Today in History - October 17
Return to home
532 Oct 17,
Boniface II, 1st "German" Pope, died.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1244 Oct 17, The Sixth Crusade
ended when an Egyptian-Khwarismian force almost annihilated the
Frankish army at Gaza.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1346 Oct 17, English forces
defeated the Scots under David II during the Battle of Neville's
Cross, Scotland.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1469 Oct 17, Crown prince
Fernando of Aragon married princess Isabella of Castile.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1483 Oct 17, The Reverend Dr.
Tomas de Torquemada (1420-1498), the Grand Inquisitor of Castile,
had his jurisdiction extended to Aragon.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/14783a.htm)
1492 Oct 17, Columbus sighted
the isle of San Salvador (Watling Island, Bahamas).
(http://tinyurl.com/774v3)
1529 Oct 17, Henry VIII of
England stripped Thomas Wolsey of his office for failing to secure
an annulment of his marriage.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1577 Oct 17, Cristofano Allori,
Italian painter (Judith), was born.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1586 Oct 17, Philip Sidney
(b.1554), English poet and diplomat, died in battle at 32. His work
included “Astrophel and Stella” and “Defense of Poesy.” In 2002 Alan
Stewart authored “Philip Sidney: A Double Life.”
(MC, 10/17/01)(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.M4)
1587 Oct 17, Francesco de'
Medici (46) died 11 days after he fell ill and a few hours before
his wife. In 2007 forensic experts reported evidence that they had
died of arsenic poisoning. Francesco had ruled from 1574. By all
accounts his wife had been his mistress while he was married to his
first wife, who is also believed to have died of poisoning.
(AP, 1/3/07)
1651 Oct 17, Future King
Charles II fled from England. [see Oct 15]
(MC, 10/17/01)
1691 Oct 17, Maine and Plymouth
were incorporated in Massachusetts.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1707 Oct 17, German composer
Johann S. Bach married his niece Maria Bach.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1725 Oct 17, John Wilkes,
English journalist, was born. He became a MP, Lord Mayor of London
and called for independence of Britain's American colonies.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1739 Oct 17, King George II
granted Thomas Coram, retired sea captain, a royal charter to
establish "a hospital for the reception, maintenance and education
of exposed and deserted young children."
(ON, 9/02, p.8)
1777 Oct 17, General John
Burgoyne with British forces of 5,000 men surrendered to General
Horatio Gates, commander of the American forces at Schuylerville,
NY. In the fall of 1777, the British commander Gen'l. Burgoyne and
his men were advancing along the Hudson River. After Burgoyne had
retreated to the heights of Saratoga, the Americans stopped
and surrounded them. The surrender was a turning point in the
American Revolution, demonstrating American determination to
gain independence. After the surrender, France sided with the
Americans, and other countries began to get involved and align
themselves against Britain.
(AP, 10/17/97)(HN, 10/17/98)(HNPD,
10/17/99)(SSFC, 6/30/02, p.C10)
1781 Oct 17, Cornwallis was
defeated at Yorktown. [see Oct 16,19]
(MC, 10/17/01)
1805 Oct 17, Vice Adm. Horatio
Nelson wrote a letter to the governor, Rear Admiral John Knight just
four days before the historic Battle of Trafalgar, in which Nelson
was killed. In it Nelson declared he was "anxious for an Easterly
wind," as that would encourage the enemy to leave port and finally
face the British.
(Reuters, 7/13/10)
1806 Oct 17, Jean-Jacques
Dessalines (b.1758), Emp. Jacques I of Haiti, was assassinated.
(www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/168.html)
1807 Oct 17, Britain declared
it would continue to reclaim British-born sailors from American
ships and ports regardless of whether they held US citizenship.
(AP, 10/17/07)
1808 Oct 17, The political
rights of Jews was suspended in Duchy of Warsaw.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1813 Oct 17, Georg Buchner,
German playwright (Danton's Death, Woyzeck), was born.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1814 Oct 17, Two giant porter
vats at the Horse Shoe Brewery on London’s Tottenham Court Road
burst when the securing hoops failed. The 25-foot-high vats were
owned by Sir Henry Meux and. Several lives were lost along with an
estimated 8,000-9,000 barrels of porter.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meux%27s_Brewery)(http://tinyurl.com/2v43jm)
1815 Oct 17, Napoleon (d.1821)
arrived in St. Helena.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1821 Oct 17, Alexander Gardner,
American photographer, was born. He documented the Civil War and the
West.
(HN, 10/17/00)
1821 Oct 17, The Gambia became
administered as a crown colony from Sierra Leone. Since then Banjul
(Bathurst) has been its capital.
(http://www.vdiest.nl/gambia.htm)
1825 Oct 17, Franz Liszt's
operetta Don Sanche premiered in Paris
(MC, 10/17/01)
1829 Oct 17, Delaware River and
Chesapeake Bay Canal formally opened. The Chesapeake-Delaware Canal
was 14 miles long.
(NG, Sept., 1939, p.379)(MC, 10/17/01)
1829 Oct 17, Sam Patch (~23),
stunt diver, successfully dove 120 feet from a platform on Goat
Island at Niagara Falls.
(MC, 11/13/01)(ON, 4/02, p.6)
1831 Oct 17, Felix
Mendelssohn's 1st Piano concert in G premiered.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1837 Oct 17, Johann Nepomuk
Hummel, Austrian composer, died at 58.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1849 Oct 17, Composer and
pianist Frederic Chopin died in Paris of tuberculosis at the age of
39. The 1945 film “A Song to Remember” was about Chopin.”
(HN, 10/17/00)(SFC, 11/25/02, p.A15)
1855 Oct 17, The Bessemer steel
making process was patented.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1859 Oct 17, Childe Hassam
(d.1935), American impressionist painter, etcher and illustrator,
was born. His work included "St. Patrick's Day."
(WUD, 1994, p.649)(HN, 10/17/00)
1862 Oct 17, Battle of Leetown
and Thoroughfare Gap, Va.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1863 Oct 17, General Ulysses S.
Grant was named overall Union Commander of the West. [see Oct 16]
(HN, 10/17/98)
1864 Oct 17, Elinor Glyn,
British novelist (3 Weeks), was born.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1871 Oct 17, President Grant
suspended writ of habeas corpus in South Carolina in response to
violence by the KKK. It applied to all arrests made by US marshals
and federal troops in nine of the state’s western counties. By the
end of November some 600 arrests were made.
(AH, 6/03, p.31)
1876 Oct 17, Henry Morton
Stanley's expedition (to find the source of the Congo River) reached
the Lualaba River.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1877 Oct 17, Brigadier General
Alfred Terry met with Sitting Bull in Canada to discuss the Indians'
return to the United States.
(HN, 10/17/99)
1883 Oct 17, A.S. Neill,
British headmaster (Summerhill), was born.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1894 Oct 17, Ohio national
guard killed 3 lynchers while rescuing a black man.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1895 Oct 17, Doris Humphrey,
modern dance choreographer, was born.
(HN, 10/17/00)
1898 Oct 17, Shinichi Suzuki
(d.1998), music teacher, was born.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1903 Oct 17, Nathanael West,
novelist and screenwriter, was born. His work included “Miss Lonely
Hearts” and “The Day of the Locust.”
(HN, 10/17/00)
1904 Oct 17, Amadeo Peter
Giannini (d.1949) founded the Bank of Italy, the predecessor to the
Bank of America, on the Montgomery block in SF.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)(SSFC, 10/24/04, Par p.5)
1907 Oct 17, Guglielmo Marconi
began offering limited commercial wireless telegraph service between
Nova Scotia and Ireland.
(AP, 10/17/07)
1910 Oct 17, Julia Ward Howe
(b.1819), author of the Battle Hymn of Republic (1893), died at 91.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1912 Oct 17, John Paul I,
[Albino Luciano], 263rd Roman Catholic pope (1978), was born.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1912 Oct 17, Bulgaria, Greece
and Serbia declared war on Turkey. [see Oct 18]
(MC, 10/17/01)
1913 Oct 17, Zeppelin LII
exploded over London, killing 28.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1914 Oct 17, John Mosely,
recording expert and entrepreneur, was born.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1915 Oct 17, Arthur Miller,
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, was born. His work included
"Death of a Salesman" and "A View from the Bridge." In 2003 Martin
Gottfried authored "Arthur Miller: His Life and Work."
(HN, 10/17/00)(SSFC, 9/28/03, p.M2)
1917 Oct 17, The 1st British
bombing of Germany took place.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1918 Oct 17, Rita Hayworth,
American actress, was born.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1918 Oct 17, Anton Dilger
(B.1884), an American saboteur educated as a surgeon in Germany,
died of Spanish flu in Spain. [see 1916] In 2007 Robert Koenig
authored “The Fourth Horseman: One Man’s Mission to Wage the Great
War in America.”
(SSFC, 1/14/07, p.M2)
1918 Oct 17, Yugoslavia
proclaimed itself a republic.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1919 Oct 17, The Radio
Corporation of America (RCA) was chartered.
(AP, 10/17/08)
1920 Oct 17, Montgomery Clift,
actor (From Here to Eternity), was born in Omaha, Neb.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1930 Oct 17, Jimmy Breslin,
columnist and novelist (NY Post, News, Newsday), was born in Queens,
NYC.
(HN, 10/17/00)
1931 Oct 17, Mobster Al Capone
was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in
prison. He was released in 1939.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1933 Oct 17, Hugh Bancroft,
president of Dow Jones & Co., died.
(www.nndb.com/people/348/000159868/)
1933 Oct 17, Due to rising
anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism in Hitler's Germany, Albert
Einstein immigrated to the United States. He made his new home in
Princeton, N.J.
(AP, 10/17/97)(HN, 10/17/98)
1934 Oct 17, "The Aldrich
Family" premiered on radio.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1934 Oct 17, "Handsome" Harry
Pierpont, bank robber, was executed in the electric chair in
Columbus, Ohio, for the murder of Sheriff Jesse Sarber.
(Internet)
1938 Oct 17, Evel Knievel (d.
Nov 30, 2007) was born as Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, Jr. He became
a US daredevil motorcycle stunt man, showman, entertainer, Member
Motorcycle Hall of Fame and Guinness World Record Holder.
(HN, 10/17/98)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Kneivel)
1939 Oct 17, Frank Capra's
comedy-drama "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" premiered in the
nation's capital.
(AP, 10/17/99)
1941 Oct 17, The U.S. destroyer
Kearney was damaged by a German U-boat torpedo off Iceland; 11
people were killed.
(AP, 10/17/08)
1941 Oct 17, Gen’l. Hideki Toho
(1885-1948) became Premier and Minister of War in Japan. When the
bellicose war minister and most powerful man in Japan, Army General
Hideki Tojo, became prime minister, there no longer was a chance of
avoiding war with Britain and the United States.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(HN, 2/21/98)
1942 Oct 17, In Switzerland
Eduard von Steiger, Justice Minister and minister of police, told
leaders of the Swiss Fatherland Assoc. that the government had
decided on a “fundamental slowing” of Jewish immigration.
(SFC, 6/10/98, p.a10)
1943 Oct 17, British Liberators
sank U-540 and U-631.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1944 Oct 17 Hans Krasa,
Czech-Jewish composer, died at Auschwitz. The opera Brundibar by
Krasa was 1st performed at a Prague orphanage. It had been intended
for a 1938 government competition. It was later performed at the
Terezin concentration camp.
(WSJ, 2/7/03, p.D8)
1945 Oct 17, Col. Juan Peron,
the future president of Argentina, was released from prison after
protests by trade unionists, ending a crisis that began with his
forced resignation from his government posts and his arrest.
(AP, 10/17/06)
1949 Oct 17, Liu Wencai
(b.1887), Chinese landlord from Sichuan province, died. He was
depicted as the archetype of the exploiter of peasant farmers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Wencai)(Econ,
6/25/11, SR p.11)
1951 Oct 17, The Egyptian army
fired on British troops.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1956 Oct 17, The all-star movie
"Around the World in 80 Days," produced by Michael Todd, had its
world premiere in New York.
(AP, 10/17/06)
1956 Oct 17, The nuclear power
station Calder Hall was opened in Britain. Calder Hall was the first
nuclear station to feed an appreciable amount of power into a
civilian network. In 2007 engineers began the planned
decommissioning of the plant.
(HN, 10/17/98)(AP, 9/29/07)
1957 Oct 17, The movie
"Jailhouse Rock," starring Elvis Presley, had its world premiere in
Memphis, Tenn.
(AP, 10/17/07)
1957 Oct 17, French author
Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in literature.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1957 Oct 17, Britain's Queen
Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited the White House.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1958 Oct 17, The special "An
Evening with Fred Astaire," the first major TV program produced on
color videotape, aired on NBC.
(AP, 10/17/08)
1960 Oct 17, A grand jury found
that the popular television game show Twenty-One had provided
contestants with questions and answers before the live programs were
broadcast.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1961 Oct 17, NY Museum of
Modern Art hung Henri Matisse's "Le Bateau" upside-down It wasn't
corrected until December 3rd.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1961 Oct 17, Paris police beat
and killed dozens of Algerian demonstrators and threw some bodies
into the Seine. The police were commanded by Maurice Papon. Papon
said some 30 bodies had been recovered from the Seine but that they
had been killed in fighting between rival Algerian nationalist
groups. In 1999 France agreed to open its archives on the issue.
Police killed 210 Algerians who were protesting against police
oppression and the curfew imposed against their community in Paris.
On Oct 17, 2011, Algeria's post office issued a new stamp to
commemorate the massacre.
(WSJ, 5/5/98, p.A1)(SFC, 5/6/99, p.A15)(Econ,
2/24/07, p.99)(AFP, 10/17/11)
1965 Oct 17, The musical "On A
Clear Day You Can See Forever," with a score by Burton Lane and book
and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, opened on Broadway.
(AP, 10/17/05)
1966 Oct 17, Wieland Wagner,
German opera director and grandson of Richard Wagner, died.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1967 Oct 17, "Hair," subtitled
The American Tribal Love/Rock Musical, premiered off Broadway at the
Public Theater. It moved to the Biltmore Theater on Broadway on
April 29, 1968, where it stayed for 1,873 performances.
(http://www.new-age-guide.com/new_age/hair_(musical).htm)
1967 Oct 17, American forces of
the black Lion battalion walked into an ambush set by NV commander
Vo Minh Triet and 61 were killed. In 2003 David Maraniss authored
"They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America,"
which centered on this battle and a protest in Wisconsin on Oct 18.
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.82)(SSFC, 12/28/03, p.M3)
1967 Oct 17, Aisin-Gioro Henry
Puyi (61), the last emperor of China, died of cancer. Official
reports said his death occurred while under persecution from
ultra-leftists of the Cultural Revolution.
(SFC, 6/11/97,
p.C16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Puyi)
1972 Oct 17, Bob Randall's play
"6 Rooms Riv Vu," premiered in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Rms_Riv_Vu)
1972 Oct 17, Peace talks
between Pathet Lao and Royal Lao government began in Vietnam.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1975 Oct 17, A UN committee
passed a resolution saying "Zionism is a form of racism." The
resolution was reversed in 1991.
(www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/bg851.cfm)(Econ,
4/25/09, p.62)
1977 Oct 17, West German
commandos stormed a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner that was on the
ground in Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages and killing
three of the four hijackers.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1978 Oct 17, President Carter
signed a bill restoring U.S. citizenship to Confederate President
Jefferson Davis.
(AP, 10/17/98)
1979 Oct 17, Mother Teresa of
India, head of the Missionaries of Charity, was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize for her years of work on behalf of the destitute in
Calcutta.
(SFC, 3/14/97, p.A13)(AP, 10/17/97)
1979 Oct 17, Pres. Carter
signed legislation creating Dept. of Education.
(www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/jec/chron.phtml)
1979 Oct 17, S.J. Perelman
(b.1904), American humorist and screenwriter (Around the World in 80
Days), died at age 75.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._J._Perelman)
1980 Oct 17, Mt. St. Helens
erupted 3 times in 24 hours, in Washington. The eruptions had begun
May 18.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1982 Oct 17, Sam Shepard's
"True West" premiered in NYC.
(www.cherrylanetheatre.org/historyMainstage.htm)
1986 Oct 17, The US Senate
approved immigration bill prohibiting hiring of illegal aliens and
offered amnesty to illegals who entered prior to 1982.
(http://tinyurl.com/yet49v)
1987 Oct 17, The 1st indoor
World Series game took place at the Minnesota Metrodome.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_World_Series)
1987 Oct 17, First lady Nancy
Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy at Bethesda Naval
Hospital in Maryland.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1988 Oct 17, Philip Morris
Companies Inc. launched an $11.5 billion takeover bid for Kraft Inc.
(AP, 10/17/98)
1988 Oct 17, Israel's supreme
court upheld a ban on Meyer Kahane's Kach Party as racist.
(www.washington-report.org/backissues/0799/9907081.html)
1989 Oct 17, The 7.1 Loma
Prieta earthquake [Watsonville] hit the Bay Area minutes before the
start of a World Series game at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. 67
people died and 3,000 were injured. It caused $7 billion worth of
damage. The Spreckel’s Temple of Music in Golden Gate Park was
damaged and later restored. 28,000 structures were damaged and
several freeways ruined. 42 people died on the Cypress Freeway. At
the train station in SF Dr. Margaret McChesney commandeered a tour
bus to take frightened passengers home and navigated the driver
safely through barricades of cars and gangs of marauding youths on
3rd St. In 1999 new measuring methods changed the magnitude to 6.9.
(SFC, 4/15/96,A-6)(SFC, 10/17/96, A15)(SFC,
7/23/97, p.A13)(AP, 10/17/97)(AR,9/12/98)(HN, 10/17/98)(SFC,
10/7/99, p.A21)
1990 Oct 17, The Cincinnati
Reds opened up a two games-to-none World Series lead, beating the
Oakland A’s 5-to-4.
(AP, 10/17/00)
1990 Oct 17, In testimony
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State
James Baker said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “must fail if peace
is to succeed.”
(AP, 10/17/00)
1991 Oct 17, The Atlanta Braves
won their first National League pennant, defeating the Pittsburgh
Pirates 4-to-0 in game seven of their playoff series.
(AP, 10/17/01)
1991 Oct 17, Tennessee Ernie
Ford (b.1919), country singer (16 Tons), died in Reston, Va.
(AP, 10/17/01)(www.ernieford.com/Bio.htm)
1992 Oct 17, The Atlanta Braves
defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in game one of the World Series,
3-to-1.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1992 Oct 17, Japanese exchange
student Yoshi Hattori, 16, was shot and killed by Rodney Peairs in
Center, La., after Hattori and his American host mistakenly knocked
on Peairs' door while looking for a Halloween party. Peairs was
acquitted of manslaughter, but in a civil trial was ordered to pay
more than $650,000 in damages to Hattori's family.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1993 Oct 17, The Philadelphia
Phillies defeated the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-4, evening the World
Series at one game each.
(AP, 10/17/98)
1993 Oct 17, Senate Minority
Leader Bob Dole, in a CBS interview, said he would offer legislation
restricting President Clinton's authority to send troops to Haiti.
(AP, 10/17/98)
1994 Oct 17, Negotiators for
the Angolan government and rebels agreed to a peace treaty to end
their 19-year civil war.
(AP, 10/17/99)
1994 Oct 17, Leaders of Israel
and Jordan initialed a draft peace treaty.
(AP, 10/17/99)
1995 Oct 17, The Cleveland
Indians won the American League pennant by defeating the Seattle
Mariners, 4-to-0, in game six of their playoff series.
(AP, 10/17/00)
1995 Oct 17, President Clinton
told wealthy contributors at a Houston fund-raiser that “you think I
raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I
think I raised them too much, too”— a statement that drew criticism
from both Republicans and Democrats.
(AP, 10/17/00)
1995 Oct 17, The gasoline
additive MTBE showed up in a second drinking water well in Santa
Monica. The city was later forced to shut down half of its water
well supply due to MTBE.
(SFC, 9/15/97, p.A10)
1995 Oct 17, A bomb exploded
aboard a Paris subway car, wounding 29 people.
(AP, 10/17/00)
1995 Oct 17, In Sri Lanka the
army started the 1st phase of an effort to take full control of the
Jaffna peninsula. Shelling and bombing against civilians often
occurred.
(SFC, 7/24/96, p.A9)
1996 Oct 17, The Atlanta Braves
won the National League Championship Series, beating the St. Louis
Cardinals.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1996 Oct 17, In Leland, Miss.
Aaron White, a black TV repairman received a gunshot wound to the
head and was killed. It was claimed that a white police narcotics
officer shot Mr. White, while the police claimed that Mr. White shot
himself. On Oct 31 angry citizens rioted after marching on the local
police dept. when local officials agreed to only speak with the
march organizers.
(SFC, 11/1/96, p.A17)
1996 Oct 17, Berthold
Goldschmidt, German-born Jewish composer and conductor, died at 93
in England.
(www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/030115-NL-goldschmidt.html)
1996 Oct 17, In France a
one-day strike was held by about 1.6 million public employees, a
third of the total public service sector. French unemployment stood
at 12.5%.
(SFC, 10/18/96, A14)
1996 Oct 17, In Russia Pres.
Boris Yeltsin dismissed Alexander Lebed from his post as national
security chief, one day after the former general was accused by a
rival of building his own rogue army.
(SFC, 10/18/96, A1)(AP, 10/17/97)
1996 Oct 17, In Slovakia some
10,000 people demonstrated against Culture Minister Ivan Hudec for
firing National Theater director Dusan Jamrich. Slovak artists claim
that the government is increasingly authoritarian.
(SFC, 10/18/96, C6)
1997 cOct 17, The new $180
million New Jersey Performing Arts Center opened in Newark.
(WSJ, 10/21/97, p.A20)
1997 Oct 17, The US Army used a
Miracl (medium infra-red advanced chemical laser developed by TRW)
laser beam to hit the MISTI-3 satellite in orbit. The laser test was
prohibited by Congress in 1985, but the ban expired in 1995. The
test failed to be recorded by sensors on the satellite.
(SFC,10/21/97, p.A2)(WSJ, 10/24/97, p.A1)
1997 Oct 17, Tosco Corp. asked
the California Air Resources Board to move away from the use of MTBE
as a gasoline fuel additive due to possible contamination of ground
water.
(SFC,10/30/97, p.A1)
1997 Oct 17, The remains of
revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-1967) were laid to rest in
his adopted Cuba in Santa Clara, 30 years after his execution in
Bolivia.
(SFC,10/18/97, p.A10)(AP, 10/17/98)
1998 Oct 17, The New York
Yankees beat the San Diego Padres in the first game of the Baseball
World Series 9 to 6.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.D1)
1998 Oct 17, Jon Postel (55),
an influential Internet pioneer, died. Since 1968 he had directed
the network’s Internet assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) that
allowed computers to be matched with web addresses. Two weeks before
he died he submitted the framework for a new organization to succeed
the IANA, a non-profit entity (ICANN) with an internationally
diverse board of directors.
(WSJ, 10/19/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/22/98, p.A22)(Econ,
11/19/05, p.68)
1998 Oct 17, Chilean officials
lodged a formal complaint to Britain over the arrest of former
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who arrested in a London medical
clinic following a request from Spain for his extradition.
(SFEC, 10/18/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 17, In Malaysia Azizah
Ismail, wife of Anwar Ibrahim, joined some ten thousand protestors
demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Mohamad.
(SFEC, 10/18/98, p.A20)
1998 Oct 17, In Nigeria a
pipeline explosion near the town of Jesse killed some 700 people.
Authorities believed that scavenger’s tools sparked the explosion.
(SFC, 10/19/98, p.a1)(SFC, 10/20/98, p.A8)(SFC,
10/21/98, p.C2)(AP, 10/17/08)
1999 Oct 17, US negotiators
proposed to Russia an alteration to the 1972 ABM treaty to allow
construction of defensive systems.
(SFC, 10/18/99, p.A5)
1999 Oct 17, The FBI reported
that serious crimes reported to police declined for seventh straight
year in 1998 and murder and robbery rates reached 30-year lows.
(AP, 10/17/00)
1999 Oct 17, Former nurse
Orville Lynn Majors was convicted of murdering six patients at a
western Indiana hospital; the jury deadlocked on a seventh count.
Major is serving a 360-year prison sentence.
(AP, 10/17/00)
1999 Oct 17, In Niger the 1st
round of the presidential election was held.
(WSJ, 10/18/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 17, In Pakistan Gen'l.
Musharraf announced a unilateral reduction of troops on the India
border, the establishment of a military-technocrat ruling council,
and an eventual return to civilian rule. He unveiled a 7-point
agenda to save the nation.
(SFC, 10/18/99, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/ruuth)
1999 Oct 17, In Yemen Abu
Hassan, "a nom de guerre" for the head of the Islamic Army of Aden
and Abyan, was executed.
(SFC, 10/29/00, p.A10)
2000 Oct 17, The New York
Yankees followed the Mets into the World Series, beating the Seattle
Mariners 9-to-7 and winning the American League championship series
four games to two.
(AP, 10/17/01)
2000 Oct 17, Al Gore and George
W. Bush held their 3rd and last TV debate from St. Louis with a town
hall format.
(WSJ, 10/17/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 17, The month long Los
Angeles transit authority strike ended following negotiations
brokered by Jesse Jackson.
(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A3)
2000 Oct 17, In Britain the
London to Leeds train derailed at Hatfield and 4 people were killed
with 70 injured.
(SFC, 10/18/00,
p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_rail_crash)
2000 Oct 17, In Chechnya it was
reported that mines planted by rebels killed 4 Russian soldiers.
(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A26)
2000 Oct 17, Ending an
emergency summit in Egypt, Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to
publicly urge an end to a burst of bloody conflict and to consult
within two weeks on restarting the ravaged Mideast peace process.
(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A1)(AP, 10/17/01)
2000 Oct 17, Montenegro Pres.
Milo Djukanovic refused to take part in national institutions with
Serbia until the Montenegro-Serbia relationship is redefined.
(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A12)
2001 Oct 17, Peter Carey won
his 2nd Booker Prize for his novel “True History of the Kelly Gang,”
a fictional account of the 19th century Australian outlaw.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.B3)
2001 Oct 17, Pres. Bush
departed on a diplomatic mission to China following a stop in
Sacramento, Ca.
(SFC, 10/17/01, p.A5)
2001 Oct 17, Federal officials
reported that the anthrax strains in New York and Florida appeared
to be identical. The House and 6 congressional office buildings were
closed for tests after over 30 Senate staff members tested positive
for exposure to spores.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 17, Some 100 US land
and sea-base planes hit targets that included Kandahar and
Mazar-e-Sharif.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.A3)
2001 Oct 17, Researchers at
Lucent’s Bell Labs reported the development of a tiny new transistor
made of a simple cluster of organic molecules.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.D2)(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.B8)
2001 Oct 17, Jay Livingston
(86), film and TV composer, died in LA. He worked with lyricist Ray
Evans and together won 3 Academy Awards for best song, which
included “Que Sera Sera” in 1956.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.D5)
2001 Oct 17, In Afghanistan
Taliban forces seized UN food warehouses in Kabul and Kandahar.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.A3)
2001 Oct 17, Rehavam Zeevi,
Israeli tourist minister, was shot dead at the Hyatt Regency in East
Jerusalem. The PFLP claimed responsibility and Yasser Arafat
promised to hunt down the perpetrators. Hambi Quran, Basel al-Asmar,
Ahmed Gholmy and Majdi Rimawi were later convicted for the murder.
Ahmed Saadat, head of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, was imprisoned in Jericho. In 2007 Hamdi Quran was
sentenced to 100 years in prison for gunning down the minister as
well as bombing and shooting attacks against Israelis. In 2008
Bassel Asmar was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder,
attempted murder and belonging to a terror organization.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.A1)(SFC, 4/30/02, p.A16)(AP,
3/7/06)(AP, 2/6/08)
2001 Oct 17, In the Philippines
gunmen abducted an Italian priest, Giuseppe Pierantoni (45), in
Dimataling, Zamboanga del Sur. He was freed Apr 8, 2002.
(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A1)(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A7)
2001 Oct 17, Russia announced
military cuts that would eliminate a navy base in Vietnam and a
radar station in Cuba.
(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A1)
2002 Oct 17, Timothy Belden,
former Enron executive, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and agreed to
cooperate with federal prosecutors. Belden admitted to giving grid
operators false information and shipping power from within
California out of state and selling it back at higher prices.
(SFC, 10/18/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 17, Ira Einhorn, the
'70s hippie guru who had fled to Europe after being charged with
murder, was convicted in Philadelphia of killing his girlfriend,
Holly Maddux, and stuffing her corpse in his closet a
quarter-century earlier. He was later sentenced to life without
parole.
(AP, 10/17/03)
2002 Oct 17, Israeli tanks
fired artillery shells and machine guns after coming under attack by
anti-tank missiles, killing at least 6 Palestinians and wounding
more than 40 in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
(AP, 10/17/02)(SFC, 10/18/02, p.A18)
2002 Oct 17, In the Philippines
bombings in Zamboanga killed 7 people and injured 152. Militants of
Abu Sayyaf were suspected.
(SFC, 10/18/02, p.A10)
2003 Oct 17, Pres. Bush stopped
in Tokyo and thanked PM Junichiro Koizumi for aid to Iraq.
(WSJ, 10/17/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 17, The US House and
Senate voted to spend some $87 billion earmarked for securing peace
and eliminating terrorist threats in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/17/04)
2003 Oct 17, In Chicago
government workers trapped in a burning downtown office tower
frantically dialed 911 as they tried to make their way through
smoke-filled staircases and hallways. 13 were found unconscious amid
the smoke, 6 of them dead.
(AP, 10/18/03)
2003 Oct 17, A new family of
frogs was reported from the western India. The purple, burrowing
frog family, named Nasikabatrachus sahydrensis, appeared to date
back some 200 million years.
(SFC, 10/17/03, p.A10)
2003 Oct 17, In eastern
Afghanistan a bomb blew up a pickup truck on a dirt road, killing
four people, and two Afghan soldiers were killed in a land mine
explosion in the country's south.
(AP, 10/19/03)
2003 Oct 17, Bolivia's Pres.
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (“Goni”) resigned in a letter to Congress.
VP Carlos Mesa, a moderate political unknown, took over the
presidency. As one of Bolivia's top journalists, Mesa wrote a
best-selling book, "Entre urnas y fusiles" (Between the Ballot Box
and the Rifle), about the many presidents in this country's often
tumultuous history. Lozada and Jose Sanchez Berzain, the former
defense minister, fled to the US. In 2007 suits were filed in the US
against Lozada and Berzain men for their October crackdown on
protestors that left 67 people dead.
(Econ, 10/16/04,
p.34)(www.boliviasolidarity.org/takeaction/latestactions/sanfran)
2003 Oct 17, The EU pushed
ahead with efforts to build its own defense arm but sought to ease
U.S. concerns by insisting the plan would neither duplicate nor
undermine NATO.
(AP, 10/17/03)
2003 Oct 17, German lawmakers
approved an $18 billion tax cut for next year and reductions in
jobless benefits.
(AP, 10/17/03)
2003 Oct 17, In Iraq the deaths
of 4 soldiers brought to 101 the number killed since Pres. Bush
declared the end of major combat on May 1.
(SFC, 10/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 17, Taiwanese
officials celebrated the completion of the world's tallest
skyscraper after crews installed the pinnacle on the 1,676-foot-tall
building.
(AP, 10/17/03)
2004 Oct 17, Betty Hill (85),
who claimed that she and her husband, Barney, had been abducted,
examined and released by extraterrestrials in 1961, died in
Portsmouth, N.H.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2004 Oct 17, Organizers of a
campaign by French non-government organizations said African chicken
farmers risk ruin from massive imports of European frozen poultry at
less than a third of their prices.
(AP, 10/17/04)
2004 Oct 17, Belarus voters
went to the polls to decide whether to abolish presidential term
limits and allow the authoritarian president to run for a third term
in 2006. Opposition leaders accused the government of arresting
exit-poll takers and turning away election observers.
(AP, 10/17/04)
2004 Oct 17, Effective as of
today Brazil's air force will be allowed to shoot down small planes
suspected of carrying drugs under a law meant to stem the flow of
cocaine.
(AP, 10/15/04)
2004 Oct 17, US forces battled
insurgents around Fallujah. Militants ambushed and killed nine Iraqi
policemen returning from training in Jordan. A suicide driver in
Baghdad killed at least 7 people. More than 200 detainees were
released from Abu Ghraib prison after a security review deemed them
no longer a threat.
(AP, 10/17/04)(SFC, 10/18/04, p.A1)
2004 Oct 17, Jordan's military
prosecutor indicted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the most wanted
insurgents in Iraq, and 12 other alleged Muslim militants for an
alleged al-Qaida linked plot to attack the U.S. Embassy in Amman and
Jordanian government targets.
(AP, 10/17/04)
2004 Oct 17, The Tawhid and
Jihad group, a militant group led by terror mastermind Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, declared its allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
(AP, 10/18/04)
2004 Oct 17, Military
helicopters doused a 730-foot office tower in Caracas' Parque
Central complex, one of Venezuela's tallest buildings, bringing
under control a blaze that many feared would cause the tower to
collapse.
(AP, 10/17/04)
2005 Oct 17, The American
magazine Conference unveiled the top 40 magazine covers of the last
40 years. The top rating went to Rolling Stone for its 1/22/81 cover
of John Lennon and Yoko Ono lying in bed.
(www.magazine.org/Press_Room/13806.cfm)
2005 Oct 17, The FBI reported
that US murders fell to 16,137 in 2004, 391 fewer than in 2003 and
that the overall violent crime rate hit a 3-year low.
(WSJ, 10/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 17, Serono
Laboratories, a Swiss drug-maker, pleaded guilty to US federal
conspiracy charges and agreed to pay $740 million for kickbacks to
doctors for the AIDS drug Serostim and for manipulating a test for
AIDS patients.
(SFC, 10/18/05, p.E1)
2005 Oct 17, General Motors
Corp. and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative agreement that
will help the embattled automaker lower its health care costs even
as GM reported a whopping $1.6 billion loss for the third quarter.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Commodities
brokerage Refco Inc. said it had filed for bankruptcy protection as
it struck a deal to sell its core futures brokerage business to a
group of private equity investors for $768 million. BAWAG, Austria’s
4th largest bank, gave Refco a top-up loan of 350 million euros just
hours before the bankruptcy. In 2007 it was revealed that Wolfgang
Flottl, a hedge fund manager, had his investments sour in 1997
causing BAWAG to lose over $1 billion. The losses were hid from
auditors for 7 years. Helmut Elsner, former boss of BAWAG
(1995-2003), faced charges along with 8 others for the bank’s near
collapse.
(Reuters, 10/17/06)(Econ, 5/6/06, p.72)(WSJ,
1/25/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/21/07, p.73)
2005 Oct 17, Idaho state and
federal health officials are trying to get to the bottom of nine
reported cases of suspected sporadic CJD in Idaho this year.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, It was reported
that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $15 million for
the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, the world's largest
institution dedicated to preserving Information Age artifacts.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Two days of
U.S.-Chinese trade talks ended with no response by China to an
ambitious American proposal to reform its financial sector and open
its markets wider to foreign products, while also moving faster on
currency reforms.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17,
Dr. Marvin Chodorow (b.1913), former professor of physics at
Stanford Univ., died. He expanded on the 1937 invention of the
klystron tube, an early form of the driver for microwave power, and
increased its power from a few hundred watts to millions of watts.
(www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/2005/pr-chodorow-102605.html)
2005 Oct 17, In southern
Afghanistan US-led coalition forces killed four police officers
after mistaking them for militants during an operation in the
Maywand district of Kandahar province. Elsewhere militants shot dead
a police intelligence officer as he was walking in Zabul province.
(AP, 10/18/05)
2005 Oct 17, An Azerbaijani
opposition leader was arrested in Ukraine and scores of his
supporters were detained by police. Tensions rose in Azerbaijan in
the run-up to next month's parliamentary election.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Radovan Karadzic,
former Bosnian-Serb leader and war-crimes fugitive, released a 6th
collection of poems titled “Under the left Breast of the Century.”
(SFC, 10/19/05, p.A2)
2005 Oct 17, The British
government announced that smoking will be banned at all workplaces
as well as pubs and restaurants in Northern Ireland from April 2007.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, China’s Shenzhou 6
capsule carrying astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng landed
before dawn by parachute in China's northern grasslands after a
five-day mission.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Ba Jin (100), one
of China's most revered communist-era writers who attacked the evils
of the pre-revolutionary era in novels, short stories and essays,
died of cancer in Shanghai. He is best known for his 1931 novel
"Family," the story of a disintegrating feudal household. Ba Jin
also translated the Russian writers Ivan Turgenev and Pyotr
Kropotkin.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, The EU urged
Croatia and Greece to expedite tests on dead birds as concerns rose
over the westward spread of avian flu.
(WSJ, 10/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 17, The European Union
unblocked $87 million in development aid for Haiti, ending a freeze
imposed almost five years ago because of allegedly flawed elections
in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Deutsche Bank AG
and private bank Sal. Oppenheim said they would acquire a combined
14% stake in China's Hua Xia Bank in a deal worth 272 million euros
($326.4 million).
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Iraq's former
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and other secular leaders announced a new
coalition they said unites moderate Sunnis, Shiites and other
political groups to run in December's parliamentary elections.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, In western Iraq 2
US Marines were killed in fighting near the Jordanian border.
Insurgents shot and killed Ayed Abdul Ghani, an adviser to one of
Iraq's top Sunni Arab officials, as he drove to work in Baghdad.
(AP, 10/18/05)
2005 Oct 17, US warplanes and
helicopters bombed two western villages, killing an estimated 70
militants near a site where five American soldiers died in a weekend
roadside blast, the military. Residents said at least 39 of the dead
were civilians.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Israel suspended
negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on issues such as
prisoner releases and slapped tough travel restrictions on the West
Bank after Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis and wounded five
a day earlier.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17,
Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi enraged China and South Korea by
visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni war shrine.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2005 Oct 17, Libyan Foreign
Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam rejected a call by US President George
W. Bush for Tripoli to spare the lives of five Bulgarian nurses
sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with
the AIDS virus.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Dutch police
arrested 45 members of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang and seized
an assortment of weapons during nationwide raids on the group's
clubhouses. Prosecutors said those arrested face charges of murder,
extortion, intimidation and weapons and drug trafficking.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, Russian state
security agents arrested a senior tax official as he was handed a $1
million bribe in a plush Moscow hotel. The arrest was announced the
next day as corruption watchdog Transparency International published
its annual survey showing graft in Russia had worsened to put it on
the same level as Sierra Leone, Niger and Albania.
(AP, 10/18/05)(Econ, 10/22/05, p.53)
2005 Oct 17, Abdi Hassan Awale,
who once served as Somalia's interior minister, was arrested on
suspicion of war crimes while attending a conference in Sweden. He
is suspected of being a militia leader during the Oct 3, 1993,
"Black Hawk Down" battle that left 18 Americans dead.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 17, South Africa's
government vowed to press ahead with legislative attempts to take
greater control of the nation's diamonds and weaken the grip of
diamond-producer De Beers, dismissing arguments that this could
disrupt global markets and lead to job losses.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2006 Oct 17, President Bush
signed legislation authorizing tough interrogation of terror
suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military
commissions. The Military Commissions Act virtually abolished the
right of any non-American deemed an enemy combatant to challenge his
indefinite detention before American courts.
(AP, 10/17/06)(Econ, 5/26/07, p.30)
2006 Oct 17, The United States
said it plans to take in about 10,000 Burundian refugees from
Tanzania, many of whom fled their landlocked nation as far back as
1972.
(Reuters, 10/18/06)
2006 Oct 17, The US FDA
approved Januvia, a novel pill for Type 2 diabetes made by Merck.
Type 2 diabetes affects about 20 million Americans.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, Actor Wesley
Snipes was indicted for cheating the US government out of nearly $12
million in false refund claims and not filing for 6 years. On Feb 1,
2008, a federal jury in Florida acquitted Snipes (45) of the most
serious charges but convicted him on 3 of 6 lesser charges and said
he must pay up to $17 million in back taxes plus penalties and
interest.
(SFC, 10/18/06, p.A2)(SFC, 2/2/08, p.A2)
2006 Oct 17, The Chicago
Mercantile Exchange announced plans to acquire the Chicago Board of
Trade for about $8 billion.
(WSJ, 10/18/06, p.A1)(Econ, 10/21/06, p.86)
2006 Oct 17, It was reported
that teams of scientists from the Dubna nuclear research center in
Moscow and Livermore Lawrence National Laboratory in California had
detected element 118 after bombarding californium with calcium ions
in a Russian cyclotron.
(SFC, 10/17/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 17, The 300 millionth
US resident was born at 4:46 am according to a US Census Bureau
estimate. The 200 million mark was reached in 1967. The 400 million
mark was expected around 2043.
(SFC, 10/18/06, p.B3)(Econ, 10/14/06, p.29)
2006 Oct 17, Megan Meier
(b.1992) of Missouri committed suicide following a series of cruel
messages on the MySpace online social network. In 2008 Lori drew
(49) of Missouri was indicted for perpetrating an online hoax, which
led to Meier’s suicide. Drew was convicted on Nov 26 of only three
minor offenses for her role in the Internet hoax. The federal jury
could not reach a verdict on the main charge against 49-year-old
Lori Drew, conspiracy, and rejected three other felony counts of
accessing computers without authorization to inflict emotional harm.
A final decision on the verdicts was still pending in 2009.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Meier_suicide_controversy)(SFC,
5/16/08, p.A4)(AP, 11/27/08)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.232)
2006 Oct 17, Rapper Fabolous
was shot as he stood at a Manhattan parking garage, spurring a
sequence of events that left him both hospitalized in stable
condition and under arrest.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, Miriam Engelberg,
cartoonist and writer, died in SF. She had recently authored “Cancer
Made Me a Shallower Person.”
(SFC, 10/20/06, p.B9)
2006 Oct 17, Christopher Glenn
(68), CBS News correspondent, died in Norwalk, Conn.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2006 Oct 17, In southern
Afghanistan British troops pulled out of the Musa Qala district in
Helmand province. A US-led coalition airstrike killed a suspected
midlevel Taliban commander and up to 15 other militants. Suspected
Taliban militants destroyed an oil tanker transporting fuel for
NATO-led peacekeepers and killed its driver in southern Kandahar
province's Spin Boldak district.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, Australia's
worsening drought was driving farmers to suicide. Scientists and
politicians said government funds should be used to help them leave
increasingly unviable land.
(AFP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, Bahrain said
Lateefa al-Geood, a British-educated civil servant, has become the
first-ever female to serve as an elected member of the parliament.
18 women were among 221 candidates vying for seats in the 40-member
assembly in the Nov. 25 vote. Al-Geood was the only candidate who
registered to run in her region.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, In Brazil some 200
Indians from the Xikrin tribe, wielding war clubs and bows and
arrows, stormed an Amazon mining complex at the company town of
Carajas, shutting it down in an apparent demand for more
compensation from CVRD, the world's largest iron ore miner. The
Indians left after 2 days.
(AP, 10/18/06)(AP, 10/19/06)
2006 Oct 17, A Chinese court
ruled that journalist Yang Xiaoqing was exempt from serving the
remainder of his sentence but would not overturn the lower court's
conviction. Xiaoqing, convicted of extortion for exposing local
corruption, was released on bail last month.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 17, A UN report
recommended that recommended that East Timor’s former interior
minister Rogerio Lobato, military chief Taur Matan Ruak, and several
others be prosecuted for illegal distribution of weapons and be held
accountable for unrest that gripped capital Dili this year. The
79-page report also called for a further investigation into former
PM Mari Alkatiri to determine whether he should face criminal
charges.
(Reuters, 10/18/06)
2006 Oct 17, In Ecuador with
60% of the vote counted, Rafael Correa was all-but tied with Alvaro
Noboa, each with about 25%.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, The EU said it
felt obliged to back limited sanctions against Iran's nuclear
program after Tehran refused to halt uranium enrichment as a
condition to start negotiations.
(Reuters, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, In eastern
Honduras a military truck plunged off a cliff, killing five soldiers
and injuring 12.
(AP, 10/18/06)
2006 Oct 17, Indonesian
television broadcast the photo of Sudjiono Timan, a fugitive
convicted of embezzling millions of dollars in state funds as part
of a new campaign against corruption. Timan, was sentenced in
absentia to 15 years in jail for embezzling $140 million after his
bank received emergency funds meant to bail out banks crippled
during Indonesia's 1998 financial crisis. This was the first
installment of a weekly TV program exposing people convicted of
corruption, which remains endemic at all levels of government.
(AP, 10/19/06)
2006 Oct 17, Iceland said it
would resume commercial whaling after a nearly two-decade
moratorium, defying a worldwide ban on hunting the mammals for their
meat.
(AP, 10/18/06)
2006 Oct 17, In Iraq attacks
left Iraqis dead and 16 more corpses turned up in Baghdad. 8 US
soldiers and one Marine were killed by roadside bombs and enemy fire
in and around Baghdad.
(AP, 10/18/06)(WSJ, 10/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 17, Israeli troops
shot and killed 5 Palestinians, including 2 young stone-throwers, in
the West Bank town of Qabatiyeh.
(AP, 10/17/06)(WSJ, 10/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 17, The Italian bank
Sanpaolo won a five-way race for control of Bank of Alexandria, the
first Egyptian bank to be privatized in a selloff worth 1.6 billion
dollars.
(AFP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, In Italy a subway
train rammed into another train halted at the Piazza Vittorio
Emanuele II station in central Rome, killing at least one person and
injuring 236.
(AP, 10/17/06)(WSJ, 10/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 17, Kenya reported its
first case of polio in 22 years at a refugee camp near the Somali
border as the United Nations appealed for urgent help to cope with a
surge in refugees from Somalia.
(AFP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, In central Mexico
an explosion in an area packed with small fireworks factories
Capulhuac, 20 miles west of Mexico City, left four people dead and a
man with severe burns. In western Mexico 14 people were killed when
a passenger bus crashed into the back of a tractor trailer. A spark
touched off an explosion aboard a gasoline tanker ship at Pemex's
Pajarito marine terminal in the city of Coatzacoalcos, killing eight
people and injuring nine others.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, The US State
Department said that the last landmines and unexploded ordnance
blocking Mozambique's vital Sena Railway line have been removed,
thanks largely to some $13 million (€10 million) in US aid. The mine
action assistance was launched in 2002. Under the US Humanitarian
Mine Action Program approximately 46 million dollars have been given
in aid to Mozambique since 1993.
(AFP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, North Korea said
it considered UN sanctions aimed at punishing the country for its
nuclear test "a declaration of war," as Japan and South Korea
reported the communist nation might be preparing a second explosion.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, Philippine media
groups accused the president's husband of trying to muzzle a
critical press by filing a string of libel cases against 43
journalists and publishers.
(AP, 10/18/06)
2006 Oct 17, Sri Lankan fighter
jets pounded two suspected Tamil Tiger bases and a camp.
(AP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, A former Janjaweed
fighter in London recounted to the BBC how the Sudanese government
has actively supported the militia that is accused of genocide
against non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur.
(AFP, 10/18/06)
2007 Oct 17,
President Bush attended a ceremony in which the Dalai Lama was
awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’ highest civilian
honor. China lodged an official protest over the honoring of the
Dalai Lama in Washington, while bluntly rejecting US President
George W. Bush's advice on how to handle the Tibet issue.
(AFP, 10/16/07)(WSJ, 10/18/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 17, The US Supreme
Court stopped the execution of Virginia death row inmate Christopher
Scott Emmet (36). Legal experts said the move signals a nationwide
halt to lethal injections until the court decides in 2008 whether
the procedure violates constitutional standards.
(SFC, 10/18/07, p.A15)
2007 Oct 17, Teresa Brewer
(b.1931), singer, died at her home in New Rochelle, NY. She had a
big hit with “Music, Music, Music” in 1950.
(SFC, 10/19/07, p.A11)
2007 Oct 17, Joey Bishop
(b.1918), comedian and the last surviving member of Frank Sinatra’s
legendary Rat Pack, died. In 2002 Michael Seth Starr authored the
biography “Mouse in the Rat Pack: The Joey Bishop Story.”
(SFC, 10/19/07, p.A11)(AP, 10/17/08)
2007 Oct 17, Taliban used heavy
machine guns and rocket propelled grenades to ambush a US-led
coalition patrol in southern Afghanistan that wounded nine troops.
In the east, a roadside bomb on a police vehicle close to the border
with Pakistan killed an officer and wounded three others in Khost
province.
(AP, 10/18/07)
2007 Oct 17, In Australia a
group of children playing in a suburban Sidney park opened a
suitcase they found floating in a pond and discovered the body of a
youngster inside.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, Hundreds of police
agents swooped in on drug gangs in two Rio de Janeiro shantytowns,
setting off gunbattles that killed 12 people, including an officer
and a boy (4).
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, In Cambodia
Alexander Trofimov (41), the Russian chairman of Koh Puos Investment
Group Ltd., was charged with debauchery, a Cambodian legal offense
covering sexual abuse of children. He was detained in the southern
resort town of Sihanoukville and accused of raping at least six
girls. In September last year, the Cambodian government gave
Trofimov's company permission to develop an island near
Sihanoukville into a tourist resort.
(AP, 11/16/07)
2007 Oct 17, In Costa Rica and
agreement was reached by which the US government and environmental
groups will trim $26 million off Costa Rica's debt rolls in exchange
for the country spending the same amount on tropical forest
conservation.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17,
Fiji's coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama pledged to hold
elections in early 2009 as Pacific countries welcomed the move and
vowed to continue pressing for progress at a regional summit.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17,
A Greek-flagged cargo ship carrying coal sank in the northern
Greek port of Thessaloniki after colliding with Panama-flagged Dubai
Guardian. The captain of the Diamond 1 was killed.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, In Indonesia's
Papua region rival tribes armed with bows and arrows clashed close
to a US-owned gold mine, killing eight people.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, Iran hanged eight
men and one woman on murder charges in the notorious Evin Prison in
northern Tehran.
(AP, 10/18/07)
2007 Oct 17, A roadside bomb
exploded near a police patrol, killing at least seven officers in a
Shiite area south of Baghdad. A suicide bomber driving an
explosives-laden truck struck a checkpoint manned by Kurdish forces
in Diyala province. The attack in a mountainous area near the
Iranian border killed 2 Kurdish soldiers and wounding more than 10
others. A bomb exploded near a residential building in the
predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah, killing two
civilians and wounding two others. US troops captured 15 suspected
militants in operations targeted al-Qaida in Tikrit, Ramadi, Baqouba
and Mosul. Those captured were accused of helping smuggle foreign
fighters and weapons into Iraq, including five with alleged
connections to Syrian-based extremists.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17,
Israeli troops killed a Hamas gunman in a battle in southern
Gaza.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17,
A man opened fire in a courtroom in northern Italy, seriously
wounding his estranged wife and killing her brother before being
shot to death by police.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, Investigators
began raids on Japanese companies accused of corruption in projects
to remove chemical weapons abandoned in China during World War II.
The allegations involve the illegal diversion of some of the $199
million the government has disbursed since 2004 to help dispose of
400,000 chemical weapons that retreating Japanese troops left in
northeast China at war's end. China has said poisons have leaked
from the weapons and killed about 2,000 people since 1945.
(AP, 10/19/07)
2007 Oct 17,
Myanmar's military junta acknowledged that it detained nearly
3,000 people during a crackdown on recent pro-democracy protests,
with hundreds still remaining in custody.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, A clash between
Hamas security forces and members of a large Gaza clan affiliated
with the rival Fatah party left four people dead.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, Interfax reported
that Russia has charged a lieutenant colonel in the security service
and 8 others for the Oct 7, 2006, slaying of anti-Kremlin journalist
Ann Politkovskaya.
(WSJ, 10/18/07, p.A1)(Reuters, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17,
Irdris Osman, the head of UN food agency operations in the
violence-wracked Somali capital, was taken away by 50 to 60 heavily
armed government security officers who had stormed the UN compound
in Mogadishu. Osman was freed on Oct 23. Overnight, at least 8
civilians and one policeman died during a battle between Islamic
insurgents and policemen.
(AP, 10/17/07)(AP, 10/23/07)
2007 Oct 17,
In South Africa the leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa
vowed to push the interests of poor nations in stalled international
trade talks and said any agreement would have to benefit the
developing world.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17,
Sudan's former southern rebels said they would rejoin the
national government to work through a stalemate on implementing a
2005 peace deal which ended Africa's longest civil war.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17,
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, on a visit to Turkey, said
that Damascus would back a possible Turkish incursion into northern
Iraq to crack down "against terrorist activities" there.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, Turkey’s
Parliament gave the government a one-year window in which to launch
cross-border offensives against Turkish Kurd rebels who've been
conducting raids into Turkey. The vote removed the last legal
obstacle to an offensive.
(AP, 10/18/07)(AP, 10/20/07)
2007 Oct 17,
Pope Benedict XVI named 23 new cardinals, tapping two
Americans, the patriarch of Baghdad, and archbishops from five
continents to join the elite ranks of the "princes" of the Roman
Catholic Church.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2008 Oct 17, The Bush
administration named the beluga whale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet an
endangered species, despite opposition from Gov. Palin. Only 375
beluga whales remained there as opposed to some 1,300 in the 1970s.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.A3)
2008 Oct 17, US drug czar John
Walters said that Mexico's drug cartels are crossing the border to
kidnap and kill inside the United States, and promised that an
anti-drug aid package to help Mexico to fight the gangs will be
ready soon.
(AP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 17, Harvard Univ.
announced a gift of $45 million and 31 major works of art from 1936
alumna Emily Rauh Pulitzer for the Harvard Art Museum. It was the
largest gift in the history of the museum.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.E3)
2008 Oct 17, In Philadelphia
college student Jocelyn Kirsch (23) was sentenced to five years in
prison and ordered to pay more than $100,000 in restitution. She and
her former boyfriend, Edward Anderton, had stolen the identities of
friends and neighbors in 2006 and 2007 to net more than $116,000 in
goods and services. Anderton’s sentence was pending.
(AP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 17, Mervyn’s, a
Hayward, Ca., based retailer, said it plans to liquidate its
remaining 149 locations and shutter the business after the holiday
season.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.C1)
2008 Oct 17, Pfizer Inc. said
it has reached agreements to end up to 92% of personal injury
lawsuits relating to anti-inflammatory drugs Bextra and Celebrex,
linked to elevated risks of heart attacks and stroke, at a cost of
$894 million.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.A2)
2008 Oct 17, George M Keller
(b.1923), former head of Standard Oil of California (1981-1988),
died at his home in Palo Alto, Ca. He oversaw the 1984 merger with
Gulf Oil to form Chevron Corp.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.B1)
2008 Oct 17, Levi Stubbs (72),
Four Tops frontman, died at his home in Detroit. His dynamic and
emotive voice drove such Motown classics as "Reach Out (I'll Be
There)" and "Baby I Need Your Loving."
(AP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 17, In Afghanistan a
bomb in Paktika province killed two civilians. A two-day battle in
Wardak province left 20 militants dead. NATO-led forces assaulted
the insurgent stronghold with airstrikes 40 miles west of
Kabul.
(AFP, 10/18/08)(AP, 10/20/08)
2008 Oct 17, Two Indonesian
fishing crew picked up in Australian territorial waters with 14
refugees on their boat were charged with people smuggling.
(Reuters, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 17, Some 30 leaders of
French-speaking nations attended a 3-day summit of French-speaking
nations in Quebec City, Canada. The focus was dominated by the
world's financial woes.
(AFP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 17, Chechen leader
Ramzan Kadyrov opened one of Europe's biggest mosques in the rebuilt
capital of the southern Russian region, saying it was proof Russian
rule and Islam can go together. The mosque, named "The Heart of
Chechnya" and constructed by Turkish builders, can host up to 10,000
worshippers.
(AP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 17, A bomb planted
near a Baghdad mosque killed three Shiite worshippers as they were
leaving prayers. Iraqi mosques used the Muslim week's holy day to
address recent attacks against Christians.
(AP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 17, In Mexico 334
police officers were ousted in ciudad Juarez after they failed
psychological, background and other checks as part of a clean-up
campaign meant to root out officers who are corrupt or cooperating
with drug traffickers. The border city sent police recruiters across
the country as it tries to replace nearly half a police force gutted
by firings and retirements.
(AP, 10/18/08)
2008 Oct 17, In northwest
Pakistan troops backed by helicopter gunships and artillery pounded
militant positions, killing 60 fighters and wounding many others
near the town of Matta in the Swat Valley.
(AP, 10/18/08)
2008 Oct 17, In southern
Thailand a 25-year-old man was shot dead in a gunfight with security
officials after the arrests of five other suspected militants.
(AFP, 10/18/08)
2008 Oct 17, Turkish warplanes
carried out successful airstrikes inside Iraq on the main bases used
by Kurdish rebels. The air strikes on Qandil Mountain killed 25
Kurdish rebels and wounded many more. Earlier in the day, the
military said it intercepted Kurdish rebel radio chatter indicating
that up to 35 guerrillas had been killed in clashes with troops
earlier this week in southeastern Sirnak province.
(AP, 10/17/08)(AP, 10/24/08)
2008 Oct 17, The UN added
Japan, Austria, Turkey, Mexico and Uganda as members to the 10
non-permanent seats of the Security Council, replacing Belgium,
Indonesia, Italy, Panama and South Africa.
(AP, 10/17/08)
2009 Oct 17, In Oakland, Ca., 3
people died when their car flipped during a sideshow in the early
hours. The Nissan in the crash was said to have been in a hyphy
train, like a conga line on wheels with cars weaving and speeding in
unison.
(SSFC, 10/18/09, p.C3)
2009 Oct 17, In Brazil drug
traffickers shot down a police helicopter during a gunbattle between
rival gangs. The weekend gang fight in Rio de Janeiro left 3 police
officers killed, and continued into the week leaving at least 32
people dead.
(SSFC, 10/18/09, p.A8)(AP, 10/21/09)(AP,
10/22/09)(Econ, 10/24/09, p.42)
2009 Oct 17, In Iraq a suicide
bomber driving a dynamite-laden truck destroyed a key bridge on a
highway used by the departing US military outside Ramadi. An attack
on an Iraqi army convoy just outside of the city of Fallujah killed
four Iraqi soldiers and wounded 14. Attackers threw hand grenades at
an Iraqi army patrol near Kirkuk, killing two civilians and wounding
two others. In Mosul 2 policemen and one civilian were killed in
three unrelated incidents.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, The West Africa
regional bloc ECOWAS imposed an arms embargo against Guinea,
accusing the ruling military junta for "mass human rights
violations" during anti-government protests last month.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, In Honduras ousted
President Manuel Zelaya said negotiations over the coup are in
"suspense" after the rival factions rebuffed each other's proposals
and his foreign minister called the internationally brokered talks a
failure.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, Members of the
Maldives' Cabinet donned scuba gear and used hand signals at an
underwater meeting staged to highlight the threat of global warming
to the lowest-lying nation on earth.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, Mexican police in
Tijuana found a man's nude, mutilated body hung by the neck from an
expressway overpass, the 2nd such grisly discovery in 9 days. Police
reported finding the mutilated body of a woman in a reservoir in
another part of Tijuana. The woman's hands and head were missing. A
shootout between gunmen and police killed one officer and a gunman
and wounded two policemen. Tijuana investigators found five assault
rifles and vests with federal prosecutors' insignia in three
vehicles thought used by the attackers.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, It was reported
that an increasing number of children in Africa are being accused of
witchcraft by pastors of evangelical Christianity and then tortured
or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of
200 cases of "witch children" reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches
were named in the case files. Campaigners against the practice said
around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria's 36
states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, More than 30,000
Pakistani soldiers launched a ground offensive against al-Qaida and
the Taliban's main stronghold along the Afghan border, in the
country's toughest test yet against a strengthening insurgency. The
operation was expected to last around two months. At least 11
suspected insurgents were killed in jet bombings, while a bomb hit a
security convoy, killing one soldier and wounding three others. 4
soldiers were killed and 12 wounded in exchanges of fire elsewhere
in the region. The plan was to capture and hold an area where an
estimated 10,000 insurgents were headquartered and reinforced with
about 1,500 foreign fighters, most of them of Central Asian origin.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, In the Philippines
a propeller-driven plane on a test flight crashed and burst into
flames in a suburb of Manila, killing at least four people onboard.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, In Puerto Rico
gunmen opened fire into a bar in Toa Baja shortly before midnight
and killed seven people, injuring 20 others. On Oct 27 Wilfredo
Semprit Santana, the owner of the bar, was arrested and charged with
drug trafficking.
(AP, 10/18/09)(AP, 10/27/09)
2009 Oct 17, In Spain a huge
crowd rallied in Madrid against a bill to ease restrictions on
abortion, a vivid and emotional show of how the issue remains
sensitive two decades after abortion was legalized in this
traditionally Roman Catholic country.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, In western Sudan 3
peacekeepers were wounded, two of them seriously, when their vehicle
came under fire in the Darfur region.
(AFP, 10/17/09)
2009 Oct 17, In Thailand some
17,000 "Red Shirt" supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra rallied in
Bangkok to pressure the Thai government over their petition seeking
a royal pardon for the fugitive former prime minister.
(AP, 10/17/09)
2010 Oct 17, The New York Times
reported that possibly hundreds of members of Iraq's Awakening
Councils, a group affiliated with the US military, have switched
their loyalty to Al-Qaeda.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, The Washington
Post reported that the United States believes some Chinese firms are
helping Iran improve its missile technology and develop nuclear
weapons and has asked Beijing to prevent such activity.
(AFP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, In Arizona a
commercial tour bus drifted off a highway near Meadview and rolled
over several times killing 2 people and injuring several others.
(SFC, 10/18/10, p.A5)
2010 Oct 17, In New York Danroy
"D.J." Henry (20), a college football player driving away from the
scene of a fight, ended up dead hours after the team's homecoming
game, struck in a burst of police gunfire that pierced his
windshield in the Westchester County hamlet of Thornwood.
(AP, 10/19/10)
2010 Oct 17, Afghanistan issued
a statement issued by the president's office saying that private
security firms will not only be able to operate inside international
compounds, but also travel with diplomats and work as protection for
international military installations. A NATO service member was
killed by a bomb blast in the south. Afghan and Western officials
said that fraud was pervasive in the Sep 18 elections and that 25%
or 800,000 to a million votes would be likely thrown out. air
strikes killed a Taliban "military leader" and 15 other insurgents
in the northern province of Baghlan. A Taliban prisoner, Mullah
Muhebullah, was found shot dead while under US guard in an Afghan
holding facility. Pfc. David Lawrence (20) was soon placed under
custody in a criminal investigation of Muhebullah’s death.
(AP, 10/17/10)(SFC, 10/18/10, p.A3)(AFP,
10/19/10)(SFC, 12/1/10, p.A6)
2010 Oct 17, In Afghanistan
about this time 3 Taliban leaders secretly met with Pres. Karzai in
an effort to weaken the Haqqani network, the US-led coalition's most
vicious enemy.
(AP, 10/31/10)
2010 Oct 17, In Brazil three
men broke into the home of Wanderley dos Reis, the owner of a small
newspaper in Sao Paulo state, and shot and killed him.
(AP, 10/20/10)
2010 Oct 17, In southeastern
Brazil a bus carrying people back from a sports festival for special
needs athletes fell from a bridge into a river, killing 11 and
injuring nearly 30.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, Congo's first
lady, Olive Lembe Kabila, led thousands of women marching in the
country's volatile east to demand an end to a wave of mass rapes. 3
residents were killed when soldiers looted homes in Congo's South
Kivu province.
(AP, 10/17/10)(AP, 10/18/10)
2010 Oct 17, In Haiti 2 inmates
were shot to death trying to escape from the roof of the
quake-damaged national penitentiary. A third was trampled to death
inside during a prison riot. Police officials familiar with the
prison said some inmates had escaped.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, In northern India
an argument over sacrificing goats during a Hindu festival triggered
a stampede that killed 10 people in a packed temple.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, Iran's Pres.
Ahmadinejad endorsed the idea of new talks with the international
community over his country's nuclear program, while warning that
negotiations would fail if the West does not clearly come out
against Israel's suspected nuclear arsenal.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, Iran freed Reza
Taghavi (71), an Iranian-American businessman. The next day he said
he had spent some of his more than two years in prison alongside
protesters detained in Iran's postelection crackdowns and praised
his first taste of freedom as a blessing "no one can imagine.”
Taghavi, who regularly visits Iran to conduct business and see
family, had been jailed for 29 months for passing $200 to someone
suspected of links to a rebel group known as Tondar, which seeks to
topple the Islamic system and was implicated in the mosque bombing.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, In Iraq two
policemen and two gunmen were killed in gunfights between security
forces and armed groups attempting to rob Baghdad jewelry stores. 5
gunmen escaped.
(AP, 10/17/10)(SFC, 10/18/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 17, In Kuwait some 100
people stormed the offices of privately owned Scope TV’s studios and
destroyed its equipment after the channel aired shows critical of
the ruling Al Sabah family.
(SFC, 10/19/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 17, The Mexican Navy
said two men were killed in a confrontation with marines in
Tamaulipas state. A Sonora state police officer was found dead,
apparently from a blow to the head, alongside the road in Benito
Juarez municipality. Ciudad Juarez gunmen burst into a home where a
family was having a party. 3 women and 2 men died at the scene, and
a man and a woman died at the hospital. Assailants attacked a second
home in the neighborhood minutes later, killing 2 men.
(AP, 10/17/10)(AP, 10/19/10)
2010 Oct 17, In Morocco world
leaders at the World Policy Conference (WPC) in Marrakech examined
frameworks for global governance ahead of a G20 summit in Seoul,
with UN chief Ban Ki-Moon stressing no single power could tackle key
issues alone.
(AFP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, A Nigerian
government spokesman said a Dubai court found cause to honor an
extradition request for former Delta state Gov. James Ibori, a
prominent politician in the ruling People's Democratic Party.
Authorities have said Ibori faces charges over stealing $292 million
in state funds while in office.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, In Pakistan gunmen
killed at least 25 people in Karachi over the past 24 hours, raising
tensions in Pakistan's largest city as voters cast ballots to
replace a provincial lawmaker murdered in August.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, Two Palestinians
were killed and a third wounded in a pre-dawn Israeli air strike
north of Gaza City. The Israeli military said the air force had
struck a "squad of terror operatives who were preparing to fire
rockets from the northern Gaza Strip into Israel."
(AFP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, Thousands of
Thailand's anti-government "Red Shirts" joined a mass rally in the
latest large-scale demonstration by the movement in recent weeks.
(AFP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, Pope Benedict XVI
proclaimed Australia's first saint, canonizing Mary MacKillop
(1842-1909), a 19th-century nun. The Vatican also declared five
other saints in an open-air Mass attended by tens of thousands.
Brother Andre (1845-1937), a Canadian, Italian nuns Giulia Salzano
and Battista Camilla da Varano, and Spanish nun Candida Maria de
Jesus Cipitria y Barriola were also canonized.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, The official
Vatican newspaper said that beer-swilling, doughnut-loving Homer
Simpson and son Bart are Catholics, and what's more, it says that
parents should not be afraid to let their children watch "the
adventures of the little guys in yellow." Executive producer Al Jean
told Entertainment Weekly the next day he was in "shock and awe" at
the latest assertion, adding that the Simpsons attend the
"Presbylutheran" First Church of Springfield. "The Simpsons" is the
longest-running prime-time TV series in the United States and is now
in its 22nd season.
(Reuters, 10/18/10)
2010 Oct 17, Vietnamese
officials said more flooding has killed at least 14 people and
forced around 78,000 people to be evacuated from their homes in the
centre of the country.
(AFP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 17, Zambian police
said managers at a Chinese-run coal mine who shot at workers
protesting poor working conditions will be charged with attempted
murder. 12 workers at Collum Coal Mine in the southern town of
Sinazongwe were injured a day earlier when mainly Chinese managers
fired randomly at the protesting workers.
(AFP, 10/17/10)
Go
to
http://www.timelinesdb.com
Go to October 18