egypt of "dragging its feet" on a more
equitable treaty.
(AFP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, In Honduras a gunman
fatally shot journalist Georgino Orellana (48) in the head as he was
leaving a television studio in the city of San Pedro Sula.
(AP, 4/21/10)
2010 Apr 20, India’s trade
ministry said it will launch a formal dispute against the EU at the
World Trade Organization (WTO) over EU seizures of Indian generic drugs.
(Reuters, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, In Iran an explosion
in a car killed 2 people and wounded 8 in the western city of Ilam. The
car was not a gas-powered vehicle of the sort that has seen a number of
accidental explosions in recent years.
(AFP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Iraqi and US troops
killed Ahmed al-Obeidi (Ahmad Ali Abbas Dahir al-Ubayd), a regional
leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, in an early morning raid in the northern
province of Ninevah. Five family members of a local chief of an
anti-Qaeda militia were gunned down in their homes in Tarmiyah, north
of Baghdad, with the children also beheaded. A police colonel and his
driver were killed by a roadside bomb in the western city of Hit, while
7 other policemen and 4 civilians were injured in bombings in Ramadi
and Baghdad.
(AP, 4/20/10)(AFP, 4/20/10)(SFC, 4/23/10, p.A2)
2010 Apr 20, Kyrgyzstan's ousted
president was in exile in Belarus, as the interim authorities
controlling the Kyrgyz capital warned he would be imprisoned if he
tried to return to the Central Asian country.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, In Malaysia ruling
party lawmaker Bung Mokhtar Radin (50) and actress Zizie Ezette A.
Samad, his second wife, pleaded guilty to entering into a polygamous
marriage without official consent amid a debate over Islamic morality
among politicians.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Mexican state police
reported that three men were found shot to death in a taxi in Acapulco.
(AP, 4/21/10)
2010 Apr 20, The Dutch Supreme
Court overturned the acquittal of Guus Kouwenhoven, a businessman
accused of supplying arms to former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor,
and ordered a new appeals hearing in the case. He had been convicted in
2006 of breaching a UN arms embargo by trading weapons for timber in
Liberia and sentenced to eight years imprisonment, but the conviction
was overturned in 2008.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Pakistani officials
said several senior Pakistani police and intelligence officials have
been removed from their posts after a damning April 15 UN report into
the killing of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto.
(AFP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Gaza's Hamas rulers
burned nearly 2 million pills of Tramadol, a painkiller many Gazans
take recreationally because they say it relaxes them and provides
temporary relief from the territory's hardships.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Rwanda’s army
announced that 2 senior generals have been arrested over accusations of
corruption and misconduct.
(AFP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, In Saudi Arabia a
police official said that the head of the powerful religious police has
fired the chief of the Mecca branch for advocating the mixing of the
sexes. Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamidi's suggestion in a newspaper
interview this week that men and women should be left to mingle freely
directly clashed with a central preoccupation of the force.
(AP, 4/21/10)
2010 Apr 20, In Serbia Biljana
Kovacevic Vuco (58), one of Serbia's most prominent human rights
activists, died. She played an important role in Serbia's fledgling
human rights and anti-war movement during the 1990s rule of late
strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 20, Two Somali radio
stations said the government has ordered them to close for obeying a
week-old order by an Islamic militant group to stop playing music.
Officials at Somaliweyn and Tusmo radio stations said they won't obey
the government order to resume playing music and shut down. The
government order was rescinded minutes after it was issued.
(AP, 4/20/10)(SFC, 4/21/10, p.A2)
2010 Apr 20, In South Korea two
North Korean army majors were arrested on suspicion of plotting to kill
Hwang Jang-yop (87), a high-profile defector. Jang-yop was one of North
Korea's most powerful officials when he fled the impoverished nation 13
years ago in a defection that reportedly enraged Kim Jong Il.
(AP, 4/21/10)
2010 Apr 20, South Africa’s
biggest agricultural union, Agri SA, said 2 farmers are attacked every
day in South Africa and two killed per week.
(AFP, 4/20/10)
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