Today in History - October 4
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1226 Oct 4, St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans and one of history's most famous nature lovers, died. [see Oct 3]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1289 Oct 4, Louis X, the Stubborn, king of France (1314-16), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1515 Oct 4, Lucas Cranach (d.1586), the Younger, German painter, was born.
(WUD, 1994, p.339)(MC, 10/4/01)
1535 Oct 4, The 1st full English translation of the Bible was printed in Switzerland. Miles Coverdale’s translation of the Bible into English (from Dutch and Latin) was the first complete version in English and was dedicated to Henry VIII.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.15)(MC, 10/4/01)
1542 Oct 4, Roberto Bellarmino, Italian Jesuit theologian, diplomat, saint, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1582 Oct 4, Theresa of Avila (b.1515), Spanish mystic writer and saint, died. She co-founded with John of the Cross (1542-1591) the Order of Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites. "Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man."
(CU, 6/87)(WUD, 1994, p.769)(AP, 12/8/97)(MC, 10/4/01)
1589 Oct 4, Francisco de Cuellar, a Spanish Armada officer from the wrecked galleon Lavia, wrote a letter from Antwerp to King Philip that was later valued for its descriptions of Ireland. He had spent 6 months evading English forces to get to Scotland where after 6 more months he reached the Netherlands.
(ON, 5/02, p.12)
1626 Oct 4, Richard Cromwell (d.1659), lord protector of England (1658-59), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1636 Oct 4, The Massachusetts Plymouth Company drafted its 1st law.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1648 Oct 4, Peter Stuyvesant established America's 1st volunteer firemen.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1669 Oct 4, Rembrandt H. van Rijn (b.1606), painter and etcher (Steel Masters, Night Watch), died. In 1999 Simon Schama published the biography "Rembrandt's Eyes."
(WSJ, 11/24/99, p.A16)(MC, 10/4/01)
1712 Oct 4, Utrecht banished poor Jews.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1744 Oct 4, The HMS Victory sank in the English Channel with at least 900 men aboard. The 175-foot sailing ship had separated from its fleet during a storm. In 2009 Odyssey Marine Exploration reported finding the vessel about 330 feet beneath the surface and more than 50 miles from where anybody would have thought it went down.
(AP, 2/1/09)
1772 Oct 4, Francois-Louis Pierne, composer, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1777 Oct 4, George Washington's troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Penn., resulting in heavy American casualties. British General Sir William Howe repelled Washington's last attempt to retake Philadelphia, compelling Washington to spend the winter at Valley Forge.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)
1795 Oct 4, General Napoleon Bonaparte led the rout of counterrevolutionaries in the streets of Paris, beginning his rise to power. France was in the midst of economic disaster—a factor that aided royalist counterrevolutionaries in their attempts to incite rebellion against the young republican government. Bonaparte, looking for a new command while on half pay in Paris, joined the defense of the Convention against overwhelming odds.
(HN, 10/4/99)(HNQ, 10/26/00)
1810 Oct 4, Alexander Walewski, French earl, foreign minister, son of Napoleon I, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1814 Oct 4, Jean Francois Millet (d.1875), French painter, was born.
(www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=745)
1822 Oct 4, Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president (R) of the United States, was born in Delaware, Ohio. Hayes was a major-general in the Civil War, then an Ohio congressman, then succeeded Grant as president (1877-81). Hayes won the Electoral College by a margin of one vote after his opponent won the popular vote in an election so fraught with charges of vote fraud that there were even fears of a coup. Hayes refused to seek a second term.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/3/01)
1824 Oct 4, The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1824 was enacted, after the overthrow of the Mexican Empire of Agustin de Iturbide. In the new constitution, the republic took the name of United Mexican States, and was defined as a representative federal republic, with Catholicism as the official religion. A liberal constitution, established at this time, was later replaced by Santa Anna.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_Constitution_of_Mexico)(AP, 9/15/10)
1832 Oct 4, William Griggs, inventor (photo chromo lithography), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1851 Oct 4, In San Francisco the third Jenny Lind Theater, run by Tom McGuire, opened on Portsmouth Square on the same site as the two preceding it, which were destroyed by the fires of 1851. In 1852 a scandal erupted as the city of San Francisco purchased the theater for $200,000 for use as the city hall. In 1949 the site was named state landmark No. 192.
(SFC, 5/24/14, p.C1)(www.noehill.com/sf/landmarks/cal0192.asp)(SFC, 7/24/21, p.B5)
1854 Oct 4, Abraham Lincoln made his 1st political speech at Illinois State Fair.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1859 Oct 4, Karl Baedeker (b.1801), German travel writer and tour guide (Die Schweiz), died.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1861 Oct 4, Frederic Remington (d.1909), American Western painter and sculptor, was born.
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1213)(HN, 10/4/00)
1861 Oct 4, The Union ship USS South Carolina captured two Confederate blockade runners outside of New Orleans, La.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1862 Oct 4, Edward Stratemeyer, author, was born. He created the Hardy Boys, Rover Boys, Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins. The first series of books written/produced by Stratemeyer was The Rover Boys, written under the pseudonym of Arthur M. Winfield. There were 30 volumes, written between 1899 and 1926. The Bobbsey Twins series (Laura Lee Hope) was next, and is the oldest "surviving" series, extending to 72 volumes, written between 1904 and 1979. Tom Swift, attributed to Victor Appleton, began in 1910 and there were 40 volumes before the series ended in 1941. (There was also a Tom Swift, Jr. series, by Victor Appleton II.) The Hardy Boys (Franklin W. Dixon, 85 volumes from 1927 to 1985) and Nancy Drew (Carolyn Keene, 78 volumes from 1930 to 1985) are the other best-known Stratemeyer books.
(HN, 10/4/00)(http://pw2.netcom.com/~drmike99/aboutbobbsey.html)
1862 Oct 4, Battle of Corinth, Mississippi, ended.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1874 Oct 4, Kiowa leader Santanta, known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrendered in Darlington, Texas. He was later sent to the state penitentiary, where he committed suicide October 11, 1878.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1877 Oct 4, Pancho Villa (d.1923), [Doroteo Arango], Mexican revolutionary rebel, was born. [see Jun 5, 1878]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1879 Oct 4, Edward Murray East, botanist, was born. His research led to the development of hybrid corn.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1881 Oct 4, [Heinrich AH] Walther von Brauchitsch, German field marshal, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1883 Oct 4, Orient Express made its 1st run linking Istanbul, Turkey, to Paris by rail.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1884 Oct 4, Damon Runyon, journalist and short story writer, was born. “Guys & Dolls" was based on his writings.
(HN, 10/4/00)(MC, 10/4/01)
1887 Oct 4, The first issue of the International Herald Tribune was published as the Paris Herald Tribune.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1892 Oct 4, Engelbert Dollfuss, Austrian Fascist chancellor, was born. He was killed by Nazis in 1934.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Buster Keaton (Joseph F. Keaton), star of silent film comedies including Sherlock, Jr. and The General, was born in Piqua, Kan. He is considered a legendary presence in the history of cinema. Nicknamed 'The Great Stone Face', he graduated to full-length films in the 1920s, which featured his amazing stunts rivaled only by Chaplin.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Hattie McDaniel, actress (Gone With the Wind, Academy Award), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Richard Sorge, German spy for USSR in Tokyo (WW II), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, The first U.S. Open golf tournament was held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. At the US Amateur Golf Championship at Newport, R.I., officials ruled against the prone position use of a pool cue to sink a put.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 11/29/97, p.C3)
1903 Oct 4, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Austrian Nazi (SS/SD) and successor to Reinhard Heydrich, was born. He was hanged in 1946.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1904 Oct 4, Frederic Auguste Bertholdi (b.1834), French sculptor, died in Paris. He is best known for designing Liberty Enlightening the World (aka the Statue of Liberty).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Auguste_Bartholdi)
1905 Oct 4, Orville Wright piloted the first flight longer than 30 minutes. The flight lasted 33 minutes, 17 seconds and covered 21 miles.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1909 Oct 4, The Cunard liner "Lusitania" crossed the Atlantic in four days, 15 hours and 52 minutes.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1910 Oct 4, Scottish surgeon Joseph Bell died. He was the real-life model for Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1911 Oct 4, The 1st public elevator began service at London's Earl's Court Metro Station.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1912 Oct 4, Gen. Zeledon, Nicaraguan opponent of US occupation, was executed.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1914 Oct 4, The first German Zeppelin raided London.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1915 Oct 4, Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah was established. Pres. Woodrow Wilson established Dinosaur National Monument in Jensen, Utah.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, p.T8)(MC, 10/4/01)
1916 Oct 4, The California State Federation of Labor maintained its policy of banning Japanese workers from joining labor unions.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W5)
1916 Oct 4, National Lead, US Steel (preferred) and Peoples Gas were removed from the Dow Jones. AT&T was first added to the DJIA.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45,46)(WSJ, 4/2/04, p.C1)
1918 Oct 4, The pigeon Cher Ami (d.1919) became the hero of the American 77th Infantry Division as she delivered her message during in the Battle of the Argonne, despite having been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, covered in blood and with a leg hanging only by a tendon.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher_Ami)(Econ, 1/16/16, p.89)
1919 Oct 4, Rene Marques, Puerto Rican playwright and short story writer, was born.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1921 Oct 4, League of Nations refused to assist starving Russians.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1923 Oct 4, Charlton Heston III, American actor, was born. His films included “10 Commandments," “Ben Hur" and “Planet of Apes."
(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/4/01)
1928 Oct 4, Alvin Toffler, writer and futurist, was born. His work included “Future Shock" (1970).
(HN, 10/4/00)(NW, 9/16/02, p.34D)
1931 Oct 4, The comic strip "Dick Tracy," created by Chester Gould (1900-1985), made its debut.
(AP, 10/4/97)(www.internationalhero.co.uk/d/diktracy.htm)
1933 Oct 4, First issue of Esquire magazine was published.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1931 Oct 4, Aerial circus star Clyde Pangborn and playboy Hugh Herndon, Jr. set off in Miss Veedol to complete the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean from Sabishiro Beach in Misawa City, Japan. A young boy gave Panghorn 5 apples from Misawa City.
(ON, 1/03, p.10)(www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7495)
1939 Oct 4, Last Polish troops surrendered to German Wehrmacht.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1940 Oct 4, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1940 Oct 4, 12 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1941 Oct 4, Jackie Collins, actress, author, was born in London, England. Her books included “The world Is Full of Married Men (1968), “Stud" (1969), “Bitch" (1979) and “Deadly Embrace" (2002).
(MC, 10/4/01)(SSFC, 8/4/02, Par p.14)
1941 Oct 4, Anne Rice, novelist, was born in New Orleans, La. Her books included “Interview with a Vampire."
(HN, 10/4/00)(MC, 10/4/01)
1943 Oct 4, German occupiers forbade the flying of kites. Violation carried a 6 month jail sentence.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1943 Oct 4, Some 6,600 Moroccans accounted for the bulk of the fighting force that freed Corsica. In 2013 France honored the Moroccan veterans and fallen soldiers who freed Corsica.
(AP, 10/4/13)
1946 Oct 4, Susan Sarandon, American film actress, was born.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1947 Oct 4, Max Karl Ernst Planck (b.1858), German physicist (Nobel 1918), died.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck)
1949 Oct 4, United Nations' permanent NYC headquarters was dedicated.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1951 Oct 4, Henrietta Lacks, a black woman, died of cancer in Baltimore. Cells from her body, later known as HeLa cells, were cultivated for research. In 1974 Dr. Nelson-Rees (d.2009 at 80), a UC Berkeley geneticist, reported that the HeLa cells had contaminated other cell cultures in laboratories around the world. In 1986 Michael Gold authored “A Conspiracy of Cells," a chronicle of the Nelson-Rees study. In 2010 Rebecca Skloot authored “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."
(SFC, 1/28/09, p.B10)(SSFC, 2/14/10, p.F3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)
1952 Oct 4, Pres. Truman arrived in SF to campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson.
(SFC, 10/4/02, p.E4)
1957 Oct 4, The television series "Leave It to Beaver" premiered on CBS. It ended in 1963 after 6 season. Joe Connelly (d.2003 at 85), writer-producer, co-created the show. It featured Jerry Mathers (9) as Beaver, Tony Dow (12) as his older brother Wally, Hugh Beaumont as the father and Barbara Billingsley (1915-2010) as the mother.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A25)(SSFC, 10/17/10, p.C9)
1957 Oct 4, Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters Union.
(AP, 10/4/07)
1957 Oct 4, The Space Age and "space race" began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik (traveler), the first man-made space satellite. The satellite, built by Valentin Glushko, weighed 184 pounds and was launched by a converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik, developed under the chief scientist Sergei Korolyov, orbited the earth every 96 minutes at a maximum height of 584 miles. The event was timed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. In 1958, it reentered the earth's atmosphere and burned up. It was followed by 9 other Sputnik spacecraft.
(WSJ, 10/7/96, p.B4)(SFC, 8/2/97, p.A12)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 10/3/97, p.A8)(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(AP, 10/1/07)
1958 Oct 4, The first trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) with flights between London and New York.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1959 Nov 4, In San Francisco a protest meeting was staged at Portsmouth Square to oppose plans for an 800-car garage at a cost of $3.2 million. 100 foot trees in the plaza were later felled for the underground parking structure.
(SSFC, 11/1/09, DB p.42)
1961 Oct 4, In San Francisco comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested on charges of using lewd and obscene language following his first act at the Jazz Workshop in North Beach. Police code No. 205 was cited. Bail was set at $367.50. Bruce was successfully defended by attorney Albert Bendich.
(SSFC, 10/2/11, DB p.42)(SFC, 1/14/15, p.D3)
1963 Oct 4-1963 Oct 8, Hurricane Flora, killed some 7-8,000 people in Cuba and Haiti.
(SFC, 11/30/98, p.A2)
1965 Oct 4, Pope Paul VI became the first reigning pontiff to visit the Western Hemisphere as he addressed the U.N. General Assembly.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1967 Oct 4, The UN Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees went into effect. The 1967 Protocol removed geographical and temporal restrictions from the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Relating_to_the_Status_of_Refugees)(Econ, 11/27/04, p.44)
1968 Oct 4, Cambodia admitted that the Viet Cong used their country for sanctuary.
(www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200408180835.asp)
1970 Oct 4, Janis Joplin (b.1943) was found dead in a seedy Hollywood motel of a heroin overdose at age 27. Her classic songs included: "Down on Me," "Ball and Chain," and "Piece of My Heart." In 1992 Laura Joplin authored “Love, Janis."
(WSJ, 1/9/97, p.A8)(SFEC, 3/16/97, Z1 p.4)(SSFC, 8/21/05, p.F1)
1972 Oct 4, Judge John Sirica imposed a gag order on the Watergate break-in case.
(www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1791.html)
1974 Oct 4, Anne Sexton (b.1928), American poet, died in Massachusetts. In 1991 Diane Middlebrook (1939-2007), authored “Anne Sexton: A Biography."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sexton)(SSFC, 12/16/07, p.A1)
1974 Oct 4, The Southern music festival Volunteer Jam, headlined by the Charlie Daniels Band, was first held at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Jam)
1974 Oct 4, In Greece the New Democracy party (ND), was founded. It became the main center-right political party.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democracy_(Greece))
1976 Oct 4, Barbara Walters made her debut as the first female nightly network news anchor. She was hired by ABC-TV, and offered a then-unheard of million dollar a year salary to co-anchor with veteran Harry Reasoner. But Reasoner was not pleased with having her there. In addition to their lack of chemistry, the network's ratings did not improve, and she was replaced in mid-1978. She joined another ABC show, 20/20, where she had much greater success.
(http://tinyurl.com/yj2yufw)(www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=99440)
1976 Oct 4, Agriculture secretary Earl Butz resigned in the wake of a controversy over a joke he'd made about blacks.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1976 Oct 4, In Gregg v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on the death sentence in murder cases. This restored the legality of capital punishment, which had not been practiced since 1967. The first execution following this ruling was Gary Gilmore in 1977.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1978 Oct 4, Funeral services were held at the Vatican for Pope John Paul I.
(AP, 10/4/98)
1980 Oct 4, Some 520 people were forced to abandon the cruise ship “Prisendam" in the Gulf of Alaska after the Dutch luxury liner caught fire—no deaths or serious injury resulted. The ship capsized and sank a week later.
(AP, 10/4/08)
1982 Oct 4, Frank Rosenthal (1929-2008), Las Vegas casino operator, survived a car bomb when his Cadillac exploded as he turned the key. He ran the mob-owned Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda and Marina casinos. In 1995 Martin Scorsese made his film “Casino," based on the life of Frank Rosenthal.
(SFC, 10/17/08, p.B8)(Econ, 11/1/08, p.99)
1982 Oct 4, Glenn H. Gould (b.1932), eccentric Canadian pianist, died in Toronto of a cerebral hemorrhage. In 1997 Peter F. Ostwald wrote a biography titled: "Glenn Gould." In 2010 the documentary “Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould" was directed by Pater Raymont and Michele Hozer.
(WSJ, 8/5/97, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Gould)(SFC, 11/19/10, p.E8)
1985 Oct 4, Islamic Jihad issued a statement saying it had killed American hostage William Buckley. Fellow hostage David Jacobsen, however, later said he believed Buckley had died (in Lebanon) of torture injuries four months earlier.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1986 Oct 4, In the Netherlands Queen Beatrix officially opened the Oosterscheldekering for use by saying the well-known words: De stormvloedkering is gesloten. De Deltawerken zijn voltooid. Zeeland is veilig. (The flood barrier is closed. The Delta Works are completed. Zealand is safe.) It was the world's largest movable flood barrier.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterscheldekering)
1987 Oct 4, National Football League owners staged their first games since the players union went on strike, with nonstriking and replacement personnel on the gridiron at sparsely attended stadiums.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1988 Oct 4, Indian professor Mithileshwar Singh, freed the day before by his Lebanese kidnappers, said his captors had treated him well during his 20 months of imprisonment, but acknowledged "there is no substitute for freedom."
(AP, 10/4/98)
1989 Oct 4, Fawaz Younis, a Lebanese hijacker convicted of commandeering a Jordanian jetliner in 1985 with two Americans aboard, was sentenced in Washington to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1989 Oct 4, Famed race horse Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner, died at Claiborne Farm, Paris, Ky., at age 19 ½.
(AH, 10/04, p.15)
1990 Oct 4, For the first time in nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first meeting of reunified Germany’s parliament.
(AP, 10/4/00)
1991 Oct 4, Pres. Bush signed Executive Order 12775 which prohibited certain transactions with respect to Haiti.
(www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/1991.html#12775)
1991 Oct 4, Leonard C. Odell died at age 83. He and his older brother Allan (d.1994) wrote some 7,000 Burma Shave poems beginning in 1925 in rural Minnesota. The Burma-Shave phenomenon faded in 1963, when Phillip Morris bought Burma-Vita and the signs began to come down.
(http://tinyurl.com/f4s8h)(www.two-lane.com/burmashave.html)
1991 Oct 4, In Madrid, Spain, 26 nations, including the United States, signed the Antarctic Treaty, which imposed a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica. It would be up for review in 2048. China acceded to the treaty in 1983.
(AP, 10/4/01)(Econ, 11/16/13, p.50)
1991 Oct 4, Carl Bildt (b.1949), leader of the Moderates, began serving PM of Sweden and continued to Oct 7, 1994. His center-right government was blighted by a deep recession followed by a huge row over whether to build the Oresund Bridge to Denmark.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Bildt)(SFC, 9/20/98, p.A12)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.60)
1992 Oct 4, In the Netherlands an Israeli El Al Jumbo Jet transport, enroute from New York to Tel Aviv, crashed into an Amsterdam apartment complex and killed 43 people. Since then scores of people complained of unidentified health problems. In 1998 it was revealed that the jet carried 50 gallons of dimethyl methylphosphonate, a non-poisonous ingredient of sarin nerve gas, destined for Israel. A report on the crash was released in 1999 and said that the plane's ballast included carcinogenic depleted uranium.
{Netherlands, Air Crash, Israel, Medical}
(AP, 10/4/97)(WSJ, 4/22/99, A1)(www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/5.03/990211-cargo.html)
1992 Oct 4, In Mozambique a peace accord ended 17 years of civil war during which some 600,000 people were killed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_General_Peace_Accords)(WSJ, 2/14/00, p.B13C)
1993 Oct 4, In Somalia US troops blasted their way out of Bakara Market in Mogadishu and left an estimated 500 Somalis dead. Dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.E4)(AP, 10/4/98)
1993 Oct 4, The Russian White House was shelled. In Moscow, the occupation of the Russian parliament building ended as tanks and paratroopers flushed out hard-line opponents of Boris Yeltsin. Rebel parliamentarians led by Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov surrendered after a total of 10 hours. As many as 150 people were killed.
(HFA, '96, p.40)(AP, 10/4/98)(http://tinyurl.com/8cg4r)
1994 Oct 4, President Clinton welcomed South African President Nelson Mandela to the White House.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1994 Oct 4, In France Florence Rey (19), a literature student, participated in a bungled holdup that left 3 police officers, a taxi driver, and her accomplice-lover dead following a car chase. In 1998 she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
(SFC, 10/2/98, p.B3)
1994 Oct 4, Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide vowed in an address to the U.N. General Assembly to return to Haiti in 11 days.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1995 Oct 4, Pope John Paul the Second arrived in the United States for a five-day visit.
(AP, 10/4/00)
1995 Oct 4, Hurricane Opal battered the Florida panhandle.
(AP, 10/4/05)
1996 Oct 4, A judge in Philadelphia issued an injunction preventing major-league baseball umpires from striking for the remainder of the postseason over an incident in which Roberto Alomar of the Baltimore Orioles spat on umpire John Hirschbeck.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1996 Oct 4, The Dow Jones hit a record 5,992.86 on reports of weak employment.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.A1)
1996 Oct 4, In New Zealand the government agreed to settle the biggest land claim ever filed by indigenous Maoris. The Ngai Tahu people would receive land and cash worth $117 million and regain some fishing rights. The Maoris number about 12% of the country’s 3.6 million people.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.A10)
1997 Oct 4, Some 500,000 people gathered in Washington DC for the Promise Keepers’ “Sacred Assembly of Men." It was one of the largest religious gatherings in U.S. history.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/98)
1997 Oct 4, US Federal officials arrested Theresa Marie Squillacote, a former Pentagon lawyer, her husband Kurt Alan Stand, and James Michael Clark for espionage that began with the recruitment of Stand in 1972 by the East Germans. He pleaded guilty to spying for East Germany in 1998.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 6/3/98, p.A1)
1997 Oct 4, The Chicago Field Museum of Natural History paid $8,362,500 for the T, rex skull from S. Dakota at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A13)
1997 Oct 4, From Bosnia it was reported that an Egyptian ship loaded with Soviet-made T-55 tanks was sitting at anchor in the Croatian port of Ploce. The shipment was registered with officials of the foreign peace force. An error on the manifest said the tanks were intended for the Bosnian Army.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A8)
1997 Oct 4, From Brazil it was reported that fires in the Amazon had increased 28% over the past year and that clouds of smoke were thicker and covered more area than those due to the burning forests of Indonesia.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, In Columbia rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces killed 17 policemen near San Juan de Arama. The rebels were staging a growing campaign to disrupt municipal elections. They had already killed 26 candidates and forced more than 1,500 to withdraw.
(SFC, 10/6/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, It was reported that France banned 20% of all cars from the streets of Paris for one day last week due to smog.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, It was reported that Greenpeace had found crabs contaminated with twice Europe’s allowed radiation level near the La Hague nuclear waste reprocessing plant near Cherbourg in northwestern France.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, In Spain Princess Christina Federica de Borbon y Grecia (32) married Inaki Urdangarin (29), a Basque professional handball team player.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, US and Algerian navies conducted a small joint search-and-rescue exercise in the Mediterranean.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, In Argentina Marcelo Cattaneo, the younger brother of Pres. Menem’s former deputy chief of staff, was found hanging by the neck outside Buenos Aires. He had been named 2 months earlier as the man who tried to bribe former directors of the Banco de la Nacion. A newspaper article on the 1994-1995 IBM-Banco de la Nacion bribery scheme was stuffed in his mouth.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.A24)
1998 Oct 4, In Brazil national elections Fernando Henrique Cardoso won with 50.3% of the vote in early returns vs. 35.6% for Luiz Inacio da Silva of the Workers Party.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, p.A21)(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct 4, In Iraq a Palestinian burst into a Baghdad synagogue and sprayed the crowd with gunfire. 2 Jews and 2 Muslims were killed.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A9)
1998 Oct 4, In Mexico the Indians of San Juan Chamula in Chiapas boycotted the elections in protest for the jailing of 5 men accused of murder. They were jailed a year ago during a dispute between Catholic and Protestant converts.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.a10)(SFC, 10/6/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 4, In Mexico Hector Teran, governor of Baja California and leader of the opposition National Action Party, died at age 67.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, Russian envoys warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that NATO might launch air-strikes unless he took "decisive measures" to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern province of Kosovo.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1998 Oct 4, Former Swiss Pres. Jean-Pascal Delamuraz died at age 62. He served his one year rotating term in 1996 and made headlines that Dec. when he described Jewish demands for compensation for Holocaust victims as blackmail.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)
1999 Oct 4, It was reported that Edmund T. Pratt, an ex-Pfizer executive, planned to donate $35 million to endow the Duke Univ. School of Engineering.
(SFC, 10/4/99, p.A3)
1999 Oct 4, An Illinois jury ordered State Farm to pay $456 million to 4.7 million customers in a lawsuit accusing the nation’s largest car insurer of using inferior parts for auto body repairs. Four days later, the judge ruled State Farm had committed fraud, and awarded $730 million in actual and punitive damages on top of the jury verdict. State Farm appealed.
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.A3)(SFC, 10/9/99, p.A3)(AP, 10/4/00)
1999 Oct 4, MCI WorldCom planned to acquire Sprint Corp. for over $100 billion. The deal was quashed in 2000.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/28/00, p.A1)
1999 Oct 4, The UN Security Council approved a one-time increase in oil sales for Iraq from $5.26 billion to $8.3 billion.
(WSJ, 10/5/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 4, Israeli PM Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed on terms for the first safe route between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A11)
1999 Oct 4, In Russia Prime Minister Putin planned to resettle thousands of Chechens in areas under Russian control, an indication that Moscow planned to split Chechnya in two. Chechen fighters shot down a Russian Sukhoi-24 warplane that was searching for another downed plane.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A10)(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A10)
1999 Oct 4, In South Korea radioactive water leaked inside a nuclear power plant in Wolsung and exposed 22 workers to small amounts of radiation.
(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A11)
2000 Oct 4, 3Com was expected to announce plans to join with Harris Interactive for the largest Internet survey to date.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.D1)
2000 Oct 4, In Indonesia Pres. Wahid denied clemency to Tommy Suharto and ordered the arrest of a Timorese militia chief.
(SFC, 10/5/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 4, In Israel Barak agreed to withdraw heavy arms from the West Bank and Gaza in a bid to halt violence. Amid fresh bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat together for talks in Paris.
(WSJ, 10/5/00, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/01)
2000 Oct 4, In the Ivory Coast a bus-station bombing killed 4 people and a state of emergency was declared.
(WSJ, 10/6/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 4, In Serbia the Constitutional Court set aside part of the Sep 24 voting results in a move seen to buy time for Pres. Milosevic. Citizens blocked an attempt by the government to use force against strikers and protesters. Major protests were planned to force Milosevic from office.
(SFC, 10/5/00, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, The US pledged $320 m million in aid to Afghanistan refugees.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, Reagan National Airport re-opened.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A15)
2001 Oct 4, NYC officials estimated that the Sep 11 disaster would cost as much as $105 billion over the next 2 years. Depending on the number of jobs permanently shifted out of the city, the September 11th attacks could cost New York City as much as $83-95 billion dollars, though the financial loss could never compare to the horrendous loss of nearly 3,000 lives.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A15)(HNQ, 9/11/02)
2001 Oct 4, In Texas Barry Bonds hit his 70th home run to tie Mark McGwire's 1998 record in a 10-2 victory over Houston. Rickey Henderson homered to pass Ty Cobb and become baseball's career leader in runs scored with 2,246 during San Diego's 6-3 win over Los Angeles.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/02)
2001 Oct 4, In Texas Mark Stroman (b.1969), in the wake of 9/11, went on a shooting spree targeting people of Middle Eastern descent killing 2 people and wounding a third. The victims were from South Asia. Stroman was later convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on July 20, 2011.
(SFC, 7/21/11, p.A9)(www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/stromanmark.htm)
2001 Oct 4, Algeria’s Pres. Bouteflika promised to recognize the Berber language, compensate victims of police brutality and prosecute police involved in brutality.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, The British government released a 16-page document over the Internet that presented details on Osama bin Laden’s responsibility for the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A16)
2001 Oct 4, The EU made a joint announcement with Spain that the Basque ETA would be put on the list of terrorist organizations whose assets would be frozen by the EU.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, In Israel PM Sharon warned the US that it risked appeasing the Arab nations: “Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense." A Palestinian posing as an Israeli soldier killed 3 Israelis in Afula. A Palestinian was killed during a 2nd day of fighting in Hebron.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D4)(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, Macedonian security forces, in opposition to external warnings, took control of 3 ethnic Albanian villages but met with resistance from others.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D4)
2001 Oct 4, Pakistan announced that it sees sufficient grounds for an indictment against Osama bin Laden.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, In the Philippines government forces captured 13 members of Abu Sayyaf and killed another in a southern clash.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D6)
2001 Oct 4, A chartered Russian Tupelov-154 airplane crashed in to the Black Sea and all 78 people aboard were killed. The Sibir Airlines jet was bound to Novosibirsk from Tel Aviv. An accidental missile strike from Ukrainian military forces was suspected but denied by Ukraine officials. Pres. Putin said terrorists might have been responsible. Later evidence indicated that flight 1812 was hit by an S-200 missile. On Oct 12 Ukraine and Russia acknowledged that an errant missile was the probable cause. In 2003 Ukraine agreed to pay $200,000 for each Israeli killed.
(SFC, 10/6/01, p.A11)(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.A1)(www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/100501crash.shtml)
2001 Oct 4, Swissair resumed flying following a 2-day shut down propped by a $281 million Swiss government loan. [see Jan 31, 2002]
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.B4)
2002 Oct 4, Hans Blix, UN weapons inspector, endorsed a US demand that Iraq make a full declaration of its weapons program before inspections resume.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A7)
2002 Oct 4, John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban," received a 20-year sentence after a sobbing, halting plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in Alexandria, Va.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2002 Oct 4, Richard C. Reid pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes and declared himself a follower of Osama bin Laden.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, US federal agents arrested 4 suspected al Qaeda terrorists, 3 in Portland and 1 in Detroit. 2 other suspected cell members were overseas.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 4, A jury in Los Angeles awarded former smoker Betty Bullock (1938-2003) $850,000 in medical costs and $28 billion in punitive damages against Philip Morris. On Dec 18 a judge reduced the punitive award to $28 million. The punitive portion was reduced to $13.8 million in 2009. This was upheld by a state appeals court in 2011.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A2)(SFC, 12/19/02, p.A8)(SFC, 8/18/11, p.C6)
2002 Oct 4, The DJIA fell 188 to 7,528. Nasdaq fell 25 to 1,139.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.B1)
2002 Oct 4, In Barbados delegations from Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Colombia and France's overseas territories abandoned an anti-racism conference that voted to exclude whites saying they'll have no part in discrimination. The walkout, on the fourth day of the six-day African and African Descendants World Conference Against Racism, came after a day of negotiations failed. Some 200 delegates had voted Wednesday for whites and Asians to leave the deliberations, saying slavery was too painful a subject to discuss in front of non-Africans.
(AP, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, Foreign ministers from six Pacific nations arrived in Java's ancient royal capital of Yogyakarta for a day of talks that Indonesia said would tackle the thorny issue of terrorism.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, Lawmakers from rival Iraqi Kurdish factions met for the first time in 8 years, in a rare show of political unity ahead of a possible U.S. attack on Iraq.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, In Nepal King Gyanendra stunned the country when he announced he was firing Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, postponing November elections and assuming direct power for the first time since absolute rule by the monarchy was abolished in 1990.
(Reuters, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, North Korean officials told a visiting US delegation that the country has a second covert nuclear weapons program.
(AP, 4/24/03)
2002 Oct 4, Pakistan said it successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile. It was named Hatf-IV (Shaheen-1) and had a range of 700 km (430 miles).
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, In central Somalia heavy fighting between the Sa'ad subclan and the Majerten clan killed at least 10 people and injured 25 others.
(AP, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, Regional mediators said the Sudanese government and southern rebels have agreed to a cessation of hostilities and the resumption of peace talks to end the country's 15-year civil war.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2003 Oct 4, A U.S. military source said Polish troops had discovered and destroyed French-made anti-aircraft missiles in Iraq. France swiftly denied selling any weapons to Iraq in violation of a U.N. arms embargo and had stopped making the Roland missiles 15 years ago.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, Sid McMath (91), former 2-term governor of Arkansas, died.
(WSJ, 10/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 4, In southwest Brazil a small airplane carrying congressman Rep. Jose Carlos Martinez and three others went missing. All 4 were found dead the next day.
(AP, 10/4/03)(AP, 10/5/03)
2003 Oct 4, In London James Forlong (44), a former Sky News television correspondent who resigned after he admitted faking parts of a report on the war in Iraq, was found dead at his home in a possible suicide.
(AP, 10/6/03)
2003 Oct 4, Eight Indonesian soldiers plummeted into the ocean and were presumed dead after a helicopter crew cut the ropes carrying them during rehearsal of a mid-air stunt.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, In Haifa, Israel, Hanadi Taysser Darajat (29), a female Palestinian lawyer, blew herself up in a crowded Mediterranean beach restaurant, killing 21 people including 4 children. A brother and cousin, Jihad terrorists, had been killed in June. Her suicide inspired a piece of installation art in 2004 at the Stockholm Museum titled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth."
(SFC, 10/11/03, p.A7)(WSJ, 1/22/04, p.D6)(AP, 10/4/04)(LSA, Fall/06, p.32)
2003 Oct 4, In Italy anti-globalization demonstrators set fire to an employment agency, smashed cars and windows and hurled insults at government headquarters in Rome.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, A shipment of uranium-enriching centrifuge gear was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. In 2009 Urs Tinner, suspected of involvement in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring, said in a Swiss TV documentary that he tipped off US intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/28/world/fg-network28)(WSJ, 12/31/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/22/09)
2004 Oct 4, Americans Dr. Richard Axel (58) of Columbia Univ. and Linda Buck (57) of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their 1991 discovery of how people recognize odors. In 2008 Linda Buck and her co-authors retracted their 2001 paper on smell due to inconsistencies on data.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A5)(SFC, 3/7/08, p.A6)
2004 Oct 4, Pres. Bush signed an extension of middle-class tax cuts.
(WSJ, 10/5/04, p.A1)
2004 Oct 4, Mike Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan, climbed to 367,442 feet in a 2nd leg and captured the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The single pilot was accompanied by the weight of 2 others to meet a 3-person requirement.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A1)(Econ, 10/9/04, p.75)
2004 Oct 4, Gordon Cooper (b.1927), US astronaut in the Mercury program, died in Ventura, Ca. He piloted Faith 7 around Earth on May 15-16, 1963.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.B7)
2004 Oct 4, Cambodia's legislature approved a long-delayed agreement to put surviving Khmer Rouge leaders on trial for atrocities that claimed nearly two million lives during their murderous rule in the late 1970s.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, The Denmark Science Ministry said it aims to show the North Pole belongs to Denmark and is sending an expedition to try to prove that the seabed there is a natural continuation of Danish territory.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Officials in Haiti said they have found hundreds more bodies, raising the death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne to nearly 2,000 people. Later estimates put the death toll at 3,000.
(AP, 10/4/04)(AP, 11/1/07)
2004 Oct 4, Suspected separatist rebels attacked sleeping villagers in northeastern India, killing six in a third day of explosions and gun attacks that have left at least 63 people dead.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Retired general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was confirmed as Indonesia's next leader as final counting from the country's first direct presidential polls gave him a landslide victory over his predecessor.
(AFP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami arrived in Khartoum to start a three-day visit to Sudan.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Insurgents unleashed a pair of powerful car bombs near the symbol of U.S. authority in Iraq, the Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and key government offices are located as well as hotels occupied by hundreds of foreigners. Two other explosions brought the day's bombing toll to at least 26 dead and more than 100 wounded.
(AP, 10/4/04)(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A3)
2004 Oct 4, Six separatist rebels were killed in a clash between separatist rebels and security forces in a thickly forested area in Jammu and Kashmir.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Palestinian militants fired off two more rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, lightly wounding one person, according to rescue workers. Ongoing violence in northern Gaza killed at least seven Palestinians, including a teenager.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Syrian President Bashar Assad replaced about one-third of his Cabinet, bringing new faces to the key interior and information ministries.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, It was reported that Vietnam had embarked on a major overhaul of its debt-laden companies as it opens up its economy.
(WSJ, 10/4/04, p.A15)
2005 Oct 4, President Bush defended his Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, from suggestions by some skeptical Republicans that she was not conservative enough, and insisted Miers shared his strict-constructionist views. Miers ended up withdrawing.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2005 Oct 4, Americans John L. Hall and Roy J. Glauber and German Theodor W. Haensch won the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics for work that could lead to better long-distance communication and more precise navigation worldwide and in space.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, The US Mint unveiled the design for a new Jefferson nickel called the Jefferson 1800, designed by Jamie Franki. It will begin circulating in 2006.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A7)
2005 Oct 4, The DJIA fell 94.37 to 10,441.11.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, Insurance claims for Hurricane Katrina were estimated at $34.4 billion in personal and commercial property loss claims.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico’s Gulf coast.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2005 Oct 4, Philadelphia selected EarthLink to run its municipal wireless system.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, According to the IMF major oil producers were now a bigger source of funds for financial markets and US creditors than China, Japan and the rest of Asia.
(WSJ, 10/4/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, Google and Sun Microsystems announced an alliance to promote each other’s products.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, It was reported that phthalate chemicals, used in a wide variety of products from toys to cosmetics, had been found to block the action of fetal androgens in rodents. Androgen hormones are critical in developing males.
(WSJ, 10/4/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, In Afghanistan a bomb exploded near a key crossing point on the Afghan-Pakistan border, killing three people and wounding 20. Authorities blamed Taliban insurgents.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, In London Russia’s Pres. Putin met with EU leaders for talks on expanding cooperation in the fight against crime, including terrorism, and strengthening trade ties.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Bosnian Serb panel said it identified more than 17,000 people with varying levels of blood on their hands for abetting the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
(WSJ, 10/5/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4-2005 Oct 5, In Canada Toronto's chief medical officer said 4 more residents of a nursing home for the elderly have died of an unknown respiratory illness, bringing the number fatally infected by the disease to 10. Officials said Legionnaires’ disease was the likely cause as the deaths rose to 16.
(AP, 10/5/05)(SFC, 10/7/05, p.A3)
2005 Oct 4, China’s state media reported that raging floodwaters spawned by Typhoon Longwang along the southeastern coast swept away 59 paramilitary police officers and washed away two buildings at a military training school.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Colombia a judge ordered the re-arrest of a man in a wheelchair who hijacked a Colombian airliner, but said he could remain under house arrest due to his failing health.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Colombia granted political asylum to former Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez, who has said he faces treason charges in his homeland.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Croatia began delayed EU membership talks, after UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte endorsed Zagreb's cooperation with her court.
(AFP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, French President Jacques Chirac said that Turkey would need to undergo a "major cultural revolution" before entering the EU, and he reiterated that France would hold a referendum on admitting Ankara to the bloc.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, It was reported that French Attorney Jean-Marc Goldnadel had launched classaction.fr, a French Web site that lets users sign up to lawsuits online for as little as 12 euros ($14.50). President Jacques Chirac had announced the introduction of class action suits earlier in the year.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In India's northeast 11 people, including five villagers hacked to death by rival tribesmen, were reported killed. Separatist insurgencies have raged in Manipur and Assam states for the past two decades.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Indonesia’s central bank raised interest rates for the 3rd time in 5 weeks one point to 11% in an effort to keep a lid on inflation.
(WSJ, 10/5/05, p.A18)
2005 Oct 4, The 1st day of Ramadan began for Muslims.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Iraqi lawmakers approved the death penalty for anyone financing or "provoking" terrorism.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A suicide car bomb exploded at a checkpoint at the main entrance of Baghdad's Green Zone, killing two Iraqi policemen and wounding one.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In western Iraq some 2,500 U.S. troops along with Iraqi forces launched their second major offensive in a week, sweeping into three towns to take them back from insurgents who had killed Marines there last month.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Japan's Cabinet endorsed a one-year extension of the country's naval mission to support U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, citing renewed concerns about terrorism after the recent bombings in Indonesia.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Nigeria at least 3 civilians were killed in crossfire and a Lagos police headquarters was burned down after a dispute between armed police and soldiers erupted in street fighting. Witnesses said that brawling broke out after an army officer tried to prevent a police patrol extorting an illegal 20 naira (seven cent) toll from a motorcycle taxi driver.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, Jim Gray (43), one of Northern Ireland's most high-profile Protestant militants was shot to death outside his home in east Belfast, more than six months after he was ousted by his outlawed group.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Pakistani security forces arrested Abdul Latif Hakimi, the chief spokesman of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, describing his capture as a major blow to the Islamic militia.
(AFP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Palestinian woman brandishing a knife stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus before other soldiers shot and killed her.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Peru Maritza Garrido Lecca, a former ballet teacher who used her dance studio to hide Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a three-month civilian retrial. Nicholas Shakespeare used the story as inspiration for his novel "The Dancer Upstairs" (1995), which John Malkovich turned into a 2002 movie of the same name, starring Javier Bardem.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Philippine provincial government filed a lawsuit in Nevada accusing Canadian mining giant Placer Dome Inc. of damaging the environment and health of residents of an island about 100 miles south of Manila. Placer Dome was blamed for a March 1996 environmental accident that sent millions of tons of open-pit copper mine waste down a river to the Marinduque capital, Boac.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Spain said it will build a third high-security fence between its Melilla enclave and Morocco after undocumented immigrants repeatedly stormed two existing barriers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, UN peacekeepers preparing to pull out of Sierra Leone said they have completed the mission they began six years ago but warn the country still has a long way to go before it recovers from one of Africa's most brutal wars.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Sudan's government and rebels from Darfur met for a 2nd day of talks in Nigeria. The visiting Dutch PM urged all parties to reach a power-sharing deal by the end of the year.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A new Syrian TV series began broadcasting around the Middle East. It tells the story of Arabs living in residential compounds in Saudi Arabia and the militant Islamists who want to blow them up so they can collect their rewards in heaven, 72 beautiful virgins.
(AP, 10/10/05)
2005 Oct 4, The UAE Labor Ministry announced that company executives will find their names on a sheet of shame published by the government if they don't start paying wages to their laborers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, The UN Security Council warned Ethiopia and Eritrea against reigniting their border war and urged Eritrea to immediately reverse its ban on all helicopter flights by UN peacekeepers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Venezuela said it has reduced its holdings of US Treasury securities and moved some foreign exchange reserves into European investments.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A18)
2005 Oct 4-2005 Oct 9, The World Golf Championships took place at Harding Park Golf Course along Lake Merced in SF, Ca.
(SFCM, 10/2/05, p.6)
2006 Oct 4, A US federal court awarded $143 million to 3 closed nuclear power plants because the government failed to remove spent fuel rods. The 3 Yankee company reactors were located in Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts.
(WSJ, 10/5/06, p.A6)
2006 Oct 4, Ousted Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn (1953-2011), a company officer and three investigators were charged with violating California privacy laws in a corporate spying scandal. The charges were later dropped, with a judge calling their conduct a "betrayal of trust and honor" that nonetheless did not rise to the level of criminal activity.
(AP, 10/4/07)(SFC, 12/6/11, p.D1)
2006 Oct 4, American Roger D. Kornberg, whose father won a Nobel Prize a half-century ago, was awarded the prize in chemistry for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, A Philadelphia jury awarded a woman $1 million and her husband $500,000 in compensatory damages after finding that Wyeth's hormone replacement drug Prempro was a cause of her breast cancer. In the first federal Prempro trial, a jury last month in Little Rock, Arkansas found Wyeth was not negligent and had adequately warned patients and doctors of the cancer risk associated with the drug. Wyeth faced some 5,000 lawsuits involving its hormone replacement drugs.
(Reuters, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, The DJIA rose 123.27 to 11,850.61, to close at record high for the 2nd day in a row. Nasdaq rose 47.30 to 2,290.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.C1)
2006 Oct 4, In Berkeley, Ca., the new 2,002-acre Eastshore State Park was dedicated. The 8.5 mile strip ran north along the East Bay from the Bay Bridge to Richmond.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.B1)
2006 Oct 4, Scientists reported that the Hubble Space Telescope had revealed 16 objects about the size of Jupiter near the center of the Milky Way and that the discovery gave strong evidence that planets are abundant in other parts of the galaxy.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.A4)
2006 Oct 4, New York Times correspondent R.W. Apple Jr. died in Washington at age 71.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2006 Oct 4, Afghanistan's intelligence agency said security agents have arrested 17 people allegedly trained in Pakistan who they believe planned to launch suicide attacks in three Afghan provinces. In southern Afghanistan suspected Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint, and the ensuing clash left six militants dead and three wounded.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Sao Paulo, Brazil, court officials said 14 workers at a juvenile detention center were convicted and sentenced to up to 87 years in prison for beating inmates with iron bars and wood to find out who organized an escape attempt in 2000.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, British PM Tony Blair said the Irish Republican Army's violent campaign in Northern Ireland is over, following a report into paramilitary activity that raised hopes of reviving self-rule.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Britain a Muslim-owned business, which reportedly housed a makeshift mosque, was petrol-bombed following three nights of clashes between white and south Asian youths on the London outskirts.
(AFP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Chile government officials announced plans to build a 62-mile highway through Pumalin Park, a nature reserve created by Douglas Tompkins of SF. The government also signaled that it will push ahead with the proposed $4 billion hydroelectric complex to dam the Baker and Pasqua rivers south of Pumalin.
(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 4, Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark reported a breakthrough in teleportation by using both light and matter.
(Reuters, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, The world's biggest book fair opened in Frankfurt, Germany, with Indian authors taking center stage and a new scheme to protect writers' copyrights from Internet piracy creating a buzz.
(AFP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Iraqi authorities took a brigade of up to 700 policemen out of service and put members under investigation for "possible complicity" with death squads following a mass kidnapping earlier this week. A series of bombs went off in rapid succession in a shopping district in a mainly Christian neighborhood of Baghdad, killing 16 people and wounding 87. The dead were among 26 people killed in attacks across Iraq. A suicide bomber attacked an Iraqi police base in the town of Ramadi, but guards shot at the explosives-packed vehicle and detonated it before it could hit the base.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Malawi pop singer Madonna traveled to a village 12 miles outside the capital Lilongwe, where she is funding the construction of a center to feed and educate about 1,000 orphans.
(Reuters, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Nicaragua defense ministers from across the Americas agreed to create an international land-mine removal center and many called for joint military missions for disaster relief and peacekeeping worldwide.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Nigeria militants freed around 25 kidnapped oil workers but five abducted expatriates were still missing in another part of the Niger Delta.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Masked men killed a local Hamas political activist as he set out for morning prayers before dawn in the northern West Bank.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Sri Lanka's air force bombed separatist rebel positions in the embattled north, a day after the insurgents agreed to peace talks with the government.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Sources said fresh inter-rebel fighting in Sudan has forced 10,000 Darfuris to seek refuge near a camp of African Union forces monitoring a widely-ignored truce.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2007 Oct 4, US marshals posing as supporters arrested convicted tax-evaders Ed and Elaine Brown at their rural, fortress-like home in New Hampshire. They had engaged in a 9-month standoff with authorities. They were convicted in January of scheming to avoid federal income taxes by hiding $1.9 million of income between 1996 and 2003 and were sentenced in April. In 2010 Brown (67) was sentenced 37 years in prison. In 2020 a federal judge ruled that Elaine Brown can be released after serving over 12 years in prison.
(AP, 10/5/07)(SFC, 1/12/10, p.A4)(AP, 1/31/20)
2007 Oct 4, The recording industry won a major fight in its effort to stop illegal music downloading with a US jury decision to impose $222,000 damages against a Minnesota woman who used a Web service to share music.
(Reuters, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig defiantly vowed to serve out his term in office despite losing a court attempt to rescind his guilty plea in a men's room sex sting.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2007 Oct 4, Former city maintenance worker John Ashley shot five people in a law office in Alexandria, La., killing two of them; Ashley was shot and killed by police following a standoff.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2007 Oct 4, In Philadelphia Mustafa Ali (36), a convicted bank robber, shot and killed two armored car guards servicing an ATM outside a bank. Several schools were locked down amid a massive manhunt for the gunman, who was arrested the next day.
(AP, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/6/07)
2007 Oct 4, Microsoft outlined its vision, dubbed HealthVault, in which a person can view, from one place, their complete health records.
(Econ, 10/6/07, p.74)(http://tinyurl.com/2fop6p)
2007 Oct 4, A British soldier was killed in an explosion about 19 miles west of Kandahar city. 82 British personnel, including 57 soldiers, have been killed in Afghanistan since operations began there in November 2001.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, The Australian government approved plans for a controversial multi-billion-dollar pulp mill in Tasmania despite objections it could ruin one of the country's most pristine environments.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Canada’s PM Stephen Harper vowed to crack down on illegal drugs, saying the Conservative government would propose mandatory prison time for serious drug offenses.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Health Canada said that it has stopped the sale of Novartis Pharmaceuticals anti-inflammatory drug Prexige and will cancel its market authorization due to the risk for serious liver-related effects including hepatitis.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Canada became the first country to notify the World Trade Organization that it has agreed to allow a Canadian company to make generic medicines for export to Rwanda.
(AFP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 4, In Chile the widow and five children of Gen. Augusto Pinochet were among 23 people indicted on charges of corruption related to the dictator's US bank accounts.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, In Congo a cargo plane crashed in a residential neighborhood near the main airport in Kinshasa, plowing into homes and killing at least 52 people. The next day Congolese President Joseph Kabila sacked Transport Minister Remy Henri Kuseyo Gatanga.
(AP, 10/4/07)(Reuters, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Egypt sent a high-level protest to dozens of European nations expressing "astonishment and regret" at their refusal to endorse Cairo's call for a Middle East nuclear free zone at a conference last month. At last month's IAEA session, 25 of the 27 EU nations abstained as did other countries hoping to join the union. In all, 47 nations abstained. Israeli objections forced a vote in which 53 countries, Muslim states and their supporters from the developing world, backed the proposal.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 4, Ethiopia pledged 5,000 troops to a future UN-African Union peacekeeping mission for Darfur.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, In northeast France dozens of hooded youths attacked two police vehicles with metal bars, set fire to more than a dozen parked cars and torched a community center in Saint-Dizier.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Siemens, one of the world’s biggest electrical engineering firms, accepted a $285 million fine imposed by a court in Munich for bribery by its communications division. CEO Peter Loscher announced a re-organization that included reducing its 9 divisions to three and downsizing the 11-man executive board. The ruling named officials in Nigeria, Libya and Russia as recipients of 77 bribes totaling some $17.5 million.
(Econ, 10/13/07, p.70)(WSJ, 11/16/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 4, The Wai Wai, an indigenous group in Guyana, backed by government decree and a US-based conservation organization, said it has banned miners and loggers from its section of the Amazon jungle and pledged to pursue an economic strategy based on ecotourism, research and traditional crafts.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Iranian state television reported that Iran and Syria have signed an agreement for Tehran to export a billion dollars worth of gas every year to its chief regional ally.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, President Jalal Talabani said Iraq has ordered light military equipment from China worth $100 million because the United States is unable to meet Baghdad's requirements. A government minister said the official Iraqi investigation into the Blackwater shooting last month recommended that the security guards face trial in Iraqi courts and that the company compensate the victims. Abbas Hassan Hamza, the mayor of the religiously mixed town of Iskandariyah, was killed along with four of his guards in a roadside bomb attack. Hamza belonged to Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party. In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near people on line at a gas station, killing four civilians and wounding eight others. 3 civilians were shot by American troops near a checkpoint in Abu Lukah set up by Iraqis who have joined forces against extremists. A US soldier was killed by small-arms fire during operations in a southern section of Baghdad.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, It was reported that in Kuwait the nomadic Bedouin, Arabic for "without," numbered about 100,000 people and have been refused what they feel is their birthright: citizenship.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Dutch authorities said their customs officers had found 100 dead beetles stuffed with cocaine whilst examining a parcel from Peru.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Officials said the Nigerian central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate MPR from eight to nine percent because of rising inflation.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pledged to seek a peace treaty to replace the Korean War's 1953 cease-fire and expand projects to reduce tension across the world's last Cold War frontier.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Militants holding some 230 Pakistani troops killed three of the captive soldiers before dawn in apparent retaliation for army raids on guerrilla hide-outs near the Afghan border.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo called for increased trade with India at the start of a three-day visit.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, The government of Somalia announced a crackdown on Islamic militants.
(WSJ, 10/6/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 4, The head of South Africa's main union body stood down from his office pending the outcome of an investigation into the disappearance of a large cash donation.
(AFP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Spanish police arrested almost the entire leadership of Batasuna as the banned party held a meeting in the Basque town of Segura. The operation confirmed the hard line against ETA by the Socialist government of PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero since the armed group officially ended a 15-month-old ceasefire in June.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Prominent world figures led by former President Carter and Desmond Tutu of South Africa said they were shocked by the suffering in Darfur and criticized Sudan's government in exceptionally harsh terms.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, A union official said Zimbabwean teachers have called off a strike for better wages after reaching a deal with the government.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2008 Oct 4, The fight over control of Wachovia intensified, as a judge temporarily agreed to block the sale of the bank to Wells Fargo, Citigroup announced in a news release. The next day the battle for control of Wachovia tilted toward Wells Fargo as a state appeals court blocked a lower court ruling that had favored rival bidder Citigroup.
(AP, 10/5/08)(AP, 10/6/08)
2008 Oct 4, In SF the 8th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, backed by financier Warren Hellman, continued or its 2nd day in Goldengate Park with an audience of some 40,000. The next day the festival drew some 100,000 fans. SF also celebrated its annual LoveFest, begun in 2004, with a downtown parade that drew tens of thousands of spectators.
(SSFC, 10/5/08, p.B1,B3)(SFC, 10/6/08, p.E1)
2008 Oct 4, In the Porter Ranch area of Los Angeles County Karthik Rajaram (45), an unemployed financial adviser despondent over his troubles, shot and killed his wife (39), mother-in-law (69), and 3 sons (7,12,19), before taking his own life.
(SFC, 10/7/08, p.A6)
2008 Oct 4, Luis Santos (b.1986), a Concord, Ca., resident, was stabbed to death after a party near the San Diego college campus. Esteban Nunez (19), the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, was later arrested along with three others in connection with the stabbing death. In 2010 Esteban Nunez pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and on June 25, 2010, he and a co-defendant were sentenced to 16 years in prison.
(SFC, 5/6/10, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/2eaav49)(SFC, 6/26/10, p.A4)
2008 Oct 4, The US coalition says its forces have killed five militants in two operations targeting al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Oct 4, The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy began meeting in Paris at a summit on the world financial crisis threatening banks, growth and jobs across the continent. They vowed to do all they could to prevent Wall Street's turmoil from destabilizing their banking systems. Germany's No. 2 commercial property lender, Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, said its $48 billion rescue plan had unraveled when private banks pulled out.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, A ceremony in Diwaniyah marked the departure of Polish troops from Iraq. Poland sent combat troops into Iraq as part of the US-led coalition and had 2,500 troops deployed there at its peak. The last 900 were being pulled out this month. Two US helicopters collided while landing at a base in Baghdad. One Iraqi soldier was killed.
(AP, 10/4/08)(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, In Mexico gunmen killed Salvador Vegara, the mayor of Ixtapan de la Sal, a resort town southwest of Mexico City. Vegara was in a car with two other people when the gunmen opened fire from another vehicle. The bodies of 5 men were found asphyxiated in a car in the eastern part of Tijuana. The men were beaten and had their hands bound. The bodies of two beheaded men were found wrapped in blankets on a road elsewhere in the city. The heads were in black plastic bags nearby.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Oct 4, In Sri Lanka heavy fighting near the rebels' administrative capital of Kilinochchi left 20 guerrillas and 4 soldiers dead. Soldiers overran five rebel bunkers in the Mullaitivu district, killing 5 rebels. 4 rebels and a soldier were killed in clashes in the Vavuniya and Welioya regions.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, Taiwan's president welcomed a US decision to sell the island up to $6.5 billion in advanced weaponry, while China warned the move would damage relations between Beijing and Washington.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2009 Oct 4, James Jones, US national security adviser, said on CNN that Al-Qaida has fewer than 100 fighters operating in Afghanistan.
(SFC, 10/7/09, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/y8kax72)
2009 Oct 4, In San Francisco Michael Bailey (26) of Baton Rouge, La., was shot and killed after being lured with friends at the City Nights club by a woman, who set them up for a robbery at the Alice Griffith public housing project. On Dec 23 prosecutors charged 5 people in the killing of Bailey. 2 of the 5 suspects were still at large. In 2014 William Jones (25) and Lance Molina (27) were found guilty of first-degree murder. Ariael Kittles (25) was acquitted of charges that she lured Bailey and friends to the complex.
(SFC, 10/6/09, p.C1)(SFC, 12/24/09, p.C4)(SFC, 6/21/14, p.C3)
2009 Oct 4, In New Hampshire Kimberly Cates (42) was killed and her daughter, Jaimie (11) was gravely wounded following a machete attack by Steven Spader during a home invasion by 4 teenagers. Steven Spader (17) and Christopher Gribble (19) both of Brookline, N.H., were charged with first-degree murder. In 2010 Spader was found guilty of murder and other charges and sentenced to life in prison.
(www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20013067-504083.html)(SFC, 11/10/10, p.A6)
2009 Oct 4, Algerian coastguards picked up 45 Algerian would-be migrants to Europe at three places off the coast west of Algiers.
(AFP, 10/4/09)
2009 Oct 4, Mercedes Sosa (74), Argentine singer, died. Her music was banned after the generals seized power in 1976. She had released over 70 albums and turned the songs of others into great anthems of the left.
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.42)
2009 Oct 4, Grameenphone, Bangladesh’s largest mobile phone firm, opened the largest IPO in Bangladesh history. It aimed to raise $70 million. It was owned by Telenor, a Norwegian telephone company, and Grameen Telecom, a non-profit founded by Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer of microfinance.
(Econ, 10/17/09, p.88)
2009 Oct 4, Greeks cast ballots in a snap general election likely to produce a change in government. Voters angered by scandals and a foundering economy were expected to reject the conservatives in favor of the opposition Socialists. Socialist leader George Papandreou trounced the conservatives under PM Costas Karamanlis (53) in an election focused on rescuing the economy. Papandreou took 44% of the vote and won 160 of 300 parliamentary seats.
(AP, 10/4/09)(AP, 10/5/09)(SFC, 10/5/09, p.A2)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.54)
2009 Oct 4, In Iraq a fuel tanker exploded near a checkpoint outside of Baghdad International Airport, along a route once known as the world's deadliest road because of frequent attacks there during the height of the insurgency. The cause of the fire was under investigation. The body of Imad Elia (45), an employee at Kirkuk's health directorate, was found dumped in a field south of Kirkuk. He was shot in the chest and authorities believe the captors kept shooting into his body after he was dead. Elia was kidnapped two days before, but his family was unable to pay the ransom demands. At least 10 Christian families have left Kirkuk in recent weeks, fearing kidnap-for-ransom gangs that have turned their sights on Christians.
(AP, 10/4/09)(AP, 10/5/09)
2009 Oct 4, In Nigeria an amnesty for militant in the Niger Delta officially expired.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.57)
2009 Oct 4, North Korea told visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that it was open to bilateral and multilateral talks on its nuclear programs.
(AFP, 10/4/09)
2009 Oct 4, In Pakistan security forces and special police battled militants in a firefight that killed six of the insurgents, including two commanders, Noorul Amin and Fazl-e-Rabbi. Police in Peshawar arrested Hukam Khan, a militant who was involved in attacking and looting convoys taking supplies to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan and recovered a substantial quantity of stolen goods. Hakimullah Mehsud, the new leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, met with reporters in the country's tribal areas for the first time since winning control of the militants. Mehsud vowed to strike back at Pakistan and the US for the increasing number of drone attacks in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/4/09)(AP, 10/5/09)
2009 Oct 4, The UAR’s official news agency said Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, has signed a law regulating the development of a civilian nuclear program, clearing the way for construction of a nuclear power plant with help from the United States.
(AP, 10/5/09)
2009 Oct 4, Pope Benedict opened a special meeting of bishops on Africa by praising the continent as the world's spiritual center but lamenting that it risks being afflicted by materialism and religious fundamentalism.
(AP, 10/4/09)
2010 Oct 4, President Barack Obama said the United States was facing an "untenable fiscal situation" and would have to get serious about tackling its federal deficit.
(Reuters, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 4, US federal agents spread out across Alabama to arrest 11 people on charges of conspiracy, bribery and honest services fraud related to attempts to legitimize bingo halls in 2009 and 2010.
(SFC, 10/5/10, p.A6)
2010 Oct 4, In New Jersey Craig Mueller (45) killed his brother with sniper fire from a second-floor window in the home they shared, took down a neighbor who came to the victim's aid and turned the gun on himself.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Afghanistan 3 NATO service members were killed by bombings in the south and an insurgent attack killed another in the east, raising the coalition's death toll to 11 in the first four days of October. NATO announced that a joint Afghan-coalition unit launched a night mission that killed a senior Taliban leader named Farman and two other militants in eastern Paktia province. A police convoy was ambushed in Khash Rod district. 5 militants were killed, 3 others wounded and two captured during a gunbattle. Habibullah Aghonzada, a former district chief, was gunned down by assailants as he prayed at a packed mosque in Kandahar city. 3 night time explosion in Kandahar City killed up to 4 Afghan police officers. Noor Ahman, deputy mayor in Kandahar, was killed in an insurgent attack. In the southwest 2 civilians riding a motorcycle died when a roadside bomb exploded as they passed. 2 others were killed by rockets in the country's east.
(AP, 10/4/10)(AP, 10/5/10)(SFC, 10/5/10, p.A5)(AP, 10/6/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Belgium European and Asian leaders opened a formal summit amid high security and palace opulence, hoping to agree on commitments to keep the global financial system on an even keel and find a better balance on the Europe-dominated IMF.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Britain’s treasury chief George Osborne said payments to jobless families will be capped and child benefits for high earners scrapped in a sweeping overhaul of the country's welfare system.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Millions of commuters in London endured a grim journey to work after staff on the Underground network walked out for the second time in a month, sparking calls for tougher strike laws.
(AFP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, British biologist Robert G. Edwards, whose contributions to the technology of in vitro fertilization have made more than 4 million couples parents, was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born Jul 25, 1978.
(www.latimes.com/health/la-sci-nobel-medicine-20101005,0,7666490.story)
2010 Oct 4, Central African Republic government troops regained control of Yalinga, a town held by rebels since September 18. On Oct 6 a spokesman for the rebel group, the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP), claimed its fighters still held the town in the unstable east of the country.
(AFP, 10/6/10)
2010 Oct 4, Colombia's defense minister Rodrigo Rivera said authorities have seized $29 million and 17 million euros in cash in a home in a poor district south of the capital, Bogota. Rivera said the money belonged to drug traffickers including Daniel "El Loco" Barrera. Authorities were offering a $2.7 million reward for Barrera's capture.
(AP, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 4, A Cuban human rights leader revealed the names of nine inmates apparently offered early release by the government in exchange for accepting exile, including some convicted of violent crimes such as hijacking, assault and piracy.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi was sworn in for another five-year term, almost five months after controversial polls propelled his party to victory.
(AFP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, France's Sanofi-Aventis launched an $18.5 billion hostile takeover offer for Genzyme Corp., stepping up its effort to capture the US biotech company's promising drugs for high cholesterol and lucrative treatments for rare genetic disorders.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Hungary a torrent of toxic red sludge from an alumina plant tore through Kolontar and two other villages. The next day Hungary declared a state of emergency in three counties. After some days 9 people were reported killed and some 150 injured.
(Reuters, 10/5/10)(AFP, 10/8/10)(AP, 10/11/10)(Econ, 10/16/10, p.63)
2010 Oct 4, In Indonesia heavy rain unleashed flash floods and mudslides, killing at least 91 people in West Papua province's village of Wasior. Rescuers struggled to reach the area.
(AP, 10/5/10)(AP, 10/6/10)(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Iraq 5 people were killed in violence in Baghdad and central Iraq, including a roadside bomb targeting a junior minister.
(AFP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Japan issued a travel alert for Europe, joining the United States and Britain in warning of a possible terrorist attack by al-Qaida or other groups, but tourists appeared to be taking the mounting warnings in stride.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Tokyo-based Toshiba unveiled the world's first high definition liquid crystal display 3-D television that does not require special glasses, one of the biggest consumer complaints about the technology.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a pre-dawn attack on tankers carrying fuel to Afghanistan for US and other NATO forces, left vulnerable on the side of the road after Pakistan shut down a key border crossing. Some 20 trucks went up in flames and four people were killed and seven injured. A US drone strike killed eight militants, including five Germans, in North Waziristan, where Western intelligence had traced an alleged plot to attack high-profile targets in Europe.
(AP, 10/4/10)(AFP, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 4, Arsonists torched a mosque in a Palestinian village in the West Bank, scrawling "revenge" on a wall in Hebrew and charring copies of the Muslim holy book in a blaze that threatened to stoke new tensions over deadlocked Mideast peacemaking.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, In the northern Philippines motorcycle-riding gunmen killed a regional trial court judge, prompting calls to exempt judges from a current gun ban.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Russia Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow who was fired by Pres. Medvedev, said in a published interview that he plans to form his own political movement.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Russia's VimpelCom Ltd and Weather Investments, the investment company headed by Egyptian telecom mogul Naguib Sawiris, said they are merging to form what would become the world's fifth largest mobile telecommunication service provider in a deal valued at over $6.5 billion. Under the agreement VimpelCom, which is Russia's second largest mobile phone service provider, would own via Weather 51.7 percent of Egypt's Orascom Telecom and all of Italy's Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA, both of which are headed by Sawiris.
(AP, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Somalia two women, a boy and two men were killed in Mogadishu by stray bullets from fighting taking place between pro-government forces and Islamist militants.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, An official said Syria has accused a 19-year-old blogger who is in prison of being a spy in the first comment from authorities on a case that sparked calls by a leading rights group for the young woman's release. Tal al-Mallohi was taken into custody in December. Her blog, known for poetry and social commentary, focused mostly on the suffering of Palestinians.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, It was reported that Syria has ordered the arrest of 33 people over false testimony given in the UN-backed probe into the assassination of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. Observers said the warrants carried no legal weight in Lebanon as the crime in question took place on Lebanese soil and the complainant as well as most of the defendants are Lebanese.
(AFP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Vietnamese officials said weekend floods triggered by heavy rains have displaced thousands of villagers in central Vietnam, and left 3 people dead and 3 others missing.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2011 Oct 4, USAID director Raj Shah said the US will donate more than $121 million to Ethiopia to fight food insecurity amid a drought in the East African nation.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, The US Justice Department said Neil Campbell (61), a native of Queensland, Australia, has pleaded guilty to one count of accepting a $10,000 bribe as an agent of an organization receiving federal funds. Campbell admitted that in July 2010, while in Afghanistan, he solicited a one-time cash payment of $190,000 from a subcontractor, as a reward for funneling more than $15 million in reconstruction projects to that subcontractor.
(AFP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Two employees of the US Army Corps of Engineers and two others were arrested in a $20 million bribery and kickback scheme related to software encryption devices.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A7)
2011 Oct 4, Officials at the Washington National Cathedral said they need to raise at least $15 million for initial repairs to the Aug 23 earthquake damaged edifice.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A7)
2011 Oct 4, It was reported that NASA has awarded a Pennsylvania company, Pipistrel-USA.com of State College, a $1.35 million prize for developing an ultra-efficient electric airplane. Wired Magazine reported that the winning airplane "was developed and built in Slovenia as a technology demonstrator for the airplane maker."
(http://tinyurl.com/3nk4ndh)
2011 Oct 4, Apple Inc. unveiled a faster, more powerful iPhone, the iPhone 4S, in its first major product event in years without Steve Jobs presiding. The device included Siri, a personal assistant application.
(AP, 10/4/11)(SFC, 1/23/15, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri)
2011 Oct 4, Apple Inc rejected an offer from Samsung Electronics Co to settle their tablet computer dispute in Australia, possibly killing off the commercial viability of the South Korean firm's new Galaxy tablet in that market.
(Reuters, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Three US-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for overturning a fundamental assumption in their field by showing that the expansion of the universe is constantly accelerating. During the 1990s, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess found that the light from more than 50 distant exploding stars was far weaker than they expected, meaning that galaxies had to be racing away from each other at increasing speed.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Kansas City, Missouri, 10-month-old Lisa Irwin was reported snatched overnight from her home.
(SFC, 10/10/11, p.A5)
2011 Oct 4, A private helicopter crashed into New York City’s East River, killing one British passenger and injuring a British couple and a New Zealand woman. The helicopter went down shortly after takeoff from a riverbank heliport. On Oct 12 the New Zealand woman died of her injuries.
(AP, 10/5/11)(SFC, 10/13/11, p.A8)
2011 Oct 4, Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with PM Manmohan Singh in New Delhi. They agreed to enhance their strategic partnership with India training Afghan security forces.
(AP, 10/4/11)(SSFC, 10/9/11, p.A4)
2011 Oct 4, An Australian boy (14) was arrested in Indonesia for having bought 0.13 ounces (3.6 grams) of marijuana. He faced 12 years in detention under tough narcotics laws. The boy was released on Dec 4 because he admitted the purchase and repeatedly expressed remorse.
(AP, 12/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, A Bahraini security court sentenced 26 activists to prison for their part in anti-government protests, raising to 60 the total number convicted over the past two days in stepped-up prosecutions by the Gulf kingdom.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, In CongoDRC rebels killed five Congolese aid workers and two other civilians in an attack in the east at Fizi, Sud-Kivu province. Those responsible were said to be members of the Mai Mai Yakutumba militia and allied rebels of Burundi's National Liberation Front.
(AFP, 10/6/11)
2011 Oct 4, Libyan revolutionary forces fired rockets into the western half of Sirte, Moammar Gadhafi's hometown, even as hundreds of residents streamed out of the city to flee the fighting.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, British company Heritage Oil PLC said that it has acquired a controlling interest in a Libyan company licensed to provide oil field services including offshore and land-based drilling. Heritage said it paid $19.5 million for a 51% stake in Sahara Oil Services Holdings Ltd.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Chile a major terror case fell apart as prosecutors dropped charges due to a lack of evidence against 13 suspects who spent eight months in prison for a series of bombings detonated outside financial institutions from 2006 to 2010.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, China and Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution threatening action against Syria's deadly crackdown on protests.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, In China a coal mine explosion killed at least 13 workers in Guizhou province.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 4, Egyptian protesters also demanded the release of blogger Michael Nabil (26), who was sentenced to three years' hard labor in April by a military court for having "insulted" the army in his writings. The blogger was on the 43rd day of a hunger strike, after his appeal hearing was adjourned to October 11.
(AFP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Haiti’s Senate approved Garry Conille as prime minister, hopefully jump-starting stalled earthquake reconstruction efforts.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, Iraqi leaders said that they need US military trainers to stay beyond a year-end deadline for American forces to leave but that the troops should not be granted immunity from prosecution.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, The Mexican Army said soldiers captured a Sinaloa cartel lieutenant who had founded an armed wing working for Mexico's most-wanted Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Noel Salgueiro Nevarez, "El Flaco" or the "Skinny," was the Gente Nueva gang leader. Mexico's navy announced that marines found nine escaped inmates apparently working for the Zetas drug cartel at a camp believed to be operated by the group near the Gulf port city of Veracruz. The detentions resulted from a series of raids conducted last week that also netted 18 local police officers who also allegedly worked for the Zetas. Marines arrested a man wearing a police uniform for disturbing the peace. The navy said he was a police officer from the city of Mendoza in Veracruz state and allegedly acted as a liaison between the Zetas and corrupt police. A list in his pocket indicated that local police officers from several towns had received payments of between 2,000 ($144) and 10,000 pesos ($718) per month from the cartel.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, Mexican officials arrested Martin Rosales Magana, one of the last major leaders of the La Familia cartel, along with three associates. The cartel has been displaced in its western home state of Michoacan by the equally cult-like Knights Templar gang.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Namibia 20 skulls, taken by German colonial forces more than a century ago, returned to Windhoek with military honours to be laid in state at parliament.
(AFP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Pakistani protesters upset over severe electricity shortages clashed with police for a second day in Gujranwala, a major industrial city in Punjab province, as the country's main opposition leader used the issue to pressure the US-allied government.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Pakistan suspected Sunni extremists shot 13 Shiite Muslims to death execution-style after ordering them off a bus as they headed to work at a vegetable market on the outskirts of Quetta. The attack targeted the Shiite Hazara tribe.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Philippine police on southern Jolo island arrested Abu Sayyaf gunman Adzhar Mawalil (32), who allegedly helped behead seven Filipino workers while singing a militant song in a grisly 2007 crime.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Somalia a truck bomb exploded in front of the education ministry in Mogadishu as students and parents crowded around to learn about scholarships, killing 82 people and wounding dozens. Bashar Abdullahi Nur, identified as the al-Shabab suicide bomber, gave an interview before the attack that was later aired on a militant-run radio station.
(AP, 10/4/11)(AP, 10/5/11)(AP, 10/6/11)(AFP, 10/30/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Syria at least four people were killed in clashes between government troops and army defectors in the country's northwest.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Turkish police detained over 140 pro-Kurdish political activists in a nationwide sweep. The detainees included a number of elected mayors in the Kurdish southeast.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 4, In Yemen shells fired into a popular shopping district of Sanaa killed two civilians and wounded another. Shelling attacks on the southwest Yemeni town of Taez, a hotbed of anti-regime protest, left seven civilians dead and 22 others injured.
(AFP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Zambia announced that it has halted all metal exports, in a move to ensure that mining firms accurately report their sales. New rules on metal exports should be ready by October 16. The ban was lifted on Oct 6 as it would take too long for new rules to be drawn up.
(AFP, 10/6/11)
2012 Oct 4, A US federal strike force charged 91 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professional across the country in connection with phony bills totaling nearly $430 billion.
(SFC, 10/5/12, p.A8)
2012 Oct 4, US health officials warned the hundreds of people who got steroid back injections in 23 states could be at risk for meningitis from contaminated vials of a steroid produced by the new England Compounding Center of Framingham, Mass. At least 5 deaths were already reported. The fungus causing the meningitis was later identified as Exserohilum rostratum.
(SFC, 10/5/12, p.A10)(SFC, 10/19/12, p.A9)
2012 Oct 4, London listed steelmaker Evraz, part-owned by tycoon Roman Abramovich, is to gain control of one of Russia's largest coal mines after acquiring a half stake in Cyprus-based investment vehicle Corber Enterprises for an undisclosed sum.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In China the Tiantou Elementary School was buried when the hillside collapsed in Zhenhe, a village in Yunnan province. 18 elementary school students were killed. A 19th victim was found the next day.
(AP, 10/5/12)
2012 Oct 4, An Egyptian court convicted Ahmed Ezz, a Hosni Mubarak-era steel magnate, of money laundering, sentencing him to seven years in prison and fining him 19.5 billion Egyptian pounds (about $3 billion). Ezz was already serving a 10-year sentence for a corruption conviction last year.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, Greek police clashed with scores of protesting shipyard workers after they forced their way into the grounds of Greece's Defense Ministry in Athens. Workers from the Skaramanga Shipyards, which deals mainly with military contacts, say they have not been paid in months.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In western Guatemala at least six people were killed and 30 were shot in a clash near Totonicapan between security forces and protesters opposed to high energy prices. A seventh victim died later at a hospital in the western city of Quezaltenango.
(AP, 10/5/12)(AP, 10/5/12)
2012 Oct 4, India's Cabinet pushed ahead with a second wave of economic reform proposals, endorsing higher levels of foreign investment in insurance and pension funds and amendments to laws governing competition.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, Iran deployed riot police at key Tehran intersections, after tensions flared over the nation's plunging currency in the most widespread display of anger linked to the country's sanctions-hit economy.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, Israeli authorities indicted Milad Khatib (26), an Arab citizen of Israel, on charges of spying for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, accusing him of gathering intelligence on security for Israel's president and on army installations.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In Israel thousands of evangelical Christians from around the world marched in Jerusalem in support of the Jewish state.
(SFC, 10/5/12, p.A5)
2012 Oct 4, Moroccan protesters targeting a Dutch abortion-rights activist scuffled with police in a port where a ship promoting safe abortion had been due to land. The "Women on Waves" boat was aiming for its first landfall in a Muslim country. It was invited to Morocco by a local women's rights organization seeking the legalization of abortion.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In the Philippines police arrested former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and temporarily detained her in a hospital on corruption charges, in her third indictment and second detention since stepping down two years ago.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, Transport strikes in Portugal brought misery for thousands of commuters. Trade unions vowed to step up their fight against the government's latest batch of austerity measures.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In South Africa a mineworker killed as police fired rubber bullets trying to disperse striking miners near an Anglo American Platinum mine in Rustenburg.
(AP, 10/5/12)
2012 Oct 4, Turkey's Parliament authorized military operations against Syria and its military fired on targets there for a second day after deadly shelling from Syria killed five civilians in a Turkish border town.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In Yemen a strike by a suspected US drone hit two cars in which al-Qaida-linked militants were traveling in Shabwa province, killing at least five of them. Adel al-Abbab, ranking fourth in the network's leadership, was among the dead.
(AP, 10/4/12)(AP, 10/22/12)
2013 Oct 4, In San Francisco the 13th edition of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival began its 3-day run in Golden Gate Park.
(SSFC, 10/6/13, p.A11)
2013 Oct 4, In NYC Avonte Oquendo (14), an autistic boy, walked away from his school in Queens. His body was found in parts in the East River in January. On Jan 26 NY Senator Chuck Schumer proposed legislation to fund voluntary tracking devices for children with autism.
(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/m3kcsg7)
2013 Oct 4, In Washington DC a man set himself on fire in the National Mall. Passers-by rushed over to douse the flames. John Constantino (64) had suffered from mental illness and died of his burns at a hospital.
(SFC, 10/5/13, p.A6)(SSFC, 10/6/13, p.A10)(SFC, 10/9/13, p.A6)
2013 Oct 4, China and Malaysia agreed elevate bilateral ties to a "comprehensive strategic partnership", aiming to boost military cooperation and nearly triple two-way trade to $160 billion by 2017.
(Reuters, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Egypt thousands of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, defying a crackdown, marched through a Cairo suburb. Hundreds of supporters of Egypt's deposed President Mohamed Mursi clashed with their opponents as they tried to enter Tahrir Square in central Cairo, and police fired tear gas to disperse them. Masked gunmen fired on a military vehicle near Ismailiya, killing one soldier and wounding an officer and another soldier.
(Reuters, 10/4/13)(AFP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Guinea's political opposition demanded that the results from last weekend's legislative election be invalidated, citing fraud and irregularities.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Ireland held a nationwide referendum to abolish the country's Senate. Proponents said the upper house wields no essential powers and its closure could save taxpayers 20 million euros ($27 million) annually. Voters rejected the referendum with a 51.7% no vote.
(AP, 10/5/13)(SSFC, 10/6/13, p.A3)
2013 Oct 4, Israel condemned a pronouncement by a European advisory council against male ritual circumcision, a practice that Jewish leaders consider central to their faith. In a non-binding resolution this week, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said circumcision was "a violation of the physical integrity of children."
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Kenya young Muslims set fire to a church, burned tires and clashed with police in the main port city of Mombasa, after the killing of an Islamic cleric his followers blamed on security forces.
(Reuters, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Norway said will slightly reduce its aid to Afghanistan from next year, signaling to Kabul that it has not done enough to combat corruption and violence against women.
(Reuters, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Poland's Catholic Church said it will not pay compensation to victims of priests who sexually abused children. Rev. Jozef Kloch said in comments aired by Polish Radio 1 that the responsibility for compensation lies with the perpetrator.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Russia's Investigative Committee said it has confiscated 57,000 diamonds and 19 kg (42 pounds) of jewelry from Yevgenia Vasilyeva, a former defense ministry official, in an ongoing investigation into corruption charges. Vasilyeva was charged in 2012 with fraud related to the sale of military assets.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Syria al-Qaida militants battled fighters linked to the Western-backed opposition along with Kurdish gunmen in towns along the Turkish border, in clashes that killed at least 19 people.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Vietnam Vo Nguyen Giap (102), a brilliant and ruthless self-taught general, died in Hanoi. He drove the French out of Vietnam to free it from colonial rule and later forced the Americans to abandon their grueling effort to save the country from communism.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, The World Health Organization said the global number of infections with the deadly MERS virus has risen to 136, after hard-hit Saudi Arabia confirmed six new cases.
(AFP, 10/4/13)
2014 Oct 4, In Illinois Mohammed Hamzah Khan (19), charged with seeking to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group, was arrested with two siblings (16 & 17) at O’Hare Int’l. Airport. The siblings were not charged.
(SFC, 11/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Oct 4, In Colorado 2 people aboard a helicopter-like Xenon gyroplane were killed when it crashed into the Colorado River near Loma.
(SFC, 10/6/14, p.A5)
2014 Oct 4, Paul Revere (76), organist and leader of the Raiders rock band, died at his home in Garden Valley, Idaho. The group’s hits included their rendition of “Louie, Louie" (1963) and Indian Reservation“ (1971).
(SFC, 10/6/14, p.C3)
2014 Oct 4, In Texas a medical helicopter crashed near Wichita Falls killing a patient it was transporting from Waurika, Oklahoma.
(SSFC, 10/5/14, p.A12)
2014 Oct 4, In Utah the Mormon church opened its biannual conference bringing some 100,000 church members to Salt Lake City to listen to words of guidance and inspiration from the faith's leaders. Residents from 64 countries were expected during the two-day conference.
(AP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, General Motors posted a recall of almost 47,000 cars for the same ignition-key defect that has already forced the recall of some 2.6 million vehicles and linked to at least 23 deaths.
(SSFC, 10/5/14, p.A12)
2014 Oct 4, Thousands marched in Africa and around the world to pressure governments to do more to stop the poaching industry that many fear is driving rhinos and elephants to the brink of extinction. The Global March for Elephants and Rhinos, took place in 136 cities and towns across six continents.
(AFP, 10/5/14)
2014 Oct 4, Several hundred people marched in central London to protest Britain's involvement in US-led air strikes against Islamic State (IS) group targets in Iraq.
(AFP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Haiti former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier (63), who ruled the impoverished Caribbean nation with an iron fist from 1971 until his ouster in 1986, died of a heart attack. He was said in reports to have looted as much as $300 million before being forced to flee.
(AFP, 10/5/14)(Econ, 10/11/14, p.102)
2014 Oct 4, In Hong Kong tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators gathered for a peace rally, as the city's security chief furiously denied the government had used triad gangs to attack them a day earlier. More than a thousand rival protesters, some wearing helmets, faced off in the densely populated Mong Kok district, fueling concerns that the Chinese-controlled city's worst unrest in decades could take a more violent turn.
(AFP, 10/4/14)(Reuters, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Iraq the Islamic State seized the town of Kubaisa two days after the fall of the nearby town of Hit as the group sought to consolidate control in towns west of Anbar’s capital Ramadi. Two bombs exploded just north of Baghdad in the towns of Tarmiyah and Husseiniyah, killing 7 and wounding 18 others. In Diyala province an officer and 7 soldiers were killed in two ambushes in the nearby districts of Mansuriya and Muqdadiya. Coalition airstrikes targeted Fallujah, Sinjar and Hit.
(Reuters, 10/4/14)(AP, 10/5/14)
2014 Oct 4, Latvia held elections as it sought to limit the influence of a pro-Kremlin party popular with ethnic Russians. Latvia's center-right ruling coalition scored a fresh victory, though Harmony, a Kremlin-allied party backed by the ethnic Russian minority, nabbed 24 seats in the 100-member parliament.
(AFP, 10/4/14)(AFP, 10/5/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Mexico security forces investigating the role of municipal police in clashes in Iguala a week ago found a mass grave on the edge of town, raising fears the pits might hold 43 students missing since the violence that also resulted in six shooting deaths. 28 bodies were found in the grave. Authorities have presented charges against 29 people in the case, including 22 police officers detained soon after the violence. Three of the suspects are fugitives, including Iguala's police chief.
(AP, 10/5/14)(AP, 10/6/14)
2014 Oct 4, Myanmar's army shot dead a journalist who was detained while covering clashes between the army and ethnic rebels at the rugged border, saying he reached for a soldier's gun during an attempted escape. Freelance journalist Par Gyi was detained by the army on Sept. 30 after photographing clashes between the military and the rebel Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA). On Nov 5 authorities exhumed his body. A rights activist said the body bore what he thought were marks of torture.
(AP, 10/24/14)(Reuters, 11/5/14)
2014 Oct 4, North Korea's presumptive No. 2 and other members of Pyongyang's inner circle met with South Korean officials in Seoul at the close of the Asian Games in the rivals' highest level face-to-face talks in five years.
(AP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, The Pakistani Taliban declared allegiance to Islamic State and ordered militants across the region to help the Middle Eastern jihadist group in its campaign to set up a global Islamic caliphate. In the northwest a powerful bomb exploded at a bus station in Kohat, killing 5 people and wounding three others. A suicide bomber struck in Quetta, killing 5 people and wounded at least 20.
(Reuters, 10/4/14)(AP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, Pakistan officials said a record number polio case have already been detected this year. Doctors discovered 202 cases from January to October 3. The previous modern record was 199 cases in 2001.
(AP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Saudi Arabia some two million Muslims ritually stoned the devil in the last major rite of this year's hajj, while fellow believers around the world celebrated Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice.
(AFP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Syria Islamic State forces shelled the border town of Kobani and its Kurdish defenders said they were expecting a new assault to try to capture it.
(Reuters, 10/4/14)
2015 Oct 4, In South Carolina floodwaters swamped Columbia after a rainstorm dumped over a foot of rain overnight. By October 7 the number of weather-related deaths in the Carolinas rose to at least 17.
(SFC, 10/5/15, p.A7)(SFC, 10/7/15, p.A6)
2015 Oct 4, In Britain tens of thousands of anti-austerity protesters rallied as PM David Cameron's governing Conservative Party opened its annual conference in Manchester.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, In China Typhoon Mujigae made landfall near Zhanjiang, Guangdong province. It left a trail of destruction and flooding and prompting authorities to issue their highest "red alert" emergency response. At least 9 people were killed.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)(AP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum launched a new foundation to consolidate a range of existing charitable and human development initiatives that aims to support more than $270 million in projects annually.
(AP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, The European Commission said nineteen EU member states have requested opt-outs for all or part of their territory from cultivation of a Monsanto genetically-modified crop, which is authorized to be grown in the European Union.
(Reuters, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, French authorities said violent storms and flooding along the chic French Riviera overnight have killed at least 16 people and left another five missing.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, In Guatemala Juan Carlos Monzon Rojas, the alleged leader of a customs corruption scandal that has rocked the government, turned himself into authorities.
(AP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, The US-led coalition targeted Islamic State with 13 airstrikes in Iraq and eight in Syria.
(Reuters, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed 2 Israelis and wounded a child. The Palestinian Red Crescent said clashes with Israeli security forces and Jewish settlers have left 77 Palestinians wounded from both live rounds and rubber bullets over the past 24 hours. Israeli troops shot dead an 18-year-old Palestinian during clashes in Tulkarem in the West Bank.
(AFP, 10/4/15)(AFP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, Kyrgyzstan went to the polls for a hotly-contested parliamentary vote.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Malaysian authorities ordered most of the country's schools shut for two days because of possible health risks posed by the thick haze from Indonesian forest fires.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Morocco and Spain arrested 10 people suspected of recruiting fighters for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Thousands of Myanmar's nationalist monks and their supporters prayed, clapped and held speeches at a large rally in Yangon, in a show of growing clout of radical Buddhists ahead of a Nov. 8 election.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, In Niger suspected Boko Haram militants killed 3 civilians and a soldier in a double suicide attack in the southeastern region of Diffa.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, The Pakistani Taliban released a video showing the hanging of Bashir Ahmad Khan, a military intelligence officer, in retaliation for recent executions of militants by Pakistan.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Portugal voted in an election seen as a test of four years of austerity. PM Pedro Passos Coelho’s center-right coalition won the election but lost its parliamentary majority.
(AFP, 10/4/15)(AP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, In western Syria air strikes by suspected Russian jets hit targets around the town of Talbiseh. One resident said at least 5 bodies had been recovered from the western part of the town. Russian planes also struck in Homs and Hama provinces.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Syrian activists said that Islamic State militants have destroyed the Arch of Triumph, a nearly 2,000-year-old arch in the ancient city of Palmyra.
(AP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Turkish warplanes struck Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq and eastern Turkey overnight, in a new air operation against the militant group.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Pope Francis reaffirmed Catholic opposition to gay marriage as he opened a three-week gathering of bishops.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Yemeni security officials said fierce battles were ongoing between pro-government fighters clashing with Shiite Houthi rebels and allied military units along Yemen's Red Sea coast. Medical officials in nearby Taiz said at least 14 dead bodies from Houthi forces arrived from the front lines.
(AP, 10/4/15)
2016 Oct 4, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court threw out another state law that would put new restrictions on abortion providers.
(SFC, 10/5/16, p.A5)
2016 Oct 4, Reuters reported that Yahoo had written customized software to scan all incoming e-mail for certain keywords, complying with a request either from America’s National Security Agency of the FBI.
(Econ, 10/8/16, p.59)
2016 Oct 4, In Afghanistan fierce gunbattles raged for a second day in the northern city of Kunduz. In the country's south, insurgents killed 12 policemen at checkpoints around the Helmand provincial capital and seized another district they had attacked a day earlier. An improvised explosive device in Nangarhar Province killed a US service member and three Afghan soldiers. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
(AP, 10/4/16)(Reuters, 10/5/16)
2016 Oct 4, British home secretary Amer Rudd announced new restrictions on foreign students in an effort to reduce the number of migrants.
(Econ, 10/15/16, p.52)
2016 Oct 4, Three British-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries about strange states of matter that could result in improved materials for electronics or quantum computers. David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, now affiliated with universities in the United States, were honored for breakthroughs they made in the 1970s and '80s.
(AP, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, Officials in the Dominican Republic reported that at least four people died when heavy rains linked to Hurricane Matthew damaged their homes.
(AP, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, Egypt's security forces killed Mohammed Kama (61), a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader, and another member of the outlawed Islamist group in an overnight shootout at a Cairo apartment. Kamal, a physician by profession, was killed along with Yasser Shahata Ali Ragab in an exchange of gunfire as police tried to arrest them.
(AP, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, In Ethiopia a US citizen was killed on the outskirts of Addis Ababa when the vehicle she was in was struck by rocks thrown by people in the area.
(Reuters, 10/5/16)
2016 Oct 4, Haiti's southwestern peninsula early with 145 mile-per-hour (230 kph) winds and storm surges. Tens of thousands were left homeless and outbreaks of cholera soon claimed more lives. By Oct 10 the confirmed death toll reached 372, but an official with the Civil Protection Agency said at least 522 deaths were confirmed just in the Grand-Anse Department. The official toll was later put at 546 dead and 128 missing.
(Reuters, 10/4/16)(AP, 10/6/16)(AFP, 10/10/16)(SFC, 10/10/16, p.A2)(SFC, 10/21/16, p.A6)
2016 Oct 4, In India police detained more than 700 detained in a raid on makeshift call centers in the Mumbai suburb of Thane. 70 people arrested. An estimated $36.5 million was extorted from US residents in an alleged tax scam that was run for about a year from call centers on the outskirts of Mumbai.
(Reuters, 10/6/16)
2016 Oct 4, A Myanmar lawmaker said parliament has abolished the Emergency Provisions Act. The law was introduced in 1950 as newly independent Myanmar struggled with nascent ethnic insurgencies but was then frequently used against activists after the military seized power in a 1962 coup.
(Reuters, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, South African police fired rubber bullets, stun grenades and teargas at student protesters in Johannesburg as authorities tried to re-open the prestigious Wits University after weeks of demonstrations.
(AFP, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, Rebels said they had repelled a Syrian army offensive in southern Aleppo as Russian and Syrian warplanes continued to pound residential areas in besieged parts of the city where thousands of civilians are trapped. 25 deaths in government-held west Aleppo were documented as a result of rebel shelling.
(Reuters, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned Russia over use of incendiary weapons in air strikes on the Syrian city of Aleppo, where he said attacks on civilian targets may amount to crimes against humanity.
(Reuters, 10/4/16)
2017 Oct 4, Washington’s top diplomat Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came under new pressure after a report claimed he had branded President Donald Trump a "moron" during a Pentagon meeting.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, US Senate leaders said that the US needs to keep products made by North Koreans out of the United States and get China to refuse to hire North Korean workers.
(AP, 10/5/17)
2017 Oct 4, Republican congressman Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania announced that he will not run for a 9th term, amid tawdry revelations of an extramarital affair in which the antiabortion lawmaker urged his mistress Shannon Edwards to get an abortion when he thought she was pregnant.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A5)
2017 Oct 4, Three researchers based in the US, UK and Switzerland won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a way to create exquisitely detailed images of the molecules driving life. The prize was shared by Switzerland's Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne, German-born US citizen Joachim Frank at New York's Columbia University and Briton Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In California billionaire landowner Vinod Khosla opened the a gate to Martin’s Beach in Half Moon Bay as litigation over access to the beach continued.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A7)
2017 Oct 4, In Brazil Cesare Battisti (62), an Italian fugitive and former leftist guerrilla convicted of murder in his own country was detained him at the Bolivian border. On Oct 6. a judge ordered him released. Battisti was convicted of being a member of an armed gang in his homeland in 1979, then escaped from prison near Rome in 1981.
(AFP, 10/7/17)
2017 Oct 4, It was reported that City of Oxford has stripped Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of a human rights award, citing deep concerns over the treatment of Rohingya Muslims under her watch. She had been an undergraduate at Oxford.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The EU said it was "time to talk" to resolve the escalating political crisis in Catalonia, as senior European politicians warned Catalan leaders against declaring independence from Spain unilaterally. Catalonia said it will move on Oct. 9 to declare independence from Spain following Oct. 1's banned referendum.
(AFP, 10/4/17)(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The European Union ordered Amazon to pay $295 million in back taxes to Luxembourg, in its latest attempt to tighten the screws on multinationals it says are avoiding taxes through sweetheart deals with individual EU states.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, A Greek court ruled to extradite Russian cybercrime suspect Alexander Vinnik to the US, where he is wanted in connection with a $4 billion bitcoin fraud case.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The presidents of Iran and Turkey vowed during talks in Tehran to work closely together to prevent the disintegration of Iraq and Syria and to oppose the Iraqi Kurds' drive for independence.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, An Iranian a semiofficial news agency reported that Abdolrasoul Ddorri Esfahani, a dual Iranian-Canadian national, has been sentenced to to five years in prison for espionage. Esfahani was a member of Iran’s team nuclear negotiators that struck a 2015 deal with world powers.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A2)
2017 Oct 4, Iraqi forces pushed into the Islamic State group stronghold of Hawija and seized some territory, stepping up their assault against one of the jihadists' last enclaves in the country.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Italian police said they have seized 11 million euros ($13 million) in assets and arrested 37 people, including two Carabinieri officers, accused in a Sicilian Mafia extortion racket involving fruit, fish and drugs.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo organizing committee wrapped up a two-day project review vowing to cut costs for the 2020 Games and address concerns over water pollution in Tokyo Bay.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, More than 50 Jordanian and international companies advertised hundreds of jobs in textiles, construction and agriculture at a job fair for Syrian refugees, part of an EU-sponsored effort to help the displaced become more self-reliant during what could be years of exile.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Libya at least four people were killed in an Islamic State group suicide bombing at the main court building in Misrata.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Mexico said it plans to send to Puerto Rico some 30 tons of bottled water, mosquito repellent and specialists in power generation, transmission and distribution from the state power utility.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Mexican officials said the last body known to be trapped in rubble following the Sept. 19 magnitude 7.1 earthquake has been recovered, and they raised the overall death toll from the quake to 369.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Mozambique Mahamudo Amurane (44), the mayor of Nampula, was fatally shot after giving a speech about peace efforts on the 25th anniversary of the signing of an accord that ended the country's civil war.
(AP, 10/5/17)
2017 Oct 4, In southwestern Niger an attack killed three US Army Special Forces members in a region where insurgents are active. Four Nigerien troops were also killed. A 4th US soldier, Sgt. La David Johnson, was found dead two days after the ambush. Islamist Adnan Abu Waleed al-Sahrawi, the leader of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, later claimed responsibility for the attack. Three IS leaders were later identified as planning and directing the attack. In 2018 US Special Forces killed two of the leaders, but Doundoun Cheffou was believed to be still alive.
(Reuters, 10/5/17)(SFC, 10/7/17, p.A2)(SFC, 10/24/17, p.A8)(Reuters, 1/13/18)(SFC, 5/30/18, p.A3)
2017 Oct 4, Nigeria's financial crimes agency brushed off allegations by the wife of the country's former president that it had conducted a "witch-hunt" against her. Last year, the EFCC froze four US dollar bank accounts that the ex-president's wife said she owned. Her spokesman said in September 2016 that the accounts in total contained around $10 million - a third of the sum reported in the Nigerian press.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned that the Supreme Court chief justice and the head of a key anti-graft agency face impeachment complaints, in an emerging faceoff with the officials.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Thousands of Romanians protested against planned hikes in social security contributions that critics say will wipe out generous salary hikes for public sector workers.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Russia jailed government critic Alexei Navalny called on his supporters to hold street protests this weekend across Russia, in defiance of an official ban, to demand that Navalny be allowed to run in next year's presidential election.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Russia said it will retaliate tit-for-tat over a new Canadian law that will impose sanctions on officials from Russia and other nations considered guilty of human rights violations.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Moscow Venezuelan Pres. Nicolas Maduro met with Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin and thanked him for his political and diplomatic support in difficult times. Putin said Russia would continue its economic cooperation with Venezuela, including on major projects.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Saudi Arabia announced the consolidation of development funds under a unified body led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, cementing the powerful prince's position in the Gulf kingdom's affairs.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, It was reported that Renate Langer (61), a former German actress, has told Swiss authorities that film director Roman Polanski raped her at a house in Gstaad in February 1972, when she was 15.
(SFC, 10/4/17, p.A2)
2017 Oct 4, Syrian troops and allied militiamen advanced to about six miles of the eastern city of Mayadeen. Rockets and barrel bombs in the area killed at least 20 people. Tens of thousands have fled the region in the past week.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A2)
2017 Oct 4, It was reported that an examination by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that samples from an attack by Syrian forces last March 30 on the opposition-held town of Latamneh tested positive for the banned nerve agent sarin.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, An official document issued by the Russian consulate in Damascus showed that at least 131 Russian citizens died in Syria in the first nine months of this year.
(Reuters, 10/27/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Togo thousands of people protested in the next phase of a campaign to force out President Faure Gnassingbe, whose dynasty has ruled the West African state for more than 50 years.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, A Turkish court found 42 former soldiers guilty of trying to kill President Tayyip Erdogan during last year's failed coup, and handed most of them life sentences in the highest profile case related to the attempted putsch so far.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The UN Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) said that it regrets a decision by Turkish Cypriot authorities to start imposing taxes and fees on humanitarian goods delivered to Greek Cypriots in the breakaway north of the ethnically split island.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In northern Yemen an air strike killed at least seven people, including four children, in a rebel-held district in Saada province. The Huthi-run news site Saba reported 12 dead. The rebels' Al-Masirah television blamed the attack on a Saudi-led coalition.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2018 Oct 4, The US Treasury issued new North Korea-related sanctions that target SIA Falcon International Group, a Turkish company, and two Turkish individuals among others.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, The US Justice Department charged seven Russian military intelligence officers with hacking anti-doping agencies and other organizations. Britain and the Netherlands condemned the Russian GRU military intelligence for a series of alleged global cybercrimes. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, denounced the accusations as fake.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In southern California a judge sentenced former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight to 28 years in prison for running over businessman Terry Carter outside a Compton burger stand in 2015.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A14)
2018 Oct 4, In San Francisco almost 2,500 hotel workers began a strike that spanned seven Marriott hotels. On Dec. 3 the hotel workers finally approved a new contract.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 4, In New Mexico Cameron Martinez (18) died from gunshot wounds in a vehicle near the Ohkay Hotel Casino near Espanola. Three other people were expected to survive their wounds. Martinez had recently appeared in a political ad for Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democratic candidate for state governor.
(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A10)
2018 Oct 4, In Utah the Mormon church joined lawmakers, the governor and advocates to back a deal that would legalize medical marijuana in the state.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A7)
2018 Oct 4, In Afghanistan two women were killed and 16 other people wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the Zhari district. In Nangarhar province a bomb blast near a non-governmental organization office killed two people and wounded seven others. In Kabul one person was killed when a sticky bomb attached to a vehicle detonated. US service member James Slape (23) of North Carolina died from wounds of an IED in Helmand province.
(AP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 10/4/18)(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 4, In southeastern Afghanistan Taliban militants mounted an attack in the Maroof district of Kandahar province when security forces responded with an airstrike. that killed four people and wounded eight others who were part of a wedding procession.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Bahrain received a $10 billion pledge from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to aid its sufering economy.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 4, Lawyers for Benin tycoon and opposition politician Sebastien Ajavon discovered that their client and three others were accused of "high-risk international drug trafficking", which carries a prison term of 10-20 years. Ajavon launched his own political party in march and has made known he wants to stand at the next election that is expected in 2020.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In eastern Burkina Faso six soldiers were killed and several others seriously injured when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device (IED).
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Human Rights Watch said more than 235 people have been killed in the Beni area of CongoDRC this year in attacks with guns, axes or machetes. More than 165 others have been kidnapped. In the past four years more than 1,000 people have died.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In eastern CongoDRC a rebel attack on an army post left six people dead. The Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) was suspected of having carried out the late night attack in the city of Beni.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Egypt one person was killed and at least three others injured in a blast at a fuel depot on the outskirts of Cairo.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, French authorities helicoptered a Slovenian she-bear into the Pyrenees mountains, despite an all-night protest by furious local farmers who fear she will eat their sheep.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid homage in Jerusalem to the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and said Germany had a responsibility to confront anti-Semitism and never to forget the Holocaust. At a news conference Merkel reaffirmed her support for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and concern about Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory where Palestinians seek for a country of their own. Germany and Israel agree that Iran should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but they differ on how to achieve this goal.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Hungary and Poland said they have gone to the European Court of Justice to challenge tighter European Union rules on the employment of workers from low-pay EU states.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, India deported seven Rohingya Muslim men to Myanmar.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Indonesia electricity was restored and some shops reopened in the quake and tsunami stricken city of Palu. The official death toll stood at 1,424, but was expected to rise.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Ingushetia thousands attended a rare protest to decry a land-swap deal with neighboring Chechnya, despite authorities reportedly setting up roadblocks to hinder demonstrators. Russia turned off 3G and 4G mobile Internet services in Ingushetia from Oct. 4 to Oct. 17 "on the basis of the justified decision of the law enforcement authorities".
(AFP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Oct 4, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address broadcast by state television that the people of Iran face a sensitive time because of pressure from America and economic problems. The Iranian rial has lost approximately 75 percent of its value since the beginning of 2018.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat announced in a statement a "detailed plan to remove UNRWA from Jerusalem and replace its services with municipal services".
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Kazakhstan the Russian Soyuz MS-08 space capsule carrying Russia's Oleg Artemyev and NASA's Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold landed safely after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, US First Lady Melania Trump brought soccer balls and books to a school in Malawi to highlight a USAID scheme to support African schools, on the second stop of her four-nation tour of the continent. President Donald Trump has sought to roll back the US foreign aid budget.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Qasim Ibrahim, a Maldives opposition leader, returned home after being exiled in Germany for months to escape a prison sentence on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Mexican police detained a couple on the outskirts of Mexico City on suspicion they may have killed as many as 10 women and sold a dead woman's baby.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Mexican police in the northern border state of Sonora said five police officers died after unidentified assailants attacked their patrol vehicle in the town of Guaymas.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Authorities in Myanmar destroyed an estimated $1.3 million worth of confiscated ivory and other parts of endangered animals, days after a conservation group charged that the country's ivory exports to China are increasing.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Norway Russian businessman Boris Rotenberg, under US sanctions over the Ukraine conflict due to his close ties with President Vladimir Putin, filed suit against four Nordic banks, accusing them of discrimination. Rotenberg also holds a Finnish passport and is not subject to European sanctions over Russia's role in Ukraine, but European banks must comply with the US sanctions in order to do business with American banks.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 4, A spokeswoman for ActionAid said Pakistan has ordered 18 international aid groups to shut down operations and leave the country. ActionAid focuses on education, poverty alleviation and human rights and is headquartered in Johannesburg.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Philippine police, backed by troops, killed nine drug suspects and arrested more than 100 others in two days of raids that ended today in central Cebu province. The government's massive crackdown has left more than 4,800 suspects dead.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in India for a two-day visit during which India is expected to sign a $5 billion deal to buy Russian S-400 air defense systems despite a new US law ordering sanctions on any country trading with Russia's defense and intelligence sectors.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Russia's Defense Ministry said the United States appears to be running a clandestine biological weapons lab in the country of Georgia, allegedly flouting international rules and posing a direct security threat to Russia.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, A South Korean government delegation arrived in North Korea for a joint celebration of the anniversary of a 2007 summit and to possibly hold further peace talks.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In South Korea this year's Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) opened with a movie portraying the plight of a North Korean defector and the unlikely family she formed during her harrowing journey.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Sudanese security agents confiscated the entire print runs of two newspapers, days after the European Union and Washington pushed for press freedoms in the African country.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Ukraine said it had given a Hungarian consul 72 hours to leave the country after accusing his consulate of illegally issuing passports to members of an ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Ukraine's constitution bars Ukrainians from holding citizenship of other countries. Hungary in turn expelled a Ukrainian consul in Budapest and reiterated a threat to block Ukraine's EU and NATO integration.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Vietnam seized eight tons of pangolin scales and elephant ivory shipped from Nigeria, the second such haul in a week.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2019 Oct 4, US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation suspending entry of immigrants who will not be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering the United States or do not have the means to pay for their healthcare costs themselves.
(Reuters, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, US President Donald Trump told reporters that he had officially allowed Polish entry into a US visa waiver program.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, The Trump administration said it will lift the annual blending mandate for biofuels starting in 2020 and ensure more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol is blended into the US fuel pool, a move to retain the support of American farmers.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Microsoft said a hacker group linked to Iran unleashed cyber-attacks on US journalists, government officials and accounts associated with a US presidential campaign.
(AFP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, It was reported that Mercury Insurance is ending its two-decade battle with California regulators over extra fees charged to customers by agreeing to pay the state $41 million. Most of the money will go to the state's general fund.
(SFC, 10/4/19, p.D2)
2019 Oct 4, California police said they have arrested Nickey Stane (52) for sexual assault and battery cases. He was caught after he allegedly used a recording device to view someone in the bathroom without their knowledge. Police used DNA evidence from two decades ago to connect Stane to a murder and a series of sexual assaults dating back to 1999.
(Good Morning America, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Diahann Carroll, black actress and singer,died in Los Angeles. Carroll was the first black woman to star in a non-servant role in a TV series. "Julia" aired from 1968-1971. Carroll's films included "Carmen Jones" (1954), "Goodbye Again" (1961), "Paris Blues" (1961), "Hurry Sundown" (1967), "The Split" (1968) and "Claudine (1974).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diahann_Carroll)(SSFC, 10/6/19, p.B10)
2019 Oct 4, In Illinois Prisciliano Carranza (22) used his car as a weapon and deliberately drove into a family of four and killing another man in Waukegan. Carranza was soon arrest and held on a $5 million bond.
(ABC News, 10/6/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Chicago a jury convicted Corey Morgan, a man who prosecutors said plotted then tried to cover up the 2015 slaying of a 9-year-old boy who was shot after being lured into a Chicago alley with the promise of a juice box. Prosecutors argued that the Nov. 2, 2015, "execution" of Tyshawn Lee was carried out as revenge on a rival gang member. The verdict came after a separate jury a day earlier convicted the alleged triggerman, Dwright Boone-Doty, and after a third man, Kevin Edwards, pleaded guilty last month in exchange for a 25-year prison sentence.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Biologists at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute said that samples taken from the waters off the shore of Collier County found high concentrations of the toxic algae where they also received reports of dead fish and cases of respiratory irritation. The toxic red tide was back after fading away earlier this year following a 15-month bloom.
(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, In New Jersey Marty Small, the Atlantic City Council president, became acting mayor, a day after Frank Gilliam Jr., a fellow Democrat, admitted stealing $87,000 from a youth basketball club he founded, and resigned.
(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Texas Joshua Xavier Brown (27), a man who used to live next to Botham Jean and who was a witness in Amber Guyger's murder trial, was shot to death in Dallas. On Dec. 5 three men were charged with capital murder in the killing of Brown.
(SFC, 10/7/19, p.A5)(AP, 12/6/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Algeria tens of thousands of protesters chanted slogans demanding the army quit politics, a purge of the ruling elite, an end to corruption, and the freeing of opposition leaders.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, It was reported that British PM Boris Johnson has told a court he will request a Brexit delay if he fails to strike a deal with the EU by October 19.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Britain's National Theater said it has decided to end its partnership with energy group Royal Dutch Shell as part of a broader "climate emergency" initiative to reduce its carbon impact.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In northern Burkina Faso twenty people were killed in an attack by suspected jihadists on a gold-mining site in Soum province.
(Reuters, 10/6/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Ecuador protests over fuel subsidy cuts paralyzed transportation for a second day as authorities held 275 people in jail for unrest triggered by President Lenin Moreno's belt-tightening fiscal package.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Thousands of Haitian protesters marched through Port-au-Prince to the UN headquarters in one of the largest demonstrations in a weekslong push to oust embattled President Jovenel Moise. The unrest came after almost four weeks of protests in which 17 people have been reported killed.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Hong Kong invoked emergency powers for the first time in more than half a century to ban face masks for protesters after months of unrest, prompting demonstrators to occupy downtown streets.
(Bloomberg, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Iran claimed a "victory" after one of its banks received $1.6 billion in compensation from British authorities over "illegal" sanctions. In June 2013, the UK Supreme Court quashed a treasury directive imposing sanction on Bank Mellat over alleged links with Tehran's controversial nuclear program.
(AFP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on both sides to cease violence. Security forces again opened fire on protesters gathered in central Baghdad. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said he’s suspending participation in parliament activities until the government introduces a program that serves Iraqi aspirations. Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain advised their citizens to avoid traveling to Iraq and those who are there to leave the country immediately. A 4th day of bloody violence hit Baghdad with 22 people killed.
(AP, 10/4/19)(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Mexico a National Geographic journalist was shot in the leg in Chihuahua state late today while interviewing an alleged drug dealer, who was killed when four armed men stormed in on the interview.
(Reuters, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, The Dutch government said it would spend hundreds of millions of euros to mitigate nitrogen emissions, in a move it hopes will pave the way for thousands of building projects to be restarted.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Dutch health authorities ordered a major recall of processed meats from grocery stores after saying they had linked a spate of food poisonings over the past two years to a likely single source. Experts had been testing the DNA of listeria bacteria involved in cases that affected 20 people in all, killing three of them and causing one woman to miscarry.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Pakistan the Taliban met with US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Islamabad for the first time since President Donald Trump declared a seemingly imminent peace deal to end Afghanistan's 18-year war 'dead' a month ago.
(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Palestinian officials said the Palestinian Authority has agreed to accept hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues collected by Israel months after declining them in protest. The PA had refused to accept the funds because Israel was withholding an amount equal to what the Palestinians pay to the families of prisoners and those killed in the conflict, including slain militants.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Palestinian Alaa Hamdan (28) was killed by Israeli gunfire during the weekly protest along the Gaza-Israel frontier.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In the Philippines at least four gunmen abducted Allan Hyrons, an elderly British man, and his Filipino wife, Wilma, in Zamboanga del Sur province.
(SFC, 10/5/19, p.A2)
2019 Oct 4, Russia said that Moscow's move to help Beijing build an early warning system to detect missile attacks showed the two countries had a special relationship.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Rwanda unknown assailants killed eight people late today in a northern area near the Volcanoes National Park that is popular with tourists for its mountain gorillas.
(Reuters, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Spanish police arrested four drug traffickers who stopped to save their lives after the officers were thrown overboard during a high speed boat chase off the coast of Malaga. More than 80 bundles of hash had been recovered from the sea.
(The Telegraph, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Sudan irrigation ministers of three key Nile Basin countries met in Khartoum, seeking to resolve differences over Ethiopia’s soon-to-be-finished Blue Nile dam, which Cairo claims threatens its water supply. The meeting of the ministers from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia was expected to last two days.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In northern Syria the US-led coalition and Turkey conducted their third joint patrol, part of a plan designed to defuse tensions between Ankara and the Syrian Kurds.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In southern Thailand Judge Khanakorn Pianchana shot himself in court and was hospitalized after delivering a not guilty verdict in the case of five Muslim suspects charged with murder in the predominantly Buddhist country's restive south.
(Reuters, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Turkey's state run Anadolu Agency said Sirri Sureyya Onder, a former deputy of the People's Democratic Party, or HDP, has been released from a high security prison. The former pro-Kurdish party legislator and film-maker had been jailed since December 2018.
(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Ukraine's Prosecutor General said that his office is reviewing several cases related to the owner of a gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son sat on the board, as part of a review of all the criminal cases closed by his predecessors.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, A panel of experts at the UN labor agency is calling on Venezuelan authorities to halt violence, threats and other forms of “aggression" against workers and employers who oppose President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2020 Oct 4, Dr. Sean P. Conley, the White House physician, acknowledged that Mr. Trump had a high fever and saw his oxygen drop on Oct 2. Conley acknowledged that he had provided a rosy version of events to please his notoriously sensitive patient. Mr. Trump made an unannounced exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the early evening, climbing into his armored Chevrolet Suburban to ride past supporters holding Trump flags gathered outside the building.
(NY Times, 10/5/20)
2020 Oct 4, Democrat Joe Biden opened his widest lead in a month in the US presidential race after President Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, and a majority of Americans think Trump could have avoided infection if he had taken the virus more seriously.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton won this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
(AP, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, California set a grim new record when officials announced that the wildfires of 2020 have now scorched a record 4 million acres — in a fire season that is far from over. There have been 31 deaths and more than 8,400 buildings have been destroyed.
(AP, 10/5/20)
2020 Oct 4, California to date had 829,561 cases of coronavirus and 16,121 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 105,310 cases and 1,566 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 7,416,126 with the death toll at 209,787.
(sfist.com, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, The Great Barrington Declaration, a statement written by three public health experts from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, encouraged governments to lift lockdown restrictions on young and healthy people while focusing protection measures on the elderly. It was signed in Great Barringtron, Mass.
(https://gbdeclaration.org/)(Econ., 10/24/20, p.70)
2020 Oct 4, It was reported that Cineworld, the world's second-biggest cinema operator, will close all its screens in the United States, Britain and Ireland this week after studios pulled major releases such as the latest James Bond film.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, In Belarus more than 100,000 marched in Minsk calling for the resignation of Pres. Lukashenko. 317 people were reported detained in Minsk and other cities. More than 10,000 people have been detained since the last election with at least 244 implicated in criminal cases related to the protests.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A2)(SFC, 10/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Oct 4, Mainland China reported 20 new COVID-19 cases, up from 16 reported a day earlier. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Mainland China now stands at 85,470, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, In northeastern China a highway crash killed at least 18 people in Fuyu, Jilin province.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Oct 4, It was reported that at least eight migrants have drowned and 12 are missing after smugglers forced them off a boat near the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said some 2,000 migrants have arrived in Djibouti from Yemen in the past three weeks alone.
(AP, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, French authorities deployed about 1,000 firefighters, four military helicopters and troops to search for at least eight people who were missing after devastating floods hit a mountainous border region with Italy, where at least four people were killed.
(AP, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, France reported 12,565 new confirmed coronavirus infections over the last 24 hours, falling from the previous daily toll that had a set a new record.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, The two visitors from western Germany were attacked and wounded in downtown Dresden. One of them died later at a hospital. On Oct. 20 a young Syrian (20) was arrested over the attack.
(AP, 10/21/20)
2020 Oct 4, Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada (81), better known as Kenzo, who created his label in Paris in the 1970s, died of complications linked to COVID-19 at the American Hospital of Paris.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, New Caledonia islanders rejected an initiative (53.3% v 46.7%) to sever ties with France. The South Pacific archipelago numbered about 270,000 inhabitants.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A4)
2020 Oct 4, Nigeria's inspector general of police banned a notorious unit from carrying out stop and search duties and setting up roadblocks amid growing anger at routine harassment and atrocities allegedly committed by its officers. The ban was triggered by the alleged killing of a young man by officers from the unit in the city of Lagos a day earlier.
(BBC, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, Oman became the first Gulf Arab state to reinstate its ambassador to Syria since the eruption of the country's ruinous civil war. Syria was expelled from the 22-member Arab League in 2011, and Arab countries have sanctioned Damascus and condemned its use of military force against the opposition.
(AP, 10/5/20)
2020 Oct 4, Pakistan's military killed two militants in a shootout in the North Waziristan district.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Oct 4, The Saudi government started allowing a maximum of 6,000 pilgrims a day to enter the sprawling Grand Mosque in Mecca. Only Saudi citizens and residents will be permitted to enter the mosque during this first phase of reopening, and each person has up to three hours to complete the pilgrimage.
(AP, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, Lee Hyo-jae (95), South Korean champion of women’s rights, died in Changwon.
(NY Times, 11/14/20)
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1226 Oct 4, St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans and one of history's most famous nature lovers, died. [see Oct 3]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1289 Oct 4, Louis X, the Stubborn, king of France (1314-16), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1515 Oct 4, Lucas Cranach (d.1586), the Younger, German painter, was born.
(WUD, 1994, p.339)(MC, 10/4/01)
1535 Oct 4, The 1st full English translation of the Bible was printed in Switzerland. Miles Coverdale’s translation of the Bible into English (from Dutch and Latin) was the first complete version in English and was dedicated to Henry VIII.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.15)(MC, 10/4/01)
1542 Oct 4, Roberto Bellarmino, Italian Jesuit theologian, diplomat, saint, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1582 Oct 4, Theresa of Avila (b.1515), Spanish mystic writer and saint, died. She co-founded with John of the Cross (1542-1591) the Order of Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites. "Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man."
(CU, 6/87)(WUD, 1994, p.769)(AP, 12/8/97)(MC, 10/4/01)
1589 Oct 4, Francisco de Cuellar, a Spanish Armada officer from the wrecked galleon Lavia, wrote a letter from Antwerp to King Philip that was later valued for its descriptions of Ireland. He had spent 6 months evading English forces to get to Scotland where after 6 more months he reached the Netherlands.
(ON, 5/02, p.12)
1626 Oct 4, Richard Cromwell (d.1659), lord protector of England (1658-59), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1636 Oct 4, The Massachusetts Plymouth Company drafted its 1st law.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1648 Oct 4, Peter Stuyvesant established America's 1st volunteer firemen.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1669 Oct 4, Rembrandt H. van Rijn (b.1606), painter and etcher (Steel Masters, Night Watch), died. In 1999 Simon Schama published the biography "Rembrandt's Eyes."
(WSJ, 11/24/99, p.A16)(MC, 10/4/01)
1712 Oct 4, Utrecht banished poor Jews.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1744 Oct 4, The HMS Victory sank in the English Channel with at least 900 men aboard. The 175-foot sailing ship had separated from its fleet during a storm. In 2009 Odyssey Marine Exploration reported finding the vessel about 330 feet beneath the surface and more than 50 miles from where anybody would have thought it went down.
(AP, 2/1/09)
1772 Oct 4, Francois-Louis Pierne, composer, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1777 Oct 4, George Washington's troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Penn., resulting in heavy American casualties. British General Sir William Howe repelled Washington's last attempt to retake Philadelphia, compelling Washington to spend the winter at Valley Forge.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)
1795 Oct 4, General Napoleon Bonaparte led the rout of counterrevolutionaries in the streets of Paris, beginning his rise to power. France was in the midst of economic disaster—a factor that aided royalist counterrevolutionaries in their attempts to incite rebellion against the young republican government. Bonaparte, looking for a new command while on half pay in Paris, joined the defense of the Convention against overwhelming odds.
(HN, 10/4/99)(HNQ, 10/26/00)
1810 Oct 4, Alexander Walewski, French earl, foreign minister, son of Napoleon I, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1814 Oct 4, Jean Francois Millet (d.1875), French painter, was born.
(www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=745)
1822 Oct 4, Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president (R) of the United States, was born in Delaware, Ohio. Hayes was a major-general in the Civil War, then an Ohio congressman, then succeeded Grant as president (1877-81). Hayes won the Electoral College by a margin of one vote after his opponent won the popular vote in an election so fraught with charges of vote fraud that there were even fears of a coup. Hayes refused to seek a second term.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/3/01)
1824 Oct 4, The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1824 was enacted, after the overthrow of the Mexican Empire of Agustin de Iturbide. In the new constitution, the republic took the name of United Mexican States, and was defined as a representative federal republic, with Catholicism as the official religion. A liberal constitution, established at this time, was later replaced by Santa Anna.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_Constitution_of_Mexico)(AP, 9/15/10)
1832 Oct 4, William Griggs, inventor (photo chromo lithography), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1851 Oct 4, In San Francisco the third Jenny Lind Theater, run by Tom McGuire, opened on Portsmouth Square on the same site as the two preceding it, which were destroyed by the fires of 1851. In 1852 a scandal erupted as the city of San Francisco purchased the theater for $200,000 for use as the city hall. In 1949 the site was named state landmark No. 192.
(SFC, 5/24/14, p.C1)(www.noehill.com/sf/landmarks/cal0192.asp)(SFC, 7/24/21, p.B5)
1854 Oct 4, Abraham Lincoln made his 1st political speech at Illinois State Fair.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1859 Oct 4, Karl Baedeker (b.1801), German travel writer and tour guide (Die Schweiz), died.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1861 Oct 4, Frederic Remington (d.1909), American Western painter and sculptor, was born.
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1213)(HN, 10/4/00)
1861 Oct 4, The Union ship USS South Carolina captured two Confederate blockade runners outside of New Orleans, La.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1862 Oct 4, Edward Stratemeyer, author, was born. He created the Hardy Boys, Rover Boys, Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins. The first series of books written/produced by Stratemeyer was The Rover Boys, written under the pseudonym of Arthur M. Winfield. There were 30 volumes, written between 1899 and 1926. The Bobbsey Twins series (Laura Lee Hope) was next, and is the oldest "surviving" series, extending to 72 volumes, written between 1904 and 1979. Tom Swift, attributed to Victor Appleton, began in 1910 and there were 40 volumes before the series ended in 1941. (There was also a Tom Swift, Jr. series, by Victor Appleton II.) The Hardy Boys (Franklin W. Dixon, 85 volumes from 1927 to 1985) and Nancy Drew (Carolyn Keene, 78 volumes from 1930 to 1985) are the other best-known Stratemeyer books.
(HN, 10/4/00)(http://pw2.netcom.com/~drmike99/aboutbobbsey.html)
1862 Oct 4, Battle of Corinth, Mississippi, ended.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1874 Oct 4, Kiowa leader Santanta, known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrendered in Darlington, Texas. He was later sent to the state penitentiary, where he committed suicide October 11, 1878.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1877 Oct 4, Pancho Villa (d.1923), [Doroteo Arango], Mexican revolutionary rebel, was born. [see Jun 5, 1878]
(MC, 10/4/01)
1879 Oct 4, Edward Murray East, botanist, was born. His research led to the development of hybrid corn.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1881 Oct 4, [Heinrich AH] Walther von Brauchitsch, German field marshal, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1883 Oct 4, Orient Express made its 1st run linking Istanbul, Turkey, to Paris by rail.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1884 Oct 4, Damon Runyon, journalist and short story writer, was born. “Guys & Dolls" was based on his writings.
(HN, 10/4/00)(MC, 10/4/01)
1887 Oct 4, The first issue of the International Herald Tribune was published as the Paris Herald Tribune.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1892 Oct 4, Engelbert Dollfuss, Austrian Fascist chancellor, was born. He was killed by Nazis in 1934.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Buster Keaton (Joseph F. Keaton), star of silent film comedies including Sherlock, Jr. and The General, was born in Piqua, Kan. He is considered a legendary presence in the history of cinema. Nicknamed 'The Great Stone Face', he graduated to full-length films in the 1920s, which featured his amazing stunts rivaled only by Chaplin.
(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Hattie McDaniel, actress (Gone With the Wind, Academy Award), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, Richard Sorge, German spy for USSR in Tokyo (WW II), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1895 Oct 4, The first U.S. Open golf tournament was held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. At the US Amateur Golf Championship at Newport, R.I., officials ruled against the prone position use of a pool cue to sink a put.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 11/29/97, p.C3)
1903 Oct 4, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Austrian Nazi (SS/SD) and successor to Reinhard Heydrich, was born. He was hanged in 1946.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1904 Oct 4, Frederic Auguste Bertholdi (b.1834), French sculptor, died in Paris. He is best known for designing Liberty Enlightening the World (aka the Statue of Liberty).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Auguste_Bartholdi)
1905 Oct 4, Orville Wright piloted the first flight longer than 30 minutes. The flight lasted 33 minutes, 17 seconds and covered 21 miles.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1909 Oct 4, The Cunard liner "Lusitania" crossed the Atlantic in four days, 15 hours and 52 minutes.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1910 Oct 4, Scottish surgeon Joseph Bell died. He was the real-life model for Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1911 Oct 4, The 1st public elevator began service at London's Earl's Court Metro Station.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1912 Oct 4, Gen. Zeledon, Nicaraguan opponent of US occupation, was executed.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1914 Oct 4, The first German Zeppelin raided London.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1915 Oct 4, Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah was established. Pres. Woodrow Wilson established Dinosaur National Monument in Jensen, Utah.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, p.T8)(MC, 10/4/01)
1916 Oct 4, The California State Federation of Labor maintained its policy of banning Japanese workers from joining labor unions.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W5)
1916 Oct 4, National Lead, US Steel (preferred) and Peoples Gas were removed from the Dow Jones. AT&T was first added to the DJIA.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45,46)(WSJ, 4/2/04, p.C1)
1918 Oct 4, The pigeon Cher Ami (d.1919) became the hero of the American 77th Infantry Division as she delivered her message during in the Battle of the Argonne, despite having been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, covered in blood and with a leg hanging only by a tendon.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher_Ami)(Econ, 1/16/16, p.89)
1919 Oct 4, Rene Marques, Puerto Rican playwright and short story writer, was born.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1921 Oct 4, League of Nations refused to assist starving Russians.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1923 Oct 4, Charlton Heston III, American actor, was born. His films included “10 Commandments," “Ben Hur" and “Planet of Apes."
(HN, 10/4/98)(MC, 10/4/01)
1928 Oct 4, Alvin Toffler, writer and futurist, was born. His work included “Future Shock" (1970).
(HN, 10/4/00)(NW, 9/16/02, p.34D)
1931 Oct 4, The comic strip "Dick Tracy," created by Chester Gould (1900-1985), made its debut.
(AP, 10/4/97)(www.internationalhero.co.uk/d/diktracy.htm)
1933 Oct 4, First issue of Esquire magazine was published.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1931 Oct 4, Aerial circus star Clyde Pangborn and playboy Hugh Herndon, Jr. set off in Miss Veedol to complete the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean from Sabishiro Beach in Misawa City, Japan. A young boy gave Panghorn 5 apples from Misawa City.
(ON, 1/03, p.10)(www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7495)
1939 Oct 4, Last Polish troops surrendered to German Wehrmacht.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1940 Oct 4, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1940 Oct 4, 12 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1941 Oct 4, Jackie Collins, actress, author, was born in London, England. Her books included “The world Is Full of Married Men (1968), “Stud" (1969), “Bitch" (1979) and “Deadly Embrace" (2002).
(MC, 10/4/01)(SSFC, 8/4/02, Par p.14)
1941 Oct 4, Anne Rice, novelist, was born in New Orleans, La. Her books included “Interview with a Vampire."
(HN, 10/4/00)(MC, 10/4/01)
1943 Oct 4, German occupiers forbade the flying of kites. Violation carried a 6 month jail sentence.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1943 Oct 4, Some 6,600 Moroccans accounted for the bulk of the fighting force that freed Corsica. In 2013 France honored the Moroccan veterans and fallen soldiers who freed Corsica.
(AP, 10/4/13)
1946 Oct 4, Susan Sarandon, American film actress, was born.
(HN, 10/4/00)
1947 Oct 4, Max Karl Ernst Planck (b.1858), German physicist (Nobel 1918), died.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck)
1949 Oct 4, United Nations' permanent NYC headquarters was dedicated.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1951 Oct 4, Henrietta Lacks, a black woman, died of cancer in Baltimore. Cells from her body, later known as HeLa cells, were cultivated for research. In 1974 Dr. Nelson-Rees (d.2009 at 80), a UC Berkeley geneticist, reported that the HeLa cells had contaminated other cell cultures in laboratories around the world. In 1986 Michael Gold authored “A Conspiracy of Cells," a chronicle of the Nelson-Rees study. In 2010 Rebecca Skloot authored “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."
(SFC, 1/28/09, p.B10)(SSFC, 2/14/10, p.F3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)
1952 Oct 4, Pres. Truman arrived in SF to campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson.
(SFC, 10/4/02, p.E4)
1957 Oct 4, The television series "Leave It to Beaver" premiered on CBS. It ended in 1963 after 6 season. Joe Connelly (d.2003 at 85), writer-producer, co-created the show. It featured Jerry Mathers (9) as Beaver, Tony Dow (12) as his older brother Wally, Hugh Beaumont as the father and Barbara Billingsley (1915-2010) as the mother.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A25)(SSFC, 10/17/10, p.C9)
1957 Oct 4, Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters Union.
(AP, 10/4/07)
1957 Oct 4, The Space Age and "space race" began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik (traveler), the first man-made space satellite. The satellite, built by Valentin Glushko, weighed 184 pounds and was launched by a converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik, developed under the chief scientist Sergei Korolyov, orbited the earth every 96 minutes at a maximum height of 584 miles. The event was timed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. In 1958, it reentered the earth's atmosphere and burned up. It was followed by 9 other Sputnik spacecraft.
(WSJ, 10/7/96, p.B4)(SFC, 8/2/97, p.A12)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 10/3/97, p.A8)(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(AP, 10/1/07)
1958 Oct 4, The first trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) with flights between London and New York.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1959 Nov 4, In San Francisco a protest meeting was staged at Portsmouth Square to oppose plans for an 800-car garage at a cost of $3.2 million. 100 foot trees in the plaza were later felled for the underground parking structure.
(SSFC, 11/1/09, DB p.42)
1961 Oct 4, In San Francisco comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested on charges of using lewd and obscene language following his first act at the Jazz Workshop in North Beach. Police code No. 205 was cited. Bail was set at $367.50. Bruce was successfully defended by attorney Albert Bendich.
(SSFC, 10/2/11, DB p.42)(SFC, 1/14/15, p.D3)
1963 Oct 4-1963 Oct 8, Hurricane Flora, killed some 7-8,000 people in Cuba and Haiti.
(SFC, 11/30/98, p.A2)
1965 Oct 4, Pope Paul VI became the first reigning pontiff to visit the Western Hemisphere as he addressed the U.N. General Assembly.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1967 Oct 4, The UN Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees went into effect. The 1967 Protocol removed geographical and temporal restrictions from the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Relating_to_the_Status_of_Refugees)(Econ, 11/27/04, p.44)
1968 Oct 4, Cambodia admitted that the Viet Cong used their country for sanctuary.
(www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200408180835.asp)
1970 Oct 4, Janis Joplin (b.1943) was found dead in a seedy Hollywood motel of a heroin overdose at age 27. Her classic songs included: "Down on Me," "Ball and Chain," and "Piece of My Heart." In 1992 Laura Joplin authored “Love, Janis."
(WSJ, 1/9/97, p.A8)(SFEC, 3/16/97, Z1 p.4)(SSFC, 8/21/05, p.F1)
1972 Oct 4, Judge John Sirica imposed a gag order on the Watergate break-in case.
(www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1791.html)
1974 Oct 4, Anne Sexton (b.1928), American poet, died in Massachusetts. In 1991 Diane Middlebrook (1939-2007), authored “Anne Sexton: A Biography."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sexton)(SSFC, 12/16/07, p.A1)
1974 Oct 4, The Southern music festival Volunteer Jam, headlined by the Charlie Daniels Band, was first held at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Jam)
1974 Oct 4, In Greece the New Democracy party (ND), was founded. It became the main center-right political party.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democracy_(Greece))
1976 Oct 4, Barbara Walters made her debut as the first female nightly network news anchor. She was hired by ABC-TV, and offered a then-unheard of million dollar a year salary to co-anchor with veteran Harry Reasoner. But Reasoner was not pleased with having her there. In addition to their lack of chemistry, the network's ratings did not improve, and she was replaced in mid-1978. She joined another ABC show, 20/20, where she had much greater success.
(http://tinyurl.com/yj2yufw)(www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=99440)
1976 Oct 4, Agriculture secretary Earl Butz resigned in the wake of a controversy over a joke he'd made about blacks.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1976 Oct 4, In Gregg v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on the death sentence in murder cases. This restored the legality of capital punishment, which had not been practiced since 1967. The first execution following this ruling was Gary Gilmore in 1977.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1978 Oct 4, Funeral services were held at the Vatican for Pope John Paul I.
(AP, 10/4/98)
1980 Oct 4, Some 520 people were forced to abandon the cruise ship “Prisendam" in the Gulf of Alaska after the Dutch luxury liner caught fire—no deaths or serious injury resulted. The ship capsized and sank a week later.
(AP, 10/4/08)
1982 Oct 4, Frank Rosenthal (1929-2008), Las Vegas casino operator, survived a car bomb when his Cadillac exploded as he turned the key. He ran the mob-owned Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda and Marina casinos. In 1995 Martin Scorsese made his film “Casino," based on the life of Frank Rosenthal.
(SFC, 10/17/08, p.B8)(Econ, 11/1/08, p.99)
1982 Oct 4, Glenn H. Gould (b.1932), eccentric Canadian pianist, died in Toronto of a cerebral hemorrhage. In 1997 Peter F. Ostwald wrote a biography titled: "Glenn Gould." In 2010 the documentary “Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould" was directed by Pater Raymont and Michele Hozer.
(WSJ, 8/5/97, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Gould)(SFC, 11/19/10, p.E8)
1985 Oct 4, Islamic Jihad issued a statement saying it had killed American hostage William Buckley. Fellow hostage David Jacobsen, however, later said he believed Buckley had died (in Lebanon) of torture injuries four months earlier.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1986 Oct 4, In the Netherlands Queen Beatrix officially opened the Oosterscheldekering for use by saying the well-known words: De stormvloedkering is gesloten. De Deltawerken zijn voltooid. Zeeland is veilig. (The flood barrier is closed. The Delta Works are completed. Zealand is safe.) It was the world's largest movable flood barrier.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterscheldekering)
1987 Oct 4, National Football League owners staged their first games since the players union went on strike, with nonstriking and replacement personnel on the gridiron at sparsely attended stadiums.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1988 Oct 4, Indian professor Mithileshwar Singh, freed the day before by his Lebanese kidnappers, said his captors had treated him well during his 20 months of imprisonment, but acknowledged "there is no substitute for freedom."
(AP, 10/4/98)
1989 Oct 4, Fawaz Younis, a Lebanese hijacker convicted of commandeering a Jordanian jetliner in 1985 with two Americans aboard, was sentenced in Washington to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1989 Oct 4, Famed race horse Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner, died at Claiborne Farm, Paris, Ky., at age 19 ½.
(AH, 10/04, p.15)
1990 Oct 4, For the first time in nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first meeting of reunified Germany’s parliament.
(AP, 10/4/00)
1991 Oct 4, Pres. Bush signed Executive Order 12775 which prohibited certain transactions with respect to Haiti.
(www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/1991.html#12775)
1991 Oct 4, Leonard C. Odell died at age 83. He and his older brother Allan (d.1994) wrote some 7,000 Burma Shave poems beginning in 1925 in rural Minnesota. The Burma-Shave phenomenon faded in 1963, when Phillip Morris bought Burma-Vita and the signs began to come down.
(http://tinyurl.com/f4s8h)(www.two-lane.com/burmashave.html)
1991 Oct 4, In Madrid, Spain, 26 nations, including the United States, signed the Antarctic Treaty, which imposed a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica. It would be up for review in 2048. China acceded to the treaty in 1983.
(AP, 10/4/01)(Econ, 11/16/13, p.50)
1991 Oct 4, Carl Bildt (b.1949), leader of the Moderates, began serving PM of Sweden and continued to Oct 7, 1994. His center-right government was blighted by a deep recession followed by a huge row over whether to build the Oresund Bridge to Denmark.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Bildt)(SFC, 9/20/98, p.A12)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.60)
1992 Oct 4, In the Netherlands an Israeli El Al Jumbo Jet transport, enroute from New York to Tel Aviv, crashed into an Amsterdam apartment complex and killed 43 people. Since then scores of people complained of unidentified health problems. In 1998 it was revealed that the jet carried 50 gallons of dimethyl methylphosphonate, a non-poisonous ingredient of sarin nerve gas, destined for Israel. A report on the crash was released in 1999 and said that the plane's ballast included carcinogenic depleted uranium.
{Netherlands, Air Crash, Israel, Medical}
(AP, 10/4/97)(WSJ, 4/22/99, A1)(www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/5.03/990211-cargo.html)
1992 Oct 4, In Mozambique a peace accord ended 17 years of civil war during which some 600,000 people were killed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_General_Peace_Accords)(WSJ, 2/14/00, p.B13C)
1993 Oct 4, In Somalia US troops blasted their way out of Bakara Market in Mogadishu and left an estimated 500 Somalis dead. Dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.E4)(AP, 10/4/98)
1993 Oct 4, The Russian White House was shelled. In Moscow, the occupation of the Russian parliament building ended as tanks and paratroopers flushed out hard-line opponents of Boris Yeltsin. Rebel parliamentarians led by Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov surrendered after a total of 10 hours. As many as 150 people were killed.
(HFA, '96, p.40)(AP, 10/4/98)(http://tinyurl.com/8cg4r)
1994 Oct 4, President Clinton welcomed South African President Nelson Mandela to the White House.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1994 Oct 4, In France Florence Rey (19), a literature student, participated in a bungled holdup that left 3 police officers, a taxi driver, and her accomplice-lover dead following a car chase. In 1998 she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
(SFC, 10/2/98, p.B3)
1994 Oct 4, Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide vowed in an address to the U.N. General Assembly to return to Haiti in 11 days.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1995 Oct 4, Pope John Paul the Second arrived in the United States for a five-day visit.
(AP, 10/4/00)
1995 Oct 4, Hurricane Opal battered the Florida panhandle.
(AP, 10/4/05)
1996 Oct 4, A judge in Philadelphia issued an injunction preventing major-league baseball umpires from striking for the remainder of the postseason over an incident in which Roberto Alomar of the Baltimore Orioles spat on umpire John Hirschbeck.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1996 Oct 4, The Dow Jones hit a record 5,992.86 on reports of weak employment.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.A1)
1996 Oct 4, In New Zealand the government agreed to settle the biggest land claim ever filed by indigenous Maoris. The Ngai Tahu people would receive land and cash worth $117 million and regain some fishing rights. The Maoris number about 12% of the country’s 3.6 million people.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.A10)
1997 Oct 4, Some 500,000 people gathered in Washington DC for the Promise Keepers’ “Sacred Assembly of Men." It was one of the largest religious gatherings in U.S. history.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/98)
1997 Oct 4, US Federal officials arrested Theresa Marie Squillacote, a former Pentagon lawyer, her husband Kurt Alan Stand, and James Michael Clark for espionage that began with the recruitment of Stand in 1972 by the East Germans. He pleaded guilty to spying for East Germany in 1998.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 6/3/98, p.A1)
1997 Oct 4, The Chicago Field Museum of Natural History paid $8,362,500 for the T, rex skull from S. Dakota at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A13)
1997 Oct 4, From Bosnia it was reported that an Egyptian ship loaded with Soviet-made T-55 tanks was sitting at anchor in the Croatian port of Ploce. The shipment was registered with officials of the foreign peace force. An error on the manifest said the tanks were intended for the Bosnian Army.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A8)
1997 Oct 4, From Brazil it was reported that fires in the Amazon had increased 28% over the past year and that clouds of smoke were thicker and covered more area than those due to the burning forests of Indonesia.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, In Columbia rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces killed 17 policemen near San Juan de Arama. The rebels were staging a growing campaign to disrupt municipal elections. They had already killed 26 candidates and forced more than 1,500 to withdraw.
(SFC, 10/6/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, It was reported that France banned 20% of all cars from the streets of Paris for one day last week due to smog.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, It was reported that Greenpeace had found crabs contaminated with twice Europe’s allowed radiation level near the La Hague nuclear waste reprocessing plant near Cherbourg in northwestern France.
(SFC, 10/4/97, p.A17)
1997 Oct 4, In Spain Princess Christina Federica de Borbon y Grecia (32) married Inaki Urdangarin (29), a Basque professional handball team player.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, US and Algerian navies conducted a small joint search-and-rescue exercise in the Mediterranean.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, In Argentina Marcelo Cattaneo, the younger brother of Pres. Menem’s former deputy chief of staff, was found hanging by the neck outside Buenos Aires. He had been named 2 months earlier as the man who tried to bribe former directors of the Banco de la Nacion. A newspaper article on the 1994-1995 IBM-Banco de la Nacion bribery scheme was stuffed in his mouth.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.A24)
1998 Oct 4, In Brazil national elections Fernando Henrique Cardoso won with 50.3% of the vote in early returns vs. 35.6% for Luiz Inacio da Silva of the Workers Party.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, p.A21)(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct 4, In Iraq a Palestinian burst into a Baghdad synagogue and sprayed the crowd with gunfire. 2 Jews and 2 Muslims were killed.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A9)
1998 Oct 4, In Mexico the Indians of San Juan Chamula in Chiapas boycotted the elections in protest for the jailing of 5 men accused of murder. They were jailed a year ago during a dispute between Catholic and Protestant converts.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.a10)(SFC, 10/6/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 4, In Mexico Hector Teran, governor of Baja California and leader of the opposition National Action Party, died at age 67.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)
1998 Oct 4, Russian envoys warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that NATO might launch air-strikes unless he took "decisive measures" to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern province of Kosovo.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1998 Oct 4, Former Swiss Pres. Jean-Pascal Delamuraz died at age 62. He served his one year rotating term in 1996 and made headlines that Dec. when he described Jewish demands for compensation for Holocaust victims as blackmail.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)
1999 Oct 4, It was reported that Edmund T. Pratt, an ex-Pfizer executive, planned to donate $35 million to endow the Duke Univ. School of Engineering.
(SFC, 10/4/99, p.A3)
1999 Oct 4, An Illinois jury ordered State Farm to pay $456 million to 4.7 million customers in a lawsuit accusing the nation’s largest car insurer of using inferior parts for auto body repairs. Four days later, the judge ruled State Farm had committed fraud, and awarded $730 million in actual and punitive damages on top of the jury verdict. State Farm appealed.
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.A3)(SFC, 10/9/99, p.A3)(AP, 10/4/00)
1999 Oct 4, MCI WorldCom planned to acquire Sprint Corp. for over $100 billion. The deal was quashed in 2000.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/28/00, p.A1)
1999 Oct 4, The UN Security Council approved a one-time increase in oil sales for Iraq from $5.26 billion to $8.3 billion.
(WSJ, 10/5/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 4, Israeli PM Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed on terms for the first safe route between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A11)
1999 Oct 4, In Russia Prime Minister Putin planned to resettle thousands of Chechens in areas under Russian control, an indication that Moscow planned to split Chechnya in two. Chechen fighters shot down a Russian Sukhoi-24 warplane that was searching for another downed plane.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A10)(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A10)
1999 Oct 4, In South Korea radioactive water leaked inside a nuclear power plant in Wolsung and exposed 22 workers to small amounts of radiation.
(SFC, 10/6/99, p.A11)
2000 Oct 4, 3Com was expected to announce plans to join with Harris Interactive for the largest Internet survey to date.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.D1)
2000 Oct 4, In Indonesia Pres. Wahid denied clemency to Tommy Suharto and ordered the arrest of a Timorese militia chief.
(SFC, 10/5/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 4, In Israel Barak agreed to withdraw heavy arms from the West Bank and Gaza in a bid to halt violence. Amid fresh bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat together for talks in Paris.
(WSJ, 10/5/00, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/01)
2000 Oct 4, In the Ivory Coast a bus-station bombing killed 4 people and a state of emergency was declared.
(WSJ, 10/6/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 4, In Serbia the Constitutional Court set aside part of the Sep 24 voting results in a move seen to buy time for Pres. Milosevic. Citizens blocked an attempt by the government to use force against strikers and protesters. Major protests were planned to force Milosevic from office.
(SFC, 10/5/00, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, The US pledged $320 m million in aid to Afghanistan refugees.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, Reagan National Airport re-opened.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A15)
2001 Oct 4, NYC officials estimated that the Sep 11 disaster would cost as much as $105 billion over the next 2 years. Depending on the number of jobs permanently shifted out of the city, the September 11th attacks could cost New York City as much as $83-95 billion dollars, though the financial loss could never compare to the horrendous loss of nearly 3,000 lives.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A15)(HNQ, 9/11/02)
2001 Oct 4, In Texas Barry Bonds hit his 70th home run to tie Mark McGwire's 1998 record in a 10-2 victory over Houston. Rickey Henderson homered to pass Ty Cobb and become baseball's career leader in runs scored with 2,246 during San Diego's 6-3 win over Los Angeles.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/4/02)
2001 Oct 4, In Texas Mark Stroman (b.1969), in the wake of 9/11, went on a shooting spree targeting people of Middle Eastern descent killing 2 people and wounding a third. The victims were from South Asia. Stroman was later convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on July 20, 2011.
(SFC, 7/21/11, p.A9)(www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/stromanmark.htm)
2001 Oct 4, Algeria’s Pres. Bouteflika promised to recognize the Berber language, compensate victims of police brutality and prosecute police involved in brutality.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, The British government released a 16-page document over the Internet that presented details on Osama bin Laden’s responsibility for the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.A16)
2001 Oct 4, The EU made a joint announcement with Spain that the Basque ETA would be put on the list of terrorist organizations whose assets would be frozen by the EU.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, In Israel PM Sharon warned the US that it risked appeasing the Arab nations: “Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense." A Palestinian posing as an Israeli soldier killed 3 Israelis in Afula. A Palestinian was killed during a 2nd day of fighting in Hebron.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D4)(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, Macedonian security forces, in opposition to external warnings, took control of 3 ethnic Albanian villages but met with resistance from others.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D4)
2001 Oct 4, Pakistan announced that it sees sufficient grounds for an indictment against Osama bin Laden.
(WSJ, 10/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 4, In the Philippines government forces captured 13 members of Abu Sayyaf and killed another in a southern clash.
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.D6)
2001 Oct 4, A chartered Russian Tupelov-154 airplane crashed in to the Black Sea and all 78 people aboard were killed. The Sibir Airlines jet was bound to Novosibirsk from Tel Aviv. An accidental missile strike from Ukrainian military forces was suspected but denied by Ukraine officials. Pres. Putin said terrorists might have been responsible. Later evidence indicated that flight 1812 was hit by an S-200 missile. On Oct 12 Ukraine and Russia acknowledged that an errant missile was the probable cause. In 2003 Ukraine agreed to pay $200,000 for each Israeli killed.
(SFC, 10/6/01, p.A11)(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.A1)(www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/100501crash.shtml)
2001 Oct 4, Swissair resumed flying following a 2-day shut down propped by a $281 million Swiss government loan. [see Jan 31, 2002]
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.B4)
2002 Oct 4, Hans Blix, UN weapons inspector, endorsed a US demand that Iraq make a full declaration of its weapons program before inspections resume.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A7)
2002 Oct 4, John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban," received a 20-year sentence after a sobbing, halting plea for forgiveness before a federal judge in Alexandria, Va.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2002 Oct 4, Richard C. Reid pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes and declared himself a follower of Osama bin Laden.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, US federal agents arrested 4 suspected al Qaeda terrorists, 3 in Portland and 1 in Detroit. 2 other suspected cell members were overseas.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 4, A jury in Los Angeles awarded former smoker Betty Bullock (1938-2003) $850,000 in medical costs and $28 billion in punitive damages against Philip Morris. On Dec 18 a judge reduced the punitive award to $28 million. The punitive portion was reduced to $13.8 million in 2009. This was upheld by a state appeals court in 2011.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.A2)(SFC, 12/19/02, p.A8)(SFC, 8/18/11, p.C6)
2002 Oct 4, The DJIA fell 188 to 7,528. Nasdaq fell 25 to 1,139.
(SFC, 10/5/02, p.B1)
2002 Oct 4, In Barbados delegations from Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Colombia and France's overseas territories abandoned an anti-racism conference that voted to exclude whites saying they'll have no part in discrimination. The walkout, on the fourth day of the six-day African and African Descendants World Conference Against Racism, came after a day of negotiations failed. Some 200 delegates had voted Wednesday for whites and Asians to leave the deliberations, saying slavery was too painful a subject to discuss in front of non-Africans.
(AP, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, Foreign ministers from six Pacific nations arrived in Java's ancient royal capital of Yogyakarta for a day of talks that Indonesia said would tackle the thorny issue of terrorism.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, Lawmakers from rival Iraqi Kurdish factions met for the first time in 8 years, in a rare show of political unity ahead of a possible U.S. attack on Iraq.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, In Nepal King Gyanendra stunned the country when he announced he was firing Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, postponing November elections and assuming direct power for the first time since absolute rule by the monarchy was abolished in 1990.
(Reuters, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, North Korean officials told a visiting US delegation that the country has a second covert nuclear weapons program.
(AP, 4/24/03)
2002 Oct 4, Pakistan said it successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile. It was named Hatf-IV (Shaheen-1) and had a range of 700 km (430 miles).
(AP, 10/4/02)
2002 Oct 4, In central Somalia heavy fighting between the Sa'ad subclan and the Majerten clan killed at least 10 people and injured 25 others.
(AP, 10/5/02)
2002 Oct 4, Regional mediators said the Sudanese government and southern rebels have agreed to a cessation of hostilities and the resumption of peace talks to end the country's 15-year civil war.
(AP, 10/4/02)
2003 Oct 4, A U.S. military source said Polish troops had discovered and destroyed French-made anti-aircraft missiles in Iraq. France swiftly denied selling any weapons to Iraq in violation of a U.N. arms embargo and had stopped making the Roland missiles 15 years ago.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, Sid McMath (91), former 2-term governor of Arkansas, died.
(WSJ, 10/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 4, In southwest Brazil a small airplane carrying congressman Rep. Jose Carlos Martinez and three others went missing. All 4 were found dead the next day.
(AP, 10/4/03)(AP, 10/5/03)
2003 Oct 4, In London James Forlong (44), a former Sky News television correspondent who resigned after he admitted faking parts of a report on the war in Iraq, was found dead at his home in a possible suicide.
(AP, 10/6/03)
2003 Oct 4, Eight Indonesian soldiers plummeted into the ocean and were presumed dead after a helicopter crew cut the ropes carrying them during rehearsal of a mid-air stunt.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, In Haifa, Israel, Hanadi Taysser Darajat (29), a female Palestinian lawyer, blew herself up in a crowded Mediterranean beach restaurant, killing 21 people including 4 children. A brother and cousin, Jihad terrorists, had been killed in June. Her suicide inspired a piece of installation art in 2004 at the Stockholm Museum titled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth."
(SFC, 10/11/03, p.A7)(WSJ, 1/22/04, p.D6)(AP, 10/4/04)(LSA, Fall/06, p.32)
2003 Oct 4, In Italy anti-globalization demonstrators set fire to an employment agency, smashed cars and windows and hurled insults at government headquarters in Rome.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, A shipment of uranium-enriching centrifuge gear was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. In 2009 Urs Tinner, suspected of involvement in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring, said in a Swiss TV documentary that he tipped off US intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/28/world/fg-network28)(WSJ, 12/31/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/22/09)
2004 Oct 4, Americans Dr. Richard Axel (58) of Columbia Univ. and Linda Buck (57) of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their 1991 discovery of how people recognize odors. In 2008 Linda Buck and her co-authors retracted their 2001 paper on smell due to inconsistencies on data.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A5)(SFC, 3/7/08, p.A6)
2004 Oct 4, Pres. Bush signed an extension of middle-class tax cuts.
(WSJ, 10/5/04, p.A1)
2004 Oct 4, Mike Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan, climbed to 367,442 feet in a 2nd leg and captured the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The single pilot was accompanied by the weight of 2 others to meet a 3-person requirement.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A1)(Econ, 10/9/04, p.75)
2004 Oct 4, Gordon Cooper (b.1927), US astronaut in the Mercury program, died in Ventura, Ca. He piloted Faith 7 around Earth on May 15-16, 1963.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.B7)
2004 Oct 4, Cambodia's legislature approved a long-delayed agreement to put surviving Khmer Rouge leaders on trial for atrocities that claimed nearly two million lives during their murderous rule in the late 1970s.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, The Denmark Science Ministry said it aims to show the North Pole belongs to Denmark and is sending an expedition to try to prove that the seabed there is a natural continuation of Danish territory.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Officials in Haiti said they have found hundreds more bodies, raising the death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne to nearly 2,000 people. Later estimates put the death toll at 3,000.
(AP, 10/4/04)(AP, 11/1/07)
2004 Oct 4, Suspected separatist rebels attacked sleeping villagers in northeastern India, killing six in a third day of explosions and gun attacks that have left at least 63 people dead.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Retired general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was confirmed as Indonesia's next leader as final counting from the country's first direct presidential polls gave him a landslide victory over his predecessor.
(AFP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami arrived in Khartoum to start a three-day visit to Sudan.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Insurgents unleashed a pair of powerful car bombs near the symbol of U.S. authority in Iraq, the Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and key government offices are located as well as hotels occupied by hundreds of foreigners. Two other explosions brought the day's bombing toll to at least 26 dead and more than 100 wounded.
(AP, 10/4/04)(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A3)
2004 Oct 4, Six separatist rebels were killed in a clash between separatist rebels and security forces in a thickly forested area in Jammu and Kashmir.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Palestinian militants fired off two more rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, lightly wounding one person, according to rescue workers. Ongoing violence in northern Gaza killed at least seven Palestinians, including a teenager.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, Syrian President Bashar Assad replaced about one-third of his Cabinet, bringing new faces to the key interior and information ministries.
(AP, 10/4/04)
2004 Oct 4, It was reported that Vietnam had embarked on a major overhaul of its debt-laden companies as it opens up its economy.
(WSJ, 10/4/04, p.A15)
2005 Oct 4, President Bush defended his Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, from suggestions by some skeptical Republicans that she was not conservative enough, and insisted Miers shared his strict-constructionist views. Miers ended up withdrawing.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2005 Oct 4, Americans John L. Hall and Roy J. Glauber and German Theodor W. Haensch won the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics for work that could lead to better long-distance communication and more precise navigation worldwide and in space.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, The US Mint unveiled the design for a new Jefferson nickel called the Jefferson 1800, designed by Jamie Franki. It will begin circulating in 2006.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A7)
2005 Oct 4, The DJIA fell 94.37 to 10,441.11.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, Insurance claims for Hurricane Katrina were estimated at $34.4 billion in personal and commercial property loss claims.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico’s Gulf coast.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2005 Oct 4, Philadelphia selected EarthLink to run its municipal wireless system.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.C1)
2005 Oct 4, According to the IMF major oil producers were now a bigger source of funds for financial markets and US creditors than China, Japan and the rest of Asia.
(WSJ, 10/4/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, Google and Sun Microsystems announced an alliance to promote each other’s products.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, It was reported that phthalate chemicals, used in a wide variety of products from toys to cosmetics, had been found to block the action of fetal androgens in rodents. Androgen hormones are critical in developing males.
(WSJ, 10/4/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4, In Afghanistan a bomb exploded near a key crossing point on the Afghan-Pakistan border, killing three people and wounding 20. Authorities blamed Taliban insurgents.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, In London Russia’s Pres. Putin met with EU leaders for talks on expanding cooperation in the fight against crime, including terrorism, and strengthening trade ties.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Bosnian Serb panel said it identified more than 17,000 people with varying levels of blood on their hands for abetting the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
(WSJ, 10/5/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 4-2005 Oct 5, In Canada Toronto's chief medical officer said 4 more residents of a nursing home for the elderly have died of an unknown respiratory illness, bringing the number fatally infected by the disease to 10. Officials said Legionnaires’ disease was the likely cause as the deaths rose to 16.
(AP, 10/5/05)(SFC, 10/7/05, p.A3)
2005 Oct 4, China’s state media reported that raging floodwaters spawned by Typhoon Longwang along the southeastern coast swept away 59 paramilitary police officers and washed away two buildings at a military training school.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Colombia a judge ordered the re-arrest of a man in a wheelchair who hijacked a Colombian airliner, but said he could remain under house arrest due to his failing health.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Colombia granted political asylum to former Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez, who has said he faces treason charges in his homeland.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Croatia began delayed EU membership talks, after UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte endorsed Zagreb's cooperation with her court.
(AFP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, French President Jacques Chirac said that Turkey would need to undergo a "major cultural revolution" before entering the EU, and he reiterated that France would hold a referendum on admitting Ankara to the bloc.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, It was reported that French Attorney Jean-Marc Goldnadel had launched classaction.fr, a French Web site that lets users sign up to lawsuits online for as little as 12 euros ($14.50). President Jacques Chirac had announced the introduction of class action suits earlier in the year.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In India's northeast 11 people, including five villagers hacked to death by rival tribesmen, were reported killed. Separatist insurgencies have raged in Manipur and Assam states for the past two decades.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Indonesia’s central bank raised interest rates for the 3rd time in 5 weeks one point to 11% in an effort to keep a lid on inflation.
(WSJ, 10/5/05, p.A18)
2005 Oct 4, The 1st day of Ramadan began for Muslims.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Iraqi lawmakers approved the death penalty for anyone financing or "provoking" terrorism.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A suicide car bomb exploded at a checkpoint at the main entrance of Baghdad's Green Zone, killing two Iraqi policemen and wounding one.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In western Iraq some 2,500 U.S. troops along with Iraqi forces launched their second major offensive in a week, sweeping into three towns to take them back from insurgents who had killed Marines there last month.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Japan's Cabinet endorsed a one-year extension of the country's naval mission to support U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, citing renewed concerns about terrorism after the recent bombings in Indonesia.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Nigeria at least 3 civilians were killed in crossfire and a Lagos police headquarters was burned down after a dispute between armed police and soldiers erupted in street fighting. Witnesses said that brawling broke out after an army officer tried to prevent a police patrol extorting an illegal 20 naira (seven cent) toll from a motorcycle taxi driver.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, Jim Gray (43), one of Northern Ireland's most high-profile Protestant militants was shot to death outside his home in east Belfast, more than six months after he was ousted by his outlawed group.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Pakistani security forces arrested Abdul Latif Hakimi, the chief spokesman of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, describing his capture as a major blow to the Islamic militia.
(AFP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Palestinian woman brandishing a knife stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus before other soldiers shot and killed her.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, In Peru Maritza Garrido Lecca, a former ballet teacher who used her dance studio to hide Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a three-month civilian retrial. Nicholas Shakespeare used the story as inspiration for his novel "The Dancer Upstairs" (1995), which John Malkovich turned into a 2002 movie of the same name, starring Javier Bardem.
(AP, 10/5/05)
2005 Oct 4, A Philippine provincial government filed a lawsuit in Nevada accusing Canadian mining giant Placer Dome Inc. of damaging the environment and health of residents of an island about 100 miles south of Manila. Placer Dome was blamed for a March 1996 environmental accident that sent millions of tons of open-pit copper mine waste down a river to the Marinduque capital, Boac.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Spain said it will build a third high-security fence between its Melilla enclave and Morocco after undocumented immigrants repeatedly stormed two existing barriers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, UN peacekeepers preparing to pull out of Sierra Leone said they have completed the mission they began six years ago but warn the country still has a long way to go before it recovers from one of Africa's most brutal wars.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Sudan's government and rebels from Darfur met for a 2nd day of talks in Nigeria. The visiting Dutch PM urged all parties to reach a power-sharing deal by the end of the year.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, A new Syrian TV series began broadcasting around the Middle East. It tells the story of Arabs living in residential compounds in Saudi Arabia and the militant Islamists who want to blow them up so they can collect their rewards in heaven, 72 beautiful virgins.
(AP, 10/10/05)
2005 Oct 4, The UAE Labor Ministry announced that company executives will find their names on a sheet of shame published by the government if they don't start paying wages to their laborers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, The UN Security Council warned Ethiopia and Eritrea against reigniting their border war and urged Eritrea to immediately reverse its ban on all helicopter flights by UN peacekeepers.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 4, Venezuela said it has reduced its holdings of US Treasury securities and moved some foreign exchange reserves into European investments.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.A18)
2005 Oct 4-2005 Oct 9, The World Golf Championships took place at Harding Park Golf Course along Lake Merced in SF, Ca.
(SFCM, 10/2/05, p.6)
2006 Oct 4, A US federal court awarded $143 million to 3 closed nuclear power plants because the government failed to remove spent fuel rods. The 3 Yankee company reactors were located in Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts.
(WSJ, 10/5/06, p.A6)
2006 Oct 4, Ousted Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn (1953-2011), a company officer and three investigators were charged with violating California privacy laws in a corporate spying scandal. The charges were later dropped, with a judge calling their conduct a "betrayal of trust and honor" that nonetheless did not rise to the level of criminal activity.
(AP, 10/4/07)(SFC, 12/6/11, p.D1)
2006 Oct 4, American Roger D. Kornberg, whose father won a Nobel Prize a half-century ago, was awarded the prize in chemistry for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, A Philadelphia jury awarded a woman $1 million and her husband $500,000 in compensatory damages after finding that Wyeth's hormone replacement drug Prempro was a cause of her breast cancer. In the first federal Prempro trial, a jury last month in Little Rock, Arkansas found Wyeth was not negligent and had adequately warned patients and doctors of the cancer risk associated with the drug. Wyeth faced some 5,000 lawsuits involving its hormone replacement drugs.
(Reuters, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, The DJIA rose 123.27 to 11,850.61, to close at record high for the 2nd day in a row. Nasdaq rose 47.30 to 2,290.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.C1)
2006 Oct 4, In Berkeley, Ca., the new 2,002-acre Eastshore State Park was dedicated. The 8.5 mile strip ran north along the East Bay from the Bay Bridge to Richmond.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.B1)
2006 Oct 4, Scientists reported that the Hubble Space Telescope had revealed 16 objects about the size of Jupiter near the center of the Milky Way and that the discovery gave strong evidence that planets are abundant in other parts of the galaxy.
(SFC, 10/5/06, p.A4)
2006 Oct 4, New York Times correspondent R.W. Apple Jr. died in Washington at age 71.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2006 Oct 4, Afghanistan's intelligence agency said security agents have arrested 17 people allegedly trained in Pakistan who they believe planned to launch suicide attacks in three Afghan provinces. In southern Afghanistan suspected Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint, and the ensuing clash left six militants dead and three wounded.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Sao Paulo, Brazil, court officials said 14 workers at a juvenile detention center were convicted and sentenced to up to 87 years in prison for beating inmates with iron bars and wood to find out who organized an escape attempt in 2000.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, British PM Tony Blair said the Irish Republican Army's violent campaign in Northern Ireland is over, following a report into paramilitary activity that raised hopes of reviving self-rule.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Britain a Muslim-owned business, which reportedly housed a makeshift mosque, was petrol-bombed following three nights of clashes between white and south Asian youths on the London outskirts.
(AFP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Chile government officials announced plans to build a 62-mile highway through Pumalin Park, a nature reserve created by Douglas Tompkins of SF. The government also signaled that it will push ahead with the proposed $4 billion hydroelectric complex to dam the Baker and Pasqua rivers south of Pumalin.
(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 4, Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark reported a breakthrough in teleportation by using both light and matter.
(Reuters, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, The world's biggest book fair opened in Frankfurt, Germany, with Indian authors taking center stage and a new scheme to protect writers' copyrights from Internet piracy creating a buzz.
(AFP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Iraqi authorities took a brigade of up to 700 policemen out of service and put members under investigation for "possible complicity" with death squads following a mass kidnapping earlier this week. A series of bombs went off in rapid succession in a shopping district in a mainly Christian neighborhood of Baghdad, killing 16 people and wounding 87. The dead were among 26 people killed in attacks across Iraq. A suicide bomber attacked an Iraqi police base in the town of Ramadi, but guards shot at the explosives-packed vehicle and detonated it before it could hit the base.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Malawi pop singer Madonna traveled to a village 12 miles outside the capital Lilongwe, where she is funding the construction of a center to feed and educate about 1,000 orphans.
(Reuters, 10/5/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Nicaragua defense ministers from across the Americas agreed to create an international land-mine removal center and many called for joint military missions for disaster relief and peacekeeping worldwide.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, In Nigeria militants freed around 25 kidnapped oil workers but five abducted expatriates were still missing in another part of the Niger Delta.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Masked men killed a local Hamas political activist as he set out for morning prayers before dawn in the northern West Bank.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Sri Lanka's air force bombed separatist rebel positions in the embattled north, a day after the insurgents agreed to peace talks with the government.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 4, Sources said fresh inter-rebel fighting in Sudan has forced 10,000 Darfuris to seek refuge near a camp of African Union forces monitoring a widely-ignored truce.
(AP, 10/4/06)
2007 Oct 4, US marshals posing as supporters arrested convicted tax-evaders Ed and Elaine Brown at their rural, fortress-like home in New Hampshire. They had engaged in a 9-month standoff with authorities. They were convicted in January of scheming to avoid federal income taxes by hiding $1.9 million of income between 1996 and 2003 and were sentenced in April. In 2010 Brown (67) was sentenced 37 years in prison. In 2020 a federal judge ruled that Elaine Brown can be released after serving over 12 years in prison.
(AP, 10/5/07)(SFC, 1/12/10, p.A4)(AP, 1/31/20)
2007 Oct 4, The recording industry won a major fight in its effort to stop illegal music downloading with a US jury decision to impose $222,000 damages against a Minnesota woman who used a Web service to share music.
(Reuters, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig defiantly vowed to serve out his term in office despite losing a court attempt to rescind his guilty plea in a men's room sex sting.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2007 Oct 4, Former city maintenance worker John Ashley shot five people in a law office in Alexandria, La., killing two of them; Ashley was shot and killed by police following a standoff.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2007 Oct 4, In Philadelphia Mustafa Ali (36), a convicted bank robber, shot and killed two armored car guards servicing an ATM outside a bank. Several schools were locked down amid a massive manhunt for the gunman, who was arrested the next day.
(AP, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/6/07)
2007 Oct 4, Microsoft outlined its vision, dubbed HealthVault, in which a person can view, from one place, their complete health records.
(Econ, 10/6/07, p.74)(http://tinyurl.com/2fop6p)
2007 Oct 4, A British soldier was killed in an explosion about 19 miles west of Kandahar city. 82 British personnel, including 57 soldiers, have been killed in Afghanistan since operations began there in November 2001.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, The Australian government approved plans for a controversial multi-billion-dollar pulp mill in Tasmania despite objections it could ruin one of the country's most pristine environments.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Canada’s PM Stephen Harper vowed to crack down on illegal drugs, saying the Conservative government would propose mandatory prison time for serious drug offenses.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Health Canada said that it has stopped the sale of Novartis Pharmaceuticals anti-inflammatory drug Prexige and will cancel its market authorization due to the risk for serious liver-related effects including hepatitis.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Canada became the first country to notify the World Trade Organization that it has agreed to allow a Canadian company to make generic medicines for export to Rwanda.
(AFP, 10/7/07)
2007 Oct 4, In Chile the widow and five children of Gen. Augusto Pinochet were among 23 people indicted on charges of corruption related to the dictator's US bank accounts.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, In Congo a cargo plane crashed in a residential neighborhood near the main airport in Kinshasa, plowing into homes and killing at least 52 people. The next day Congolese President Joseph Kabila sacked Transport Minister Remy Henri Kuseyo Gatanga.
(AP, 10/4/07)(Reuters, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Egypt sent a high-level protest to dozens of European nations expressing "astonishment and regret" at their refusal to endorse Cairo's call for a Middle East nuclear free zone at a conference last month. At last month's IAEA session, 25 of the 27 EU nations abstained as did other countries hoping to join the union. In all, 47 nations abstained. Israeli objections forced a vote in which 53 countries, Muslim states and their supporters from the developing world, backed the proposal.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 4, Ethiopia pledged 5,000 troops to a future UN-African Union peacekeeping mission for Darfur.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, In northeast France dozens of hooded youths attacked two police vehicles with metal bars, set fire to more than a dozen parked cars and torched a community center in Saint-Dizier.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Siemens, one of the world’s biggest electrical engineering firms, accepted a $285 million fine imposed by a court in Munich for bribery by its communications division. CEO Peter Loscher announced a re-organization that included reducing its 9 divisions to three and downsizing the 11-man executive board. The ruling named officials in Nigeria, Libya and Russia as recipients of 77 bribes totaling some $17.5 million.
(Econ, 10/13/07, p.70)(WSJ, 11/16/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 4, The Wai Wai, an indigenous group in Guyana, backed by government decree and a US-based conservation organization, said it has banned miners and loggers from its section of the Amazon jungle and pledged to pursue an economic strategy based on ecotourism, research and traditional crafts.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Iranian state television reported that Iran and Syria have signed an agreement for Tehran to export a billion dollars worth of gas every year to its chief regional ally.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, President Jalal Talabani said Iraq has ordered light military equipment from China worth $100 million because the United States is unable to meet Baghdad's requirements. A government minister said the official Iraqi investigation into the Blackwater shooting last month recommended that the security guards face trial in Iraqi courts and that the company compensate the victims. Abbas Hassan Hamza, the mayor of the religiously mixed town of Iskandariyah, was killed along with four of his guards in a roadside bomb attack. Hamza belonged to Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party. In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near people on line at a gas station, killing four civilians and wounding eight others. 3 civilians were shot by American troops near a checkpoint in Abu Lukah set up by Iraqis who have joined forces against extremists. A US soldier was killed by small-arms fire during operations in a southern section of Baghdad.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, It was reported that in Kuwait the nomadic Bedouin, Arabic for "without," numbered about 100,000 people and have been refused what they feel is their birthright: citizenship.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Dutch authorities said their customs officers had found 100 dead beetles stuffed with cocaine whilst examining a parcel from Peru.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Officials said the Nigerian central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate MPR from eight to nine percent because of rising inflation.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pledged to seek a peace treaty to replace the Korean War's 1953 cease-fire and expand projects to reduce tension across the world's last Cold War frontier.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Militants holding some 230 Pakistani troops killed three of the captive soldiers before dawn in apparent retaliation for army raids on guerrilla hide-outs near the Afghan border.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo called for increased trade with India at the start of a three-day visit.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, The government of Somalia announced a crackdown on Islamic militants.
(WSJ, 10/6/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 4, The head of South Africa's main union body stood down from his office pending the outcome of an investigation into the disappearance of a large cash donation.
(AFP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Spanish police arrested almost the entire leadership of Batasuna as the banned party held a meeting in the Basque town of Segura. The operation confirmed the hard line against ETA by the Socialist government of PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero since the armed group officially ended a 15-month-old ceasefire in June.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 4, Prominent world figures led by former President Carter and Desmond Tutu of South Africa said they were shocked by the suffering in Darfur and criticized Sudan's government in exceptionally harsh terms.
(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 4, A union official said Zimbabwean teachers have called off a strike for better wages after reaching a deal with the government.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2008 Oct 4, The fight over control of Wachovia intensified, as a judge temporarily agreed to block the sale of the bank to Wells Fargo, Citigroup announced in a news release. The next day the battle for control of Wachovia tilted toward Wells Fargo as a state appeals court blocked a lower court ruling that had favored rival bidder Citigroup.
(AP, 10/5/08)(AP, 10/6/08)
2008 Oct 4, In SF the 8th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, backed by financier Warren Hellman, continued or its 2nd day in Goldengate Park with an audience of some 40,000. The next day the festival drew some 100,000 fans. SF also celebrated its annual LoveFest, begun in 2004, with a downtown parade that drew tens of thousands of spectators.
(SSFC, 10/5/08, p.B1,B3)(SFC, 10/6/08, p.E1)
2008 Oct 4, In the Porter Ranch area of Los Angeles County Karthik Rajaram (45), an unemployed financial adviser despondent over his troubles, shot and killed his wife (39), mother-in-law (69), and 3 sons (7,12,19), before taking his own life.
(SFC, 10/7/08, p.A6)
2008 Oct 4, Luis Santos (b.1986), a Concord, Ca., resident, was stabbed to death after a party near the San Diego college campus. Esteban Nunez (19), the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, was later arrested along with three others in connection with the stabbing death. In 2010 Esteban Nunez pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and on June 25, 2010, he and a co-defendant were sentenced to 16 years in prison.
(SFC, 5/6/10, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/2eaav49)(SFC, 6/26/10, p.A4)
2008 Oct 4, The US coalition says its forces have killed five militants in two operations targeting al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Oct 4, The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy began meeting in Paris at a summit on the world financial crisis threatening banks, growth and jobs across the continent. They vowed to do all they could to prevent Wall Street's turmoil from destabilizing their banking systems. Germany's No. 2 commercial property lender, Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, said its $48 billion rescue plan had unraveled when private banks pulled out.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, A ceremony in Diwaniyah marked the departure of Polish troops from Iraq. Poland sent combat troops into Iraq as part of the US-led coalition and had 2,500 troops deployed there at its peak. The last 900 were being pulled out this month. Two US helicopters collided while landing at a base in Baghdad. One Iraqi soldier was killed.
(AP, 10/4/08)(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, In Mexico gunmen killed Salvador Vegara, the mayor of Ixtapan de la Sal, a resort town southwest of Mexico City. Vegara was in a car with two other people when the gunmen opened fire from another vehicle. The bodies of 5 men were found asphyxiated in a car in the eastern part of Tijuana. The men were beaten and had their hands bound. The bodies of two beheaded men were found wrapped in blankets on a road elsewhere in the city. The heads were in black plastic bags nearby.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2008 Oct 4, In Sri Lanka heavy fighting near the rebels' administrative capital of Kilinochchi left 20 guerrillas and 4 soldiers dead. Soldiers overran five rebel bunkers in the Mullaitivu district, killing 5 rebels. 4 rebels and a soldier were killed in clashes in the Vavuniya and Welioya regions.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 4, Taiwan's president welcomed a US decision to sell the island up to $6.5 billion in advanced weaponry, while China warned the move would damage relations between Beijing and Washington.
(AP, 10/4/08)
2009 Oct 4, James Jones, US national security adviser, said on CNN that Al-Qaida has fewer than 100 fighters operating in Afghanistan.
(SFC, 10/7/09, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/y8kax72)
2009 Oct 4, In San Francisco Michael Bailey (26) of Baton Rouge, La., was shot and killed after being lured with friends at the City Nights club by a woman, who set them up for a robbery at the Alice Griffith public housing project. On Dec 23 prosecutors charged 5 people in the killing of Bailey. 2 of the 5 suspects were still at large. In 2014 William Jones (25) and Lance Molina (27) were found guilty of first-degree murder. Ariael Kittles (25) was acquitted of charges that she lured Bailey and friends to the complex.
(SFC, 10/6/09, p.C1)(SFC, 12/24/09, p.C4)(SFC, 6/21/14, p.C3)
2009 Oct 4, In New Hampshire Kimberly Cates (42) was killed and her daughter, Jaimie (11) was gravely wounded following a machete attack by Steven Spader during a home invasion by 4 teenagers. Steven Spader (17) and Christopher Gribble (19) both of Brookline, N.H., were charged with first-degree murder. In 2010 Spader was found guilty of murder and other charges and sentenced to life in prison.
(www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20013067-504083.html)(SFC, 11/10/10, p.A6)
2009 Oct 4, Algerian coastguards picked up 45 Algerian would-be migrants to Europe at three places off the coast west of Algiers.
(AFP, 10/4/09)
2009 Oct 4, Mercedes Sosa (74), Argentine singer, died. Her music was banned after the generals seized power in 1976. She had released over 70 albums and turned the songs of others into great anthems of the left.
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.42)
2009 Oct 4, Grameenphone, Bangladesh’s largest mobile phone firm, opened the largest IPO in Bangladesh history. It aimed to raise $70 million. It was owned by Telenor, a Norwegian telephone company, and Grameen Telecom, a non-profit founded by Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer of microfinance.
(Econ, 10/17/09, p.88)
2009 Oct 4, Greeks cast ballots in a snap general election likely to produce a change in government. Voters angered by scandals and a foundering economy were expected to reject the conservatives in favor of the opposition Socialists. Socialist leader George Papandreou trounced the conservatives under PM Costas Karamanlis (53) in an election focused on rescuing the economy. Papandreou took 44% of the vote and won 160 of 300 parliamentary seats.
(AP, 10/4/09)(AP, 10/5/09)(SFC, 10/5/09, p.A2)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.54)
2009 Oct 4, In Iraq a fuel tanker exploded near a checkpoint outside of Baghdad International Airport, along a route once known as the world's deadliest road because of frequent attacks there during the height of the insurgency. The cause of the fire was under investigation. The body of Imad Elia (45), an employee at Kirkuk's health directorate, was found dumped in a field south of Kirkuk. He was shot in the chest and authorities believe the captors kept shooting into his body after he was dead. Elia was kidnapped two days before, but his family was unable to pay the ransom demands. At least 10 Christian families have left Kirkuk in recent weeks, fearing kidnap-for-ransom gangs that have turned their sights on Christians.
(AP, 10/4/09)(AP, 10/5/09)
2009 Oct 4, In Nigeria an amnesty for militant in the Niger Delta officially expired.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.57)
2009 Oct 4, North Korea told visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that it was open to bilateral and multilateral talks on its nuclear programs.
(AFP, 10/4/09)
2009 Oct 4, In Pakistan security forces and special police battled militants in a firefight that killed six of the insurgents, including two commanders, Noorul Amin and Fazl-e-Rabbi. Police in Peshawar arrested Hukam Khan, a militant who was involved in attacking and looting convoys taking supplies to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan and recovered a substantial quantity of stolen goods. Hakimullah Mehsud, the new leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, met with reporters in the country's tribal areas for the first time since winning control of the militants. Mehsud vowed to strike back at Pakistan and the US for the increasing number of drone attacks in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/4/09)(AP, 10/5/09)
2009 Oct 4, The UAR’s official news agency said Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, has signed a law regulating the development of a civilian nuclear program, clearing the way for construction of a nuclear power plant with help from the United States.
(AP, 10/5/09)
2009 Oct 4, Pope Benedict opened a special meeting of bishops on Africa by praising the continent as the world's spiritual center but lamenting that it risks being afflicted by materialism and religious fundamentalism.
(AP, 10/4/09)
2010 Oct 4, President Barack Obama said the United States was facing an "untenable fiscal situation" and would have to get serious about tackling its federal deficit.
(Reuters, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 4, US federal agents spread out across Alabama to arrest 11 people on charges of conspiracy, bribery and honest services fraud related to attempts to legitimize bingo halls in 2009 and 2010.
(SFC, 10/5/10, p.A6)
2010 Oct 4, In New Jersey Craig Mueller (45) killed his brother with sniper fire from a second-floor window in the home they shared, took down a neighbor who came to the victim's aid and turned the gun on himself.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Afghanistan 3 NATO service members were killed by bombings in the south and an insurgent attack killed another in the east, raising the coalition's death toll to 11 in the first four days of October. NATO announced that a joint Afghan-coalition unit launched a night mission that killed a senior Taliban leader named Farman and two other militants in eastern Paktia province. A police convoy was ambushed in Khash Rod district. 5 militants were killed, 3 others wounded and two captured during a gunbattle. Habibullah Aghonzada, a former district chief, was gunned down by assailants as he prayed at a packed mosque in Kandahar city. 3 night time explosion in Kandahar City killed up to 4 Afghan police officers. Noor Ahman, deputy mayor in Kandahar, was killed in an insurgent attack. In the southwest 2 civilians riding a motorcycle died when a roadside bomb exploded as they passed. 2 others were killed by rockets in the country's east.
(AP, 10/4/10)(AP, 10/5/10)(SFC, 10/5/10, p.A5)(AP, 10/6/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Belgium European and Asian leaders opened a formal summit amid high security and palace opulence, hoping to agree on commitments to keep the global financial system on an even keel and find a better balance on the Europe-dominated IMF.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Britain’s treasury chief George Osborne said payments to jobless families will be capped and child benefits for high earners scrapped in a sweeping overhaul of the country's welfare system.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Millions of commuters in London endured a grim journey to work after staff on the Underground network walked out for the second time in a month, sparking calls for tougher strike laws.
(AFP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, British biologist Robert G. Edwards, whose contributions to the technology of in vitro fertilization have made more than 4 million couples parents, was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born Jul 25, 1978.
(www.latimes.com/health/la-sci-nobel-medicine-20101005,0,7666490.story)
2010 Oct 4, Central African Republic government troops regained control of Yalinga, a town held by rebels since September 18. On Oct 6 a spokesman for the rebel group, the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP), claimed its fighters still held the town in the unstable east of the country.
(AFP, 10/6/10)
2010 Oct 4, Colombia's defense minister Rodrigo Rivera said authorities have seized $29 million and 17 million euros in cash in a home in a poor district south of the capital, Bogota. Rivera said the money belonged to drug traffickers including Daniel "El Loco" Barrera. Authorities were offering a $2.7 million reward for Barrera's capture.
(AP, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 4, A Cuban human rights leader revealed the names of nine inmates apparently offered early release by the government in exchange for accepting exile, including some convicted of violent crimes such as hijacking, assault and piracy.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi was sworn in for another five-year term, almost five months after controversial polls propelled his party to victory.
(AFP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, France's Sanofi-Aventis launched an $18.5 billion hostile takeover offer for Genzyme Corp., stepping up its effort to capture the US biotech company's promising drugs for high cholesterol and lucrative treatments for rare genetic disorders.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Hungary a torrent of toxic red sludge from an alumina plant tore through Kolontar and two other villages. The next day Hungary declared a state of emergency in three counties. After some days 9 people were reported killed and some 150 injured.
(Reuters, 10/5/10)(AFP, 10/8/10)(AP, 10/11/10)(Econ, 10/16/10, p.63)
2010 Oct 4, In Indonesia heavy rain unleashed flash floods and mudslides, killing at least 91 people in West Papua province's village of Wasior. Rescuers struggled to reach the area.
(AP, 10/5/10)(AP, 10/6/10)(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Iraq 5 people were killed in violence in Baghdad and central Iraq, including a roadside bomb targeting a junior minister.
(AFP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Japan issued a travel alert for Europe, joining the United States and Britain in warning of a possible terrorist attack by al-Qaida or other groups, but tourists appeared to be taking the mounting warnings in stride.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Tokyo-based Toshiba unveiled the world's first high definition liquid crystal display 3-D television that does not require special glasses, one of the biggest consumer complaints about the technology.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a pre-dawn attack on tankers carrying fuel to Afghanistan for US and other NATO forces, left vulnerable on the side of the road after Pakistan shut down a key border crossing. Some 20 trucks went up in flames and four people were killed and seven injured. A US drone strike killed eight militants, including five Germans, in North Waziristan, where Western intelligence had traced an alleged plot to attack high-profile targets in Europe.
(AP, 10/4/10)(AFP, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 4, Arsonists torched a mosque in a Palestinian village in the West Bank, scrawling "revenge" on a wall in Hebrew and charring copies of the Muslim holy book in a blaze that threatened to stoke new tensions over deadlocked Mideast peacemaking.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, In the northern Philippines motorcycle-riding gunmen killed a regional trial court judge, prompting calls to exempt judges from a current gun ban.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Russia Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow who was fired by Pres. Medvedev, said in a published interview that he plans to form his own political movement.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Russia's VimpelCom Ltd and Weather Investments, the investment company headed by Egyptian telecom mogul Naguib Sawiris, said they are merging to form what would become the world's fifth largest mobile telecommunication service provider in a deal valued at over $6.5 billion. Under the agreement VimpelCom, which is Russia's second largest mobile phone service provider, would own via Weather 51.7 percent of Egypt's Orascom Telecom and all of Italy's Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA, both of which are headed by Sawiris.
(AP, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 4, In Somalia two women, a boy and two men were killed in Mogadishu by stray bullets from fighting taking place between pro-government forces and Islamist militants.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, An official said Syria has accused a 19-year-old blogger who is in prison of being a spy in the first comment from authorities on a case that sparked calls by a leading rights group for the young woman's release. Tal al-Mallohi was taken into custody in December. Her blog, known for poetry and social commentary, focused mostly on the suffering of Palestinians.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, It was reported that Syria has ordered the arrest of 33 people over false testimony given in the UN-backed probe into the assassination of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. Observers said the warrants carried no legal weight in Lebanon as the crime in question took place on Lebanese soil and the complainant as well as most of the defendants are Lebanese.
(AFP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Vietnamese officials said weekend floods triggered by heavy rains have displaced thousands of villagers in central Vietnam, and left 3 people dead and 3 others missing.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2011 Oct 4, USAID director Raj Shah said the US will donate more than $121 million to Ethiopia to fight food insecurity amid a drought in the East African nation.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, The US Justice Department said Neil Campbell (61), a native of Queensland, Australia, has pleaded guilty to one count of accepting a $10,000 bribe as an agent of an organization receiving federal funds. Campbell admitted that in July 2010, while in Afghanistan, he solicited a one-time cash payment of $190,000 from a subcontractor, as a reward for funneling more than $15 million in reconstruction projects to that subcontractor.
(AFP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Two employees of the US Army Corps of Engineers and two others were arrested in a $20 million bribery and kickback scheme related to software encryption devices.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A7)
2011 Oct 4, Officials at the Washington National Cathedral said they need to raise at least $15 million for initial repairs to the Aug 23 earthquake damaged edifice.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A7)
2011 Oct 4, It was reported that NASA has awarded a Pennsylvania company, Pipistrel-USA.com of State College, a $1.35 million prize for developing an ultra-efficient electric airplane. Wired Magazine reported that the winning airplane "was developed and built in Slovenia as a technology demonstrator for the airplane maker."
(http://tinyurl.com/3nk4ndh)
2011 Oct 4, Apple Inc. unveiled a faster, more powerful iPhone, the iPhone 4S, in its first major product event in years without Steve Jobs presiding. The device included Siri, a personal assistant application.
(AP, 10/4/11)(SFC, 1/23/15, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri)
2011 Oct 4, Apple Inc rejected an offer from Samsung Electronics Co to settle their tablet computer dispute in Australia, possibly killing off the commercial viability of the South Korean firm's new Galaxy tablet in that market.
(Reuters, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Three US-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for overturning a fundamental assumption in their field by showing that the expansion of the universe is constantly accelerating. During the 1990s, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess found that the light from more than 50 distant exploding stars was far weaker than they expected, meaning that galaxies had to be racing away from each other at increasing speed.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Kansas City, Missouri, 10-month-old Lisa Irwin was reported snatched overnight from her home.
(SFC, 10/10/11, p.A5)
2011 Oct 4, A private helicopter crashed into New York City’s East River, killing one British passenger and injuring a British couple and a New Zealand woman. The helicopter went down shortly after takeoff from a riverbank heliport. On Oct 12 the New Zealand woman died of her injuries.
(AP, 10/5/11)(SFC, 10/13/11, p.A8)
2011 Oct 4, Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with PM Manmohan Singh in New Delhi. They agreed to enhance their strategic partnership with India training Afghan security forces.
(AP, 10/4/11)(SSFC, 10/9/11, p.A4)
2011 Oct 4, An Australian boy (14) was arrested in Indonesia for having bought 0.13 ounces (3.6 grams) of marijuana. He faced 12 years in detention under tough narcotics laws. The boy was released on Dec 4 because he admitted the purchase and repeatedly expressed remorse.
(AP, 12/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, A Bahraini security court sentenced 26 activists to prison for their part in anti-government protests, raising to 60 the total number convicted over the past two days in stepped-up prosecutions by the Gulf kingdom.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, In CongoDRC rebels killed five Congolese aid workers and two other civilians in an attack in the east at Fizi, Sud-Kivu province. Those responsible were said to be members of the Mai Mai Yakutumba militia and allied rebels of Burundi's National Liberation Front.
(AFP, 10/6/11)
2011 Oct 4, Libyan revolutionary forces fired rockets into the western half of Sirte, Moammar Gadhafi's hometown, even as hundreds of residents streamed out of the city to flee the fighting.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, British company Heritage Oil PLC said that it has acquired a controlling interest in a Libyan company licensed to provide oil field services including offshore and land-based drilling. Heritage said it paid $19.5 million for a 51% stake in Sahara Oil Services Holdings Ltd.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Chile a major terror case fell apart as prosecutors dropped charges due to a lack of evidence against 13 suspects who spent eight months in prison for a series of bombings detonated outside financial institutions from 2006 to 2010.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, China and Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution threatening action against Syria's deadly crackdown on protests.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, In China a coal mine explosion killed at least 13 workers in Guizhou province.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 4, Egyptian protesters also demanded the release of blogger Michael Nabil (26), who was sentenced to three years' hard labor in April by a military court for having "insulted" the army in his writings. The blogger was on the 43rd day of a hunger strike, after his appeal hearing was adjourned to October 11.
(AFP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Haiti’s Senate approved Garry Conille as prime minister, hopefully jump-starting stalled earthquake reconstruction efforts.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, Iraqi leaders said that they need US military trainers to stay beyond a year-end deadline for American forces to leave but that the troops should not be granted immunity from prosecution.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, The Mexican Army said soldiers captured a Sinaloa cartel lieutenant who had founded an armed wing working for Mexico's most-wanted Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Noel Salgueiro Nevarez, "El Flaco" or the "Skinny," was the Gente Nueva gang leader. Mexico's navy announced that marines found nine escaped inmates apparently working for the Zetas drug cartel at a camp believed to be operated by the group near the Gulf port city of Veracruz. The detentions resulted from a series of raids conducted last week that also netted 18 local police officers who also allegedly worked for the Zetas. Marines arrested a man wearing a police uniform for disturbing the peace. The navy said he was a police officer from the city of Mendoza in Veracruz state and allegedly acted as a liaison between the Zetas and corrupt police. A list in his pocket indicated that local police officers from several towns had received payments of between 2,000 ($144) and 10,000 pesos ($718) per month from the cartel.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, Mexican officials arrested Martin Rosales Magana, one of the last major leaders of the La Familia cartel, along with three associates. The cartel has been displaced in its western home state of Michoacan by the equally cult-like Knights Templar gang.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Namibia 20 skulls, taken by German colonial forces more than a century ago, returned to Windhoek with military honours to be laid in state at parliament.
(AFP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Pakistani protesters upset over severe electricity shortages clashed with police for a second day in Gujranwala, a major industrial city in Punjab province, as the country's main opposition leader used the issue to pressure the US-allied government.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Pakistan suspected Sunni extremists shot 13 Shiite Muslims to death execution-style after ordering them off a bus as they headed to work at a vegetable market on the outskirts of Quetta. The attack targeted the Shiite Hazara tribe.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Philippine police on southern Jolo island arrested Abu Sayyaf gunman Adzhar Mawalil (32), who allegedly helped behead seven Filipino workers while singing a militant song in a grisly 2007 crime.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Somalia a truck bomb exploded in front of the education ministry in Mogadishu as students and parents crowded around to learn about scholarships, killing 82 people and wounding dozens. Bashar Abdullahi Nur, identified as the al-Shabab suicide bomber, gave an interview before the attack that was later aired on a militant-run radio station.
(AP, 10/4/11)(AP, 10/5/11)(AP, 10/6/11)(AFP, 10/30/11)
2011 Oct 4, In Syria at least four people were killed in clashes between government troops and army defectors in the country's northwest.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Turkish police detained over 140 pro-Kurdish political activists in a nationwide sweep. The detainees included a number of elected mayors in the Kurdish southeast.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 4, In Yemen shells fired into a popular shopping district of Sanaa killed two civilians and wounded another. Shelling attacks on the southwest Yemeni town of Taez, a hotbed of anti-regime protest, left seven civilians dead and 22 others injured.
(AFP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 4, Zambia announced that it has halted all metal exports, in a move to ensure that mining firms accurately report their sales. New rules on metal exports should be ready by October 16. The ban was lifted on Oct 6 as it would take too long for new rules to be drawn up.
(AFP, 10/6/11)
2012 Oct 4, A US federal strike force charged 91 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professional across the country in connection with phony bills totaling nearly $430 billion.
(SFC, 10/5/12, p.A8)
2012 Oct 4, US health officials warned the hundreds of people who got steroid back injections in 23 states could be at risk for meningitis from contaminated vials of a steroid produced by the new England Compounding Center of Framingham, Mass. At least 5 deaths were already reported. The fungus causing the meningitis was later identified as Exserohilum rostratum.
(SFC, 10/5/12, p.A10)(SFC, 10/19/12, p.A9)
2012 Oct 4, London listed steelmaker Evraz, part-owned by tycoon Roman Abramovich, is to gain control of one of Russia's largest coal mines after acquiring a half stake in Cyprus-based investment vehicle Corber Enterprises for an undisclosed sum.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In China the Tiantou Elementary School was buried when the hillside collapsed in Zhenhe, a village in Yunnan province. 18 elementary school students were killed. A 19th victim was found the next day.
(AP, 10/5/12)
2012 Oct 4, An Egyptian court convicted Ahmed Ezz, a Hosni Mubarak-era steel magnate, of money laundering, sentencing him to seven years in prison and fining him 19.5 billion Egyptian pounds (about $3 billion). Ezz was already serving a 10-year sentence for a corruption conviction last year.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, Greek police clashed with scores of protesting shipyard workers after they forced their way into the grounds of Greece's Defense Ministry in Athens. Workers from the Skaramanga Shipyards, which deals mainly with military contacts, say they have not been paid in months.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In western Guatemala at least six people were killed and 30 were shot in a clash near Totonicapan between security forces and protesters opposed to high energy prices. A seventh victim died later at a hospital in the western city of Quezaltenango.
(AP, 10/5/12)(AP, 10/5/12)
2012 Oct 4, India's Cabinet pushed ahead with a second wave of economic reform proposals, endorsing higher levels of foreign investment in insurance and pension funds and amendments to laws governing competition.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, Iran deployed riot police at key Tehran intersections, after tensions flared over the nation's plunging currency in the most widespread display of anger linked to the country's sanctions-hit economy.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, Israeli authorities indicted Milad Khatib (26), an Arab citizen of Israel, on charges of spying for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, accusing him of gathering intelligence on security for Israel's president and on army installations.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In Israel thousands of evangelical Christians from around the world marched in Jerusalem in support of the Jewish state.
(SFC, 10/5/12, p.A5)
2012 Oct 4, Moroccan protesters targeting a Dutch abortion-rights activist scuffled with police in a port where a ship promoting safe abortion had been due to land. The "Women on Waves" boat was aiming for its first landfall in a Muslim country. It was invited to Morocco by a local women's rights organization seeking the legalization of abortion.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In the Philippines police arrested former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and temporarily detained her in a hospital on corruption charges, in her third indictment and second detention since stepping down two years ago.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, Transport strikes in Portugal brought misery for thousands of commuters. Trade unions vowed to step up their fight against the government's latest batch of austerity measures.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In South Africa a mineworker killed as police fired rubber bullets trying to disperse striking miners near an Anglo American Platinum mine in Rustenburg.
(AP, 10/5/12)
2012 Oct 4, Turkey's Parliament authorized military operations against Syria and its military fired on targets there for a second day after deadly shelling from Syria killed five civilians in a Turkish border town.
(AP, 10/4/12)
2012 Oct 4, In Yemen a strike by a suspected US drone hit two cars in which al-Qaida-linked militants were traveling in Shabwa province, killing at least five of them. Adel al-Abbab, ranking fourth in the network's leadership, was among the dead.
(AP, 10/4/12)(AP, 10/22/12)
2013 Oct 4, In San Francisco the 13th edition of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival began its 3-day run in Golden Gate Park.
(SSFC, 10/6/13, p.A11)
2013 Oct 4, In NYC Avonte Oquendo (14), an autistic boy, walked away from his school in Queens. His body was found in parts in the East River in January. On Jan 26 NY Senator Chuck Schumer proposed legislation to fund voluntary tracking devices for children with autism.
(SFC, 1/27/14, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/m3kcsg7)
2013 Oct 4, In Washington DC a man set himself on fire in the National Mall. Passers-by rushed over to douse the flames. John Constantino (64) had suffered from mental illness and died of his burns at a hospital.
(SFC, 10/5/13, p.A6)(SSFC, 10/6/13, p.A10)(SFC, 10/9/13, p.A6)
2013 Oct 4, China and Malaysia agreed elevate bilateral ties to a "comprehensive strategic partnership", aiming to boost military cooperation and nearly triple two-way trade to $160 billion by 2017.
(Reuters, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Egypt thousands of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, defying a crackdown, marched through a Cairo suburb. Hundreds of supporters of Egypt's deposed President Mohamed Mursi clashed with their opponents as they tried to enter Tahrir Square in central Cairo, and police fired tear gas to disperse them. Masked gunmen fired on a military vehicle near Ismailiya, killing one soldier and wounding an officer and another soldier.
(Reuters, 10/4/13)(AFP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Guinea's political opposition demanded that the results from last weekend's legislative election be invalidated, citing fraud and irregularities.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Ireland held a nationwide referendum to abolish the country's Senate. Proponents said the upper house wields no essential powers and its closure could save taxpayers 20 million euros ($27 million) annually. Voters rejected the referendum with a 51.7% no vote.
(AP, 10/5/13)(SSFC, 10/6/13, p.A3)
2013 Oct 4, Israel condemned a pronouncement by a European advisory council against male ritual circumcision, a practice that Jewish leaders consider central to their faith. In a non-binding resolution this week, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said circumcision was "a violation of the physical integrity of children."
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Kenya young Muslims set fire to a church, burned tires and clashed with police in the main port city of Mombasa, after the killing of an Islamic cleric his followers blamed on security forces.
(Reuters, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Norway said will slightly reduce its aid to Afghanistan from next year, signaling to Kabul that it has not done enough to combat corruption and violence against women.
(Reuters, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Poland's Catholic Church said it will not pay compensation to victims of priests who sexually abused children. Rev. Jozef Kloch said in comments aired by Polish Radio 1 that the responsibility for compensation lies with the perpetrator.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, Russia's Investigative Committee said it has confiscated 57,000 diamonds and 19 kg (42 pounds) of jewelry from Yevgenia Vasilyeva, a former defense ministry official, in an ongoing investigation into corruption charges. Vasilyeva was charged in 2012 with fraud related to the sale of military assets.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Syria al-Qaida militants battled fighters linked to the Western-backed opposition along with Kurdish gunmen in towns along the Turkish border, in clashes that killed at least 19 people.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Vietnam Vo Nguyen Giap (102), a brilliant and ruthless self-taught general, died in Hanoi. He drove the French out of Vietnam to free it from colonial rule and later forced the Americans to abandon their grueling effort to save the country from communism.
(AP, 10/4/13)
2013 Oct 4, The World Health Organization said the global number of infections with the deadly MERS virus has risen to 136, after hard-hit Saudi Arabia confirmed six new cases.
(AFP, 10/4/13)
2014 Oct 4, In Illinois Mohammed Hamzah Khan (19), charged with seeking to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group, was arrested with two siblings (16 & 17) at O’Hare Int’l. Airport. The siblings were not charged.
(SFC, 11/4/14, p.A4)
2014 Oct 4, In Colorado 2 people aboard a helicopter-like Xenon gyroplane were killed when it crashed into the Colorado River near Loma.
(SFC, 10/6/14, p.A5)
2014 Oct 4, Paul Revere (76), organist and leader of the Raiders rock band, died at his home in Garden Valley, Idaho. The group’s hits included their rendition of “Louie, Louie" (1963) and Indian Reservation“ (1971).
(SFC, 10/6/14, p.C3)
2014 Oct 4, In Texas a medical helicopter crashed near Wichita Falls killing a patient it was transporting from Waurika, Oklahoma.
(SSFC, 10/5/14, p.A12)
2014 Oct 4, In Utah the Mormon church opened its biannual conference bringing some 100,000 church members to Salt Lake City to listen to words of guidance and inspiration from the faith's leaders. Residents from 64 countries were expected during the two-day conference.
(AP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, General Motors posted a recall of almost 47,000 cars for the same ignition-key defect that has already forced the recall of some 2.6 million vehicles and linked to at least 23 deaths.
(SSFC, 10/5/14, p.A12)
2014 Oct 4, Thousands marched in Africa and around the world to pressure governments to do more to stop the poaching industry that many fear is driving rhinos and elephants to the brink of extinction. The Global March for Elephants and Rhinos, took place in 136 cities and towns across six continents.
(AFP, 10/5/14)
2014 Oct 4, Several hundred people marched in central London to protest Britain's involvement in US-led air strikes against Islamic State (IS) group targets in Iraq.
(AFP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Haiti former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier (63), who ruled the impoverished Caribbean nation with an iron fist from 1971 until his ouster in 1986, died of a heart attack. He was said in reports to have looted as much as $300 million before being forced to flee.
(AFP, 10/5/14)(Econ, 10/11/14, p.102)
2014 Oct 4, In Hong Kong tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators gathered for a peace rally, as the city's security chief furiously denied the government had used triad gangs to attack them a day earlier. More than a thousand rival protesters, some wearing helmets, faced off in the densely populated Mong Kok district, fueling concerns that the Chinese-controlled city's worst unrest in decades could take a more violent turn.
(AFP, 10/4/14)(Reuters, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Iraq the Islamic State seized the town of Kubaisa two days after the fall of the nearby town of Hit as the group sought to consolidate control in towns west of Anbar’s capital Ramadi. Two bombs exploded just north of Baghdad in the towns of Tarmiyah and Husseiniyah, killing 7 and wounding 18 others. In Diyala province an officer and 7 soldiers were killed in two ambushes in the nearby districts of Mansuriya and Muqdadiya. Coalition airstrikes targeted Fallujah, Sinjar and Hit.
(Reuters, 10/4/14)(AP, 10/5/14)
2014 Oct 4, Latvia held elections as it sought to limit the influence of a pro-Kremlin party popular with ethnic Russians. Latvia's center-right ruling coalition scored a fresh victory, though Harmony, a Kremlin-allied party backed by the ethnic Russian minority, nabbed 24 seats in the 100-member parliament.
(AFP, 10/4/14)(AFP, 10/5/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Mexico security forces investigating the role of municipal police in clashes in Iguala a week ago found a mass grave on the edge of town, raising fears the pits might hold 43 students missing since the violence that also resulted in six shooting deaths. 28 bodies were found in the grave. Authorities have presented charges against 29 people in the case, including 22 police officers detained soon after the violence. Three of the suspects are fugitives, including Iguala's police chief.
(AP, 10/5/14)(AP, 10/6/14)
2014 Oct 4, Myanmar's army shot dead a journalist who was detained while covering clashes between the army and ethnic rebels at the rugged border, saying he reached for a soldier's gun during an attempted escape. Freelance journalist Par Gyi was detained by the army on Sept. 30 after photographing clashes between the military and the rebel Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA). On Nov 5 authorities exhumed his body. A rights activist said the body bore what he thought were marks of torture.
(AP, 10/24/14)(Reuters, 11/5/14)
2014 Oct 4, North Korea's presumptive No. 2 and other members of Pyongyang's inner circle met with South Korean officials in Seoul at the close of the Asian Games in the rivals' highest level face-to-face talks in five years.
(AP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, The Pakistani Taliban declared allegiance to Islamic State and ordered militants across the region to help the Middle Eastern jihadist group in its campaign to set up a global Islamic caliphate. In the northwest a powerful bomb exploded at a bus station in Kohat, killing 5 people and wounding three others. A suicide bomber struck in Quetta, killing 5 people and wounded at least 20.
(Reuters, 10/4/14)(AP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, Pakistan officials said a record number polio case have already been detected this year. Doctors discovered 202 cases from January to October 3. The previous modern record was 199 cases in 2001.
(AP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Saudi Arabia some two million Muslims ritually stoned the devil in the last major rite of this year's hajj, while fellow believers around the world celebrated Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice.
(AFP, 10/4/14)
2014 Oct 4, In Syria Islamic State forces shelled the border town of Kobani and its Kurdish defenders said they were expecting a new assault to try to capture it.
(Reuters, 10/4/14)
2015 Oct 4, In South Carolina floodwaters swamped Columbia after a rainstorm dumped over a foot of rain overnight. By October 7 the number of weather-related deaths in the Carolinas rose to at least 17.
(SFC, 10/5/15, p.A7)(SFC, 10/7/15, p.A6)
2015 Oct 4, In Britain tens of thousands of anti-austerity protesters rallied as PM David Cameron's governing Conservative Party opened its annual conference in Manchester.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, In China Typhoon Mujigae made landfall near Zhanjiang, Guangdong province. It left a trail of destruction and flooding and prompting authorities to issue their highest "red alert" emergency response. At least 9 people were killed.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)(AP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum launched a new foundation to consolidate a range of existing charitable and human development initiatives that aims to support more than $270 million in projects annually.
(AP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, The European Commission said nineteen EU member states have requested opt-outs for all or part of their territory from cultivation of a Monsanto genetically-modified crop, which is authorized to be grown in the European Union.
(Reuters, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, French authorities said violent storms and flooding along the chic French Riviera overnight have killed at least 16 people and left another five missing.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, In Guatemala Juan Carlos Monzon Rojas, the alleged leader of a customs corruption scandal that has rocked the government, turned himself into authorities.
(AP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, The US-led coalition targeted Islamic State with 13 airstrikes in Iraq and eight in Syria.
(Reuters, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed 2 Israelis and wounded a child. The Palestinian Red Crescent said clashes with Israeli security forces and Jewish settlers have left 77 Palestinians wounded from both live rounds and rubber bullets over the past 24 hours. Israeli troops shot dead an 18-year-old Palestinian during clashes in Tulkarem in the West Bank.
(AFP, 10/4/15)(AFP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, Kyrgyzstan went to the polls for a hotly-contested parliamentary vote.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Malaysian authorities ordered most of the country's schools shut for two days because of possible health risks posed by the thick haze from Indonesian forest fires.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Morocco and Spain arrested 10 people suspected of recruiting fighters for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Thousands of Myanmar's nationalist monks and their supporters prayed, clapped and held speeches at a large rally in Yangon, in a show of growing clout of radical Buddhists ahead of a Nov. 8 election.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, In Niger suspected Boko Haram militants killed 3 civilians and a soldier in a double suicide attack in the southeastern region of Diffa.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, The Pakistani Taliban released a video showing the hanging of Bashir Ahmad Khan, a military intelligence officer, in retaliation for recent executions of militants by Pakistan.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Portugal voted in an election seen as a test of four years of austerity. PM Pedro Passos Coelho’s center-right coalition won the election but lost its parliamentary majority.
(AFP, 10/4/15)(AP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 4, In western Syria air strikes by suspected Russian jets hit targets around the town of Talbiseh. One resident said at least 5 bodies had been recovered from the western part of the town. Russian planes also struck in Homs and Hama provinces.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Syrian activists said that Islamic State militants have destroyed the Arch of Triumph, a nearly 2,000-year-old arch in the ancient city of Palmyra.
(AP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Turkish warplanes struck Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq and eastern Turkey overnight, in a new air operation against the militant group.
(AFP, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Pope Francis reaffirmed Catholic opposition to gay marriage as he opened a three-week gathering of bishops.
(Reuters, 10/4/15)
2015 Oct 4, Yemeni security officials said fierce battles were ongoing between pro-government fighters clashing with Shiite Houthi rebels and allied military units along Yemen's Red Sea coast. Medical officials in nearby Taiz said at least 14 dead bodies from Houthi forces arrived from the front lines.
(AP, 10/4/15)
2016 Oct 4, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court threw out another state law that would put new restrictions on abortion providers.
(SFC, 10/5/16, p.A5)
2016 Oct 4, Reuters reported that Yahoo had written customized software to scan all incoming e-mail for certain keywords, complying with a request either from America’s National Security Agency of the FBI.
(Econ, 10/8/16, p.59)
2016 Oct 4, In Afghanistan fierce gunbattles raged for a second day in the northern city of Kunduz. In the country's south, insurgents killed 12 policemen at checkpoints around the Helmand provincial capital and seized another district they had attacked a day earlier. An improvised explosive device in Nangarhar Province killed a US service member and three Afghan soldiers. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
(AP, 10/4/16)(Reuters, 10/5/16)
2016 Oct 4, British home secretary Amer Rudd announced new restrictions on foreign students in an effort to reduce the number of migrants.
(Econ, 10/15/16, p.52)
2016 Oct 4, Three British-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries about strange states of matter that could result in improved materials for electronics or quantum computers. David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, now affiliated with universities in the United States, were honored for breakthroughs they made in the 1970s and '80s.
(AP, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, Officials in the Dominican Republic reported that at least four people died when heavy rains linked to Hurricane Matthew damaged their homes.
(AP, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, Egypt's security forces killed Mohammed Kama (61), a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader, and another member of the outlawed Islamist group in an overnight shootout at a Cairo apartment. Kamal, a physician by profession, was killed along with Yasser Shahata Ali Ragab in an exchange of gunfire as police tried to arrest them.
(AP, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, In Ethiopia a US citizen was killed on the outskirts of Addis Ababa when the vehicle she was in was struck by rocks thrown by people in the area.
(Reuters, 10/5/16)
2016 Oct 4, Haiti's southwestern peninsula early with 145 mile-per-hour (230 kph) winds and storm surges. Tens of thousands were left homeless and outbreaks of cholera soon claimed more lives. By Oct 10 the confirmed death toll reached 372, but an official with the Civil Protection Agency said at least 522 deaths were confirmed just in the Grand-Anse Department. The official toll was later put at 546 dead and 128 missing.
(Reuters, 10/4/16)(AP, 10/6/16)(AFP, 10/10/16)(SFC, 10/10/16, p.A2)(SFC, 10/21/16, p.A6)
2016 Oct 4, In India police detained more than 700 detained in a raid on makeshift call centers in the Mumbai suburb of Thane. 70 people arrested. An estimated $36.5 million was extorted from US residents in an alleged tax scam that was run for about a year from call centers on the outskirts of Mumbai.
(Reuters, 10/6/16)
2016 Oct 4, A Myanmar lawmaker said parliament has abolished the Emergency Provisions Act. The law was introduced in 1950 as newly independent Myanmar struggled with nascent ethnic insurgencies but was then frequently used against activists after the military seized power in a 1962 coup.
(Reuters, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, South African police fired rubber bullets, stun grenades and teargas at student protesters in Johannesburg as authorities tried to re-open the prestigious Wits University after weeks of demonstrations.
(AFP, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, Rebels said they had repelled a Syrian army offensive in southern Aleppo as Russian and Syrian warplanes continued to pound residential areas in besieged parts of the city where thousands of civilians are trapped. 25 deaths in government-held west Aleppo were documented as a result of rebel shelling.
(Reuters, 10/4/16)
2016 Oct 4, The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned Russia over use of incendiary weapons in air strikes on the Syrian city of Aleppo, where he said attacks on civilian targets may amount to crimes against humanity.
(Reuters, 10/4/16)
2017 Oct 4, Washington’s top diplomat Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came under new pressure after a report claimed he had branded President Donald Trump a "moron" during a Pentagon meeting.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, US Senate leaders said that the US needs to keep products made by North Koreans out of the United States and get China to refuse to hire North Korean workers.
(AP, 10/5/17)
2017 Oct 4, Republican congressman Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania announced that he will not run for a 9th term, amid tawdry revelations of an extramarital affair in which the antiabortion lawmaker urged his mistress Shannon Edwards to get an abortion when he thought she was pregnant.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A5)
2017 Oct 4, Three researchers based in the US, UK and Switzerland won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a way to create exquisitely detailed images of the molecules driving life. The prize was shared by Switzerland's Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne, German-born US citizen Joachim Frank at New York's Columbia University and Briton Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In California billionaire landowner Vinod Khosla opened the a gate to Martin’s Beach in Half Moon Bay as litigation over access to the beach continued.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A7)
2017 Oct 4, In Brazil Cesare Battisti (62), an Italian fugitive and former leftist guerrilla convicted of murder in his own country was detained him at the Bolivian border. On Oct 6. a judge ordered him released. Battisti was convicted of being a member of an armed gang in his homeland in 1979, then escaped from prison near Rome in 1981.
(AFP, 10/7/17)
2017 Oct 4, It was reported that City of Oxford has stripped Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of a human rights award, citing deep concerns over the treatment of Rohingya Muslims under her watch. She had been an undergraduate at Oxford.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The EU said it was "time to talk" to resolve the escalating political crisis in Catalonia, as senior European politicians warned Catalan leaders against declaring independence from Spain unilaterally. Catalonia said it will move on Oct. 9 to declare independence from Spain following Oct. 1's banned referendum.
(AFP, 10/4/17)(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The European Union ordered Amazon to pay $295 million in back taxes to Luxembourg, in its latest attempt to tighten the screws on multinationals it says are avoiding taxes through sweetheart deals with individual EU states.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, A Greek court ruled to extradite Russian cybercrime suspect Alexander Vinnik to the US, where he is wanted in connection with a $4 billion bitcoin fraud case.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The presidents of Iran and Turkey vowed during talks in Tehran to work closely together to prevent the disintegration of Iraq and Syria and to oppose the Iraqi Kurds' drive for independence.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, An Iranian a semiofficial news agency reported that Abdolrasoul Ddorri Esfahani, a dual Iranian-Canadian national, has been sentenced to to five years in prison for espionage. Esfahani was a member of Iran’s team nuclear negotiators that struck a 2015 deal with world powers.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A2)
2017 Oct 4, Iraqi forces pushed into the Islamic State group stronghold of Hawija and seized some territory, stepping up their assault against one of the jihadists' last enclaves in the country.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Italian police said they have seized 11 million euros ($13 million) in assets and arrested 37 people, including two Carabinieri officers, accused in a Sicilian Mafia extortion racket involving fruit, fish and drugs.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo organizing committee wrapped up a two-day project review vowing to cut costs for the 2020 Games and address concerns over water pollution in Tokyo Bay.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, More than 50 Jordanian and international companies advertised hundreds of jobs in textiles, construction and agriculture at a job fair for Syrian refugees, part of an EU-sponsored effort to help the displaced become more self-reliant during what could be years of exile.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Libya at least four people were killed in an Islamic State group suicide bombing at the main court building in Misrata.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Mexico said it plans to send to Puerto Rico some 30 tons of bottled water, mosquito repellent and specialists in power generation, transmission and distribution from the state power utility.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Mexican officials said the last body known to be trapped in rubble following the Sept. 19 magnitude 7.1 earthquake has been recovered, and they raised the overall death toll from the quake to 369.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Mozambique Mahamudo Amurane (44), the mayor of Nampula, was fatally shot after giving a speech about peace efforts on the 25th anniversary of the signing of an accord that ended the country's civil war.
(AP, 10/5/17)
2017 Oct 4, In southwestern Niger an attack killed three US Army Special Forces members in a region where insurgents are active. Four Nigerien troops were also killed. A 4th US soldier, Sgt. La David Johnson, was found dead two days after the ambush. Islamist Adnan Abu Waleed al-Sahrawi, the leader of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, later claimed responsibility for the attack. Three IS leaders were later identified as planning and directing the attack. In 2018 US Special Forces killed two of the leaders, but Doundoun Cheffou was believed to be still alive.
(Reuters, 10/5/17)(SFC, 10/7/17, p.A2)(SFC, 10/24/17, p.A8)(Reuters, 1/13/18)(SFC, 5/30/18, p.A3)
2017 Oct 4, Nigeria's financial crimes agency brushed off allegations by the wife of the country's former president that it had conducted a "witch-hunt" against her. Last year, the EFCC froze four US dollar bank accounts that the ex-president's wife said she owned. Her spokesman said in September 2016 that the accounts in total contained around $10 million - a third of the sum reported in the Nigerian press.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned that the Supreme Court chief justice and the head of a key anti-graft agency face impeachment complaints, in an emerging faceoff with the officials.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Thousands of Romanians protested against planned hikes in social security contributions that critics say will wipe out generous salary hikes for public sector workers.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Russia jailed government critic Alexei Navalny called on his supporters to hold street protests this weekend across Russia, in defiance of an official ban, to demand that Navalny be allowed to run in next year's presidential election.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Russia said it will retaliate tit-for-tat over a new Canadian law that will impose sanctions on officials from Russia and other nations considered guilty of human rights violations.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Moscow Venezuelan Pres. Nicolas Maduro met with Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin and thanked him for his political and diplomatic support in difficult times. Putin said Russia would continue its economic cooperation with Venezuela, including on major projects.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, Saudi Arabia announced the consolidation of development funds under a unified body led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, cementing the powerful prince's position in the Gulf kingdom's affairs.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, It was reported that Renate Langer (61), a former German actress, has told Swiss authorities that film director Roman Polanski raped her at a house in Gstaad in February 1972, when she was 15.
(SFC, 10/4/17, p.A2)
2017 Oct 4, Syrian troops and allied militiamen advanced to about six miles of the eastern city of Mayadeen. Rockets and barrel bombs in the area killed at least 20 people. Tens of thousands have fled the region in the past week.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A2)
2017 Oct 4, It was reported that an examination by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that samples from an attack by Syrian forces last March 30 on the opposition-held town of Latamneh tested positive for the banned nerve agent sarin.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, An official document issued by the Russian consulate in Damascus showed that at least 131 Russian citizens died in Syria in the first nine months of this year.
(Reuters, 10/27/17)
2017 Oct 4, In Togo thousands of people protested in the next phase of a campaign to force out President Faure Gnassingbe, whose dynasty has ruled the West African state for more than 50 years.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, A Turkish court found 42 former soldiers guilty of trying to kill President Tayyip Erdogan during last year's failed coup, and handed most of them life sentences in the highest profile case related to the attempted putsch so far.
(Reuters, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, The UN Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) said that it regrets a decision by Turkish Cypriot authorities to start imposing taxes and fees on humanitarian goods delivered to Greek Cypriots in the breakaway north of the ethnically split island.
(AP, 10/4/17)
2017 Oct 4, In northern Yemen an air strike killed at least seven people, including four children, in a rebel-held district in Saada province. The Huthi-run news site Saba reported 12 dead. The rebels' Al-Masirah television blamed the attack on a Saudi-led coalition.
(AFP, 10/4/17)
2018 Oct 4, The US Treasury issued new North Korea-related sanctions that target SIA Falcon International Group, a Turkish company, and two Turkish individuals among others.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, The US Justice Department charged seven Russian military intelligence officers with hacking anti-doping agencies and other organizations. Britain and the Netherlands condemned the Russian GRU military intelligence for a series of alleged global cybercrimes. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, denounced the accusations as fake.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In southern California a judge sentenced former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight to 28 years in prison for running over businessman Terry Carter outside a Compton burger stand in 2015.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A14)
2018 Oct 4, In San Francisco almost 2,500 hotel workers began a strike that spanned seven Marriott hotels. On Dec. 3 the hotel workers finally approved a new contract.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 4, In New Mexico Cameron Martinez (18) died from gunshot wounds in a vehicle near the Ohkay Hotel Casino near Espanola. Three other people were expected to survive their wounds. Martinez had recently appeared in a political ad for Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democratic candidate for state governor.
(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A10)
2018 Oct 4, In Utah the Mormon church joined lawmakers, the governor and advocates to back a deal that would legalize medical marijuana in the state.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A7)
2018 Oct 4, In Afghanistan two women were killed and 16 other people wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the Zhari district. In Nangarhar province a bomb blast near a non-governmental organization office killed two people and wounded seven others. In Kabul one person was killed when a sticky bomb attached to a vehicle detonated. US service member James Slape (23) of North Carolina died from wounds of an IED in Helmand province.
(AP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 10/4/18)(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 4, In southeastern Afghanistan Taliban militants mounted an attack in the Maroof district of Kandahar province when security forces responded with an airstrike. that killed four people and wounded eight others who were part of a wedding procession.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Bahrain received a $10 billion pledge from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to aid its sufering economy.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 4, Lawyers for Benin tycoon and opposition politician Sebastien Ajavon discovered that their client and three others were accused of "high-risk international drug trafficking", which carries a prison term of 10-20 years. Ajavon launched his own political party in march and has made known he wants to stand at the next election that is expected in 2020.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In eastern Burkina Faso six soldiers were killed and several others seriously injured when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device (IED).
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Human Rights Watch said more than 235 people have been killed in the Beni area of CongoDRC this year in attacks with guns, axes or machetes. More than 165 others have been kidnapped. In the past four years more than 1,000 people have died.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In eastern CongoDRC a rebel attack on an army post left six people dead. The Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) was suspected of having carried out the late night attack in the city of Beni.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Egypt one person was killed and at least three others injured in a blast at a fuel depot on the outskirts of Cairo.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, French authorities helicoptered a Slovenian she-bear into the Pyrenees mountains, despite an all-night protest by furious local farmers who fear she will eat their sheep.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid homage in Jerusalem to the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and said Germany had a responsibility to confront anti-Semitism and never to forget the Holocaust. At a news conference Merkel reaffirmed her support for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and concern about Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory where Palestinians seek for a country of their own. Germany and Israel agree that Iran should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but they differ on how to achieve this goal.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Hungary and Poland said they have gone to the European Court of Justice to challenge tighter European Union rules on the employment of workers from low-pay EU states.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, India deported seven Rohingya Muslim men to Myanmar.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Indonesia electricity was restored and some shops reopened in the quake and tsunami stricken city of Palu. The official death toll stood at 1,424, but was expected to rise.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Ingushetia thousands attended a rare protest to decry a land-swap deal with neighboring Chechnya, despite authorities reportedly setting up roadblocks to hinder demonstrators. Russia turned off 3G and 4G mobile Internet services in Ingushetia from Oct. 4 to Oct. 17 "on the basis of the justified decision of the law enforcement authorities".
(AFP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Oct 4, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address broadcast by state television that the people of Iran face a sensitive time because of pressure from America and economic problems. The Iranian rial has lost approximately 75 percent of its value since the beginning of 2018.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat announced in a statement a "detailed plan to remove UNRWA from Jerusalem and replace its services with municipal services".
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Kazakhstan the Russian Soyuz MS-08 space capsule carrying Russia's Oleg Artemyev and NASA's Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold landed safely after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, US First Lady Melania Trump brought soccer balls and books to a school in Malawi to highlight a USAID scheme to support African schools, on the second stop of her four-nation tour of the continent. President Donald Trump has sought to roll back the US foreign aid budget.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Qasim Ibrahim, a Maldives opposition leader, returned home after being exiled in Germany for months to escape a prison sentence on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Mexican police detained a couple on the outskirts of Mexico City on suspicion they may have killed as many as 10 women and sold a dead woman's baby.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Mexican police in the northern border state of Sonora said five police officers died after unidentified assailants attacked their patrol vehicle in the town of Guaymas.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Authorities in Myanmar destroyed an estimated $1.3 million worth of confiscated ivory and other parts of endangered animals, days after a conservation group charged that the country's ivory exports to China are increasing.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Norway Russian businessman Boris Rotenberg, under US sanctions over the Ukraine conflict due to his close ties with President Vladimir Putin, filed suit against four Nordic banks, accusing them of discrimination. Rotenberg also holds a Finnish passport and is not subject to European sanctions over Russia's role in Ukraine, but European banks must comply with the US sanctions in order to do business with American banks.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 4, A spokeswoman for ActionAid said Pakistan has ordered 18 international aid groups to shut down operations and leave the country. ActionAid focuses on education, poverty alleviation and human rights and is headquartered in Johannesburg.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Philippine police, backed by troops, killed nine drug suspects and arrested more than 100 others in two days of raids that ended today in central Cebu province. The government's massive crackdown has left more than 4,800 suspects dead.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in India for a two-day visit during which India is expected to sign a $5 billion deal to buy Russian S-400 air defense systems despite a new US law ordering sanctions on any country trading with Russia's defense and intelligence sectors.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Russia's Defense Ministry said the United States appears to be running a clandestine biological weapons lab in the country of Georgia, allegedly flouting international rules and posing a direct security threat to Russia.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, A South Korean government delegation arrived in North Korea for a joint celebration of the anniversary of a 2007 summit and to possibly hold further peace talks.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In South Korea this year's Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) opened with a movie portraying the plight of a North Korean defector and the unlikely family she formed during her harrowing journey.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Sudanese security agents confiscated the entire print runs of two newspapers, days after the European Union and Washington pushed for press freedoms in the African country.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Ukraine said it had given a Hungarian consul 72 hours to leave the country after accusing his consulate of illegally issuing passports to members of an ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Ukraine's constitution bars Ukrainians from holding citizenship of other countries. Hungary in turn expelled a Ukrainian consul in Budapest and reiterated a threat to block Ukraine's EU and NATO integration.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Vietnam seized eight tons of pangolin scales and elephant ivory shipped from Nigeria, the second such haul in a week.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2019 Oct 4, US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation suspending entry of immigrants who will not be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering the United States or do not have the means to pay for their healthcare costs themselves.
(Reuters, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, US President Donald Trump told reporters that he had officially allowed Polish entry into a US visa waiver program.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, The Trump administration said it will lift the annual blending mandate for biofuels starting in 2020 and ensure more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol is blended into the US fuel pool, a move to retain the support of American farmers.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Microsoft said a hacker group linked to Iran unleashed cyber-attacks on US journalists, government officials and accounts associated with a US presidential campaign.
(AFP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, It was reported that Mercury Insurance is ending its two-decade battle with California regulators over extra fees charged to customers by agreeing to pay the state $41 million. Most of the money will go to the state's general fund.
(SFC, 10/4/19, p.D2)
2019 Oct 4, California police said they have arrested Nickey Stane (52) for sexual assault and battery cases. He was caught after he allegedly used a recording device to view someone in the bathroom without their knowledge. Police used DNA evidence from two decades ago to connect Stane to a murder and a series of sexual assaults dating back to 1999.
(Good Morning America, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Diahann Carroll, black actress and singer,died in Los Angeles. Carroll was the first black woman to star in a non-servant role in a TV series. "Julia" aired from 1968-1971. Carroll's films included "Carmen Jones" (1954), "Goodbye Again" (1961), "Paris Blues" (1961), "Hurry Sundown" (1967), "The Split" (1968) and "Claudine (1974).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diahann_Carroll)(SSFC, 10/6/19, p.B10)
2019 Oct 4, In Illinois Prisciliano Carranza (22) used his car as a weapon and deliberately drove into a family of four and killing another man in Waukegan. Carranza was soon arrest and held on a $5 million bond.
(ABC News, 10/6/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Chicago a jury convicted Corey Morgan, a man who prosecutors said plotted then tried to cover up the 2015 slaying of a 9-year-old boy who was shot after being lured into a Chicago alley with the promise of a juice box. Prosecutors argued that the Nov. 2, 2015, "execution" of Tyshawn Lee was carried out as revenge on a rival gang member. The verdict came after a separate jury a day earlier convicted the alleged triggerman, Dwright Boone-Doty, and after a third man, Kevin Edwards, pleaded guilty last month in exchange for a 25-year prison sentence.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Biologists at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute said that samples taken from the waters off the shore of Collier County found high concentrations of the toxic algae where they also received reports of dead fish and cases of respiratory irritation. The toxic red tide was back after fading away earlier this year following a 15-month bloom.
(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, In New Jersey Marty Small, the Atlantic City Council president, became acting mayor, a day after Frank Gilliam Jr., a fellow Democrat, admitted stealing $87,000 from a youth basketball club he founded, and resigned.
(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Texas Joshua Xavier Brown (27), a man who used to live next to Botham Jean and who was a witness in Amber Guyger's murder trial, was shot to death in Dallas. On Dec. 5 three men were charged with capital murder in the killing of Brown.
(SFC, 10/7/19, p.A5)(AP, 12/6/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Algeria tens of thousands of protesters chanted slogans demanding the army quit politics, a purge of the ruling elite, an end to corruption, and the freeing of opposition leaders.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, It was reported that British PM Boris Johnson has told a court he will request a Brexit delay if he fails to strike a deal with the EU by October 19.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Britain's National Theater said it has decided to end its partnership with energy group Royal Dutch Shell as part of a broader "climate emergency" initiative to reduce its carbon impact.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In northern Burkina Faso twenty people were killed in an attack by suspected jihadists on a gold-mining site in Soum province.
(Reuters, 10/6/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Ecuador protests over fuel subsidy cuts paralyzed transportation for a second day as authorities held 275 people in jail for unrest triggered by President Lenin Moreno's belt-tightening fiscal package.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Thousands of Haitian protesters marched through Port-au-Prince to the UN headquarters in one of the largest demonstrations in a weekslong push to oust embattled President Jovenel Moise. The unrest came after almost four weeks of protests in which 17 people have been reported killed.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Hong Kong invoked emergency powers for the first time in more than half a century to ban face masks for protesters after months of unrest, prompting demonstrators to occupy downtown streets.
(Bloomberg, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Iran claimed a "victory" after one of its banks received $1.6 billion in compensation from British authorities over "illegal" sanctions. In June 2013, the UK Supreme Court quashed a treasury directive imposing sanction on Bank Mellat over alleged links with Tehran's controversial nuclear program.
(AFP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on both sides to cease violence. Security forces again opened fire on protesters gathered in central Baghdad. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said he’s suspending participation in parliament activities until the government introduces a program that serves Iraqi aspirations. Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain advised their citizens to avoid traveling to Iraq and those who are there to leave the country immediately. A 4th day of bloody violence hit Baghdad with 22 people killed.
(AP, 10/4/19)(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Mexico a National Geographic journalist was shot in the leg in Chihuahua state late today while interviewing an alleged drug dealer, who was killed when four armed men stormed in on the interview.
(Reuters, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, The Dutch government said it would spend hundreds of millions of euros to mitigate nitrogen emissions, in a move it hopes will pave the way for thousands of building projects to be restarted.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Dutch health authorities ordered a major recall of processed meats from grocery stores after saying they had linked a spate of food poisonings over the past two years to a likely single source. Experts had been testing the DNA of listeria bacteria involved in cases that affected 20 people in all, killing three of them and causing one woman to miscarry.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Pakistan the Taliban met with US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Islamabad for the first time since President Donald Trump declared a seemingly imminent peace deal to end Afghanistan's 18-year war 'dead' a month ago.
(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Palestinian officials said the Palestinian Authority has agreed to accept hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues collected by Israel months after declining them in protest. The PA had refused to accept the funds because Israel was withholding an amount equal to what the Palestinians pay to the families of prisoners and those killed in the conflict, including slain militants.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, Palestinian Alaa Hamdan (28) was killed by Israeli gunfire during the weekly protest along the Gaza-Israel frontier.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In the Philippines at least four gunmen abducted Allan Hyrons, an elderly British man, and his Filipino wife, Wilma, in Zamboanga del Sur province.
(SFC, 10/5/19, p.A2)
2019 Oct 4, Russia said that Moscow's move to help Beijing build an early warning system to detect missile attacks showed the two countries had a special relationship.
(Reuters, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Rwanda unknown assailants killed eight people late today in a northern area near the Volcanoes National Park that is popular with tourists for its mountain gorillas.
(Reuters, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Spanish police arrested four drug traffickers who stopped to save their lives after the officers were thrown overboard during a high speed boat chase off the coast of Malaga. More than 80 bundles of hash had been recovered from the sea.
(The Telegraph, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, In Sudan irrigation ministers of three key Nile Basin countries met in Khartoum, seeking to resolve differences over Ethiopia’s soon-to-be-finished Blue Nile dam, which Cairo claims threatens its water supply. The meeting of the ministers from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia was expected to last two days.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In northern Syria the US-led coalition and Turkey conducted their third joint patrol, part of a plan designed to defuse tensions between Ankara and the Syrian Kurds.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, In southern Thailand Judge Khanakorn Pianchana shot himself in court and was hospitalized after delivering a not guilty verdict in the case of five Muslim suspects charged with murder in the predominantly Buddhist country's restive south.
(Reuters, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Turkey's state run Anadolu Agency said Sirri Sureyya Onder, a former deputy of the People's Democratic Party, or HDP, has been released from a high security prison. The former pro-Kurdish party legislator and film-maker had been jailed since December 2018.
(AP, 10/5/19)
2019 Oct 4, Ukraine's Prosecutor General said that his office is reviewing several cases related to the owner of a gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son sat on the board, as part of a review of all the criminal cases closed by his predecessors.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2019 Oct 4, A panel of experts at the UN labor agency is calling on Venezuelan authorities to halt violence, threats and other forms of “aggression" against workers and employers who oppose President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
(AP, 10/4/19)
2020 Oct 4, Dr. Sean P. Conley, the White House physician, acknowledged that Mr. Trump had a high fever and saw his oxygen drop on Oct 2. Conley acknowledged that he had provided a rosy version of events to please his notoriously sensitive patient. Mr. Trump made an unannounced exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the early evening, climbing into his armored Chevrolet Suburban to ride past supporters holding Trump flags gathered outside the building.
(NY Times, 10/5/20)
2020 Oct 4, Democrat Joe Biden opened his widest lead in a month in the US presidential race after President Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, and a majority of Americans think Trump could have avoided infection if he had taken the virus more seriously.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton won this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
(AP, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, California set a grim new record when officials announced that the wildfires of 2020 have now scorched a record 4 million acres — in a fire season that is far from over. There have been 31 deaths and more than 8,400 buildings have been destroyed.
(AP, 10/5/20)
2020 Oct 4, California to date had 829,561 cases of coronavirus and 16,121 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 105,310 cases and 1,566 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 7,416,126 with the death toll at 209,787.
(sfist.com, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, The Great Barrington Declaration, a statement written by three public health experts from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, encouraged governments to lift lockdown restrictions on young and healthy people while focusing protection measures on the elderly. It was signed in Great Barringtron, Mass.
(https://gbdeclaration.org/)(Econ., 10/24/20, p.70)
2020 Oct 4, It was reported that Cineworld, the world's second-biggest cinema operator, will close all its screens in the United States, Britain and Ireland this week after studios pulled major releases such as the latest James Bond film.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, In Belarus more than 100,000 marched in Minsk calling for the resignation of Pres. Lukashenko. 317 people were reported detained in Minsk and other cities. More than 10,000 people have been detained since the last election with at least 244 implicated in criminal cases related to the protests.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A2)(SFC, 10/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Oct 4, Mainland China reported 20 new COVID-19 cases, up from 16 reported a day earlier. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Mainland China now stands at 85,470, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, In northeastern China a highway crash killed at least 18 people in Fuyu, Jilin province.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Oct 4, It was reported that at least eight migrants have drowned and 12 are missing after smugglers forced them off a boat near the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said some 2,000 migrants have arrived in Djibouti from Yemen in the past three weeks alone.
(AP, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, French authorities deployed about 1,000 firefighters, four military helicopters and troops to search for at least eight people who were missing after devastating floods hit a mountainous border region with Italy, where at least four people were killed.
(AP, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, France reported 12,565 new confirmed coronavirus infections over the last 24 hours, falling from the previous daily toll that had a set a new record.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, The two visitors from western Germany were attacked and wounded in downtown Dresden. One of them died later at a hospital. On Oct. 20 a young Syrian (20) was arrested over the attack.
(AP, 10/21/20)
2020 Oct 4, Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada (81), better known as Kenzo, who created his label in Paris in the 1970s, died of complications linked to COVID-19 at the American Hospital of Paris.
(Reuters, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, New Caledonia islanders rejected an initiative (53.3% v 46.7%) to sever ties with France. The South Pacific archipelago numbered about 270,000 inhabitants.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A4)
2020 Oct 4, Nigeria's inspector general of police banned a notorious unit from carrying out stop and search duties and setting up roadblocks amid growing anger at routine harassment and atrocities allegedly committed by its officers. The ban was triggered by the alleged killing of a young man by officers from the unit in the city of Lagos a day earlier.
(BBC, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, Oman became the first Gulf Arab state to reinstate its ambassador to Syria since the eruption of the country's ruinous civil war. Syria was expelled from the 22-member Arab League in 2011, and Arab countries have sanctioned Damascus and condemned its use of military force against the opposition.
(AP, 10/5/20)
2020 Oct 4, Pakistan's military killed two militants in a shootout in the North Waziristan district.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Oct 4, The Saudi government started allowing a maximum of 6,000 pilgrims a day to enter the sprawling Grand Mosque in Mecca. Only Saudi citizens and residents will be permitted to enter the mosque during this first phase of reopening, and each person has up to three hours to complete the pilgrimage.
(AP, 10/4/20)
2020 Oct 4, Lee Hyo-jae (95), South Korean champion of women’s rights, died in Changwon.
(NY Times, 11/14/20)
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